Stanley-Eric-Captive-Genders-Trans-Embodiment-and-Prison-Industrial-Complex

Maroon Abolitionists[T]he movie [Eyes of the Rainbow] was very powerful because it wasvery powerful to see this woman warrior both as Oya in the deityform and as a physical being in the Assata form. Defying horrific oddsand fighting for justice and life and liberation. 27As the tempestuous goddess of upheaval and change, Oya is oftenrepresented with a machete, cutting away the old to clear a way for newgrowth (Gleason 1992). By invoking Oya, Maya summons ancient wisdomand power in her work with the Hands Off Assata campaign, a campaignthat poses a powerful grassroots challenge to the US government’spower to punish and to the legitimacy of its imperial reach. Maya’s initiationto Oya enables her to channel West African encounters with theDivine Feminine to counter the “horrific odds” faced by grassroots mobilizationsagainst and within US empire. Countering Christian conservatismrooted in Eurocentric, masculinist conceptions of the Sacred, theseAfrican diasporic spiritual practices are also evident in Nathaniel’s returnto black folk traditions and in Trey’s reliance on her grandmother’s spiritfor guidance. They introduce a metaphysical component to maroon abolitionism,connecting contemporary activism to the otherworldly sourcesof power invoked by their maroon antecedents. 28 Calling on the ancestorsand the spirit world to enliven the struggle for social justice, they representunderground spiritual currents in the anti-prison movement.ConclusionThe activists in this study are located at the intersections of systems of dominance.The politics and subjectivity arising from this location have longbeen the subject of black feminist interrogation. However, our investigationshave assumed that only black female subjects or other women of colorexperience the epistemic privilege associated with the multiple jeopardyof race, class, gender, and sexuality (Collins 1990; King 1995; Sudbury1998). In contrast, this research finds that other gender-oppressed activistswho stand at the “nexus” of systems of dominance also use an integratedantiracist, antisexist, anticapitalist analysis as a basis for their work. 29At the nexus of race, class, gender, and sexuality, black gender-oppressedactivists bring to the anti-prison movement a unique vision ofsocial justice based on lived experiences of racialized policing, surveillance,and imprisonment. These activists embody a tradition of marronage, theabolitionist praxis of ex-slaves and their families. In so doing, they reintroducethe Sacred as an element of anti-prison activism, indicating that313