#prison

Here is an example;

In the Civil Rights struggle, getting arrested en mass was seen as an important part of the process of freedom. The civil rights leaders realized that the areas they were in did not have large enough jails to confine them all, and that if they filled the jails up, the police simply could not confine everyone else in the movement. Getting arrested in coordinated ways was a noble and helpful sacrifice that kept your brothers and sisters from getting arrested. Due to less strict sentencing at the time, and the ability of the movement to scare the police into releasing people, getting arrested often wasn’t the utterly disabling and free-life ending process it is today. (That’s not to say getting arrested was easy on people; the police brutality of the time was incredibly intense.)

Those who spent time in jail were given almost a reverent status. That had gone through much suffering to keep others from the same fate. Often, their ability to taking confinement completely off the table for the rest of the activists is precisely what allowed for certain other actions to be successful. Paying for legal defense and moderate bail costs was something of a drain on the movements scant, resources but it could often be worth it due to the role arrests played.

However, the state responded to this, and turned it to their benefit. The next fifty years saw a prison boom. Now, economically deprived small towns were made to bid and beg for prisons to be built in there areas; not only to lock people up, but also because working at the prison was presented as one of the only jobs left in rural America. Additionally, thisdrove the labor minded population to be further in conflict with other movements in some areas.

As the capacity of the government to capture and confine increased, the capacity of the movement to fill up the jails and prevent further arrests did not. Now, the system was hungry for more and more bodies for its endless rooms. It further instilled and mechanized the capacity of prisons to force labor, undercutting labor movements. Sentences became longer, parole became stricter, fines and restitutions increased to exorbitant amounts. Those who went in for petty arrests often never came out.

But, the feeling that getting arrested was a noble and venerable goal did not leave the movement. Some transitioned tactics; instead of filling up the jails to allow others to act without recourse, they sought to get arrested in test cases, as they had seen work occasionally before. But this too became more and more difficult, as the legal system realized it did not have to play by its own rules. Slowly but surely, the legal mythology that because it is written and because it is fair, it will be ruled so, began to overtake the minds of activists; even as they failed time and time again to win this way, they still threw countless of their friends into the mouth of the enemy, and condemned them to life in prison.

Even this had become a shadow of itself by the 2000s and 2010s. Arrest became an aesthetic goal instead of a practical one. The most radical in the movements were culturally encouraged to throw their lives away for petty protests that none would see, and would have no material impact on the operations of the system of dominion. The reality that getting kettled at a non violent protest could land you with the same jail time as a political assassination did not dawn upon these activists until long after hey were already in jail, and already disconnected from the movement. Their friends would gather all their meager savings towards bail funds, oftentimes going into debt, or otherwise extracting money from the rest of the marginalized communities supportive of the activism. Those funds would then go to the government in the form of bail, and then right back towards operating the same policing systems that targeted them. In this way, the main economic output of the leftists movement of the time was to fund the very systems of policing that they sought to destroy; and to get themselves and each other locked in cages in the process. Instead of developing practical systems of change, radicals were taught to emulate key aspects of the tactics of prior generations that had specifically been recuperated into the goals of the state.

Those who saw the futility in this were readily pushed towards the defanged and self acknowledged pointless marches of the nonviolent liberal movement, which never had any goal other than to once again emulate the visual aesthetics and personal emotional fulfillment of past movements.

We see this pattern play out all the time. People insisting on the radical importance of a leftist print newspaper in a time when print journalism is dead. A fetishization of industrial unionism in a town where no factory has been for three generations. Arguments over whether to support long defunct governments and long dead leaders for some tactical benefit which will never arise from reality.

It is long past time for us to realize that the process of achieving human liberation does not come from symbolic actions, nor from following the playbook of past movements. We must learn our history, yes, but not to emulate it; instead we must learn it to understand its failures and its successes, and, most importantly, how our movement ancestors interacted with the material conditions of their time to create multifaceted plans that met the needs of their people and made successful guerrilla war upon dominion.

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toji comes home after 3 years of being in prison on your bday, you guys got into a huge argument the week beforehand and haven't spoken sense!! the only way he got through prison was your sexy alluring voice before bed since he had his own cell.

The apartment is dead quiet when the clock hits midnight.

Your birthday.

No texts from friends anymore, no music playing low in the background like you promised yourself there would be. Just rain tapping against the fire escape and the soft hum of the kitchen light you forgot to turn off.

Three years.

Three years since Toji Fushiguro got dragged away in handcuffs with blood on his knuckles and that unreadable look in his eyes. Three years of late-night phone calls from prison. Three years of pretending you weren’t waiting for them every single night.

And then the fight. A week ago. The worst one you’d ever had.

“You don’t get to come back and act like nothing happened, Toji.”

His silence on the other end had cut deeper than yelling ever could.

Then

“Maybe I shouldn’t come back at all.”

Click.

No calls after that.

Nothing. You stare at your untouched birthday cake on the counter, jaw tight. You hate that your chest still aches for him. Hate that every little sound outside makes your heart jump. Then comes a knock at the door. Not rushed. Not hesitant. Three slow taps. Your breath catches. No one knocks like that except him. You stand there frozen for a second before crossing the apartment barefoot, fingers trembling as they curl around the lock. The door opens. And there he is. Bigger somehow. Broader. Black shirt clinging tight to his frame, duffel bag hanging from one shoulder. A faint scar cuts across his mouth you don’t recognize. His hair’s longer. His face rougher.

But his eyes... Those same green eyes lock onto yours like he’s been starving. Toji looks exhausted. Not prison exhausted. You exhausted.

His gaze drags slowly over your face, your body, like he needs proof you’re real. Then he laughs once under his breath, rough and disbelieving.

“Still wearing that thing to bed?” You glance down at the oversized shirt slipping off one shoulder. The exact shirt he used to love. Heat rushes up your neck instantly. “What are you doing here?” His expression shifts. There’s something dangerous in it now. Something barely held together. “You stopped answering my calls.” “You said maybe you shouldn’t come back.” “And you believed me?” he snaps immediately.

The apartment goes silent again. Toji runs a hand over his face and exhales hard, like he’s trying not to lose his temper. “You think I survived three fucking years in that place to stay away from you?”

Your throat tightens.

He steps inside before you can stop him. The scent of rain and cigarettes follows him in. Familiar. Ruining you instantly.

“I had a cell to myself,” he says quietly. “You know what that means?”

You don’t answer.

His eyes pin you where you stand.

“It means every night was silent.” His voice lowers. “Except for you.”

Your heartbeat stutters.

“Toji—”

“Nah. You don’t get it.” He drops the duffel by the door. “You’d call half asleep, mumbling about your day, bitching about work, telling me goodnight in that voice—”

His jaw clenches.

“That voice was the only thing keeping me sane in there.”

The tension finally cracks in your chest. Because he sounds angry. But underneath it?He sounds hurt.

"Y/N you don't know how I fucking miss you."

"If I had to go back to prison for doing what I did, I would do it again just to make sure you're protected with all means."

you jump into toji's arm and give him a hug. you never knew how bad he was hurting, you were to busy being mad at him.

you never realize how much of your life belongs to someone until their absence starts making decisions for you.