Ruth Gilmore discusses abolition and the prison industrial complex – Purdue Exponent

Prison abolitionist and author of the Golden Gulag, Ruth Gilmore, talked about the police industrial complex at Thursday nights virtual lecture hosted by the Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging.

Gilmore is well known for her work which discusses the disparities in Californias prison system and co-founded the California Prison Moratorium Project, which works to prevent the construction of private and public prisons in California, said history professor Tithi Bhattacharya, who introduced Gilmore.

Ruth Wilson Gilmore remains, the activist scholar who drove miles and miles across California to visit prisoners and write some of the most searing critiques of the prison industrial complex, Bhattacharya said.

Gilmore addressed the international solidarity that came during the 2020 Black Lives Matter marches in response to the murder of George Floyd.

I am hopeful at the moment, strangely enough, because of the global outpouring of solidarity that I took to be exactly that solidarity, not charity," she said.

Gilmore said the awareness of police brutality brought by the aftermath of the George Floyd protests brings the U.S. one step closer to abolishing prisons.

If I were to use a PowerPoint tonight, she said, I would start with a series of images of murals painted by people all around the world in the wake of George Floyd's murder, expressing solidarity murals in Japan, South Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Europe, North and South America, Central America and into the Caribbean.

Gilmore said she believes that abolitionists should be relentless in their fight against prisons regardless of whether or not they care about an individual prisoner.

She shared the story of sociologist douard Louis as an example. Louis' book, Who Killed My Father, details the poor conditions responsible for his fathers preventable death.

Louis wrote that despite his disdain for his father on account of his frequent abuse, he would still fight against the reasons his father died.

I hated my father, Gilmore said, quoting from Louis book. I do not have to care for him as an individual to care that he should not have been murdered and that, to me, is part of the heart of abolitionism.

Be curious about abolition and be curious about struggles people are already engaged in, she said

It's only by organizing people that anything is going to change.

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Ruth Gilmore discusses abolition and the prison industrial complex - Purdue Exponent