LIVING IN MINNEAPOLIS-SAINT PAUL, I LISTEN TO THE STORIES OF OTHER ABOLITIONISTS TO LEARN HOW THEY CAME TO THIS RADICAL APPROACH ~ Camille Tinnin ~ We are living in a time of increased authoritarianism around the globe, propped up by police and other forms of law enforcement. In the United States we see the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the National Guard, with police cooperation on various levels. Masked agents, refusing to provide names or identification, appear in workplaces, homes, roads, and businesses, snatching up neighbours. Fear abounds, as does resistance. As we fight this new onslaught and rollback of personal civil liberties, it is important to not only focus on what we are fighting against, but what we are fighting for. Police abolitionist organisers provide wisdom for this moment. Abolitionists are not only fighting against the police state, we are building alternative practices and institutions that push against assumptions about conflict, power, and interpersonal and community relationships. We are questioning our collective conception of power, considering accountability for harm over discipline and punishment, developing skills to better resolve conflicts in our neighbourhoods, families, organising spaces, and society. We are engaging in mutual aid and the creation of community spaces. We are building skills that generations of capitalist individualism have attempted to train out of us. Living in Minneapolis-Saint Paul (Twin Cities), Minnesota, I listen to the stories of other abolitionists to learn how they came to this radical approach, and about what people are doing to model and build the world we want to see. The Twin Cities have an array of organisations working toward abolition (and related movements) creatively. I see three main ways that abolitionists are engaging which go beyond obstructing injustice to creating prefigurative alternatives. The modelling of imagined future in the now, while fighting against present oppression. These works of what Sarah Lamble calls “everyday abolition” include: 1. the development of conflict skills and education around conflict transformation, 2. mutual aid, and 3. claimed and created spaces. CONFLICT SKILLS During my interviews, many abolitionists mentioned how we, as a society, need to build conflict skills. Collectively, we often outsource responsibility for managing conflict to the State, rather than addressing it ourselves. One way this occurs is through calling the police (or State institutions that do similar work). Abolitionists avoid doing so. One said, “if I have a problem with my neighbour and can talk to my neighbour about it, or if I can talk to another person who knows my neighbour, and get that solved, why would I ever have to go over here [to the police]?” Abolitionists talked about how, to not rely on the police, people need to be willing to step in and help neighbours-in-crisis, or diffuse disagreements. To respond, people need to have the skills to do so. By conflict skills, I mean approaches or tools to use in conflict that equip parties to respond to acute or ongoing situations with de-escalation, communication of disagreement, and collective problem solving. This can include listening skills, conflict mapping, understanding underlying needs and feelings, nonviolent communication, and collective problem-solving skills. These skills are relevant beyond avoiding the police. Abolitionists focus on the need to holistically respond to conflict, including in movement spaces. Conflict is neither good nor bad. Rather, it is something that can be positively or negatively engaged with, arising from disagreements, communication challenges, opposing interests, and so on. It can be interpersonal, or exist within a broader group. We must use conflict, and its transformation, as a way to identify harm, take accountability, repair relationships, grapple with complexity and differences of opinion or strategy, and ultimately determine how we can work together toward transformation. Often, people can be quick to sever ties during conflict. adrienne maree brown, in their book We Will Not Cancel Us, discusses how the disposability projected onto others uses similar carceral logic to the systems we are working to dismantle. Of course, when harm has occurred, people must be willing to acknowledge it and take accountability, and the safety needs for individuals and groups must be considered when navigating repair and transformative justice work. Abolitionists also discussed examples of groups helping people develop these skills, and the importance of education and training. REP, in South Minneapolis, is a local organisation with a crisis hotline that operates several nights a week, and offers ‘studios’ to build conflict skills and knowledge around abolitionist principles. REP’s studios have included ‘consent and abolition’, ‘self-de-escalation and regulation’, ‘community trauma and care’, and ‘solving problems ourselves’. One abolitionist involved in the project said: “We’re striving towards a deep cultural shift in how people assess a crisis and address the crisis, instead of having that knee-jerk response to call someone else.” This is key to the work of unlearning our existing social structures and learning how to face accountability without isolating ourselves, or choosing self-pity or self-flagellation rather than action and repair. There are other community education projects, reading circles, and so on, around the Twin Cities offering different ways for people to learn together. People are creating participatory education programs, sometimes in a certain career or sector, sometimes in certain identity groups, and often for people looking to develop certain skills. MUTUAL AID Several abolitionists interviewed mentioned how they engage in mutual aid work, particularly supporting unhoused neighbours, because many of the biggest challenges our communities face are connected to lack of resources. Mutual aid is when people work together to meet basic human needs because they recognise the capitalist system is not designed to do so. Multiple people discussed working with programs that support our unhoused neighbours. One said of unhoused encampment sweeps, which often result in people losing everything they have, that a lot of our ‘public safety’ interventions are more about preventing people from seeing the realities of capitalism than safety. Community members organise free distributions of clothing and food through Little Free Pantries in people’s front yards, the People’s Closet in George Floyd Square, neighbourhood-based “Buy Nothing” groups on Facebook, and cooked-meal distributions. Abolitionists discussed how people come together to meet collective and individual needs, often stepping in to fill gaps that could be filled by reallocation of government funds. George Floyd Square, the memorial and community space located in the intersection where he was murdered by the police, was a mutual aid hub during the 2020 uprisings, and continues to be where free clothing, books, and other supplies are distributed. An abolitionist explained: “In press conferences, [Governor] Tim Walz, Mayor Frey, [city council member] Andrea Jenkins and the crew, were all saying, ‘oh, that’s the best part of Minneapolis.’ You see it. You see it. You see the people coming together. You see the people forming groups to protect each other and their neighbourhoods. That’s the best Minneapolis, to which I respond, if that’s the best of Minneapolis, why aren’t you doing it?” While city officials continue to destroy encampments, state officials cut public health insurance for undocumented immigrants, and federal officials cut food, housing, and health programs, the needs of our communities will continue to grow. Mutual aid will become even more important. SPACE/ TAKING UP SPACE/ INTENTIONAL SPACES Abolitionists discussed the importance of taking up space and having intentional spaces. John Gaventa, in his piece Finding Spaces For Change: A Power Analysis, calls these spaces “claimed by less powerful actors from or against the power holders, or created more autonomously by them.” One such space is George Floyd Square, which one abolitionist described as “community-built systems of networking and safety doing a lot more to provide feelings of safety than policing does.” Others discussed student anti-war encampments pushing for their demands to be heard through getting in the way of business-as-usual, and providing space to try out alternatives. Abolitionists discussed the need for community spaces that foster imagination, like ‘third spaces’, where people can gather, without needing to spend money, to exchange ideas, host events, and build community. Several interview participants are working on creating such spaces. In this period of amplifying and expanding inhumanity by the State, people are working locally to meet our collective needs. We have the opportunity, amidst the intentional chaos created by those with formal power, to build ways-of-being in community that model a future worth fighting for. The abolition movement in the Twin Cities provides just one example of the prefigurative work happening around the globe. We may not live to see the future we prefigure, but as links in a chain, we continue this work, as Mariane Kaba says “until we free us.” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was first published in the Winter 2025-6 issue of Freedom anarchist journal The post Everyday abolition in the Twin Cities appeared first on Freedom News.

