Third Abolition Feminism School (Re:AFK)
Dreaming the Future of Abolition Feminism: Lessons from the Student Occupations
Student occupations of educational institutions and blockades of streets, bridges and even the national broadcaster in Serbia have resonated throughout the entire region. We’ve had the opportunity to witness and participate in perhaps the most widespread political organizing in this region so far. Besides its massiveness, this movement is also characterized by the establishment of decentralized non-state counter-institutions in universities, cultural spaces, local communities and on the streets. Similar tendencies have emerged in many other contexts in recent history, particularly over the past two decades, in countries such as Turkey, Greece, the USA, Syria, Bangladesh, Egypt, France, Croatia, and Bosnia.
What makes the student occupations unique is that they represent forms of organizing that point to the possibility of overcoming and questioning current organizing models in our societies. The students consistently refused to elect leaders, opposed hierarchy, and made decisions via direct democracy at plenums, which are central decision-making bodies at each faculty. The process of direct democracy is often mystified as overly complicated and inapplicable to broader social movements, but the students made it work. None of this would have been possible without massive mutual aid offered by the wider community: material support (donations of food, hygiene products, and resources like stages and accommodation), emotional support (joining protests, advocating for the movement and its demands), and protection from physical violence, even from groups not aligned with progressive politics.
Even though the student movement has been explicitly committed to nonviolence, it has faced a disproportionate response from repressive state apparatuses, including arrests, beatings, the use of a sonic weapon at a peaceful demonstration, surveillance, tracking, and the leaking of confidential information to the media. Abolition feminism is one of the perspectives that, since its inception, has sought to critically examine precisely the questions we face today—which role do repressive institutions like the police, military, or prisons actually play in our society? What is their function in sustaining capitalist exploitation, and how is this violence woven into regimes of gender, race, and/or ethnicity or nationhood? Can we imagine societies based on solidarity, care, and community? How do we address violence without reproducing it through its institutionalization into prisons, police, military, and other forms of repression? What are the alternatives to neoliberal capitalism and the re/oppressions it requires to function?
These questions have become dramatically more relevant today, judging by the number of people who are thinking about them together or spontaneously living out these questions in practice. However, many groups and individuals—refugees, Roma people, sex workers, women, the poor, workers, people ethnically marked as minorities in nationally stratified spaces, LGBTIQ+ persons, and others that face violence from a system that is openly hostile to them—have been pushed into these questions by their positionality. In the US, these ideas were considered and developed by Black communities, who founded the theoretical strand of abolitionism and abolition feminism. In other parts of the world, this work was taken up by colonized, racialized, and ethnicized communities, squatters, anarchists, and social, environmental, labor, and/or feminist movements. This work is necessary not only to survive, but to build futures in which we no longer have to worry about police violence or having a roof over our heads.
The Abolition Feminism Summer School is a space for collectively pausing and taking responsibility for the kind of society we want to live in, and a chance to learn from one another, as well as from texts that trace abolitionist themes. This summer, we’ll study the social context that led to the canopy collapse at the Novi Sad train station and the beginning of the blockades from the lens of abolition feminist critique. We’ll try to build a common foundation for understanding the genesis of the student blockades by analyzing the legacy and influence of past movements. We also want to critically examine the political and ideological contradictions within this mass movement. What can we learn from the blockades, and what can we improve upon by drawing from the principles of abolition feminism? Ultimately, our goal is to read the blockades critically and build upon them. Where can we locate abolition feminism in the blockades and how do we dream of organizing for the future?
This year’s school, organized by the Re:AFK collective, will be held from September 3rd to the 7th in Zagreb, Croatia. We invite feminist activists, researchers, members of queer feminist collectives and organizations, and others who are seeking a radical reimagining and transformation of social relations. If you’re interested in participating, you can apply by August 4th via the following link: Third Abolition Feminism School.
The working language of the school will be Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian-Montenegrin, with solidarity-based translation into English provided.
Participation is free, but we would kindly ask for a solidarity contribution to help cover organizational costs if you are able to give one.
About us:
The Abolition Feminism School is a self-organized post-Yugoslav initiative aimed at sparking dialogue about envisioning and creating a society not based on punitive policies, prisons, and policing, but on solidarity, mutual aid, and care for one another—in the context of building economic and social justice, with a special focus on gender and queer feminist politics. The school is envisioned as a space of encounter, collective work, shared dreaming, and translating emancipatory imaginaries into practice. Participants are actively involved in knowledge production throughout the school.
The first two summer schools were held in Novi Sad. This year, for the first time, we are moving to Zagreb. Our hope is to make the school an annual event, each time in a different post-Yugoslav city, in order to strengthen regional connections, challenge imposed and disciplining borders of states, nations, and ethnicities, and learn from various local contexts.
As a result of last year’s school, together with the participants, we published a collection of essays titled Abolition Feminism Perspectives in a Global Context: Dispatches from Novi Sad. This publication premiered this year at the Subversive Festival in Zagreb. For us, publications like this one are not just documentation—they are tools for political work, archiving experience, and spreading abolition feminist practices.
REGIONALNI ABOLICIONISTIČKI FEMINISTIČKI KOLEKTIV 