Abolishing Systems That Harm All Of Us

Hi Friends,

As systems and structures that many of us have depended upon and perhaps taken for granted break down around us, more and more of us are seeing how many of these systems and structures were already failing so many of us. It is simply happening to more of us now, making it more visible, increasing the impact, making it harder to ignore or explain away.

In the gaps that are becoming more visible, in the spaces where things are crumbling, we have opportunities to step into the breach and create something new. Something that meets all of our needs to thrive and belong.

As we consider what we need and what new structures and systems should look like, I invite you to approach these questions with a Veil of Ignorance, centering fairness. Imagine that you are creating a society, but you are ignorant of your own personal qualities (race, education level, income level, ability, age, etc.). What would you create to ensure that no matter your circumstances that you have access to the same opportunities and resources as everyone else? Imagine living in a system that "would provide a basic foundation of well-being and dignity for all, with people at the center, not money."

How do we create these systems? One resource you might consider is the Mapping Community Ecosystems of Collective Care toolkit. Created by Shannon Perez-Darby and Andrea J. Ritchie in 2023, they wrote,

"As communities face increased policing, criminalization, and organized abandonment; mounting state violence, repression, and authoritarianism; escalating white supremacist, homophobic, and transphobic violence; and climate collapse, building skilled, coordinated, expansive, and robust ecosystems of collective care is only becoming more and more essential to our collective survival."

Current examples of collective care are abundant:
- Indigenous-led collectives patrolling neighborhoods in Minneapolis;
- labor unions stepping up to advocate and demonstrate;
- a universal basic income program for incarcerated women; and,
- care-based counter institutions being created in real time.

Now, as we are seeing an increase in criminalization and persecution of legal activities across the country, this guidance is more and more necessary. Surveillance is increasing and non-criminal behavior is being tracked. When the federal government vilifies victims of state violence, we must look at our criminal systems and seek the abolition of punitive systems of punishment and criminalization.

For this, we must look to Andrea Ritchie again. In her interview with Kelly Hayes in "The Trap of Law and Order Under Fascism" from September 2025, she says:

"So I need people to start thinking about what is the social contract that we want to create together, and how do we want to create it together. Whether it’s how we’re going to defend our block, how we’re going to provide for the things people need, and what kind of world we’re going to build together in ways that are creative rather than sort of hanging on to… Not to be hackneyed about the use of this phrase, because it’s actually a really powerful and revolutionary phrase, that we can’t keep hanging onto the master’s tools. And the rule of law is definitely the master’s tools."

This might feel destabilizing, so let me elaborate. The federal government has been acting outside of the law, despite numerous efforts by judges across the country to rein in this lawless behavior, and some courts have refused to uphold established law. The Supreme Court has been stripping away our rights and has moved to prevent transparency. Some judicial decisions are being ignored by those who have sworn to uphold the rule of law.

Our criminal legal system has never functioned with true justice in mind, but has been focused on punishment and incarceration. We need to let go of this system and these structures as they currently operate (and have from the beginning) in order to find, as Ritchie says, "many other far more effective ways that we could be moving right now in order to resist and build and practice a new social contract."

During this time of upheaval, we must demand accountability in response to harm caused. This is actually a step that our country has little experience with, one that we desperately need. We have never truly reckoned with the harm caused by the (ongoing) genocide of Indigenous peoples or the (ongoing) system of slavery in our country. We have been unable to heal from these harms because there has been no accountability, very few attempts at repair, and so the harm keeps resurfacing, like a recurring argument in a relationship. Because repair is relational. In order to break the cycle of harm, we must find paths to repair.

Some consider accountability to mean legal consequences (punishment) for harm caused. But here is where our rejection of the criminal legal system becomes especially important. Accountability does not mean punitive revenge. Many of us are very, very angry and have been truly harmed by the actions of our government and its systems and structures. That anger is real and valid and healthy. But our anger is at the actions of the people making choices that harm us. Our anger cannot be directed at the humanity of those people, or we are participating in a cycle of harm that will never end.

As Valarie Kaur demands that we block harm with one hand and extend the other in love, we must separate the behavior from the person, much as I hope we all try to do when interacting with children who are struggling to learn the rules. We love them unconditionally even when we do not love their behavior. We teach them with love; we do not lock them away, interrupting any sense of belonging or inherent human value, and then expect them to heal alone in the darkness.

We invite them to remember who they are, how they belong in our family and in our community. We do not send them out, unforgivable and irredeemable. When they lose their way, we must remind them of who they are and how they can be accountable and fully integrated into society again.

