Week 12
no soft police
Key Questions
What are the “soft police”? How do supposedly benevolent institutions participate in policing?
What might a non-carceral approach to welfare look like? How can care be provided without cops?
How can we define the state? What might its role be in abolitionist struggles?
Required Materials:
Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie, No More Police: A Case for Abolition, “No Soft Police”
Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie, No More Police: A Case for Abolition, “Tricks and Tensions”
Joanna Wuest, “Mutual Aid Can’t Do It Alone”
Supplementary Materials:
Nick French, “Class Struggle Built the Swedish Welfare State”
Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Craig Gilmore, “Restating the Obvious”
Kelly McKowen, “The More Universal the Welfare State, the Freer the People”
Matt Bruenig, “The Problems With Means-Testing Are Real”
The Care Collective, The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence, “Caring States”
Dorothy Roberts, Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families — And How Abolition Can Build a Safer World, “Care In Place of Terror”
Tamara Kamatovic, “How Vienna’s Socialist City Hall Put Children at the Heart of the Welfare State”