I am an abolitionist. Abolition is a plot against racial capitalism which is all capitalism, not just some of it. It is a plot in a narrative sense. It is a plot in which the arc of change is always going resolutely towards freedom. It is a plot in a geographic sense. It is a plot in which we aim to make all space, not just some space, free in two senses. Free in the sense it cannot be alienated which is to say it cannot be sold by anybody to anybody, and free in the sense of non-exclusion – no boundary, no border, which would keep somebody in or keep somebody out.
— Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Rustbelt Abolitionist Radio
February 21st is a special. On this day in 1803, Colonel Edward Marcus Despard was executed in London as a traitor. His comrade and partner, Catherine, was among the thousands who witnessed the hanging and decapitation. She had helped him in the days preceding to write the address which he delivered from the gallows. He explained that he was a friend to the poor and oppressed and trusted that “the principles of freedom, of humanity, and of justice will finally triumph over falsehood, tyranny, and delusion.”
He was Irish. Just a couple years earlier Ireland’s political independence was extinguished with the creation of the U.K. She was African-American who came from Jamaica or Honduras. They were abolitionists in the senses explained by Professor Gilmore, that is, they bent the arc of change towards freedom, and they…