Community Church, January 25, 2009

By Nancy Murray, President, Gaza Mental Health Foundation, Inc.    

     On Dr. Martin Luther King Day, when foreign journalists were finally permitted to enter the Gaza Strip and report on the horror they encountered, I re-read Dr. King’s truth telling sermon of April 4, 1967 about the need to break the silence on Vietnam.

     “As I ponder the madness of Vietnam,” he said,  “and  search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind  goes constantly to the people…who have been living under the  curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries….”   

     If only Dr. King were with us to hold up the folly of a US Middle East policy which makes no attempt to either connect with the humanity of Palestinians who have, for six continuous decades, been living under the curse of war and threat of ethnic cleansing, or to hear their broken cries.  What would Dr. King say about the unleashing of the armed might of the fourth largest army in the world on a tiny intensely crowded territory only a little larger than Boston, in which more than half the residents were children?  What would he say about the massacre of more than 1,300 Palestinians, 300 of them children, whose bodies are still being pulled out of the rubble?  Would he try to convey the immensity of this loss to his audiences by telling them this is the equivalent of 300,000 dead in US terms? What would he say about the intense bombardments using US armaments that have left more than 5,000 Palestinians injured, including 1,200 children – many of them now lying in the corridors of the densely crowded, undersupplied hospitals with horrific injuries the doctors had never before seen and do not have the capacity to treat?  What would he say about the widely reported use of lethal new weapons like Dense Inert Metal Explosives and white phosphorous shells fired into densely crowded neighborhoods in the laboratory for experimentation that the Gaza Strip has become? What would he say about the bombing of 3 UN schools being used as shelters for displaced persons, leaving 45 dead, in including 13 children? And what would he say about the damage or destruction of at least 60 other schools, including the American International School and Gaza Music School, and 21 hospitals, and clinics and 16 ambulances? (The figures I am giving you are from a Save the Children fact sheet, dated January 19).  Then there is the targeting for destruction of a university, of Gaza’s major municipal buildings including its legislative assembly, of more than 22,000 homes and essential infrastructure such as sewage and water facilities.  Where is the person today of Dr. King’s moral authority and vision, who can tell our new president that the change that the world hopes for is an end to the wholly uncritical support of Israel on the part of our government and elected officials which is giving our client state the green light to commit genocide? 

     I do not use this word lightly.  In the rest of my remarks this morning I want to speak from my personal experience, and describe what the Gaza Strip has gone through since I first began to visit it in 1988.  In this way I hope to make the case that Israel’s war on Gaza was not, as it has claimed, prompted by the need to keep its citizens safe from Hamas’ firing of homemade rockets, which had killed a total of 16 Israelis between the years 2002 when they were first used and December 2008.  During that time nearly 3,000 Palestinians had been killed in the Gaza Strip alone, nearly 700 of them children, and hundreds of Israelis had been killed by Palestinian suicide bombers.  Instead this latest attack is part of an old story, with an overarching objective: the destruction of the notion that there is a Palestinian people with a cause that can arouse the world.   I believe that Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, the president of the UN General Assembly, had it right, when, on January 14, he asserted that Israel’s real intention was “genocide” which is defined by the international community as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”

     The Gaza Strip, just 26 miles long and 4-5 miles wide, is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea on the West, Egypt on the South and Israel on the North and East. Because of its strategic location Gaza was at various times besieged by the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians and successfully conquered by Alexander the Great.     After World War I, the Gaza District became part of Mandatory Palestine.  In 1947 Gaza contained perhaps 80,000 people.  With the creation of Israel the following year, two-thirds of the Gaza District became part of the State of Israel, and some 250,000 refugees flooded into the tiny Gaza Strip which was then administered by Egypt – with their descendents, refugees now number nearly 700,000.  Most of them had been forced to flee from those parts of Israel which were reached by Hamas’ rockets.  Stateless from that day to this, they live in 8 refugee camps, often 10 people to a room, with sewage running down the narrow camp roads.  The biggest of these camps – Jabalyia – has been largely destroyed in the last few weeks.

      In 1967, the Gaza Strip, like the West Bank, was occupied by Israel, and Palestinians came under Israeli military rule.  Over a thousand military decrees governed every aspect of their lives, dictating for instance, when they could plant tomato seedlings or whitewash a house.

      My first trip to Gaza took place early in 1988 as part of a fact-finding mission a few months after the first Palestinian uprising began in a refugee camp in Gaza.   Like most Americans, I knew virtually nothing about the Gaza Strip. I encountered one of the most densely crowded pieces of land on earth – a spit of sand that was home to more than a million people, half of them children 14 years and younger, and two-thirds of them impoverished refugees.

      The most fertile land in the Strip – about a quarter of the total land – was set aside for a few thousand Jewish settlers or was part of a closed military zone which was off limits to Palestinians. To give you an idea of the disparities between the two populations, while there were 166,000 Gazans per square mile in the Gaza Strip, there were 80 Israeli settlers per square mile. Even at the time of my first visit 20 years ago, the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip was experiencing a severe water crisis.  I remember wondering how people could drink the salt water that came out of faucets.  Meanwhile, the few thousand Israeli settlers in their midst had their own water supply with which they irrigated fields and greenhouses and kept their swimming pools full. Before Israel removed its settler population in 2005, when any of those Israeli settlers wanted to move along the main road running the length of the Gaza Strip, all cars belonging to Palestinians were forced to stop at one of the major roadblocks, often for an hour and sometimes much longer.

