{"id":2055,"date":"2021-02-14T11:14:28","date_gmt":"2021-02-14T16:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/?p=2055"},"modified":"2021-02-14T11:15:07","modified_gmt":"2021-02-14T16:15:07","slug":"s-shabzadeh-shahid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/s-shabzadeh-shahid\/","title":{"rendered":"S. Shabzadeh | Shahid"},"content":{"rendered":"

By S. Shabzadeh<\/h2>\n

From inside a cell, the night sky isn\u2019t the measure\u2014
\nthat\u2019s why it\u2019s prison\u2019s vastness your eyes reflect after prison.<\/p>\n

My lover don\u2019t believe in my sadness. She says whisky,
\nnot time, is what left me wrecked after prison.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In his third book of poetry , Felon<\/em>, Dwayne Betts opens with a \u2018ghazal\u2019\u2013a poetic form originating in seventh century Arabia which was quickly popularized with the spread of Islam into Persia, Anatolia, and Central and South Asia. The word \u2018ghazal\u2019 derives from the Arabic word for \u2018thread\u2019 as poets string together abstract and independent couplets all ending in a common refrain\u2013oftentimes a single word or a phrase. While the couplets can be independent and abstract, each couplet in a ghazal speaks to central themes of love, separation, and, above all else, loss.<\/p>\n

In his ghazal, Betts uses the refrain \u201cafter prison\u201d at the end of each of his fourteen couplets. Betts\u2019 opening ghazal speaks to the immense loss experienced by prisoners not only during their time in prison but also long after release. Betts masterfully intertwines his own experience in prison\u2013serving nearly eight years for an armed carjacking he did as a sixteen-year-old\u2013to shed light upon how prison \u2018redacts\u2019 men of time, safety, innocence and their humanity. Betts displays this process of redaction strikingly on the cover of Felon<\/em> as the image of four black men\u2019s faces dipped in tar represents how incarceration consumes its victims.<\/p>\n

In his introduction to Abolition 9\/13<\/a> Betts was true to his penname, \u2018shahid\u2019\u00ad<\/em>\u2013Persian for witness\u2013by relaying the truth of his experience and the experience of his friends back in prison to the panel. Holding up a tattered pair of grey sweatpants which he and a visual artist transformed by hand into paper, Betts explained: \u201cjail [as an experience] attempts to redact all of our relationships and all of our humanity.\u201d The paper was then inscribed with a mix of letters sent from prison from Dwayne\u2019s friends, their prison records, and Japanese historical records. To Betts, these strips of paper strung together represented a kite, an embodiment of release and freedom as a means by which to get beyond the traumas of incarceration.<\/p>\n

In Abolition 9\/13 Dwayne Betts\u2019s artistic and poetic approach to prison abolition came in dialogue with the prison abolition discourse popular in the academic world. Betts\u2019 conversation with Allegra McLeod, a prison abolitionist and professor of law at Georgetown University, revealed the divisions and fissures in the contemporary discourse surrounding prison abolition.<\/p>\n

In defining abolition, McLeod set forth that abolition was a project working towards the opening of new possibilities and the building of genuinely egalitarian coexistence that are anti-capitalist, decolonial and feminist, beyond white supremacy and capitalism. McLeod was highly critical of the attempts by centrist and liberal politicians to appropriate the language of abolition in order to give legitimacy to the status quo and reinforce the role of policy and prison in society. For example, McLeod critiqued centrist rhetoric calling for an end for racism in policing through trainings and increased funding to alternative forms of policing. These centrists who appropriate the language of abolition, McLeod argued, promote ideas of listening to the community and reform of the current criminal justice system to protect and preserve the status quo rather than do away with the system altogether.<\/p>\n

McLeod connects such rhetoric to an attempt to de-radicalize the call for police abolition which became part of mainstream discourse following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the resulting nationwide protests and demonstrations. By limiting the goal of abolition to the overturning of the racialized aspect of policing in the United States, politicians, journalists, and others attempt to obfuscate the size and scope of the abolition project. McLeod argues that such rhetoric seeks to refocus discourse away from abolishing the police and prison and focus it rather on alternative forms of policing minus the racial bias.\u00a0 Similarly, McLeod additionally was highly critical of the appropriation of prison abolitionist rhetoric in order to provide legitimacy to the prison reform movement. Quoting Dylan Rodriguez\u2019s \u201cAbolition as Praxis of Human Being,\u201d McLeod relates both the appropriation of police and prison abolitionist rhetoric to \u201cliberal-to-progressive reformist attempts to protect and sustain the institutional and\u00a0 cultural-political coherence of an existing system by adjusting and\/or refurbishing it, [and] abolition addresses the historical roots of that system in relations of oppressive, continuous, and asymmetrical violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Delving into issues of safety, McLeod attempted to address concerns regarding prison and police abolition arising from the oft asked question: \u201cwhat about the murderers and rapists?\u201d To this question, McLeod responded by highlighting the role of the government and elite in creating a \u201cracist distribution of life chances\u201d which creates conditions of deprivation, harm and violence in minority communities across the United States. McLeod likens this deprivation to violence and asks why attention isn\u2019t given to the elites and government officials who do harm to communities across the country through their decision-making and allocation of resources while facing zero consequences.<\/p>\n

