Bisola Marignay, The Abolition Movement Today

(This presentation was a part of CIIS Multiversity February 2008)

A exposition of how the U.S. Constitution permits legal slavery; how it is practiced through the Criminal Justice System; why accountability is impossible within prisons; and how the new abolition movement is responding to this social reality.

The prison abolition movement is mounted on recognition of the inability of reform efforts to overcome the inherent disparity and devastation that accompanies not only imprisonment, but the entire regime of oppression throughout the criminal justice system. Profile policing and arrest, non-functionality of legal representation for indigent defendants and prosecutorial misconduct thwart the possibility of fairness in trials and cause the imprisonment of many innocent defendants on an on-going basis. Activism aimed at shrinking the prison industrial complex into non-existence will be discussed relative to the social discourse necessary to the creation of new non-penal alternatives and the obstacles to the development of that discourse.

Bisola Marignay is an activist who has participated in pro-choice and union organizing, anti-child abuse and family support advocacy, and is presently involved in the new abolition movement and organized resistance to cultural appropriation. She studies Social and Cultural Anthropology here at CIIS.