      During my first visit in 1988, the few poorly equipped hospitals in the Strip were full of young people – many of them children – who had endured the “force, might and beatings” which Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin ordered to put down what was essentially an unarmed uprising of the entire population. Beginning at 7 PM a curfew was imposed on the entire Strip confining everyone to their homes.  Gazans were under curfew, which sometimes turned into a round-the-clock house arrest lasting days or even weeks at a time, for 5 straight years.  Although there was no one on the street after 7 PM, all night long I would hear screams, gunshots and the wailing of ambulances.  

      During my early visits, I found conditions in Gaza almost unbearably grim.  But compared to what Gazans face today, those were hopeful times.  The people of Gaza – like Palestinians in the West Bank – had faith that they would be able to “shake off” (this is what the word intifada means in Arabic) Israel’s military occupation which was already decades old, which was illegal in the eyes of the international community. In 1988,  I heard Gazans express their fears that Israel was secretly backing the new Islamic group Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement), which was the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, in an effort to undermine support for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). But at that time no one could have predicted that one day there would be open warfare between the largest group of the PLO and Hamas.

      In 1988, it was possible to drive from the West Bank through Israel to the Gaza Strip.  Many Gazans would go to Israel to work as laborers and to the West Bank for university studies and for medical care.  No one imagined that one day Israel would no longer need Palestinian labor because of the numbers of Filipino, Thai and other guest workers it could import to take their place.   No one could conceive of the Strip being encircled with an electronic fence and all movement in and out strictly controlled at a few crossing points and then choked off altogether. 

      The Gazan economy suffered greatly during the first intifada of 1988 to 1992 (which saw a decline of 60 percent in per capita GNP) and as a result of the first Gulf War, when Palestinians were expelled from Kuwait and Gaza lost their remittances.  By 1992, the economy was so bad that when the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA – which supports refugees by providing schools and food) advertised 8 jobs for garbage collectors, it got 11,655 applications – which represented 10 percent of the entire labor force. 

      But it was under the so-called Oslo “peace process” of the mid and late 1990s that Gaza was turned into a big prison and the economy throttled.   Palestinian entrepreneurs who returned home to Gaza to build up the local economy soon encountered a process termed “de-development” by Sara Roy, a  researcher at Harvard University and daughter of Holocaust survivors who has done the most important scholarly work on the political economy of Gaza.   In her book Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, Dr. Roy defines de-development as “the deliberate, systematic and progressive dismemberment of an indigenous economy by a dominant one, where economic – and by extension, societal – potential is not only distorted but denied…De-development ensures that there will be no economic base – even one that is malformed – to support an independent indigenous economy (and society).”

      Between 1993 and 1996 – when the world still considered Oslo a promising “peace process,” the Gaza Strip was entirely sealed for a total of 342 days – a third of each year.  During that time, raw materials could not be imported, and agricultural produce and industrial products could not be exported.  During those years the Gaza GNP continued its downward slide.

      Economic decline provided the opportunity for Hamas to win support in a society which was largely Sunni Muslim (there are also Greek Orthodox Christians in Gaza) but not particularly religious.  Most Palestinians wanted – and still want – a secular national state, not a religious state.  But Hamas provided for the essential needs of an increasingly desperate population through a network of orphanages, schools, clinics and emergency aid distribution.  People also turned to Hamas in disgust at the performance of the Palestinian Authority set up under Oslo to administer what was called “autonomy” – and run schools, hospitals, municipal services and police the population. After Yasser Arafat returned from Tunis to Gaza in 1994, the PA was controlled by his Fatah group.  It rapidly became both corrupt and authoritarian.  This is the main reason why Hamas did so well in the democratic elections of January 2006, leading Israel and the US to impose collective punishment on the entire Palestinian people for voting for what they termed a terrorist group.

      Hamas and some other Palestinian groups – most notably Islamic Jihad and some militant Fatah factions – had turned to violence as the Oslo “peace process” faltered in the mid 1990s and Israel continued to expropriate Palestinian land and doubled the number of its settlers.  The first Palestinian suicide bombing occurred in April 1994.  Hamas claimed it carried out the bombing as a response to the killing by Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein of 30 Muslims as they were kneeling in prayer in the Ibrahim Mosque in Hebron. 

      The failure of Oslo led to a second, Palestinian uprising which has had catastrophic consequences for both peoples.  Under international humanitarian law, targeting civilians is absolutely prohibited.  That law has been repeatedly violated by both Israelis and Palestinians.

     I would like to tell you about one particularly significant incident whose aftermath I personally witnessed.  In July 2002, after the Israeli military had re-invaded the West Bank and Gaza Strip, destroying thousands of Palestinians houses and hundreds of lives, Fatah and Hamas reached an understanding that suicide bombings within Israel had to stop.  Just 90 minutes before a joint announcement to that effect was to be made on July 22, the Israeli air force dropped a one ton bomb on apartment building in an intensely crowded area of Gaza City in effort to kill a Hamas leader –16 Palestinian civilians, including 11 children perished.  I had arrived in Gaza on that day, and immediately went to the site of the bombing – people in shock, kids shoes, school supplies scattered through the rubble.  And the suicide bombings continued.

