Collective Care and Abolition: Implications for Climate Justice (Social Work)

The social work profession is grappling with calls for abolition, defined as "a political vision with the goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment" (Critical Resistance, 2020), to critically examine our engagement with carceral systems. In this roundtable, we consider what it means for social workers to practice at the intersections of climate justice and abolition. Carceral logics devalue and target Black, Indigenous, and people of color-- the same communities that are disproportionately impacted by environmental harms. Further, incarcerated people have often been exploited during and in the wake of disasters, to clean debris, or fight wildfires. Yet, they are also less likely to be evacuated and often left without food, water, ventilation, and access to health care post-disaster. To address social issues rooted in the devaluation of people of color and the places where they live, we argue that it is important to integrate calls for abolition within ecosocial work. This roundtable brings together scholars working on environmental and climate justice to consider how social workers can engage in convergent social change efforts that foster collective care and the building of a new world. We draw on the works of Grace Lee Boggs to center shared values, beliefs, and action through community-led efforts, and Miriame Kaba to point to inherent flaws in the criminal justice system and the shift instead toward healing, community building, social relationships, and shared accountability.The roundtable will be a space for social workers to reflect on these considerations. After a brief overview of collective care and abolition to set the stage, the first speaker will examine connections between ongoing environmental struggles and their tensions in combating carceral systems with global examples of environmental and climate activists being suppressed by state authorities and law enforcement agencies. The next speaker will explore the connection between prisons and hazards and propose abolitionist considerations for climate change impacts. They will begin with a reflection on the legacy of prison & hurricane community organizing, and conclude with an invitation to join new organizing efforts to address extreme weather conditions in the U.S. Northeast, emphasizing the need to rethink planning, community, and carcerality in response to the expanding challenge of a changing climate. The third speaker will dwell on the importance of actively engaging with our neighbors and communities toward a cohesive and stronger future. This will span newer and innovative ways of being and doing, particularly in redefining safety work and advancing DIY-urbanism, especially during climate disasters. The final speaker will delve into the strategic and ethical tensions in community-driven, localized social work situated within, and yet resisting, oppressive social, political, and economic systems and acknowledge the tensions in navigating these complex and challenging situations.