Each curriculum area has been divided into three “semesters.” Feel free to do these semesters at your own pace, or jump directly to the topics that your feel are most useful for you! The semesters are: Spring: Abolition and Narrative, Summer: Countering Copaganda and Censorship, and Fall: Tools for Creating Abolition Journalism + Media.

Semester One — Spring

Abolition and Narrative

The fight to interrupt criminalization and its wide ranging consequences depends on changing narratives and shaping how we experience reality and possibility. Do we need police? Do prisons make us safer? Is war a condition of safety? A lot of journalism and media is created with the assumption that the answer to these questions is “yes” — thus manufacturing consent for everything from genocide to exploding military and police budgets to repression of people challenging the violence of policing, prisons, borders, settler colonialism, and imperialism.

Explore IC resources on abolition that address some of the most common myths and messages about policing and prisons. 

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QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:

  • How does the news media reinforce the idea that police and prisons are inevitable and necessary? 

  • What is the dominant narrative you have learned about policing?

  • How does the media obscure and justify the horrific violence of the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine?

  • What alternative narratives can you see or imagine? 

If you are a journalist working to question the dominant narrative around public safety, tell different stories about policing and safety, or highlight alternative visions and practices, check out the Abolition Media Office Hours!

Semester Two — Summer

Countering Copaganda and Censorship

The word we use for police and military propaganda at IC is “copaganda,” and it comes in many forms, from subtle messaging about how we should all be afraid of one another, to directed disinformation about police violence. 

The “Don’t Be A Copagandist” publication series offers tools to media makers and media consumers for recognizing where copaganda is showing up, and links to news media that are taking alternate approaches. 

Successful copaganda goes hand in hand with the censorship of voices who tell a different story, particularly criminalized and incarcerated people. This semester, we’ll focus on the idea of prison, jail and detention as a form of censorship, and hear from incarcerated participants in IC’s journalism programs who are telling their stories from the inside. 

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QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:

  • What disinformation or misinformation have you received about police and prisons?

  • What disinformation or misinformation have you received about public safety?

  • What disinformation or misinformation have you received about militarism and colonialism, Palestine, and/or U.S. and Israeli colonialism? 

  • What systems or structures in media and journalism are making it possible for copaganda to continue?

  • What are some techniques for pushing back against these false narratives? How have organizers and media makers pushed back against copaganda?  

  • How is prison itself a form of censorship? What did Mariame Kaba mean when she said that?

  • How are incarcerated people affected by censorship and book bans? What is similar, and what is different, from their counterparts who are not in prison, jail or detention?

Our Abolition Media Office Hours can help you strategize about covering prisons, police and community safety, and supporting incarcerated media makers — learn more about these office hours here. We also offer office hours to incarcerated writers and journalists — email ravenjournalist@gmail.com if you want IC Fellow Lewis Raven Wallace to get in touch with an incarcerated comrade and schedule with them. 

Semester Three — Fall

Tools for Creating Abolition Journalism + Media

One of the best ways to counter copaganda and fight censorship is to tell our own stories about what public safety means and looks like to us — and get them out into the world in every way we know how. Movement-made abolitionist podcasts, radio shows, prisoner blogs, and pushing our narratives in mainstream media are all ways to intervene on dominant narratives. Our Abolition Journalism Fellow Lewis Wallace also supports journalists to become abolitionists and abolitionists to become journalists.

The following are some resources that can help with both sides of that equation.

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QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:

  • What is your role in shifting narratives and building informational power for abolition? What do you want your role to be?

  • What tools, skills, and relationships do you need in order to do this narrative and information building work? 

  • What is an example of “movement journalism” you can point to? (hint : we gave you at least one example to check out…)

  • What movement journalism or abolitionist journalism do you feel ready to make now?

For support in creating your own abolitionist media, building informational power, and shifting narratives, we offer regular Abolition Media Office Hours with Lewis Raven Wallace.