Arkansas Democrat-Gazette l Becca Martin-Brown
DecARcerate, according to its website, envisions a state where communities are safe and caring, individuals who cause harm are rehabilitated and reintegrated into supportive communities, all people are respected and treated equitably across institutions, and systems of exploitation and oppression are replaced with ones that are just and create healing.
Zachary Crow is the executive director of the Little Rock-based grassroots coalition, and he doesn't mince words about the importance of his work.
"The American prison system serves as an extension of slavery, holding millions of people in bondage and under state control," Crow says. "To be a person committed to freedom requires a deep analysis of the structures that continue to enslave, dismantle, and destroy. We have been conditioned to believe that we need prisons to protect us. It is simply not true.
"Prisons do not reconcile harm. Prisons perpetuate harm."
Crow will speak Oct. 9-10 as part of the McMichael Lecture Series at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Fayetteville. But interest in the issues surrounding incarceration are not new to the church, says St. Paul's spokeswoman Megan Downey.
Among the ongoing efforts at St. Paul's, Downey points out the Prison Story Project, founded in 2012 as a ministry of St. Paul's with the mission of bridging "the gap between inmates and the communities they are members of through the healing art of story"; Justice for All, which works to lower incarceration rates "by supporting our fellow citizens with their court-related obligations prior to trial"; Dick Johnston Children's Camp, created for children 8 to 12 years old who have at least one parent incarcerated; and the church's involvement with Magdalene Serenity House, which offers a residential program to "help rebuild the lives of women who have experienced trauma, sexual exploitation, addiction and incarceration."
Crow says his interest in the topic of incarceration was born "because I have seen firsthand the harm perpetuated by 'the prison industrial complex.'"
"Over and over again, I have witnessed the effects of my friends and loved ones being targeted and assaulted by the police, locked in cages, murdered, tortured and turned into second-class citizens," says Crow, who is an ordained minister with New Millennium Church in Little Rock, in addition to working as a storyteller, filmmaker, poet and, along with Judge Wendell Griffen, host of "The Barbershop Radio Hour," a weekly call-in show centering around issues of social justice on KABF 88.3FM.
Crow spent two years living alongside and learning from homeless, incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals in Atlanta as a part of the Open Door Community, a residential community that seeks to abolish the death penalty "and proclaim the Beloved Community through loving relationships with some of the most neglected and outcast, the homeless and those in prison."
"I learned a great deal about the experiences of people who have been victimized by the carceral state," he says, but "I would much rather speak to what it is I learned from my friends in Atlanta.
"I learned that while those most directly impacted by systemic oppression are closest to solutions, they are most often denied the resources necessary to fully participate in movement work. I learned that building community is difficult and vital work. I learned that the carceral state perpetuates harm rather than reconciling it. I learned what it means to be resilient in the face of unthinkable oppression.
"The biggest misconception of currently and formerly incarcerated people are that they are different from those who have never been caged by the state," he goes on. "They aren't. I can count on one hand the people I would trust with my life. Most have spent time in jail or prison."
Crow returns to the topic of slavery, saying "during the time of slavery, enslaved people were referred to as 'beasts.' Today, words like 'beast' are replaced with 'monster,' 'criminal,' 'offender,' 'thug,' 'felon,' or 'inmate,' and are widely used inside and outside of the system. This is just one example of the ways that people trapped in the system -- both those entering and exiting prison -- are 'othered' and stripped of their humanity.
"Witnessing the perpetuation of trauma has convinced me that abolition is the only moral response," Crow says. "For many, this will seem an impossible challenge. Even so, we must persist, building a world where equity, healing and reconciliation replace systems of punishment and oppression. Abolitionists before us -- Sojourner Truth, Nat Turner, John Brown, and Harriet Tubman, among others -- began this work despite being told victory was impossible.
"While we will not be able to dismantle these systems overnight, we must begin building models and structures that represent how we want to live into the future."