One of my wonderful students, Jody Liu, is a part of an on-campus movement to get rid USC’s security as it exists today. I support student-led efforts for either reform or abolition, as our security needs to change. Students should lead in re-envisioning security because it’s their campus and honestly I feel like the old folks (this includes me) on campus have run out of ideas. Here is the intro from one of the zine’s makers:

We’ve spent the past couple of months putting together the zine “Abolish DPS: Envisioning a #PoliceFreeUSC”, which elucidates the connections between the University of Southern California (USC) and the prison industrial complex. In particular, we highlight violent incidents that have been inflicted on the surrounding South Central communities. We then outline our vision for prison abolition at USC.

In full disclosure, my own interactions as a person with a disability with on-campus security has fallen into two categories: a) great interactions with mostly women who get that they are part of a community and b) miserable, escalated confrontations with dudes who get off thinking they are commandos by shouting at me to move faster (I can’t) or to not be where I am (you can freaking ask instead of shout, dickhead). I’d like to see campus security protect the livelihoods of the people who have made the effort to be a part of the place and find other work for the dudes who use the job to recreate the power trips they took in high school sticking the small kid’s heads in toilets.