Institute of Race Relations 17 June 2021: Abolition – a roadmap to the future?

17 June 2021 — — Origin: Institute of Race Relations

This week we draw attention to a new article by Liz Fekete, Looking Back to Look Forward: imagining a world without state violence, published by the Stuart Hall Foundation as part of their Imagined Futures series. At a time when social movements are coming together in collective opposition to laws that exclude and dehumanise, the IRR’s director shows how the abolitionist arguments they draw on are rooted in history.

In our calendar of racism and resistance, too, we document how collective action can be a driving force for change. Following a powerful campaign and protests in London and Glasgow, the Home Office has abandoned its plan to deport 22-year-old Osime Brown to Jamaica, which he left at the age of 4. In Copenhagen, hundreds of Syrians are continuing a sit in outside the Danish parliament for a third week, protesting measures declaring Syria safe and cancelling refugees’ residence permits.

To find out more about the legal barriers facing people seeking asylum in the UK, and how to overcome them, South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group (SYMAAG) are holding an event this evening at 7pm, at which IRR Vice-Chair Frances Webber will be speaking. Still time to register here.

IRR News team

What abolitionism offers is a road map to the future, which begins with addressing the social crisis & misery in front of us.’

Abolitionist demands – far from being new – have always been at the centre of calls for justice. Today’s abolitionist arguments, associated with Critical Resistance and the Movement for Black Lives (MBL) in the US reverberate across continents and time. For the Stuart Hall Foundation, IRR Director Liz Fekete reflects on the history of abolition and how State power clarifies our current moment.

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On Monday, the IRR joined over 40 organisations in condemning the Home Office’s introduction of 24-hour GPS monitoring of people on immigration bail. The physical and psychological effects of electronic monitoring are explored in Monish Bhatia’s Race & Class article, ‘Racial surveillance and the mental health impacts of electronic monitoring’. Read it for free via Exact Editions here.

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A fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlighting key events in the UK and Europe. Calendar of Racism & Resistance

This week’s calendar documents collective action as a driving force for change with the successful campaign to stop the Home Office’s planned deportation of Osime Brown. On the 4th anniversary of the Grenfell fire, survivors highlight the government’s failure to fix hundreds of thousands of high-rise homes with similar fire safety defects.