      Since 9/11, Israel’s actions against Palestinians have been framed as an essential part of the global “war on terror.” Over the past seven years, many Americans seem to have lost sight of the Israeli military occupation, which reached its 40^th anniversary in 2007.  During this time, Israel has sought to destroy Palestinian resistance to occupation once and for all – and remember, under international law Palestinians DO have the right of resistance to an illegal military occupation, although that right does not include the right to attack civilians.  In the Gaza Strip’s Rafah refugee camp, the Israeli army destroyed over a thousand homes, leaving 20,000 people homeless.  Hundreds of thousands of fruit trees belonging to Palestinians were uprooted and huge tracks of agricultural land by Israeli bulldozers.  The statistics are numbing.

      I would like to read to you from a “Letter from Gaza” I published after a visit in 2004. 

      “I saw a landscape where guard towers, miles of razor wire and concrete slabs have replaced the buildings, greenhouses, crops and date trees “shaved” by the Israeli army in the name of “self-defense.”  At the checkpoint near the Kfar Dorom settlement which divides the Gaza Strip in half, vehicles can pile up for miles and wait as long as 12 hours for passage — assuming the checkpoint opens at all.  It is “normal,” I was told, to wait for two to four hours. Drivers have been shot from a guard tower for opening the car door or rolling down a window to get a breath of air.

      At the southern end of the Gaza Strip is the Rafah refugee camp, bludgeoned by the Israeli army in its “Operation Rainbow” invasion in May. Parts of Rafah come under daily fire from soldiers in machine gun turrets along a 25-foot high steel wall, or from sniper nests that tower above the dunes. The press has speculated that the gunfire is remotely controlled by soldiers through high tech surveillance equipment. Or it might be automatic, triggered by any sign of movement.

      Whatever the cause, the road around us was peppered with automatic gunfire when we visited the site where on May 19 at least ten, possibly as many as twenty, unarmed demonstrators were killed by Apache combat helicopters and tanks. They were among the 3,000 old and young men, women and children who had marched from downtown Rafah towards the besieged Tel al Sultan neighborhood carrying food, water and blankets.”

      The year following my 2004 visit, Israel removed its settlers from the Gaza Strip.  Dov Weisglass, the advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in an interview in the October 2005 Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz stated that the purpose of the removal was to freeze the political process.  “And when you freeze that process you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about refugees, the borders and Jerusalem.  Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely.”

      The settler withdrawal – written about as a major Israeli concession in the US press – completed the transformation of the Gaza Strip into what the Israeli human rights group B’tselem has called the largest prison on earth.  Gaza was totally encircled by walls, fences and towers, as Israel continued to control its air, sea and land, and who goes in and out.   Once the settlers were withdrawn, Palestinians were repeatedly subjected to glass shattering sonic booms, tank fire and missile strikes, day and night.   In June 2006, Israeli air strikes destroyed the only power plant in the Gaza Strip, which impacted hospitals, water and sewage systems and plunged the Strip in darkness.

      The closure was tightened after Hamas won the 2006 legislative election – so much for the promotion of democracy in the Middle East – and was transformed into a chokehold following the Hamas-Fatah clashes of June 2007 (encouraged by the CIA) and the total Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian economy no longer functioned.  In November 2007 the International Committee of the Red Cross, which generally maintains a discreet behind-the-scenes profile and rarely makes public pronouncements, issued a report called “Dignity Denied in the Occupied Palestinian Territories” which was nothing less than a clarion call for action.  “The dignity of the Palestinians is being trampled underfoot day after day, both in the West Bank and in Gaza,” the Red Cross wrote.  “Israel’s harsh security measures come at an enormous humanitarian cost, leaving those living under occupation with just enough to survive, but not enough to live normal and dignified lives.”  I have never before seen an ICRC document which goes so far as to demand an immediate political solution to a conflict.  But that is how this report ends: “Only prompt, innovative and courageous political action can change the harsh reality of this long-standing occupation, restore normal social and economic life to the Palestinian people, and allow them to live their lives in dignity.”

      Needless to say, that never happened.  Under the harsh economic siege imposed by Israel for the 18 months preceding its December 2008 attacks,, only 12 basic items were permitted to enter the Gaza Strip – and just enough of them to keep people alive.  Electricity and fuel were severely rationed and cement, soap, many medical supplies, clean water and raw materials kept out altogether.  Hospital shelves were practically bare and patients were barred from leaving the Gaza Strip to get treatment elsewhere. 

      On March 6, 2008 a coalition of human rights groups including Amnesty UK, Care International UK, Christian Aid, Medecins du Monde, Oxfam and Save the Children UK issued a devastating report entitled The Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion. It concludes: “This humanitarian crisis is a direct result of on-going collective punishment of ordinary men, women and children and is illegal under international law.  Isolation and poverty are breeding increasing levels of violence for which both Palestinians and Israelis are paying the price…peace will not be achieved by locking 1.5 million people into a prison of spiraling poverty and misery…the policy of isolation and refusal to engage with all elements of the Palestinian leadership only closes doors to negotiations while reinforcing the political and humanitarian crisis.”  Israel turned a deaf ear to this call  the siege went on, preparing Gazans for the “shock and awe” of Israel’s ,military might.  On December 15, 2008 – shortly before Israel launched its war – an article in the Sunday Times (UK) of December 14, 2008 was headlined, “Gaza families eat grass as Israel locks border.”

