Charity, Control, or Solidarity? Reclaiming "Care" as Revolutionary Praxis

We often talk about the various ways in which the state, nonprofits, and service providers coopt abolitionist demands for "care" to justify their own repressive and reformist agendas. But even within leftist spaces, we think about care work in terms of survival, not in terms of ensuring that marginalized communities can actually thrive. So there is a need for greater clarity and specificity even in our own organizing communities around care work: what kind of care are we talking about and to what ends?

Imprisoned abolitionist, Stevie Wilson and Dr. Joy James discuss what care is, how we avoid performing a version of care that is based on exploitation or infantilization, and how we can ensure care work is instead rooted in a revolutionary praxis of solidarity.

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9971 engages imprisoned people through study and discussion. We provide mutual aid that creates and sustains community behind the walls.

For more info check out In the Belly: https://abolitioniststudy.com/

Speakers:

Stevie Wilson (he/him) is a currently imprisoned Black queer abolitionist organizer and facilitator from Philadelphia. Wilson is the founder of the inside abolitionist study collective 9971 and is the founder of the abolitionist journal In the Belly. He is a columnist for the Abolitionist, a newspaper published by Critical Resistance, and a recipient of the Writing Freedom Fellowship from Haymarket Books.

Joy James, Ebenezer Fitch Professor of the Humanities at Williams College, is a political philosopher who works with organizers. She is editor of The Angela Y. Davis Reader; Imprisoned Intellectuals; The New Abolitionistsand co-editor of The Black Feminist Reader. James's recent books include In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love; New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency and the (After)Life of Erica Garner; and Contextualizing Angela Davis: The Agency and Identity of an Icon. Her 2024 edited books with Pluto include: Beyond Cop Cities and ENGAGE: Indigenous, Black, Afro-Indigenous Futures.