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Angela Davis recently noted, “We support the trans community precisely because the community has taught us how to challenge that which is totally accepted as normal. It challenges cisgender identity and heterosexuality as the epitome of validity by offering a more expansive basis for humanhood.
Queerness is both a criticism of and collective movement against the status quo. If we are to continue living in a world that seeks to disappear us through prison and police violence, abolition must be central to any movement for queer liberation. In addition to the removal of the violent systems that seek to oppress us, abolition also requires an active commitment to building support systems that actually make our Black, queer communities safer. Abolition encourages us to face the lies we have been told about what justice looks like and take active steps towards unlearning and rebuilding. Queer people are also at greater risk of experiencing homelessness, extreme poverty, sexual assault, intimate partner violence, and all of the violent conditions that lead to encounters with police and the PIC. Nearly one in two Black trans people have been to prison, often as punishment for crimes of survival. By definition, queerness exists outside the confines of what is deemed acceptable, so it comes as no surprise that 48% of LGBTQ+ victims of violence report police misconduct.
Prisons breed violence and swallow those capitalism deems undesirable police enforce and perpetuate that violence.