"The Green New Deal’s underlying logic shares something foundational with the prison abolition movement. Prison abolitionists like to say that our objective isn’t so much the abolition of prisons as it is the abolition of a society that could have prisons. Prison abolition isn’t just a movement against cages. It’s also a movement for alternative ways of living together and building social infrastructure.
Similarly, the Green New Deal is about abolishing carbon pollution and stabilizing the climate. It also recognizes that the only way we can do these things is by transforming the economy and the social-environmental relations that constitute it." As an intersectional environmentalist, newfound prison abolitionist, and Green New Deal enthusiast, I found this article a super insightful read as to how the Green New Deal and the prison abolition movement share similar goals, and both aspire to have communities in America that invest in social welfare, infrastructure for healthy living, and environmental justice. This kind of Green New Deal would redefine public safety to include social and economic stability. A jobs guarantee would help reduce incarceration, if it explicitly allowed everyone to be eligible, regardless of previous arrests or convictions. It would also require investment in high-quality education. Over the past 30 years, spending on jails and prisons has increased at triple the rate of spending on P-12 public education. The increase of cops in schools has led to school-based arrests increasing 300-500 percent since the 1990s, and this criminalization disproportionately affects black, brown, and queer kids. A Green New Deal for Decarceration would reinvest in public education and resources for troubled kids, as opposed to their criminalization. It would include investments in housing security, which would greatly reduce the risk of incarceration, and provide resources for vulnerable communities as opposed to funneling at-risk kids into prisons. It would empower care workers and disempower the police. Communities would have the opportunity to invest in restorative and transformative justice, as opposed to a justice system rooted in vengeance and punishment. Justice does not need to be criminalized, and indeed, if we want to see out communities grow and take care of one another, that criminalization is exactly what needs to be avoided. We have an opportunity here to end both carbon and carceral dependence. Right now, both climate-vulnerable communities and those most at-risk by a militarized prison and police state are subject to surveillance, behavioral micromanagement, criminalization, and incarceration. What they need and deserve instead is healthcare, housing, jobs, education, and public health. "We urge a transition not just to liberal formulations of restorative justice, which prioritize restitution between individuals, but also a structural restorative justice among people, institutions, and society. Not just restorative justice, in other words, but redistributive justice. And we suggest that redistributive justice is and can be ecological and economic justice, too; a justice that fits squarely into the objectives and ambitions of the Green New Deal." -P
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |