Today I saw, not for the first time, a group of people on Bluesky (supported by many likes) fantasizing about putting MAGA cultists in prison. No matter how often I see it, it still surprises me how quickly people turn to prison as a “solution” to problems. It represents a frighteningly violent desire for vengeance rather than actual solutions. It’s so normalized, and gets very little pushback.

Abolition needs to become much better understood. Let’s delve a bit into what jailing our political enemies would actually look like.

When you are feeling particularly and justifiably angry, you might hear yourself say, “I think Maga supporters should be in prison!”

So what you think should happen, the ideal solution in your heart and mind, is that we take the people who’ve been propagandized into a cult, and we put them in cages. We deprive them of food, we cut them off from their families and communities.

We let them get beat up and abused. We cut them off from trees and fresh air and the sound of birds. We deny them medical care and mental health support.

We control every minute of their day. We cut them off from any books that would help them understand and organize to change this situation.

We staff the place with guards. We put the burden of the dehumanization and control labour on these guards. These guards can then only deal with the psychological fracturing from facilitating this violence all day long by cutting off their ability to see these Maga prisoners as human.

We do that to them for some amount of time determined arbitrarily, maybe years. And then, what? We release them back into society after all that trauma?

Is that really, in your heart, what you think we should do?

Prison as a solution to social problems is a deeply unserious suggestion, and I think that needs to be said more often. But it’s more than that. It reflects a trapped imagination, an inability to think beyond the authoritarian control approaches that we’ve grown up with in settler colonial society.

More control, dehumanization and violence will not solve the problems caused by those things. Even if we wanted it to—and many do—we know it doesn’t work.

This “jail my enemies” impulse scares me not only because of the unexamined bloodlust people so frequently display and support, but because each of these conversations means we’re not talking about what might actually work to change the conditions we’re facing. It’s doomerism, at its core.

Importantly, the opposite of prison and punishment is not “do nothing.” I know you can think beyond that binary. You are scared, I am too. But you are also smart and creative and wonderful. You can hold the complexity, the difficulty. We can hold it together. Abolitionists already have ideas for us!

If you do feel ready to do the deep, difficult, but rewarding work of exploring how we might get out of this mess with our humanity intact—first, I want to express my gratitude to you, because it’s honestly shockingly fucking hard to push past the anger enough to do this. Most people are not ready

The five resources I always suggest first are these. None are perfect, all are just tools in a toolbox. Pick whichever interests you, leave anything you don’t feel aligned with.

1) Nonviolent communication training: to learn how to talk to and connect with people with a non-authoritarian approach

2) Let This Radicalize You by @mskellymhayes.bsky.social and @prisonculture.bsky.social: practical advice for organizing and activism, and how to make hope something that you build with others

3) Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer: To begin the process of decolonizing your body, mind and spirit, and reconnect with the land.

4) This one is a bit of a spicier recommendation, but if you’re ready to go even deeper and see how spirituality is an essential component we need to integrate moving forward, then listen to The Emerald podcast. Here is a relevant episode, but listen to any that pique your interest. My fav is “Snail Juice”

5) Maybe I’m cheating by calling this one a single resource, but it’s just too good! Interrupting Criminalization has got so much! Use it all, share it all! They are amazing!

Hilary Agro is a community organizer, low-income PhD student & mother of two young children. If you appreciate the labour that went into this article, consider sending me and my kids some masks, HEPA filters, diapers or books, or just a cash tip ❤