EDITORIAL FROM OUR NEW JOURNAL ISSUE ON SURVEILLANCE EXPLORING STATES’ AMBITIONS TO CONSTRAIN AND REFUSE OUR FREEDOM – AND WAYS TO FIGHT BACK Anarchism in its essence is a lived philosophy of freedom. It is also a recognition that freedom, as Mikhail Bakunin knew, depends on equality. Only when we are equal can we be truly free from domination; free not just in mind but in body, to realise all the possibilities of life in a society forged through mutual aid and solidarity. But in a capitalist society guaranteed by the power of the state, we anarchists are engaged in an everyday war to preserve, protect, and expand freedom. If, as Freedom’s own Colin Ward claimed, anarchism remains a seed beneath the snow, ready to blossom if the conditions are right, then the fight to secure those conditions has seldom been more desperate. In this issue, we explore the challenges and possibilities of anarchist freedom in a time when supposedly ‘democratic’ states – aided and abetted by digital firepower – are seeking to constrain and refuse freedom in ways that would make some authoritarian regimes blush. In Ukraine, war itself is the testing ground for the technologies that seek to reduce freedom to a memory, with AI targeting systems demonstrating in the sharpest relief the power concentrated in the hands of right-wing tech barons such as Peter Thiel. These technologies fuel killing on the battlefield and the analysis of health data here in the UK, with the desperate Labour government also betting big on the magic beans of AI to somehow deliver ‘growth’, at any cost. How to fight in a situation where the implications of totalitarian technologies are – to paraphrase one of our writers in this issue – simply ignored with a shrug is a critical question for we anarchists. A return to more traditional forms of communication and the resurrection of zines and hardcopy media represents a partial way out, but it requires us to fundamentally reorient our audience – addicted as they are to the instant hits of easily-surveilled social media platforms. Also in the UK, the ongoing Spycops inquiry – in which Freedom is a core participant – is a constant reminder that the state’s ambitions to constrain and refuse freedom are in its very nature. The state’s aims today are unchanged from the era in which police officers lied to women and fathered children with them; indeed as our author notes, what is being investigated by the inquiry has actually been made legal for future state agents. But there remains cause for hope. From the Twin Cities in Minnesota where abolitionist initiatives are contesting the authority of the Trump regime, to Greece where anarchist groups are mobilising actively around the cause of prisoners arrested for protest, battles are being won. The German police’s lack of appetite for scrutiny comes up too, but while the police may not be comfortable with being watched, the security apparatus is perfectly delighted to watch us. So much so that we at Freedom recently learned that two separate US Department of Homeland Security accounts were subscribed to our newsletter. Meanwhile, despite civil liberties being up for grabs on a daily basis in the form of a Labour government who thinks an eternal right-wing drift is the cheat code for success, the popular response to the government’s heavy-handed attacks on those protesting genocide implies very strongly that Reform voters are not, nor should they be, the centre of gravity for UK politics. The veteran Spanish anarchist Jose Peirats once said ‘the state is a virus, it can exist in all of us’. The key question in the coming weeks and months will be how can an anarchist immune system effectively fight it? Some of the ideas are in these pages. The rest are in our communities. Together we have everything we need. The post Freedom winter 2025-6: Watched, databased, yet to be controlled appeared first on Freedom News.

THE FAMILY IS MARKETED AS A SAFE SPACE, A PLACE OF LOVE AND MUTUAL CARE, BUT THIS IS NOT SUPPORTED BY THE DATA—HOW DO WE BRING OUR EXPERIENCES OF MUTUAL SUPPORT NETWORKS TO THE CENTRE OF SOCIETY? ~ Alana Queer, El Salto ~ Something is wrong. We already struggle to imagine the end of capitalism, but abolishing the family? Feminism seems to have long since abandoned this old feminist demand, and this year the LGBTQIA+ movement in Spain will celebrate twenty years of equal marriage, that is, its inclusion in this patriarchal institution of marriage and family that marks a new “homonormativity,” which is primarily a copy of heteronormativity. We’re in trouble. We lack imagination, we lack visions of other forms of coexistence and parenting. I write this article from my perspective as a family survivor. A survivor of sexual abuse, psychological and emotional abuse and neglect, abuse that has left me with complex trauma that I am still learning to live with. To live, not just survive, as I have done for decades of my life. Writing from a survivor’s perspective, in a way, is writing from the perspective of a child, providing a counterpoint to the debate dominated by adult-centric perspectives. When I think of family, the first words that come to mind are violence, (sexual) abuse, abandonment, mistreatment, emotional blackmail… Not for a millisecond of my life have I considered starting a family.  