This is an interview with Mariame Kaba with Beyond Prisons, a podcast on prison abolition. Kaba discusses things like how she thinks about the question of "What will you do with rapists and...
This is an interview with Mariame Kaba with Beyond Prisons, a podcast on prison abolition. Kaba discusses things like how she thinks about the question of "What will you do with rapists and murderers without prison", how the prison system has wide and damaging effects on everybody involved with it, and her perspective of hope being a discipline, something that you need to practice every day.
There is a full transcript of the episode in the link, but since it's a little long, here is an excerpt of the section on hope:
Kim: I think someone retweeted something you posted the other day and the last few days, it just really resonated with me and just has helped me tremendously. There are a lot of times where I’m kind of lurking on Twitter, not necessarily engaging for a lot of reasons, but I saw this… it is something you wrote about hope being a discipline. I got to tell you, it made my day, if not my week, absolutely! Because it’s something that... it is easy to get down on everything that’s going on.
Mariame: Sure.
Kim: It’s really easy to kind of look around and be like, “Oh my God, everything… set it all on fire and let’s just be done!” [laughs] Especially right now and I think that plugging in with folks and reading things and listening to things that are affirming and uplifting and do allow you to focus on the hopeful side of things are part of abolition. I’d like you to say something about that, but I have another part to that question because they are both related or at least, in my thinking, which is about self-care for those of us doing this work. And that’s something I spend a lot of time thinking about and talking about as well with the folks that I’m connected with.
Mariame: I always tell people, for me, hope doesn’t preclude feeling sadness or frustration or anger or any other emotion that makes total sense. Hope isn’t an emotion, you know? Hope is not optimism.
I think that for me, understanding that is really helpful in my practice around organizing, which is that, I believe that there’s always a potential for transformation and for change. And that is in any direction, good or bad. The idea of hope being a discipline is something I heard from a nun many years ago who was talking about it in conjunction with making sure we were of the world and in the world. Living in the afterlife already in the present was kind of a form of escape, but that actually it was really, really important for us to live in the world and be of the world. The hope that she was talking about was this grounded hope that was practiced every day, that people actually practiced it all the time.
And so, I bowed down to that. I heard that many years ago and then I felt the sense of, Oh my god. That speaks to me as a philosophy of living, that hope is a discipline and that we have to practice it every single day. Because in the world which we live in, it’s easy to feel a sense of hopelessness, that everything is all bad all the time, that there is nothing going to change ever, that people are evil and bad at the bottom. It feels sometimes that it’s being proven in various, different ways, so I get that, so I really get that. I understand why people feel that way. I just choose differently. I choose to think a different way and I choose to act in a different way. I choose to trust people until they prove themselves untrustworthy.
Jim Wallace, who people know as a liberal Evangelical, who thinks about faith a lot and talks about faith a lot and he always talks about the fact that hope is really believing in spite of the evidence and watching the evidence change. And that, to me, makes total sense. I believe ultimately that we’re going to win, because I believe there are more people who want justice, real justice, than there are those who are working against that.
And I don’t also take a short-time view, I take a long view, understanding full well that I’m just a tiny, little part of a story that already has a huge antecedent and has something that is going to come after that, that I’m definitely not going to be even close to around for seeing the end of. So, that also puts me in the right frame of mind, that my little friggin’ thing I’m doing, is actually pretty insignificant in world history, but [if] it’s significant to one or two people, I feel good about that.
If I’m making my stand in the world and that benefits my particular community of people, the people I designate as my community, and I see them benefiting by my labor, I feel good about that. That actually is enough for me.
So, maybe I just have a different perspective and I talk to a lot of young organizers - people reach out to me a lot because I’ve been organizing for a long time - I’m always telling them, “Your timeline is not the timeline on which movements occur. Your timeline is incidental. Your timeline is only for yourself to mark your growth and your living.” But that’s a fraction of the living that’s going to be done by the universe and that has already been done by the universe. So, when you understand that you’re really insignificant in the grand scheme of things, you just are, then it’s a freedom, in my opinion, to actually be able to do the work that’s necessary as you see it and to contribute in the ways that you can see fit. So, I think that’s my answer to that.
And self-care is really tricky for me, because I don’t believe in the self in the way that people determine it here in this capitalist society that we live in. I don’t believe in self-care, I believe in collective care, collectivizing our care, and thinking more about how we can help each other. How can we collectivize the care of children so that more people can feel like they can actually have their kids but also live in the world and contribute and participate in various different kinds of ways? How do we do that?
How do we collectivize care so that when we’re sick and we’re not feeling ourselves, we’ve got a crew of people that are not just our prayer warriors, but our action warriors who are thinking through with us? Like, I’m not just going to be able to cook this week, and you have a whole bunch of folks there, who are just putting a list together for you and bringing the food every day that week and you’re doing the same for your community, too.
I want that as the focus of how I do things and that really comes from the fact that I grew up the daughter of returned migrants, African-returned migrants. I don’t see the world the way that people do here, I just don’t. I don’t agree with it, I think capitalism is actually continuously alienating us from each other, but also even from ourselves and I just don’t subscribe. And for me, it’s too much with, “Yeah I’m going to go do yoga and then, I’m going to go and do some sit-ups and maybe I’ll like, you know, go to…” You don’t have to go anywhere to care for yourself.
Brian: [chuckles] Right.
Mariame: You can just care for yourself and your community in tandem and that can actually be much more healthy for you, by the way. Because all this internalized, internal reflection is not good for people. You have to be able to have... Yes, think about yourself, reflect on your practice, okay, but then you need to test it in the world, you’ve got to be with people. So, that’s important. And I hate people! So, I say that as somebody who actually is really anti-social...
[Brian and Kim laugh]
Mariame: … and I say, “I hate people.” I don’t want to socialize in that kind of way but I do want to be social with other folks as it relates to collectivizing care.
