Election post 3: reflecting on the bigger picture

This is the last post in my mini series on the election.

THE BIG PICTURE

The consequences of this election are so enormous, and yet so unknown, that it’s been difficult to form an analysis. What I have below are some initial and necessarily incomplete thoughts. There will be more to come as we all collectively figure out the implications and next steps. My overall stance is that we have a lot to work with, and if we understand ourselves and our opposition, we will prevail. I urge you to resist resigning yourself to an awful future. What’s coming will be very problematic but may also spur new forms of organizing, community support, and creative campaign structures that we never would have gotten to without being under pressure.

On to what I’m thinking: the first thing ringing in my head is the idea that there are two ways to think about “criminal justice reform” work. On the one hand, it’s about expanding social justice, extending freedom and fairness more equitably. The states churn millions of people a year through a punitive system calibrated to overselect vulnerable people - whether because they are poor, disabled, less educated, or something else. Some people have chosen to pay attention to this, and some haven’t. On the other hand, it’s about limiting the reach of authoritarian power. I don’t think people will be able to ignore that so easily. When we are facing an authoritarian state, the police, courts, prosecutors, sheriffs, jails, and prisons are the mechanism by which that state touches the ground. In other words, authoritarianism is carried out on the very platform that we are working to change. Leaders in this field have seen the reach of that excessive power and they know how to face it.

Second, mass deportation and mass incarceration already overlap heavily, and that’s going to intensify under this administration. If democratic governors skip along with Trump when it comes to that first wave, it will be very hard to resist the later ones. The police, sheriffs, prosecutors, jails, prisons, and other mechanisms will be harnessed to arrest and detain a lot of people. Given the scale of Trump’s deportation ambitions, they will need it all. Moreover, the road to mass deportation starts by deporting people convicted of serious offenses, then less serious, then just the status of being undocumented, and so on.

Third, the battle over who can define and deliver “safety”, which has multiple conflicting meanings, continues. Safety can mean being free from a street crime, or it could mean the security that comes from knowing one’s “in group” is in power, or feeling secure that any present prosperity will continue in the future. Emotions in response to threats to these different kinds of safety can produce fear responses across the whole spectrum of safety. Republicans understand this very well. Will Democrats get a clue?

Fourth, I’ve written before about how this work is in a winter, which people often read as a negative assessment of low funding and low public attention. I do partly mean that, but I also mean winter in another sense: right now this field needs to be engaging in deep reflection, learning, and renewal, which could lead to picking major areas of focus over the next 5 years and agreements on coordination across the field. However, this type of reflection is hard to undertake when there is so much anxiety and pressure, which is about to increase.

As a result, imho, this field is not currently ready to jump back on the issue main stage and absorb a ton of people if Trump does something that unleashes major popular energy on criminal justice. Even something much smaller than the George Floyd marches would be a huge event for us and we are not ready. What’s the way out of this? What I’m meditating on now is that we should be looking for the leaders in the rising generation and connecting them together. If even some parts of this field could be coordinated in that way, the field would be in a much better position to absorb a wave of energy.