While I strongly agree with the diagnosis of the family’s role in the economic and political order, as put forward, for example, by Nuria Alabao in this article or Sophie Lewis in her book Abolish the Family, in a way, this diagnosis is unnecessary. I only have to think about my own experience, look at my surroundings, my friends, and what I see is violence, mistreatment, abuse, emotional neglect, and all the resulting traumas. Is it possible that so many of us have simply been unlucky? Perhaps there is a more structural problem, that it’s not something failing in some (many) individual families, but the family system itself that is at fault? THE FAMILY, A SYSTEM OF MISTREATMENT AND ABUSE The family is marketed as a safe space, a place of love and mutual care. Above all, it is said that the family is the best place for children. This could not be further from the truth.  According to a meta-analysis of physical violence experienced or witnessed in the family at the global level, in Europe 12.7% of children have been victims of physical violence in their family, with a higher rate for boys compared to girls (girls are not included in the analysis), and 10.5% have witnessed physical violence in their family. Another global meta-analysis of more types of abuse and neglect reaches even higher results: 14.3% of girls and 6.2% of boys had suffered sexual abuse, 27% of boys and 12% of girls had suffered physical abuse, 6.2% of boys and 12.9% of girls had suffered emotional abuse, and 14.8% of boys and 13.9% of girls had suffered neglect during their childhood. Overall, boys suffer more physical abuse and neglect, and girls more emotional and sexual abuse. Fathers perpetrate more physical and sexual abuse, while mothers perpetrate more emotional abuse and neglect. A study in the United Kingdom concluded that 41.7% of children were exposed to some form of child abuse—physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, or physical or emotional neglect. Some 19.3% witnessed domestic violence between their parents or care-givers within the family. The famous ACE Study (Adverse Childhood Experiences Study) of 1998 in the United States reached prevalence rates of 11.1% for psychological abuse, 10.8% for physical abuse, 22% for sexual abuse, and 12.5% for exposure to domestic violence against the mother. Children often suffer more than one form of abuse at a time. In Spain, an estimated 18.9% of the population has been a victim of sexual abuse in childhood (15.2% of men and 22.5% of women), more than half of whom were perpetrated by a family member. According to a report by Save the Children, more than 25% of children in Spain have been victims of abuse by their parents or care-givers. Despite considerable variation across studies, all of them show the family as a site—the primary site—of abuse, mistreatment, and neglect. Studies that differentiate by sexual orientation, such as one from the United States, generally find much higher prevalence rates of abuse and mistreatment across all categories for LGBTQIA+ people compared to heterosexuals. And children who exhibit behaviours that do not conform to their assigned sex at birth suffer even more abuse of all kinds. Beyond abuse, 40% of children never develop a secure attachment to one of their care-givers. According to research by the Sutton Trust in the United Kingdom, “Many children lack secure attachment relationships. Around 1 in 4 children avoid their parents when they are upset because they ignore their needs. Another 15% resist their parents because they cause distress.” According to the same research, insecure parental attachment is the most important risk factor; that is, insecure attachment is reproduced from generation to generation if parents with insecure attachment do not work on their own attachment styles and traumas. > To these figures of child abuse and neglect, we can add the high prevalence of > intimate partner violence, gender violence, and domestic violence. Witnessing > this violence also has negative consequences for children. Is the family a safe place of love and care? The numbers debunk this myth. We can say that for children, the least safe and most dangerous place is their family home. With these figures—a prevalence of abuse between 15% and 40%—how can we think that something is wrong at the individual level, that the problem isn’t the structure (the family), but a lack of education, resources, etc.? I invite you to a thought experiment. Let’s imagine a society wants to choose between several models of coexistence and parenting: tribal or community parenting, other models I have no idea what they might be, and family parenting. Predictions of child abuse are estimated for each model. Can we imagine that a model with a 25% prediction of abuse would be chosen? I doubt it. CHILD ABUSE: LIFELONG DAMAGE Child abuse leaves lifelong damage, I know this from my own experience. For example, complex trauma refers to early negative experiences involving neglect and/or abuse that occur within an attachment relationship with the primary care-giver. This means that the figure who is supposed to provide affection, love, and protection to the child is, at the same time, a source of