ABOLITION
EVERYDAY SH!T: THE PILOT ISSUE
Content Notice: genocide, ethnic cleansing, military occupation, settler colonialism, state repression
A hand-painted poster with a prayer by @Bitterillegal translated into four languages by Jess X. Snow and @Bitterillegal. Arabic translation by Stephanie Najjar. Included as part of the Justseeds Palestine Will Be Free Graphics Package #2 and Artists Against Apartheid.
“But if we are bound together in our oppression, we are also bound together in our liberation. Because their fight is our fight. Their liberation is our liberation. Because when they rise, we rise. When they resist, we resist. When they refuse to be broken, they teach us how to be unbreakable.”
My friends, my family, sons of self-determination and daughters of liberation, my brothers and my sisters in the ongoing fight for a better world—hello, salaam alaikum.
I stand before you today not only to speak to you all as a community educator but also as your sister in grief as our collective heart bleeds for the people of Falestine. In a time where those at the highest forms of government continue to use their power to demolish your rights, feed their greed, and flippantly discuss ethnic cleansing, where the very act of stepping out here to march with us today puts your own livelihoods at risk, as they call you everything from delinquent to terrorist, I commend you all for your courage, your resolve, your refusal to give into their threats and your ability to see through their lies. Thank you for being here with me today.
In Abolition School, we teach that abolition is not just the destruction of prisons, police, and carceral systems—it is the abolition of a global system of oppression. A system that exploits, murders, and extracts wealth from the many, and does so for the benefit of the few. A system that shackles our minds as well as our bodies. A system that cages our people, whether in the jails erected on our soil or the open-air prison that is the West Bank.
As abolitionists we are also internationalists, because we understand that all of our struggles, from Philly, to Sudan, to the Congo, to Palestine are all inextricably linked. That the fight against police brutality in West Philadelphia is the same fight against military occupation in the West Bank. That the same police who terrorize our neighborhoods train under the same brutal military that enforces occupation in the Palestinian streets. The same hands that demolish their villages gentrify our neighborhoods. The same bullets that kill our brothers, sisters, and children in Philadelphia are manufactured by the same corporations profiting from the massacre in Gaza. This oppression is a web—interconnected, intricate, insidious, that we must endeavor to understand so that we can work to destroy it . To win against a global system of oppression, we must counter it by building a global system of solidarity and resistance.
Because colonialism, slavery, and capitalism are global systems, we know that abolition is a global project. When we say we want to abolish prisons, we mean prisons everywhere. When we say we want to abolish policing, we mean all policing—whether in the form of a cop attacking a brother on his walk home from work accusing him of being a criminal for just existing or an occupying soldier laughing as they terrorize the children like lambs for slaughter in a refugee camp.
When I visited Palestine this past December, I witnessed firsthand the unimaginable brutality of occupation. But more than that, I witnessed the unwavering resistance of the Palestinian people. I met a woman, Faduah, who told me, “Even though we are occupied, you Americans, you too are occupied.” She reminded me that our governments, our institutions of power, our very cities—are occupied with Zionists the same way the Palestinian streets are. We are crushed under the boot of the very same oppressor that both profits from their genocide and our suffering.
But if we are bound together in our oppression, we are also bound together in our liberation. Because their fight is our fight. Their liberation is our liberation. Because when they rise, we rise. When they resist, we resist. When they refuse to be broken, they teach us how to be unbreakable.
Our fight is not just about ending repression; it is about creating something new. Abolition is not just about tearing down; it is about reconstructing a world where all people can live freely, with dignity, without fear. A world where Palestinian children are free to play without drones hovering above them. A world where our own children do not live in fear of being brutalized by the police just because the system sees them as a threat. A world where land is not stolen, where resources are not hoarded, and where life is not disposable.
We have a duty to fight. To hold these so-called leaders, these criminals in suits, whose hands are drenched in blood, accountable! We have a duty to fight to abolish the institutions that protect and fund them. To take the power from the billionaires who profit from genocide, from eviction, from imprisonment, from war. The IDF, the KKK, PPD, the forces of this city and the forces of this nation that control them - they are all the same —they are one enemy! And they will fall!
Palestine's children are our children - no matter what any leader, any zionist, or any president, says.
And that is why we will not stop marching. We will not stop fighting. They have tried to break us. They have tried to silence us. They try to make us afraid and make us give up the fight. And they will continue to fail.
We will not rest until Palestine is free, and its children can return home. Until every prison is torn down. Until every system of oppression is dismantled. Until every stolen dollar, every stolen home, every stolen life is returned to the people.
And so we say today, with one voice: We will not be silenced. We will not be made afraid. And we will not falter.
Liberation for all!
All power to the people!
All glory to the martyrs!
Long live the global intifada!
From the river to the sea,
Palestine will be free!
All power to the people!
All glory to the martyrs!
Long live the global intifada!
From the river to the sea,
Palestine will be free!