Azadeh Zohrabi (Director of Underground Scholars, UC Berkeley)

Register here: https://bit.ly/3ol5CW6

This virtual teach-in addresses calls for campuses to cut ties with local and state police, defund and abolish campus police. What must be done to create a campus that is safe for all people — especially for Black, Indigenous, undocumented and gender non-conforming people — those targeted by police harassment and terror. How can we create campuses that are free from policing, including local, state, federal, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). How do the multiple levels of administrators (from student conduct officers to Provosts and Chancellors) act as police to target, punish and harm students and faculty? How do we build with communities beyond the campus to defund and dismantle policing and build abolitionist communities?

This panel will offer examples of organizing – at the campus, local, city and state level – to remove police from campuses. Panelists will share tactics, resources and strategies developed by their networks and organizations and also offer pathways to engage restorative justice and transformative justice (TJ) practices. This panel features organizers and scholar-activists who have been building abolitionist alternatives. 

About the Abolition and the University Teach-in Series

The unprecedented protests and grassroots organizing against antiblack police and white vigilante violence has generated demands to end systemic racism endemic across US political, economic, legal, cultural and educational institutions. This webinar series aims to expand an understanding of abolition and its ongoing practices and potential to radically transform college campuses and universities as sites of struggle.

The first teach-in addressed how the university has historically functioned to reproduce and sanction antiblackness and policing. This panel of scholar-activists spoke to how antiblackness has been foundational to the structure, organization and policies of the university and has operated to police bodies, disciplines, knowledges, movements and activism, often under the cover of rhetorics that promote liberal ‘multicultural inclusion and diversity.’ (Available to watch at Critical Resistance Facebook page)

The second teach-in addresses what we mean by genuine campus safety for all and why we demand the abolition of policing. Our speakers will elaborate how we can learn from abolitionist organizing beyond the campus to build models of security and care that meet the basic needs of our communities and educate to prevent harm. This webinar will introduce transformative justice (TJ) practices and how we can invest the resources of the university to begin to repair past harms and build learning communities that hold people accountable rather than punish, penalize and disavow the root problems inherent to the hierarchical and colonial culture of the university.

The third panel elaborates our collective vision of an abolitionist university. In a settler-colonial society, how can we establish an abolitionist university and how would its purpose be radically different from how the neoliberal university functions to reproduce a carceral society, racial capitalism and US imperial hegemony? How can we take collective action to transform the university into a gathering place for decolonization and collective liberation?

This three-part teach-in series aims to support, deepen and proliferate abolitionist organizing on post-secondary educational campuses. This series of webinars will elevate on the ground strategies and tactics, lift up collectives and networks that are raising critical questions to ignite dialogue, and encourage action and strengthen organizing. While we don’t have all the answers, we call on students, faculty, staff and organizers who are engaging abolition at the site of the university and beyond to join us in this discussion.