Beauty in the struggle: Insurgent safety and abolitionist commoning in Arizona

Abstract

ABSTRACT Arizona is one of the most punitive places on the planet, with an incarceration rate of 868 per 100,000 people. State actors use criminalization, policing, prisons, and probation to respond to social and economic problems at an industrial scale. In Arizona and across the country, public safety is understood through the logics and material practices of carcerality. Over the past decade, a series of rebellions against police violence and mass incarceration have destabilized the United States’ punishment regime. This article an effort to examine counter-hegemonic conceptualizations of safety at scale, asking: What do non-carceral forms of safety look like in Southern Arizona, in one ward, in one city? To answer this question, we examine the results of the Barrio Centro Community Safety Project (BCCSP) and the emergent practices of one neighborhood collective, Flowers & Bullets. We employ the term ‘abolitionist commoning’ to describe the centrality of land and place-making to recovering and building relations free from domination. In doing so, we advocate alongside a flock of scholars, organizers, and cultural workers for abolitionist models of safety that are place-based and emphasize experimentation, healing, self-determination, and (re)new(ed) modes of sociality.