      Subjecting an entire population to collective punishment is a war crime under international law. We often hear of famine, and starvation in various places in the world – but I don’t know of any other place where inflicting starvation on an entire people was a matter of government policy, and was done with the collusion of the US and international community.  And I don’t know of any issue where the United Nations, the reach of human rights law, and human rights organizations, have been more demonstrated to be more impotent than in the matter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

      In late October 2008, I, along with 100 other internationals including a dozen from the Boston area, tried to enter the Gaza Strip to participate in an “end the siege” conference organized by the Gaza Community Mental Health Foundation.  We were denied entry, despite the efforts of the World Health Organization to get us permits.  We were in good company –  Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter had also been denied entry. One of the few people to be allowed into Gaza in November was the former Irish president and head of the UN Human Rights Commission Mary Robinson.  On November 4, she told the BBC, that it was “almost unbelievable” that the world did not care about what she called “a shocking violation of so many human rights…their whole civilization has been destroyed.  I’m not exaggerating.”

      On this same day, the Israeli army entered Gaza and killed six Hamas members, breaking the six-month truce between Hamas and Israel that was due to expire in December.  The fact that Israel broke the truce, and that it had never in fact fulfilled its part of the truce requiring it to ease the economic blockade, has been largely ignored by the US mainstream press.  I urge you to read an important piece by Henry Siegman called “Gaza: The Lies of War” which has just been published in the London Review of Books (January 29, 2009.)  Siegman, a former head of the American Jewish Congress, bluntly exposes as “a lie” all claims blaming Hamas for the war and the sorry state of Middle East peacemaking.  He argues that “Hamas is no more a ‘terror organization’ (Israel’s preferred term) than the Zionist movement was during its struggle for a Jewish homeland,” that it was ready to back a Palestinian state within the 67 borders to exist alongside Israel, and that Israel was determined to destroy Hamas because it believes “that its leadership, unlike that of Fatah, cannot be intimidated into accepting a peace accord that establishes a Palestinian ‘state’ made up of territorially disconnected entities over which Israel would be able to retain permanent control.”

      If Gaza was a sealed off prison whose population was facing starvation before Israel’s attacks, it is now a sealed off prison whose residents are living in unspeakable conditions of trauma, broken bodies and a landscape strewn with rubble.  And American taxpayers, who give Israel $10 million every day, have a measure of responsibility for this situation. 

      I hope that everyone here will undertake to contact our government officials, from President Obama on down, and tell them that Gaza’s borders must immediately be opened.  The siege must end!  Please mail this message to president@whitehouse.org.  Senator Kerry the new head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee – we should focus our attention on him (202) 224-2742 or  (617) 565-8519.

      Tell him that the Israeli Army is using weapons supplied by the US to kill and maim Gaza’s civilians (80 percent of the casualties)  in violation of the US  Arms Export Control Act, the US Foreign Assistance Act, and the Geneva Conventions.   Demand that Israel is held accountable for violating US law, and that US military aid to Israel be cut off, as required by law.

      I am here in my capacity as President of the Gaza  Mental Health Foundation, Inc. – a 501 c 3 organization which raises funds for the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme  or GCMHP.  It was founded in 1990  by a tremendous humanitarian and the first psychiatrist in the Gaza Strip, Dr. Eyad el Sarraj who, in 1997, received the first human rights award given by Physicians for Human Rights at its 10^th Anniversary celebration in Boston.  The headquarters of the GCMHP was badly damaged by an Israeli air strike.  On January 17, Dr. el Sarraj sent a message detailing the psychological impact of the attacks on children and appealing to the world community to help fund a “massive plan of action to deal with the immediate crisis and avert its medium and long term effects.”   You can find out more from the pamphlet and our website www.gazamentalhealth.org.  A tax-deductible contribution to the Gaza Mental Health Foundation will be sent in its entirety to help with this critically important work.  Thank you.

To understand the modern abolitionist movement one must have at least a basic understanding of the current prison industrial complex (PIC).  Scholars and activists like Angela Davis and the Critical Resistance movement have popularized the term “prison industrial complex.”  The PIC is a multifaceted construction of control and domination, most commonly seen as the U.S. prison and jail system, the concrete and steel buildings that warehouse individuals.  While prisons and jails are a pivotal aspect, the PIC includes an entire culture of state and corporate collusion to control, discipline, and torture poor/low-income communities and Communities of Color.  The tactics range from police forces to cameras mounted in communities; from the (in)justice system to corporate profiteering from prison phone-calls; from immigration enforcement to media depictions of “criminals”; and on and on.  The PIC builds its strength from the myth that it is solving the problems of “crime” and violence.  Marilyn Buck, a White anti-racist revolutionary political prisoner, speaks about prison as “a relationship with an abuser who controls your every move, keeps you locked in the house.  There’s the ever-present threat of violence or further repression, if you don’t toe the line.”{2}   While Buck is specifically referring to her experience within a particular prison, the metaphor of a domestic violence relationship is significant when one considers the PIC as the abuser and marginalized communities as the survivor.  The prison industrial complex is an ever-present force in the daily lives of those most marginalized in our society, and thus the movement for abolition must come out of and be led by those communities.