anxiety, threat, neglect, and/or abuse, resulting in distressing experiences such as verbal abuse, abandonment, bullying, emotional invalidation, abandonment, and so on. Because of their ongoing nature, such abuse generates a stress response that leaves a mark on the brain. Furthermore, these situations go unnoticed externally and are cumulative. In many ways, complex trauma is related to “non-events,” things that didn’t happen when they should have—a look, a smile, being considered, or a comforting hug. These non-events have a significant impact, although they don’t remain as memories beyond emotional sensations. I know all this very well. It’s estimated that up to 7.7% of adults suffer from complex post-traumatic stress disorder (c-PTSD or complex PTSD) and up to 20% suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. To me, these numbers seem too low. However, it’s important to keep in mind that this isn’t a simple binary—either you have PTSD or complex PTSD according to strict diagnostic criteria, or you’re fine. Problems with emotional regulation, forming close relationships, behaviour, trust, and a negative self-image can all be present and can cause considerable problems without meeting all the diagnostic criteria for PTSD or complex PTSD. Complex trauma, often also called complex developmental trauma or developmental trauma, is in the vast majority of cases the result of prolonged emotional abuse and neglect in childhood and adolescence. Here we see many of the 15% of children who avoid their parents because they cause distress: survivors of sexual abuse and other forms of prolonged maltreatment. There are also other consequences for mental and physical health: eating disorders, depression, other mental disorders, substance use and abuse, and much more. From the ACE study in the United States, we know that adverse childhood experiences have a profound impact on many areas of adult health. TOWARDS OTHER MODELS So, we abolish the family. Okay! But what do we put in its place? Sophie Lewis says: “Nothing.” Perhaps an overly simplistic answer.  It’s true that in the current system, the family fulfils functions for which the best answer is “nothing”. As Nuria Alabao says, “The family is not a neutral institution: it is still sustained by hierarchical relations of subordination based on gender, age, and race/migration origin. […] As an institution, the family has a central economic function; it has always been essential to the reproduction of classes in capitalism, to allocate inheritances, transmit property, or guarantee the payment of debts”. These are the functions we don’t want to replace. Enough with Sophie Lewis’s “nothing.” We don’t need a gender police force, we don’t need an institution that reproduces patriarchy and prepares children to function well under capitalism. However, there are other functions of the family in the current system, such as parenting and caregiving, which the family performs quite poorly, as I’ve shown above, but which are nonetheless necessary. We need other models of living together, of relating, of parenting, and of organising caregiving. Today, mainstream feminism has nothing more to offer than promoting “co-responsibility” in parenting, that is, equal participation of fathers in childrearing. Where are the more radical visions? > I don’t mean that children need their mother, father or biological parent, but > they do need adults who allow them a safe and stable attachment. According to Nuria Alabao, “In 19th-century socialism linked to the labour movement, and later in the 1970s, class-based feminism called for the socialisation of social reproduction: soup kitchens, 24-hour day-care, or innovated experiences of nurturing or support on the margins”. However, even these proposals don’t question the family itself in a deeper way. They are proposals more focused on allowing women to participate in the labour market. Ultimately, they are adult-centric proposals. And, regarding the miserable figures of children with secure attachments, I fear that these proposals could even worsen the situation for children if the nuclear family model is maintained. By this, I don’t mean that children need their biological mother, father, or parent, but they do need adults who allow them a secure and stable attachment. In this sense, it might even be helpful to “de-centre” biological parents, to think about care and parenting in a community, a tribe, parenting models that include a network, a community of adults in the children’s lives. The African proverb “it takes a village to raise a child” points in this direction. Children need more secure and stable relationships with adults, beyond their parents, a “village.” There is some research on the perspectives of children raised in consensually non-monogamous relationships. According to Elisabeth Sheff, “The presence of more than two adults in the family provides several advantages to children, such as receiving more attention, nurturing, and time from significant adults, receiving more gifts