If The Creek Don’t Rise: Collective History and Prison Abolition in the Southeast
NYU XE: MA THESIS PROJECT
If The Creek Don’t Rise: This digital humanities project identifies the gaps between theory and practice in prison abolition in the Southeastern region of the United States. To understand the ongoing issues with incarceration, one must fully realize how the prison system was formed and the Southeast was central to it. Almost 2 million people are incarcerated today in what is now known as the United States, and nearly half of those lives are detained in one region: the Southeast.If the Creek Don’t Rise asks those who strive for prison abolition to include the South in their movements and understand why decarceration in the South is vital to ending mass incarceration and forging a new world without prisons. This microcosm of memory culture educates people on the history between the North and South (Why the South) and offers an epistemology of the tensions that exist today. The Layered Histories portion of the site is ontological by juxtaposing the shared history and stories of the lands that prisons now sit on in the Southeast and the current justice system. The Data portion informs people of who is incarcerated in the United States, the South and how culture plays a role in the rates of those imprisoned. If the Creek Don’t Rise recommends a plan for all prison activists to support the people on the ground in the South fighting and suggests ways to achieve prison abolition in a larger framework. (Layered Futures) Overall, this work hopes to leave people with the desire to own history for what is was and to move forward in communal healing.
