Prisons, Policing, and Pollution: Toward an Abolitionist Framework within Environmental Justice
How are prisons, policing, pollution related and why is this intersection critical to understand? Environmental Justice defines the environment as the spaces where we live, work, play, and pray. The Environmental Justice (EJ) Movement has traditionally used this definition to organize against toxics in low-income communities of color. However, within EJ work, prisons or policing have often not been centralized or discussed. This means that the approximately 2.2 million people that are incarcerated are excluded from the conversation and movement. Additionally, communities and activists are identifying police and prisons as toxics in their communities, but an analysis of policing and prisons is largely missing in EJ scholarship. This is an issue because although anti-prison organizers are engaging in EJ discourse and EJ activists are joining forces with anti-prison activists, in general, the EJ field has not thoughtfully engaged with the prison industrial complex or abolitionist discourse.
Resource Details
Related resources (by topic)
‘1.5°C to stay alive’: climate change, imperialism and justice for the Caribbean
Treating the threat of climate change in the Caribbean as a case study instructive for responses globally, this article examines the social and political relations of climate change. It argues for an analysis taking into account the ways in which…
An Invitation to Save the Planet by Ending White Supremacy
A racist system that values some lives over others helps to fuel the climate crisis.
Another Gulf is Possible
Another Gulf Is Possible Collaborative is a women-of-color led, grassroots collaborative of ten members from Brownsville, Texas to Pensacola, Florida. We are built upon decades of organizing resulting in a strong and rooted ecosystem of relationships between individuals tied to…
Anti-Greenwashing Educational Toolkit
This toolkit highlights how greenwashing plays out in the push for widespread electrification, which requires lithium and other industrially mined metals for batteries. We hope it will help guide activists, students, community organizers, and anyone who seeks a path of…
Help us expand the Resource Hub
Share resources that you think would be a good addition to this tool and our team will review them for inclusion in future updates.