Under Attack from the State and in Our Homes: Materialist Interventions and Lessons in Abolition Feminisms from Desis Rising Up and Moving

Abstract

Abstract: In this paper we consider working-class abolitionist feminists’ conceptualizations of safety. Taking seriously the notion that “freedom is a place,” we look at how working-class South Asians and Indo Caribbeans in New York City build livable worlds at the intersecting crises of capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. We look at Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM)’s organizing efforts following the expansion of immigrant detention and policing that came after the 1996 immigration laws and their contemporary organizing around gender-based violence and oppression as examples of a materialist articulation of abolition feminism. Drawing on DRUM’s archive and autoethnographic reflections, we show how DRUM develops and practices an abolition feminism that addresses both systematized racial state violence and patriarchal violence in working-class Asian American communities. We show how DRUM’s experiments with community-based intervention (CBI) around domestic violence aims to reduce violence and meet the material needs of gender-oppressed individuals in the community, while expanding the horizon for socialized care and a world without police.