Session 7: Abolition as Transnational Freedom Struggles

Key Questions

• Why is it important to study transnational freedom struggles?

• What ways did Third World liberation movements inspire and inform Black freedom struggles in the U.S. or vice versa? 

• What does solidarity look like? How do we build transnational solidarity? What challenges might we encounter, and how can we overcome them? 

• How is solidarity maintained across privilege, region, and context?

Required Readings

• Robin D.G. Kelley, Freedom Dreams, “Roaring from the East: Third World Dreaming”

• Angela Davis, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle, “Ferguson Reminds Us of the Importance of a Global Context”

• Angela Davis, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle, “On Palestine, G4S, and the Prison-Industrial Complex”

Supplementary Materials

• Book: Julia Erin Wood, “ ‘What That Meant to Me’: SNCC Women, the 1964 Guinea Trip, and Black Internationalism” in To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism, eds. Keisha Blain and Tiffany M. Gill (Urbana, 2019)

• Article: Da’Shaun Harrison, Eva, Bisan, and Osama, “From Atlanta to Palestine: Our Struggles Are Intertwined” (PDF)

• Podcast: Rustbelt Abolition Radio with Liliana Cabrera from Yo No Fui

• Poem: Miguel James, “Contra la policía” (trans. Guillermo Parra)

• Poem: Mahmoud Darwish, “Identity Card”

• Primary Source: The Global Prison Abolitionist Coalition, “Statement of Purpose”

Recommended Materials

• George L. Jackson, Blood in My Eye, 3-7

• Jalil Mutaquim, We Are Our Own Liberators: Selected Prison Writings, “The National and International Struggle: Toward a New Global Revolutionary Pan-Afrikan Strategy”

• “Confronting COVID-19 in prisons and black neighborhoods is a real task for militants against the genocide of black people - report 1”

Exercise

Davis writes that “our histories never unfold in isolation” and details how Palestinian activists used social media to shared advice with Ferguson activists dealing with tear gas. 

Think of a comrade living elsewhere (i.e. Brazil, South Africa, Palestine). What is important about this moment and your immediate conditions that you would want to convey to them? What would you want to know from them about their conditions, struggles, and movements? Use short or long-form mediums such as a letter, poem, tweet, email, or something else that speaks to you. Reflect on the barriers to solidarity that might exist and how you might dismantle those.

Reading Guide

1. In “Ferguson Reminds Us of the Importance of a Global Context,” Davis writes:
   In the abolition movement, we’ve been trying to find ways to talk about Palestine so that people who are attracted to a campaign to dismantle prisons in the US will also think about the need to end the occupation in Palestine.
   What connections between Black liberation struggles in the US and Palestinian liberation does Davis point out in both chapters 2 and 4? 

2. In what ways do these connections above help us understand the need for a global struggle against racial capitalism and settler colonialism?

3. What does Kelley tell us about the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), and how can RAM’s work inform and transform freedom dreams for abolitionists?