The Language of Liberation: “Abolition is freedom”
Karen Evans, Executive Director of the New Orleans Children and Youth Planning Board, shares her definition of youth abolition and how listening to youth voices shapes that work.
Behind This Story | Louisiana currently has the second highest imprisonment rate in the nation, but our communities don’t feel any safer. What are the alternatives to mass incarceration? The Language of Liberation is a community resource produced by the Fall 2023 Community Reporting Fellows to make information on the prison abolition movement more accessible to community members so that we can begin to answer that question. This guide is part of a larger reporting series on youth incarceration and abolition. The guide features definitions of abolition terms, as well as the perspectives of local abolitionists. Have questions or comments? Email us at ledeneworleans@gmail.com.
By Morgan Love
I spent last fall researching what abolition work means and looks like in New Orleans. I learned that the term abolition references the practice or work to end harmful systems. As I dug in more, I learned that abolition advocates want to replace current practices with institutions and systems that will rehabilitate and facilitate healing. Abolition occurs in response to systems that are built with a punitive spirit, systems that work to punish individuals instead of helping them.
I think of abolition as an ideology and a set of practices and approaches that my community–specifically young Black and brown people–does not currently have access to. Young people are constantly being thrown into jails and prisons and are not given the proper guidance or resources needed to help them become better individuals. They are not given the necessary tools to be successful and safe so as to live a life free from stressors that research shows can drive criminal offense, like poverty, hunger, subpar education and lack of fulfilling and well-paying employment. I have seen many young people turn “bad” because of a lack of community resources and a lack of general help. The modern abolition movement is working to address the things that are lacking in communities by pushing for alternatives to communities and individual lives that are defined by punishment and prison.
From my perspective, abolition is about creating and providing community resources that can be used to help motivate, protect and heal the individuals who are most in need of resources. Abolition ends the current incarceration system and its efforts to monetize and profit from the lives and labor of incarcerated individuals instead of giving them access to education, medicine and mental health care. In a world that seems to pride itself on designing increasingly punitive measures, abolition challenges that punitive spirit and replaces it with one of healing and rehabilitation.
Community Voice: Karen Evans
Last October, I sat down with Karen Evans to discuss the meaning of abolition. Evans referred to abolition simply as “freedom.” Evans serves as executive director of the Children and Youth Planning Board (CYPB), which works with a range of local stakeholders to advocate for and develop plans to meet the physical, social, emotional and developmental needs of local children and families. Evans explained that her priority is making sure youth voices are amplified and their needs are prioritized in local policy and decision-making. That is why two of the CYPB’s top priorities are pushing for an overall reduction in the number of local young people committed to prisons and state institutions, as well as developing programs that support community responses to juvenile delinquency.
“I don’t often think of my work as youth abolition work, but when you’re talking about youth voices–that is exactly what it is,” Evans said. “I think what I’ve learned the most, and continue to learn every time I encounter young people is that they–young people–have something to say about that. My vision of what abolition looks like may not match their vision of what it needs to look like, based on the experience that they have and the expectation that they hold.”
Evans and I discussed how young people in New Orleans are subjected to harsh realities early in life and have to struggle to be free. Abolition work–through the work of CYPB and other like-minded organizations–paves the way to meet the needs of our youth and gives them the security and protection that they need and deserve. That’s why school environment and school discipline are focus areas for CYPB.
Evans observed that school is where children and youth form the basis for knowledge about the world. It should be a place of protection and opportunity for emotional growth. But when school policies are designed to mete out discipline and establish order, the opposite can be true, she said.
The current school system in New Orleans “is designed to have our young people who go through the system think a certain kind of way, pursue certain kinds of things and demonstrate a certain level of possibility,” Evans said.
In my experience, public education in New Orleans and many U.S. cities is one-size-fits-all. It isn’t designed to provide equitable care and treatment for each individual based on circumstances and needs. That environment is the reason why we’re still talking about the school-to-prison pipeline.
From Evans’ perspective, abolition allows the youth to be free and experience a life where conflict is resolved peacefully; a life filled with joy and safety. Evans helped me understand that without abolition, there is no freedom. And to really understand what youth abolition looks like in New Orleans, you need to turn to young people for insight and experience, Evan said.
“You need to go directly to the folks that are affected by abolition to get their perspective and to engage them in the creation of an abolition space,” Evans said. “That means something to them.”
Morgan Love, 21, was born and raised in Jackson, Miss. Love studies psychology and English at Loyola University. Love is a Fall 2023 Community Reporting Fellow with Lede New Orleans.
Nijah Narcisse produced this piece. She is a New Orleans born-and-bred creative writer and journalist, and an alumni of the Community Reporting Fellowship at Lede New Orleans. Narcisse is Fellowship Producer at Lede New Orleans.
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