This petition calls for the official recognition of a local and national Abolition April Awareness month.

The campaign belongs to all of us who are impacted by interlocking systems of oppression and fighting to abolish carceral systems. 

The United States has the highest incarceration rates in the world with nearly 2 million people caught in the criminal system. Black and brown women and men are disproportionately targeted by carceral sytems--including surveillance, punishment, policing, and prisons.

The criminal system works together with systems of domination and social inequities to limit and foreclose vulnerable communities of their civil and human rights. The attacks on critical race theory, abortion rights, voting rights, and democratic ideals have double-downed on reinforcing hegemonic powers to perpetuate the oppression of Black and vulnerable people.

In addition, government spending on police budgets is increasing. Gun violence surpassed motor vehicles as the leading cause of death for children. More and more Black and Brown people are harmed by State-sponsored violence. Black women and mothers are criminalized for merely trying to survive, while some privileged White men exploit, embezzle, and impose harms but with the benefit of immunity and evading accountability. 

A local and national recognition of Abolition April is guided by three objetives:

1) To raise national awareness on the historical and current struggles to end surveillance, policing, and prisons in America, as well as collectively challenge all systems of oppression targeting Black, Brown, Indigenous, undocumented, and otherwise persecuted trans* and non-trans* impoverished communities.

2) To imagine abolitionist futures in a world where the least among us can thrive with access to gainful employment, housing security, food equity, universal education and healthcare, reparations, community-led approaches to public safety, and other resources, programs, and infrastructure critical for care-first approaches to communal flourishing.

3) To activate a national coalition committed to working for policies, transformative justice, and resistance strategies that overthrow the U.S. carceral state and rebuild a more just and equitable society beyond punishment, policing, and prisons.

Mass incarceration is one of the most urgent crises of the 21st Century. Now is the time to act!

Sign the petition today and demand that Mayor Karen Bass (City of Los Angeles) and Congress to pass local and national recognitions of Abolition April Awareness month.