There’s one major problem with thinking those who attended the anti-trans protest on Saturday in Melbourne are the only ones practicing white supremacy in this country, it isn’t true.
We live in a community that is built on policies of white supremacy. Our policing system, our justice system and our prison system are structured around white supremacy – built out of colonialism.
It’s time to see white supremacy for what it is and where it is.
The ongoing and escalating incarceration of First Nations girls, boys, women and men is a targeted agenda and it is national.
We must end carceral violence against First Nations people and communities and that begins by calling out the structures that support their detention.
The legal system, from its founding was about preserving distributions of wealth and property and white supremacy – that has not changed.
Lawyers have been trying to use the legal system to change what is really a problem of capitalism, white supremacy, colonialism and power across this country. We have to work to dismantle the system that does not serve community, that does not protect community.
We have a colonial legal system and it is an instrument of ruling class oppression.
It is a system that is allowing policies to lock up children to spread like wildfire across this country because it knows the majority of those children will be First Nations children.
The system is the problem and it needs to be abolished.
I have been an abolitionist long before I knew what that word meant. As someone who has been inside the system since a young child I always knew that prisons were not rehabilitative places. I knew they were a tool of white supremacy and I knew they needed to be dismantled. We must focus our attention on removing all tools of white supremacy, not just the obvious ones marching down the street.
How can you help?
The Sisters Inside Fund for Children supports children of women in the criminal justice system to choose their own future free of the burdens so commonly felt while their mother is in prison.
#Free Her Campaign
This campaign has been set up by Debbie Kilroy, CEO of Sisters Inside Inc. The funds raised will be used to release people from prison and pay warrants so they are not imprisoned.