Kazu Haga wrote recently about how the harmful things we do often come from an effort to address an unmet need. He says, "Marshall Rosenberg, founder of Nonviolent Communication (NVC), taught that everything we say and do as human beings is an attempt to meet universal needs – needs for safety, for meaning, belonging, to be heard and be seen. Sometimes, we choose unfortunate strategies to meet those needs. Even when a strategy causes harm, it is still rooted in a very human attempt to meet a shared need."

He further elaborates,

"When someone participates in a violent system, nobody escapes the harm. ICE is a violent system, and it is not healthy for the soul of an ICE agent to be part of it. We have to do everything we can to stop them from spreading that harm, but in a way that leaves open the possibility of their healing. In a way that acknowledges that part of our work is to help people escape violent systems, and ultimately violent worldviews."

Our criminal legal system is one of punitive harm. It does not keep us safe. It does not provide paths for accountability and repair of harm. It ostracizes, excludes, punishes, devalues, extracts, torments, and causes great harm, including to those who work in the system: police officers, prison wardens, prosecutors, judges, all of them. Our prison system generates harm, not safety. Prisons and detention centers are sites of inhumanity and our federal court system is enabling their expansion as ICE detains more and more people, many of whom are here legally or are U.S. citizens.

More and more people are being branded as violent or dangerous, including protesters and legal observers. Kelly Hayes could see where we are headed when she said:

"the state will twist itself in knots to brand you 'violent,' if you get in their way, and we’re seeing that with the severity of some of the charges people are facing now — but also the severity of charges people have been facing for years for taking actions to stop catastrophic harm from happening, without hurting anyone. People have been charged with 'trafficking' for life-saving acts of mutual aid. 'Violence' is an incredibly flexible term, and criminalization is a dehumanizing trap."

In this environment, we are all at risk of being deemed terrorists or threats to public safety. The systems and structures many of us have believed will keep us safe are being weaponized against us.

The system endures because too many of us believe that we are safer when we lock people up. And it endures because a few people become extremely wealthy running these systems at the expense of the rest of us. Meanwhile, ICE is expanding its presence across the country, purchasing warehouses to serve as makeshift prisons and infiltrating our communities. Lobbying efforts are trying to force banks to provide loans to private prison firms, which own and operate ICE detention centers. As The Workers Circle highlights in a recent update, detention sites are selected in a way to keep us from seeing the truth: "The point of a place like this is isolation. Make it hard to reach. Make it easy to look away. Keep the cruelty out of sight, so it can keep running."

It is not difficult to see the through-lines of this current moment with the mental gymnastics many communities used to justify their silence during the Holocaust and Japanese internment.

Heather Cox Richardson wrote recently about the ramping up of mass detention, referring specifically to a community member who spoke at a city council meeting in Surprise, Arizona in response to a new federal detention center going in there. He spoke about Ohrdruf, the first Nazi camp liberated by U.S. troops, on April 4, 1945, about the mayor of that town: "And maybe he did not know the full extent of the outrages that were committed in his community, but he knew enough. And we don’t know exactly how ICE will use this warehouse. But we know enough. ... Because in his heart he knew, as we do, that we are all responsible for what happens in our community."

Scot Nakagawa wrote recently about the similarities between incarcerating the Japanese American community during World War II and the current moment. "The Japanese American community was incarcerated not for anything they did, but for who they were, justified by “military necessity.” No charges. No trials. Just racism laid onto a manufactured threat. Today, immigrants, protesters, and Democratic officials are being characterized as national security threats. The pattern is nearly identical: transform political opposition into an existential threat requiring extraordinary measures."

As Abraham Lincoln understood in his rejection of enslavement, summarized by Heather Cox Richardson, "if we give up the principle of equality before the law, we have given up the whole game. We have admitted the principle that people are unequal and that some people are better than others. Once we have replaced the principle of equality with the idea that humans are unequal, we have granted approval to the idea of rulers and ruled. At that point, all any of us can do is to hope that no one in power decides that we belong in one of the lesser groups."

Even now, while we are working towards ending this authoritarian regime (because it will end, sooner or later), we must undertake the work of rebuilding, not to replace exactly what has been destroyed, but to build anew. In this time of transition, we have the opportunity to require accountability without resorting to punitive, harmful systems again. What can we create if we are no longer spending a majority of our national budget on harm-making institutions? What kind of society could we live in if we created a culture of accountability and repair?

Emily
Listen. Amplify. Follow. In Solidarity.