Tiyo Attallah Salah-El, a lifer in Pennsylvania, asserts that prison abolition, “like the abolition of slavery, is a long-range goal.  Abolition is not simply a moment in time, but a protracted process.  Prison abolitionism should not now be considered a pipe dream, but rather a strong strategy that can in time bring about a halt to the building of more prisons.”{3}   I would take this further and suggest that the abolition of physical prisons and jails is not the end of the abolition movement.  The modern abolition movement must listen to the voices of those in INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence and others who remind the movement that, “to live violence-free lives, we must develop holistic strategies for addressing violence that speak to the intersection of all forms of oppression.”{4}   Abolition is not simply an eschatological moment rather it is a reflection of our collective ontological selves; it is a movement built on hope.  A movement built on hope that is “only realistic when it is combined with praxis, but it forms an indispensable dynamic for continuing change in the face of the resistance of those whose interests are served by the status quo.”{5}

One of the essential aspects of abolitionism is the refusal to engage in so-called “prison reform”.  Abolitonists understand the PIC to be a well-maintained machine that does not need to be fixed as it serves the purpose it was created for, the warehousing of those considered “criminal” in a White Supremacist, capitalist, heteropatriarchal society.  There is some debate among abolitionists about the legitimacy of abolitionist reforms, changes in policy or practices that affect the daily lives of prisoners, formerly incarcerated people, juveniles and others without strengthening or in any way adding to the legitimacy of the PIC.  I believe it is vital for us to make changes in the system as requested by those most impacted by it, so long as those changes are truly abolitionist reforms – taking out bricks, not adding them.  As we build an abolitionist theology we must keep in mind the essential need to create alternative solutions to the realities of interpersonal violence in our multiple communities.

Within this paper I have chosen to pay special attention to the writings of current and former political prisoners and prisoners of war held in United States prisons. According to David Gilbert, a former member of the Weather Underground who was captured in 1981 during an expropriation, a political prisoner is, “anyone whose incarceration is a result of his or her actions taken, or positions espoused, on behalf of a political cause – specifically a political cause on behalf of the oppressed and downtrodden in society and against the powers that be.”{6}   Political prisoners are the foreparents of the struggles that inspire and build the abolitionist movement today.  Prisoners of War are, “captured freedom fighters from the Black, the Puerto Rican, and the Native American struggles… These include POWs from the Black Liberation Army and Puerto Rican Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion.”{7}  I have struggled at different times about prioritizing the writings and experiences of those declared by leftist movements as political prisoners while there are nearly 2.5 million people in prison, all of whom are caged to further the politics of fear and punishment.  Mumia Abu-Jamal, a political prisoner on death row, suggests that all prisoners are political prisoners in part because, “every prosecution is a public and symbolic act, a political act by the state to give the populace an illusion of control, to show that ‘we’re taking care of this problem.’”{8}   Regardless of whether one believes those who have taken direct revolutionary action in response to oppression are entitled to more respect as prisoners, the reality remains that political prisoners are regularly treated more harshly than other prisoners yet remain committed to the struggle that landed them behind bars in the first place.  As I hope to consider myself a revolutionary, I believe their writings to be an essential aspect of building a liberationist humanist theology for the modern abolition movement.

My own personal location is important to note as I attempt to develop and expand on this theology.  I write as an individual committed to the modern abolitionist movement.  I write as a White privileged, class privileged, queer-anarchist, formerly incarcerated man.  My commitment to abolition was deeply strengthened after being imprisoned because of my choice to trespass on a military base with the hopes of bringing the atrocities of the School of the Americas to the attention of more people.  My experience of incarceration was not that of the majority in prison.  I hold many privileged identities and also had endless support on the outside, even receiving hundreds of letters during my six-month sentence.  Thus my particular story of being in prison cannot be centralized in the development of a more universal liberationist humanist theology of abolition.  This is not to diminish my experience of prison but to attempt to be more accountable to those most impacted by the violence of the PIC.

It is reasonable to state that liberation theology began to form out of many contexts at roughly the same time: Latin American liberation theology, Black theology, feminist theology, and womanist theology.  Whether the theologian saw God as opting for the poor, the realization of a Black Jesus who suffered with Black people and provided liberation from oppression, a need to lift up the experience of women in Biblical stories, or the celebration of the wilderness as a place for transformation and spiritual birth, liberation theology was born into many circumstances.  The fundamental connecting point of liberation theologies is the centralization of the experience of the particular theologian’s oppressed community as the subject of theological discourse.

At the writing of this paper Black women are the fastest growing population in U.S. prisons.{9}   Thus if abolition theology is truly going to be liberationist, it must centralize the experiences of Black women and the writings of womanists.  Katie Canon reflects on some of the gifts that womanism has to offer, “the role of emotional, intuitive knowledge in the collective life of the people.  Such intuition enables moral agents in situations of oppression to follow the rule within and not be dictated to from without.”{10}   This kind of theological and ethical framework is necessary for a liberationist humanist theology to function within the abolitionist movement.  As we choose to distance ourselves from the oppressive (in)justice system we must still address situations of violence and inequality within our communities.  This framework allows for communities considered “outlaw” to center their own morality, creating systems of accountability that prioritize the needs of the community rather than the validity of the state, capitalism, White Supremacy, or heteropatriarchy.  Another statistical reality of the prison system is that “One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34.”{11}   If abolition theology is to be liberationist it must also centralize the experiences of Black men, remembering James Cone’s definition of Black theology as, “the story of black people’s struggle for liberation in an extreme situation of oppression.”{12}

Humanism has been consistently disparaged in much of the United States.  “Secular humanism” is blamed for the denigration of our moral fabric and family values.  Humanism, however, provides an incredible outlet and inroad for those seeking to join a spiritual, religious or secular community with whom they can engage in liberationist struggle.  Anthony Pinn, a leading scholar and theologian in Black humanism, identifies “Five Major Principles of Black Humanism”:

1.    Understanding of humanity as fully (and solely) accountable and responsible for the human condition and the correction of humanity’s plight.
2.    Suspicion toward or rejection of supernatural explanation and claims, combined with an understanding of humanity as an evolving part of the natural environment as opposed to being a created being.  This can involve disbelief in god(s)  3.    An appreciation for African American cultural production and a perception of traditional form of black religiosity as having cultural importance as opposed to any type of “cosmic” authority
4.    A commitment to individual and societal transformation
5.    A controlled optimism that recognizes both human potential and human destructive activities.{13}

Pinn’s principles are incredibly important for the development of a liberationist humanist theology of abolition.  The most recent Humanist Manifesto III, from the American Humanist Association, essentially leaves out any acknowledgement of identity more complex or specific than the simplicity of “human.”  The manifesto becomes an inherently oppressive document by its choice to omit the acknowledgement of multiple forms of oppression.  In a White Supremacist society, humanity is defined by racist default as White, unless otherwise mentioned.  That stated, the Humanist Manifesto III does have worthwhile points that could lead to a theology of abolition.  A number of highlights include, “ [Humanists] welcome the challenges of the future, and are drawn to and undaunted by the yet to be known…Humanists ground values in human welfare shaped by human circumstances, interests, and concerns and extended to the global ecosystem and beyond.”{14}   The inclusion of the global ecosystems as part of humanist principles is vital to a theology for abolition.  Humanity is certainly the direct target of the prison industrial complex; our entire ecosystem, however, suffers from the perpetuation of this system.  The actual production of the buildings themselves is entirely destructive to the planet.  Concrete, steel, razor wire, and other building materials are produced with inefficient energy sources that destroy our planet.  Once the prison is built, often in rural areas or densely populated cities, the production of human excrement is detrimental to the ecosystem, the plant and animal life are displaced, and enormous amounts of energy are used to maintain lights and heat.  In order for humanism to reach its fullest liberationist potential it must release its historical anthropocentrism and embrace a true sense of interdependence.  Ecofeminist theologian Ivone Gebara introduces interdependence as the reality of “accepting the basic fact that any life situation, behavior, or even belief is always the fruit of all the interactions that make up our lives, our histories, and our wider earthly and cosmic realities.  Our interdependence and relatedness do not stop with other human beings:  They encompass nature, the powers of the earth and of the cosmos itself.”{15}

Humanism finds a home in multiple spaces, including Internet blogs, Unitarian Universalist congregations, and liberationist propaganda.  Aleksandar Pavkovic explores some of the differences between his understandings of universal humanism and liberationist humanism.  Pavkovic is looking at those he designates as “terrorists” and their use of tactical violence that targets individuals designated as oppressors, whether they are actively engaged in maintaining the system or being complicit in its continuation.  According to Pavkovic’s understanding of liberation humanism, “in virtue of their (alleged) responsibility for the oppression, the oppressors have lost the right to their lives, dignity, and liberty which the oppressed have; once their oppression ceases this right is restored to them.”{16}  As a Unitarian Universalist I believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person, including oppressors, at all times.  However, I do believe that oppressors lose significant aspects of their humanity as long as oppression continues.  Marilyn Buck shows clearly her understanding of the interconnectedness of her privileged humanity with the marginalized humanity of others when she writes, “If we stopped police brutality; if black women and men were treated lie equal human beings, that would make me feel really, really good, because I would be less dehumanized as a white person in this society.  I would not be objectified as the oppressor.”{17}   If liberation humanism accepts the reality that oppressors are dehumanized by their actions, then liberation humanist praxis will lead to the long-term liberation of the oppressors, even when that is not immediately seen by those in the oppressor class who have not chosen to act in solidarity as Marilyn Buck did.

There must be multiple avenues of entry into the orthopraxis of a liberationist humanist theology of abolition.  Those outside of the prison walls have particular access to actions that those on the inside do not have.  Liberationist humanism provides a theological basis to prioritize the needs of the oppressed over the needs of the oppressor.  Aleksandar Pavkovic states in his essay, “liberation humanism holds that the lives of the oppressors are of less value than the achievement of liberation for the oppressed.”{18}   A theology that embraces this concept provides support for those who experience oppression or who are taking action in direct solidarity with the oppressed to use the tactics they believe will best lead to liberation.  Certainly those inside the prison walls cannot organize a neo-underground railroad in the tradition of Harriet Tubman, but those on the outside could create such a project that would be consistent with a faith built around the liberation of humanity’s oppressed peoples.  We must not forget that Harriet Tubman was not considered a hero by the mainstream at the time of her revolutionary organizing.  Tubman was part of an illegal underground movement in direct opposition to the status quo, utilizing skill and determination to tear apart the fear of death in search of liberation for those held in chattel slavery.   It is still unknown who exactly liberated Assata Shakur from her prison cell, but the commitment of Black Liberation Army members to keep their comrades free is an authentic example of the orthopraxis needed for a liberationist humanism to thrive in the abolitionist movement.