This is an interview with Mariame Kaba with Beyond Prisons, a podcast on prison abolition. Kaba discusses things like how she thinks about the question of "What will you do with rapists and murderers without prison", how the prison system has wide and damaging effects on everybody involved with it, and her perspective of hope being a discipline, something that you need to practice every day.
There is a full transcript of the episode in the link, but since it's a little long, here is an excerpt of the section on hope:
Kim: I think someone retweeted something you posted the other day and the last few days, it just really resonated with me and just has helped me tremendously. There are a lot of times where I’m kind of lurking on Twitter, not necessarily engaging for a lot of reasons, but I saw this… it is something you wrote about hope being a discipline. I got to tell you, it made my day, if not my week, absolutely! Because it’s something that... it is easy to get down on everything that’s going on.
Mariame: Sure.
Kim: It’s really easy to kind of look around and be like, “Oh my God, everything… set it all on fire and let’s just be done!” [laughs] Especially right now and I think that plugging in with folks and reading things and listening to things that are affirming and uplifting and do allow you to focus on the hopeful side of things are part of abolition. I’d like you to say something about that, but I have another part to that question because they are both related or at least, in my thinking, which is about self-care for those of us doing this work. And that’s something I spend a lot of time thinking about and talking about as well with the folks that I’m connected with.
Mariame: I always tell people, for me, hope doesn’t preclude feeling sadness or frustration or anger or any other emotion that makes total sense. Hope isn’t an emotion, you know? Hope is not optimism.
I think that for me, understanding that is really helpful in my practice around organizing, which is that, I believe that there’s always a potential for transformation and for change. And that is in any direction, good or bad. The idea of hope being a discipline is something I heard from a nun many years ago who was talking about it in conjunction with making sure we were of the world and in the world. Living in the afterlife already in the present was kind of a form of escape, but that actually it was really, really important for us to live in the world and be of the world. The hope that she was talking about was this grounded hope that was practiced every day, that people actually practiced it all the time.
And so, I bowed down to that. I heard that many years ago and then I felt the sense of, Oh my god. That speaks to me as a philosophy of living, that hope is a discipline and that we have to practice it every single day. Because in the world which we live in, it’s easy to feel a sense of hopelessness, that everything is all bad all the time, that there is nothing going to change ever, that people are evil and bad at the bottom. It feels sometimes that it’s being proven in various, different ways, so I get that, so I really get that. I understand why people feel that way. I just choose differently. I choose to think a different way and I choose to act in a different way. I choose to trust people until they prove themselves untrustworthy.
Jim Wallace, who people know as a liberal Evangelical, who thinks about faith a lot and talks about faith a lot and he always talks about the fact that hope is really believing in spite of the evidence and watching the evidence change. And that, to me, makes total sense. I believe ultimately that we’re going to win, because I believe there are more people who want justice, real justice, than there are those who are working against that.
And I don’t also take a short-time view, I take a long view, understanding full well that I’m just a tiny, little part of a story that already has a huge antecedent and has something that is going to come after that, that I’m definitely not going to be even close to around for seeing the end of. So, that also puts me in the right frame of mind, that my little friggin’ thing I’m doing, is actually pretty insignificant in world history, but [if] it’s significant to one or two people, I feel good about that.
If I’m making my stand in the world and that benefits my particular community of people, the people I designate as my community, and I see them benefiting by my labor, I feel good about that. That actually is enough for me.
So, maybe I just have a different perspective and I talk to a lot of young organizers - people reach out to me a lot because I’ve been organizing for a long time - I’m always telling them, “Your timeline is not the timeline on which movements occur. Your timeline is incidental. Your timeline is only for yourself to mark your growth and your living.” But that’s a fraction of the living that’s going to be done by the universe and that has already been done by the universe. So, when you understand that you’re really insignificant in the grand scheme of things, you just are, then it’s a freedom, in my opinion, to actually be able to do the work that’s necessary as you see it and to contribute in the ways that you can see fit. So, I think that’s my answer to that.
And self-care is really tricky for me, because I don’t believe in the self in the way that people determine it here in this capitalist society that we live in. I don’t believe in self-care, I believe in collective care, collectivizing our care, and thinking more about how we can help each other. How can we collectivize the care of children so that more people can feel like they can actually have their kids but also live in the world and contribute and participate in various different kinds of ways? How do we do that?
How do we collectivize care so that when we’re sick and we’re not feeling ourselves, we’ve got a crew of people that are not just our prayer warriors, but our action warriors who are thinking through with us? Like, I’m not just going to be able to cook this week, and you have a whole bunch of folks there, who are just putting a list together for you and bringing the food every day that week and you’re doing the same for your community, too.
I want that as the focus of how I do things and that really comes from the fact that I grew up the daughter of returned migrants, African-returned migrants. I don’t see the world the way that people do here, I just don’t. I don’t agree with it, I think capitalism is actually continuously alienating us from each other, but also even from ourselves and I just don’t subscribe. And for me, it’s too much with, “Yeah I’m going to go do yoga and then, I’m going to go and do some sit-ups and maybe I’ll like, you know, go to…” You don’t have to go anywhere to care for yourself.
Brian: [chuckles] Right.
Mariame: You can just care for yourself and your community in tandem and that can actually be much more healthy for you, by the way. Because all this internalized, internal reflection is not good for people. You have to be able to have... Yes, think about yourself, reflect on your practice, okay, but then you need to test it in the world, you’ve got to be with people. So, that’s important. And I hate people! So, I say that as somebody who actually is really anti-social...
[Brian and Kim laugh]
Mariame: … and I say, “I hate people.” I don’t want to socialize in that kind of way but I do want to be social with other folks as it relates to collectivizing care.