Abolition Week Four
LIBERATION LECTIONARY - BLACK AUGUST
That We Would Live and Not Die
“Our top priority now is to get on with the building process.” -Mamie Till-Mobley
Daily Readings from Isaiah 30 and 33
Sunday: Isaiah 30.15 For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. But you refused.
Monday: Isaiah 30.18 Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you; therefore they will rise up to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for them.
Tuesday: Isaiah 30.19-23 O people in Zion, inhabitants of Jerusalem, you shall weep no more. They will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; and will answer you when they hear it. Though the Lord may give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide any longer, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” Then you will defile your silver-covered idols and your gold-plated images. You will scatter them like impure things; you will say to them, “Away with you!” The Lord will give rain for the seed with which you sow the ground, and grain, the produce of the ground, will be rich and plenteous. On that day your cattle will graze in broad pastures.
Wednesday: Isaiah 30.26-29 Moreover, the light of the moon will be like the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, like the light of seven days, on the day when the Lord binds up the injuries of their people and heals the wounds inflicted by their blow.See, the name of the Lord comes from far away,their anger burning and burden heavy;their lips are full of indignation,and their tongue is like a devouring fire;their breath is like an overflowing streamthat reaches up to the neck-to sift the nations with the sieve of destructionand to place on the jaws of the peoples a bridle that leads them astray.You shall have a song as in the night when a holy festival is kept and gladness of heart, as when one sets out to the sound of the flute to go to the mountain of the Lord, to the Rock of Israel.
Thursday: Isaiah 33.2-6 O Lord, be gracious to us; we wait for you. Be our arm every morning, our salvation in the time of trouble. At the sound of tumult, peoples fled; before your majesty, nations scattered. Spoil was gathered as the caterpillar gathers; as locusts leap, they leaped upon it. The Lord is exalted and dwells on high, having filled Zion with justice and righteousness; they will be the stability of your times, abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge; the fear of the Lord is Zion’s treasure.
Friday: Isaiah 33.14b - 17 “Who among us can live with the devouring fire? Who among us can live with everlasting flames?” Those who walk righteously and speak uprightly, who despise the gain of oppression, who wave away a bribe instead of accepting it, who stop their ears from hearing of bloodshed and shut their eyes from looking on evil, they will live on the heights; their refuge will be the fortresses of rocks; their food will be supplied, their water assured. Your eyes will see the king in his beauty; they will behold a land that stretches far away.
Saturday: Isaiah 33.21-22 But there the Lord in majesty will be for us a place of broad rivers and streams where no galley with oars can go nor stately ship can pass. For the Lord is our judge; the Lord is our ruler; the Lord is our king who will save us.
Music / Meditation ~ Black August Playlist
We are meant to do more than remove and replace. We are given the power of imagination to come up with something that eases our struggles and brings purpose in the face of community pain, not punishment. Enjoy these grooves under the themes of deliverance, dreaming for our futures, and demanding change even now.
YouTube Video Playlist – watch live performances of the tracks we’ve chosen for this month.
Reflection: A New Way
Black August means abolition in every space.
The prison industrial complex is not a place where restitution, renewal and rehabilitation can happen. The families who suffered loss desire to see their loved ones returned to them. That would be justice, ultimately. But no system of imprisonment can provide it. Punishment does not bring us justice. The roots of our wounds, the motives of those that caused them, these are not dealt with by locking anything away.
In the words of Ruth Wilson Gilmore “Ultimately, abolition is a practical program of change rooted in how people sustain and improve their lives, cobbling together insights and strategies from disparate, connected struggles. We know we won’t bulldoze prisons and jails tomorrow, but as long as they continue to be advanced as the solution, all of the inequalities displaced to crime and punishment will persist. We’re in a long game.”
More than ending mass incarceration, abolition aspires to change the way we think about the future. What measures of accountability are present in maternal care, reproductive health, child rearing, immigration and education? How do we build boundaries and remove barriers? The carceral viewpoint scares people into submission. An abolitionist values the path of accountability. This focus pulls apart the currently entwined injustices are work within the criminal legal system. Whether innocent or guilty, people who fit the profile are sentenced to the prison of stereotype. Poverty associated with undeserving, unemployment is associated with laziness. Mental illness unaddressed; youth activism aged out of children’s advocacy. Abolition gains momentum because there is much more to build than there is to dismantle.
Again from Ruth Wilson Gilmore: “In other words, we work the entire ecology of precarious existence that shapes, but is not bounded by, the aggrandizing “criminal justice system,” including housing, jobs, education, income, faith, environment, status. Far from being starry-eyed idealists, we are specialists in the daily grind of the deliberate, patient and persistent work necessary for what we want–freedom and justice.”
Justice right now might be most possible through the resurrection mindset of those who see the ancestral as the actual. Justice in the future means building a world where systems protect and enrich our lives rather than cause us to die.
Prayer: from a Booklet of Uncommon Prayer
by Kenji Kuramitsu
“Jesus Christ, Son of God, who promised in your first sermon to break the chains of the oppressed and to set the prisoners free, break apart our wrecked and ruinous criminal (in)justice system. Do not let profits strangle your prophets any longer, but be with us and teach us not to tolerate these practices from this day forward. May we not only visit the sick and imprisoned but support smart legislation, protest, and incline our hearts towards rehabilitative justice and the abolition of human cages, that all may know the freedom from judgment that only Christ can bring.” Amen
From A Prayer to End Mass Incarceration
Credits
Article source for Ruth Wilson Gilmore quotes: from the Marshall Project
Kenji Kuramitsu’s Book of Uncommon Prayer : from Evangelicals for Social Action
Resource for more “Movement Prayers”
Artwork: Wanger Ayu