Beneath the Mountain: an Anti-Prison Reader

Recently, I was honored to receive this beautiful book (coming out this week!) from Saleem Holbrook, founder of the Abolitionist Law Center and Straight Ahead, two leading Pennsylvania-based organizing and advocacy groups. The book contains 31 writings, including letters, testimonies, and essays, with a focus on liberation. It starts with the story of Oney Judge, an enslaved person in the house of George Washington who escaped, and ends with Saleem Holbrook. I have only just started reading it, but already I am so refreshed by the focus on freedom and resistance. 

You might think it’s obvious and natural that books against prison would focus on freedom, but I find that books in this field very frequently obsess over the technical components of prisons - the guards, the judges, the police, the prosecutors, the defenders - the mechanics, in other words - rather than what is actually going on. I wonder if it’s because of a deep faith in institutions in America, which drives us to talk about how they may need to change piece by piece, because the idea that core institutions could be rotten is just inconceivable. 

If someone is trying to run you over with a car, understanding how the car works and conceiving of possible adjustments will not make a huge difference in solving the problem. Maybe you could adjust the gas to make it slower, adjust the brakes to make them stronger, shrink the tires, soften the bumper…. All of these things might help reduce the damage to you. And those are good things to do – I am a believer in harm reduction! But from an analytical perspective, understanding the car doesn’t help us understand why this person is trying to run you over and how to make it stop, nor does it help you explain the significance to others. Stories about freedom have been strangely missing or limited in the discourse on prisons and mass incarceration over the past few years. I’m happy to see this book start there!