Creating art, writing poetry, and simply waking up each day can be revolutionary orthopraxis for those held inside the walls.  When prisoners send out their poetry and other writings they are contributing to movements and directly resisting the domination of the prison authorities and the judges who thrive on taking away the lives of defendants.  This excerpt from Kimberly Headly’s poem, “Spare a Little Change” is just one of many examples of prisoner writing,

The world is too blind
And people are not kind
To my situation.
So when I say: “Spare a little change”
I’m talkin’ about a revolution
Of the suffering, deprived
The hopelessly denied
Masses
Broken into classes
Of struggle
Change has been long overdue
And I am underpaid!{19}

Marilyn Buck continues to write poetry, Mumia Abu-Jamal does a regular radio show, Jaan Lamaan records his words for a regular internet podcast, Assata Shakur communicates from Cuba where she is allowed to live in political asylum, and so many others continue to use their voices even when they have been told their lives are not worth anything.  It is essential to understand that orthopraxis looks different for individuals and communities based on what they have access to.  One must be careful if challenging another’s commitment liberationist humanism.  Marcella Althaus-Reid challenges liberation theologians, writing, “the theology which promised an option for the poor also defined, ideologically, a Christian identity based on patriarchal, colonial identities.”{20}   While liberationist humanism will not define a “Christian identity” for anyone, heeding the caution to challenge all forms of oppression when specifically working on behalf of another is essential to holistically engage in liberationist humanism.

The importance of challenging normative discourses in theological reflections on prison issues becomes incredibly important when the discussion of “good” prisoners versus “bad” prisoners comes up or “violent” versus “non-violent” convictions.  Many “reformist” activists will talk about the need to improve conditions for certain prisoners, such as drug war victims, without seeing the system in its entirety as a problem.  Particular prisoners also have to bear the burden of carrying all of our society’s sins and being disciplined or crucified for our communal redemption.  We lock up an individual who kills one person or a family, but when a soldier comes home from war after carpet-bombing cities or a cop shoots an unarmed civilian, we often place medals on their chests.  Each year there are hundreds of murders that go unsolved.  The murders of poor people, transgender people, Youth of Color, and people experiencing homelessness are hardly ever prioritized by the police.  We should also be very aware that the large majority of perpetrators of sexual violence, from child sexual abuse to adult rapists, are never caught by the police or put through the (in)justice system.  An abolitionist theology must learn from Delores Williams’ assertions about resisting the surrogacy model of redemption through Jesus Christ.  In particular, Williams states that “the womanist theologian uses the sociopolitical thought and action of the African-American woman’s world to show black women their salvation does not depend on any form of surrogacy made sacred by traditional and orthodox understandings of Jesus’ life and death.  Rather their salvation is assured by Jesus’ life of resistance and the survival strategies he used to help people survive the death of identity.”{21}   Those who do not connect particularly with the Jesus story can still see the pattern of social atonement theologies when we place particular “evil” pedophiles on public trials or put a serial rapist behind bars.  We are able to deceive ourselves that we are dealing with the violence of our society by disciplining those who have less access to expensive attorneys or who a primarily White, class-privileged jury will see as “criminal.”  Our communal salvation will not come by utilizing the tools of the prison industrial complex.  An abolitionist theology must instead encourage us to find our salvation in the resistance and survival strategies developed by those who are the primary survivors/victims of violence.  We must prioritize the development of anti-violence strategies that actually deliver us all from the cycle of violence that tears at individuals and communities.

A liberationist humanist theology of abolition must also affirm the spiritual practices incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people have established for themselves.  Borrowing from Melanie L. Harris’ suggestions of womanism’s possible influence on Black humanism we must also expand humanism’s possibilities by “meshing its hard boundaries into a more fluid, mutually enhancing one, allowing more space for a theistic humanist perspective.”{22}   This theological space will allow the building of beautiful ecumenical/inter-faith movements that affirm the gifts Christian tradition, the Nation of Islam, and other faiths have provided for prisoners.  Again, poetry, one of the strongest catalysts for prisoner resistance and spirituality, provides a window into what this spirituality looks like.  Asha Bandele opens her poem “No Turn Backs” with the words of a well-known Black Spiritual,

See my people dressed in black
You know we come a long way
And we ain’t turnin back
Wade in the water children
Wade in the water
You know God is gonna trouble these waters for me
Until every one of my people are free{23}

The deep parallels between U.S. chattel slavery and the PIC encourage the liberationist humanist theologian of abolition to turn to the theological strategies used by earlier abolitionists and people held in slavery.

Liberationist humanist theologies of abolition have the benefit of multiple years of critique on liberation theology.  Post-colonial theologian Marcella Althaus-Reid encourages theologians not to turn from the sexual nature of all theology.  She explains that “theology is a sexual ideology performed in a sacralising pattern:  it is a sexual divinized orthodoxy (right sexual dogma) and orthopraxy (right sexual behavior); theology is a sexual action.”{24}   The prison industrial complex is a space of sexual exploitation.  There are concerted efforts around the country dedicated to ending the epidemic of sexual violence behind bars.  So many of these efforts, however, continue to legitimize the PIC in the process as they depend on prison hierarchies to create more systems of discipline and segregation rather than to authentically dismantle the oppressive systems and mentalities that maintain sexual violence as the status quo.  Ed Mead, a revolutionary former political prisoner, writes about his experience organizing Men Against Sexism, a conscious effort made by queer and transgender prisoners at prisons in the Northwest to address the patterns of sexual violence and specific targeting of queer and transgender prisoners.  He claims that, “during that ten-year period [when Men Against Sexism was active] there was not a single prisoner-on-prisoner rape at Monroe, nor did I hear of any happening at other facilities within the state.”{25}   Men Against Sexism is still the only queer-specific organization ever sanctioned at a prison.  They not only empowered queer and transgender prisoners to protect themselves from guard and prisoner violence but also affirmed their right to express themselves openly.  They openly challenged homophobic preachers in the prison,{26}  and organized to bring in the Metropolitan Community Church, a far more progressive and prison-involved denomination at the time.  A liberationist humanist theology of abolition must recognize prisoners as sexual beings and their connection to their own bodies, the bodies of other prisoners, and the bodies of people on the outside.  This theology must challenge the ongoing sexual violence while also affirming the beauty of human sexuality as a tool for surviving oppressive situations.