In response, Betts was highly critical of the academic discourse and rhetoric surrounding abolition, calling it \u201cfake and not real\u201d and part of a conversation that he was \u201cnot interested in having.\u201d Betts went on to say he didn\u2019t want to be part of a conversation that doesn\u2019t \u201cforthrightly allow me to acknowledge what friends of mine say when they confront people that murdered their family members.\u201d Betts elaborated by relating a story of one of his friends who was contacted by a federal prosecutor to ask his stance on the compassionate release of a man who killed his cousin. Betts\u2019 friend wanted his cousin\u2019s murderer to stay behind bars. Betts\u2019 anecdote and his response sought to problematize abolitionist rhetoric surrounding violence, innocence and safety, by highlighting the deeply entrenched ideology of retributive justice in the United States. Betts took the onus off the state saying that criticizing the state as a proxy for individual violence is \u201cdisingenuous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Further, Betts was critical of the contemporary discourse which seeks to \u201csanitize\u201d abolition through the use of the rhetoric of innocence, by focusing attention on the wrongly convicted and the theory that society would be safer without mass incarceration. Betts openly discussed his own guilt and the guilt of his friends that he has worked so hard to free from jail. To demonstrate the complexities of guilt and justice, Betts related a story of a man who killed his own cousin. When Connecticut offered a rehearing and resentencing, the man\u2019s own family argued that he deserved life in prison for what he did. Bett\u2019s anecdote again works to problematize ideas of innocence and safety. Here, the family was asking that this man\u2013a family member\u2013spend life behind bars both due to his guilt and to maintain their sense of safety in line with retributive conceptions of justice.<\/p>\n

Finally, Bett\u2019s sought to refocus the scope of critique from institutions and concepts that perpetuate mass incarceration to include the elite: \u201cIt hasn\u2019t been people in the street that denied me my dignity, my right to work, it\u2019s been our colleagues\u201d Betts said as he related experiences with Yale Law school, the Connecticut Bar Association, and other elites as they denied him reintegration due to his status as a felon. Betts continued, \u201cwhat really matters to us is who you harmed and if you\u2019ll harm us.\u201d By highlighting that it was indeed his own colleagues\u2013those participating and attending the seminar\u2013Betts transformed the conversation into a critique of the disconnection of the academic elite and their active role in perpetuating the harm of mass incarceration. Highlighting the disconnection of the academic and legal elite from those they purport to advocate for, Bett\u2019s closed his intervention by stating that \u201ca conversation that doesn\u2019t try to meet them where they live and suffer is a false one. It is a completely false one.\u201d<\/p>\n

The clashes Abolition Democracy 9\/13 revealed the deep fissures that exist not only between abolitionist academics and liberals who use abolitionist rhetoric for institutionalist or centrist aims, but also between the academic and legal elite in general and those they purport to advocate for. Bett\u2019s discussion of his own experience, that of his mother who was a victim of rape, and his friends in prison highlighted the difficulty with implementing the aspirational goal of implementing abolition in practice. Whereas abolitionists in academia seek to abolish both the police and prison, Betts\u2019 critique underscored that the complex and multifaceted nature of violence, innocence and safety all present major challenges to overcoming the status quo.<\/p>\n

The communities which suffer most from the harms of mass incarceration also suffer from endemic racialized under-policing which leaves these communities vulnerable to crime and violence. Betts\u2019 own experience represents the cross-section of the complexity of violence and the many ways in which it manifests in racialized and under-policed communities:\u00a0 Betts\u2019 experience both as a perpetrator of crime and violence and as a prisoner who suffered from the violence of mass incarceration, in addition to Betts\u2019 mother\u2019s experience who had to relive her trauma as a victim of rape, reflect the problem in its full dimensionality.<\/p>\n

Betts\u2019 critique comes at a critical time for the abolitionist movement. The George Floyd protests and the election of a Democratic president in the United States has allowed the entry of abolitionist rhetoric into mainstream discourse. While McLeod was correct in pointing out that abolitionist discourse has been appropriated and misused for other means, the discursive infrastructure remains intact. Betts\u2019 critique demonstrates the need to use this moment in history to connect the ideals of the academic and legal elite to the needs of those who are suffering. To listen to them, to hear their pain and ask for their input is essential in this moment if we, as abolitionists, \u00a0hope to realize our abolitionist goals. Doing so will require acknowledging our own complicity and hypocrisy.<\/p>\n

As is common with all ghazals, Betts ends his ghazal by inscribing his penname at the end of the poem:<\/p>\n

You have come so far, Beloved, & for what, another song?
\nThen sing. Shahid you\u2019re loved, not shipwrecked, after prison.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the Persian and Arabic, the word shahid has a dual meaning depending on the context: witness and martyr. Betts embodies both interpretations of the word shahid: he is simultaneously both a witness of the horrors that is mass incarceration in the United States and he also is a martyr who embodies the struggle for not only his own humanity, but his friends, too\u2013the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated. Betts\u2019 poetic honesty forces us to confront that beyond the ideals and niceties of abolitionist rhetoric, these are people fighting for their humanity and it\u2019s time their voice is heard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By S. Shabzadeh From inside a cell, the night sky isn\u2019t the measure\u2014 that\u2019s why it\u2019s prison\u2019s vastness your eyes reflect after prison. My lover don\u2019t believe in my sadness. She says whisky, not time, is what left me wrecked… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2322,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38981],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-resources-9-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2322"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}