The Foggy Memories of An Aboilitionist

By Lamarr Reid

Police never made me feel safe. and prisons never did the mracle job of making people better. Ever since I could remember, for the most part, they repectiveely made things worse.

I remember the neighbors beating our door down, screaming "Jay the police got Rob." Immediately, my nine year old mind went to not ever seeing my dad again. I, along with the rest of my siblings, followed my mom out the door, past the elevator to the staircase where we took the steps---a flight at a time, or so it seemed. I remember seeing the blue-red lights flashing, through the crowd of on-lookers in the lobby and blindly following my mom. We pushed through the crowd of spectators,who were either whispering their grievances or yelling obscenities and, as my mother approached what appeared to be a hispanic officer, we all instinctively knew to pause and keep our distance.

It was a real spectacle.

I saw my dad, who was a bit drunk, being pressed against the hood of a squad car, as if he was a murder suspect, as if he was a sideshow . . . as if he was immune to the swelteing summertime heat in New York. Even I knew that the hood of the car had to be part of the reason why the sweat poured from his forehead like summer rain.

Things went from bad to worse.

My mom, who must've violated some personal space rule or broke some noise ordinance code yelling at the officer who pinned my dad against the car's hood, was tackled. I don't remember much after seing that. I remember feelng lonely and staying at the neighbors apartment---although it was packed.

Since I'm on the story of talking about my crazy family (and I say this with a loving spirit and good intention), I recall my favorite uncle returning home from prison not quite the same as he was when he left us. When he went to serve his sentence, I was seven. A decade later, and a tour of New Yok's finest prisons, Uncle returned physically different and mentally scarred. Long gone was the joyous uncle who would buy the kids on the block ice cream from Mr. Softees ice cream truck who showed us that skills out-do youth on the basketball court....In place of my joyous uncle was the shell of a man who stayed in his room screaming at a host of people that weren't there although he said they were "trying to get him." Long gone was the smile that made all of my troubles vanish once he flashed his perfect pearly whites. In place of my uncles smile was a set of dentures that he never wore (they occuppied a bowl atop his dresser). He once told me the story about losing his teeth as the result of an officer led assault in Attica. I thought Uncle was absolutely telling the tale of a man who didn't practice good dental hygeine, until I entered prison and saw (and heard) uncle-type stories on a fairly regular basis. He returned home a product of a carceral system that produces people with mental health issues.

So what does my crazy family story have to do with abolition? More often than not, we see police officers man handle people or show more delight in asking for information than providing assistance (the show Cops made a citcom of it). Too many people we've known, who are good people that made a bad choice as a kid, or otherwise, are shipped to prison and return worse off than when they went away (if they are so lucky to be released). So when we see this mishandling of people taking place right before our eyes and don't think it needs fixing, we are a part of the problem. Why invest in something that doesn't work? Or why invest in something that does more harm than good? Why support the perpetual violence Danielle Sered warned us about? Why contribute to the increase of mass-incarceration that Michelle Alexander denounced? It's time to re-think and re-see!