Toward an Abolitionist Security Culture

Centering Abolitionism, Somatic Social Justice & The Art of Slowing Down

Apr 28, 2025

Introduction: The Crisis Within the Crisis

We already know: policing does not only exist in the form of external repression. It lives inside the very strategies, habits, and survival instincts of our movements. It shows up in our fear responses, our gatekeeping practices, our conflicts, and our crises.

If we do not transform how we protect each other — externally and internally — we will replicate the very systems we seek to dismantle.

Drawing from the visions of Mariame Kaba, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Dean Spade, Frantz Fanon, and Malcolm X, this essay outlines how we build abolitionist security culture: a collective practice of protection rooted in care, transparency, trust, and relational accountability.

Foundational Principles of Abolitionist Security

These principles are not a rigid formula, but a starting place for conversation, reflection, and adaptation. Every community carries its own histories, wounds, and dreams. Building abolitionist security culture requires contextual wisdom, creativity, and an ongoing commitment to collective learning.

Trust is Built, Not Assumed
Real trust grows through lived relationships, not clout, identity markers, or surface-level affiliations.
Care Is the Core of Safety
Protection must be rooted in mutual care and consent, not suspicion or fear-based control.
Accountability Without Punishment
We must address harm through transformative practices of repair, not through exile, isolation, or public spectacle.
Transparency Over Secrecy
Openness and communication, rather than secrecy and gatekeeping, create resilient movements.
Conflict is a Portal, Not a Problem
When handled with abolitionist discipline, conflict becomes a site of growth, not destruction.
Everyone is Teachable
Movements must center the possibility of transformation, not the disposability of individuals.

Ultimately, abolitionist security culture must be shaped by the needs, truths, and visions of each community it seeks to protect and empower.

External Security Culture: Building Protective Networks

External security practices resist surveillance, infiltration, and repression without mirroring the state’s violence. Abolitionist security culture demands that our protective networks be relational, consent-based, and rooted in collective trust rather than fear or hierarchy.

Relational Vetting: Move beyond shallow "vouching." Build security through authentic networks of mutual witnessing, shared struggle, and long-term relational accountability. Ask: Who has seen this person show up over time? Who trusts them through conflict, not just proximity?
Mutual Skill-Building: Skill up the collective. Digital security, counter-surveillance, operational security (OpSec), and protest safety must be demystified and collectively taught. Abolitionist movements build resilience by making sure no one is left out of vital knowledge loops.
Digital Security Grounded in Consent: Every aspect of digital protection — from encrypted communication to information sharing protocols — must prioritize consent and transparency. Digital tools should empower community self-defense, not be used as a means of exclusion or technocratic hierarchy.
Refusing Collaboration with Police and State Entities: No matter the temptation or threat, abolitionist security culture does not collaborate with police, private security, intelligence agencies, or carceral institutions. We hold the line that our safety cannot be bought through betrayal.
Prioritizing People Over Property: Property is not sacred. People are. We resist narratives that frame broken windows, damaged ATMs, or corporate storefronts as "violence." Our security priorities center protecting life, dignity, and collective wellbeing over capitalist assets.
Non-Carceral Response to Property Destruction: Honor the diversity of resistance tactics, especially expressions of rage and grief against oppressive systems. Abolitionist security culture does not police comrades for strategic differences, and refuses to reinforce carceral distinctions between "good protesters" and "bad protesters."

Building protective networks is not simply about resisting the state — it is about creating a living architecture of collective care, trust, and revolutionary defense that no empire can infiltrate or destroy.

Internal Security Culture: Repairing Our Relationships

Internal security practices are the heartbeat of sustainable movements. They focus on nurturing the health of the collective, building resilience against fractures, and preventing the replication of the punitive systems we are trying to abolish. True security means we protect each other's humanity as fiercely as we resist external threats.

Internal abolitionist security culture recognizes that harm, rupture, and conflict are inevitable parts of human relationships. Rather than fearing or punishing these moments, we treat them as opportunities to deepen trust, fortify solidarity, and practice the world we seek to build.

Key practices include:

Conflict Transformation Protocols: Prepare for conflict as a predictable aspect of collective life. Embed community agreements and clear relational processes that center harm acknowledgment, responsibility, repair, and transformation over blame, punishment, or exile. Conflicts are openings, not failures.
Trauma-Informed Security Plans: Understand that unprocessed trauma often gets activated in movement spaces. Craft safety plans that take emotional, psychological, and relational needs into account, and center collective care for trauma survivors, frontline defenders, and vulnerable members.
De-Escalation Without Domination: Build a culture where conflict and tension can be de-escalated through consent, relational accountability, and care — not through dominance, coercion, or enforced "order."
Practicing Transformative Solidarity: Hold each other through complexity. Recognize that principled disagreement, discomfort, and critique are vital parts of collective growth. Resist the pull to cancel, exile, or isolate those who falter; instead, lean into practices that uphold dignity and foster transformation.
Relational Repair as Daily Discipline: Make ongoing repair a living part of movement culture. Normalize regular check-ins, apology, accountability processes, and recommitment to shared values. Repair is not just an emergency response — it is part of the ordinary rhythm of collective liberation.

Conflict Transformation Flow: A Core Abolitionist Practice

When rupture occurs, abolitionist security culture demands an intentional, relational, and healing-centered process. Conflict is inevitable in any living movement. What determines whether we replicate systems of domination or practice liberation lies in how we move through it.

Pause the Escalation — Refuse urgency culture. Take a breath. Slow down the nervous system individually and collectively to prevent reactive harm. Slowing down is an act of care and strategy.
Name the Tension Without Blame — Articulate the conflict clearly by focusing on impacts, needs, and relational dynamics — not collapsing into accusations, shame, or punitive framing. The goal is collective understanding, not enemy-making.
Center Care and Repair — Prioritize the emotional, physical, and relational needs of all involved. Ask: What will help restore safety, dignity, and belonging for each person? What practices or changes are needed to repair trust?
Offer Relational Invitations, Not Demands — Accountability must be rooted in consent, not coercion. Participation in repair and healing processes must be voluntary, with options for agency and autonomy at every step.
Co-Design a Collective Pathway Forward — Rather than imposing a solution, build it together. Through dialogue, negotiation, and creative imagining, chart possible paths forward that are honest about capacity, boundaries, and desires for transformation.
Reflect, Integrate, and Evolve — After the conflict process concludes, hold space for collective learning. What systemic patterns contributed to the rupture? What preventative practices can we strengthen? How can this experience fortify our abolitionist culture going forward?

Handled through abolitionist flows, conflict becomes a ceremony of resilience — a site where movements mature, deepen, and fortify their commitment to liberation from both external and internalized domination.

Why We Must Build Now

As Frantz Fanon warned in The Wretched of the Earth (1961):

"The colonial world is a world divided into compartments." Without actively constructing new systems of solidarity, Fanon reminds us, we risk replicating the hierarchies of the old world under new banners.

As Malcolm X declared:

"You can't have capitalism without racism." He warned that without revolutionary alternatives, we unconsciously maintain the structures we claim to resist.

And as Ruth Wilson Gilmore teaches:

"Abolition is about presence, not absence." It is not enough to reject the old world. We must build the new world in real time, through real relationships, through real practices.

Abolitionist Security Culture is not a side project. It is the foundation of revolutionary survival.

We are not only fighting to end policing and prisons. We are fighting to end the ways they live inside us.

Safety is a collective art. Survival is a ceremony of care. Protection is a revolutionary practice.

Only then will we know true freedom. Only then will we win.

@spirit.ofthelion

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