Understanding the sexual act of theology, liberationist humanism can be more open to the vitality of body theology.  “Enslavement,” Anthony Pinn begins, “seeks to strip the body of its flesh, but this is never completely accomplished.  Rather, the flesh is transformed: it is hidden from view, covered by protective layers.”{27}   The same is true for imprisonment.  Theology that is going to be meaningful for those held in U.S. prisons and jails must serve the outer protective layers individuals have created while also, gently, reaching beneath the layers, trying to find the deepest truth held in the body and nurturing its growth.  Prisoners experience more than enough invasion of their bodies: strip searches, cell “tossing,” and pat-downs.  This body theology must recognize prisoners’ need to have autonomy over their body and to centralize that reality as part of its liberating nature as a theological praxis.

The role of a liberationist humanist theology of abolition is to provide another entry point into a movement toward the creation of revolutionary communities that meet the needs of those who are continuously marginalized and oppressed by the prison industrial complex.  The role of the abolitionist theologian is similar to what Kuwasi Balagoon declared as the duty of the revolutionary, “tell the truth, disrespect this court and make it clear that the greatest consequence would be failing to step forward.”{28}   We may not see a complete dismantling of the prisons and jails in our country as soon as abolitionist theologians want, and we may end up behind the same bars we seek to tear down if we truly engage in this revolutionary theological praxis.  The greatest consequence, as all political prisoners will remind us, is not the prison cell but the death of our true selves if we fail to take action.  A liberationist humanist theology of abolition will hopefully fill some of the empty space left by the destruction of the prison industrial complex.  Certainly all the potentials of such a theology are not presented here.  This is simply a beginning whose end will only be realized when we are living in a constant state of abolition and rebirth, affirming the lives of people and assuring the salvation of our society by creating communities that truly live the principles of transformative justice and human fulfillment.

_________________________________
1. James Cone, God of the Oppressed (New York:  Orbis Books, 1997), 8.
2. Joy James, The New Abolitionists: (Neo)Slave Narratives and Contemporary Prison Writings (New York:  State University of New York Press, 2005), 262.
3. Ibid., 72.
4. Incite! Women of Color Against Violence, Color of Violence (Cambridge:  South End Press, 2006), 223.
5. Letty Russell, Human Liberation in a Feminist Perspective – A Theology (Philadelphia:  The Westminster Press, 1974), 117.
6. David Gilbert, No Surrender:  Writings from an Anti-Imperialist Political Prisoner (Montreal:  Abraham Guillen Press and Arm the Spirit, 2004), 258.
7. Ibid., 258.
8. Dhoruba Bin Wahad, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and Assata Shakur, Still Black Still Strong (New York:  Semiotexte(e) Offices, 1993), 126.
9. Prison Policy Initiative, “Women in Prison”; available from www.prisonsucks.com; Internet; accessed 23 December 2008.
10. Katie Geneva Canon, Katie’s Canon: Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community (New York:  The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc., 1995), 126.
11. “1 in 100 U.S. Adults Behind Bars, New Study Says,” New York Times, 28 February 2008 sec. A, p. 1.
12. Cone, God of the Oppressed, 49
13. Anthony Pinn, African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the Children of Nimrod (New York:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 7.
14. The American Humanist Association, “Humanist Manifesto III”; available from www.americanhumanist.org/3/humandltsaspirations.php; Internet; accessed 28 December 2008.
15. Ivone Gebara, Longing for Running Water:  Ecofeminism and Liberation (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 1999), 52.
16. George Meggel, Ethics of Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism (Piscataway: Rutgers University, 2005), 252.
17. James, The  New Abolitionists, 270.
18. Meggel, Ethics of Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism, 254.
19. Kimberly Headly, “Spare a Little Change,” The Network Of Black Organizers Journal of AfricanAmerican Dialogue, Volume II Number 1 (1995): 126
20. Christopher Rowland, The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2007), 126.
21. Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness:  The Challenges of Womanist God-Talk  (New York:  Orbis Books, 1993), 164.
22. Stacey Floyd-Thomas, Deeper Shades of Purple Womanism in Religion and Society (New York:  New York University Press, 2006), 216.
23. Asha Bandel, “No Turn Backs” The Network Of Black Organizers Journal of AfricanAmerican Dialogue, Volume II Number 1 (1995): 45
24. Marcella Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender and Politics (New York:  Routledge, 2000), 64.
25. James, The New Abolitionists, 130.
26. Ibid., 122-123.
27. Anthony Pinn, Terror and Triumph: The Nature of Black Religion (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2003), 146.
28. Kuwasi Balagoon, A Soldier’s Story:  Writings by a Revolutionary New Afrikan Anarchist (Montreal:  Kersplebedeb Publishing, 2003), 56.