When I speak of prison abolition rather than prison reform, even those opposed to prison will gasp and run in circles like Chicken Little anticipating the sky falling. But I don’t even advocate JUST the abolition of the prison system, but hierarchy in general, the end of the few ruling the many, of the State dictating to everyone.
We cannot conceive of a world absent the oppression, a world where people are free. But consider: there was a time when, if you told people that kings and queens would someday hold only symbolic power, they would have laughed at you. A world NOT run by autocrats with unlimited power? Laughable. Then, in feudal times, if you told people that their whole system would soon be obliterated, they could not have possibly conceived of the system that would come next. Or during the Crusades, if you had proposed a time when the pope would someday be a figurehead in charge of a handful of guards in funny costumes, nobody would have been able to imagine what system would come after, who would hold power, and how it would work.
