The Ground on Which We Stand: Making Abolition

Abstract Abolition is both a vision and a practice. As abolitionists, we envision a world without prisons. We must also make that world together. Abolition is thus more than an ideological commitment to the absence of prisons. Abolition is presence, as Ruth Wilson Gilmore reminds us. It is the presence of life‐giving institutions. It is our presence with one another, as we enact and explore in this article. As co‐authors, we have been journeying together at Florida State University for nearly a year. Our work has shapeshifted through the COVID pandemic and in the wake of the Tallahassee Police Department murders of Mychael Johnson and Tony McDade. We open this article on these grounds, honoring the people have fought before us and all who fight in their legacy. We also stretch back into the violent histories that fill our present, and reflect in succession on the intimate work of building the world otherwise. Our prison nation may govern through erasure and abandonment, but the prison is in fact everywhere. That means that abolition must be everywhere, too. This ethnography is our work to create it. Through it, we hope to support you in making your own abolitionist futures in real time.