Day of Refusal

Today is the Transnational Day of Refusal, a kick-off to the Cops off Campus Coalition’s Abolition May.

In small-group discussion today, we’ll ask:

• What does refusal mean to you in your space – individually, in your department, at UMass as an institution, in your community?
• How does this refusal tie to your scholarship, your activism, both? How will you sustain this work beyond a day, a month?

What does it mean to refuse and rebuild, what does it mean to create rather than destroy? Abolition has woven through the fabric of our semester, as we’ve explored how histories rooted in white supremacy, colonialism, and capitalism shape our institutions of learning, how our institution continues to benefit from theft of Indigenous lands, and how we can resist both within and outside these spaces. We’ve explored the intersecting movements for climate justice, social justice, and racial justice. We’ve explored how science fiction can be a lens for imagining other futures, and how our relationships with nonhuman animals can be spaces to learn about ourselves and these futures.

As we wrap up this semester, we also look ahead. In the words of Ruth Wilson Gilmore, “Abolition requires that we change one thing: everything.” How do we move forward knowing we need to change everything, the very systems of power and oppression that we are all somehow entangled with? This can be daunting, but Mariame Kaba reminds us that “it also means there are many places to start, infinite opportunities to collaborate, and endless imaginative interventions and experiments to create.”

Let’s begin our abolitionist journey not with the question “What do we have now and how can we make it better?” Instead, let’s ask, “What can we imagine for ourselves and the world?” If we do that, then boundless possibilities of a more just world await us.

Mariame Kaba, “So You’re Thinking About Becoming an Abolitionist”

Thanks for being in community with us this spring. Our work continues.