for special occasions, and being exposed to a greater number of positive role models. It also allows them to form family bonds with other children beyond biogenetic kinship and to have more siblings”. > The parenting network does not have to be limited to the sexual and emotional > bonds of the parents: I am thinking of networks of relational anarchy, > networks that decentralize love and the couple. Other recent research with children says: “Children living in polyamorous households often view their parents’ romantic partners as resource persons, which fosters the development of a positive view of these adults in the child. Many children explained their affection for their parents’ partners by highlighting how these adults cared for them and supported them, emotionally and materially. This echoes studies conducted with parents practicing NMC, who described their extra-dyadic romantic partners as supportive, loving, and understanding, not only for them but also for their children.”  Thinking further, in terms of the concept of “village” or community, the nurturing network need not be limited to the parents’ sexual affective ties. I’m thinking of networks of relational anarchy, networks that de-centre love and the couple (or couples). This isn’t so simple. Myriam Rodríguez del Real and Javier Correa Román say in an article in El Salto: “The central issue is understanding that friendship has been emptied of material content in order to centralize the couple. Societies construct systems of kinship and affinity that determine which bonds are recognized and which are left on the margins. The heterosexual monogamous couple constitutes the center of these systems, and the rest of the relationships (including friendship) are reconfigured in response to it”. And: “Therefore, it is not simply a matter of ‘giving more importance to friends,’ but of rejecting the current configurations of both the couple and friendship to create new relational forms. We need to ‘disorient’ (…) the normative notions of affection in order to imagine other forms of relational inhabitation. Only to the extent that we think of other forms of friendship does the couple cease to make sense as the organising centre of our lives”. In a talk about abolishing the family in Seville two years ago, considering alternatives to the family, Nuria Alabao spoke about building relationships with a reciprocal obligation (in order to assume caregiving), and that these types of relationships take time to build. We already have this obligation in today’s family, and I seriously doubt it contributes to adequate care, neither for children nor for adults or the elderly. For me, caregiving out of obligation isn’t care, but rather a sacrifice. And, today, the vast majority of women have to make this sacrifice to care for their parents or another relative. > How do we bring our experiences of mutual support networks to the centre of > society? How do we change our perceptions so that we see ourselves as capable > of trusting these networks? Personally, I think more about making commitments—that is, I voluntarily make a commitment in a relationship (of any kind) that doesn’t require reciprocity. It’s more about trusting the network (of relational anarchy, of my community), that when I need care or support, there will be a person in the network (or several) who can take it on, and they don’t have to be the same people who previously received support from me. I feel like this is something we’re already trying to practice in my network. Hil Malatino, in his book Trans Care  (Bellaterra, 2021) ,  offers this minimal definition of community: people who are re-weaving. And when I review my experience of the last nine years, facing my family traumas, it has been a constant re-weaving of my networks. Some people left my networks, others joined. Perhaps we should leave behind the idea of a stable, lifelong mutual support network that should assume the care and support—emotional, financial, parenting, when we are sick—that today is assumed (often poorly) by the family, and instead rely on our networks, always fragile, always in reconfiguration, but capable of sustaining us when we need them? I don’t know. I’m still afraid of it myself, but, at the same time, my networks have sustained me over the past few years, and they continue to sustain me. How do we bring our experiences of mutual support networks to the centre of society? How do we change our perceptions so that we see ourselves as capable of trusting these networks? How can we strengthen them? I don’t have the answers. I think it’s about building by walking and experimenting. This is just a start. And, for me, building alternatives to family, new structures of mutual support and care, is a matter of survival. I’ve outlived my family, and I’ve gotten this far thanks to my networks. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Machine translation. Photo: David F. Sabadell The post Abolishing the family: A survivor’s perspective appeared first on Freedom News.