bodhi alarcón (they/them) is in the process of decolonizing, attempting to heal generations of trauma from colonialism, heteropatriarchy, and white supremacy. They process this alongside a community of abolitionist and N.E.R.D.y queers on Muscogee/Creek territory. During the summer of 2020, bodhi attended the Abolitionist Youth Organizing Institute along with fifty critically conscious comrades under the age of 25. Below, bodhi shares some graphics and poems that have helped them articulate their abolition dreams, as well as a handful of lessons and learnings from budding abolitionist communities
Inspired by the resilience and prevalence of fungi, I recently started snapping pics of the little eukaryotes while out on hikes or walks. It felt exciting to begin noticing the ways these mushrooms seemed to be capable of popping up anywhere, some adding a vivid splash of warmth amongst cool shaded soil, others attaching to decomposing trees hanging several feet off the ground. And although I had no way of photographing it, I'd often think about the microscopic mycelium layer in the soil that trees in the forests I'd hike through use to distribute resources organically and communicate threats. In the same emergent way, it was awe-inspiring to see demands of police and prison abolition at direct actions across the country after the murder of George Floyd. Distributed across borders, it was both exhilarating and terrifying to participate in such powerful displays of solidarity with victims of police violence against those who were perpetuating the violence in the first place.
The abolition of the police state will not just take the absence of police, but thousands, millions of tiny growths tending to community safety in ways that we are still imagining. With words pulled from the song "Locked Inside" by Janelle Monáe, this piece draws inspiration from that growth process, hoping to better our abolitionist practices by learning communication, coordination, and symbiotic survival from our fungi friends.
The stories we tell matter — they give us free space to imagine and connect to worlds vastly different from our own. For the past decade, I've grooved, jammed, and booty-shaked my way up and down Janelle Monáe's 2010 album The ArchAndroid. Set in the year 3005, the album is just one piece of Monáe's Metropolis saga, a genre-hopping time-traveling story that follows a burgeoning android resistance movement in the future sustaining their fight for freedom through eclectic dance parties, vulnerably anxious ballads, and decadent lovefests. The album first struck a chord with me sonically, but after repeated listens the messages of radical expression as resistance shone through her lyrics and electrifying delivery.
Connecting with this piece of art regularly made it all the more powerful when I found myself this year in a network of houses and individuals trying to practice abolition through cooperative living situations and sustained radical gatherings. I wrote the above poem after one such gathering this summer in which we set intentions, called on ancestors, and shared music under a bright full moon. The piece's title is taken from a song I shared that night originally by Emily King, and like King, I wanted to communicate how powerful it is when we create vectors from our present situations to our desired futures. That same power seems to have plucked my current community straight out of Monáe's sci-fi saga and into my life.
The stories we share today will inform the care networks and abolitionist structures that will live on past the collapse of prison-industrial complex. Unlearning decades of carceral programming will take just as many years, if not more. How crucial it is, then, that we take time to explore other worlds, other ways of being, to liberate our minds from the cages that constrict our dreams of what the future could hold for us.
In the face of centuries of genocide, displacement, sterilization, and imprisonment, colonized people must heal to survive. Adaku Utah, who brought an offering around Healing Justice to the AYO Institute, insists that we deserve the time it takes to heal, to build relationships, process, think, and rest. When we tend to our own wounds, we make it so that others will not suffer from our own displaced pain.
Unfortunately, we too often do not give ourselves nor our communities adequate time to heal from wounds we are inflicted. This year, I've witnessed and experienced firsthand what happens when we do not give our movement the time and space to heal — conflicts grow from bullying, gossiping, and clout-chasing to full on ostracizing folks, whom are often our most marginalized comrades. My heart has gone through immense pain seeing so-called "abolitionist" people and organizations aligning themselves with non-profit careerism and extractive capitalism instead of addressing harm.
We are all susceptible to applying carceral, capitalist, and colonial logics onto ourselves and our relationships. We must carry ourselves with trusting humility in order to listen deeply and be transformed by what we hear. The above poem draws heavily from the Earthseed verses in Octavia Butler's Parable series, and was originally sung in a round as a way to process and reflect on these often heart-breaking and always complex instances of harm.
A handful of projects and tiny experiments I'm looking forward to: