Non-reformist reform

Creating non-reformist reforms is often cited as difficult. One challenge to creating non-reformist reform is the risk of co-option, incorporation and depoliticization, or mainstreaming, of the demands of social movements. Lawyer and activist Dean Spade identifies mainstreaming as "when a very oppressive harmful institution tries to use an emptied-out version of [for example] queer politics as a PR stunt for itself, but queer people don't get anything out of it". Spade states that mainstreaming can be identified when "new forms of visibility" for the social justice issue in question become visible, but only under a form of "conditional acceptance" or respectability to the dominant system. Mainstreaming results in the "deployment of 'deserving' figures" in which a select group of people who the social justice issue pertains to become cast as "hardworking", "professionals", or "things that are tolerable" to the dominant system while others are simultaneously cast as "undeserving" and are excluded. Mainstreaming then produces reformist reform or recuperative reform proposals that reinforce or recuperate harmful institutions while the harm and violence actually continues. Janet Newman states that "women's claims for equality [in the new social movements of the 1960s and 1970s] had been incorporated through processes of 'mainstreaming' that have served to bureaucratize and depoliticize feminism". Criteria for identification In consideration of the challenges to creating non-reformist reform that scholars identify, activists have established criteria for identifying when a reform may be reformist or non-reformist. Notable activists and organizations who have established criteria include Dean Spade, Peter Gelderloos, Harsha Walia, Critical Resistance and Mariame Kaba, who propose the following criteria respectively: ; Dean Spade • Does it provide material relief? • Does it leave out an especially marginalized part of the affected group (e.g. people with criminal records, people without immigration status)? • Does it legitimize or expand a system we are trying to dismantle? • Does it mobilize the most affected for an ongoing struggle? ; Peter Gelderloos • Does it seize space in which new social relations can be enacted? • Does it spread awareness of its ideas? (participatory, not passive) • Does it have elite support? • Does it achieve any concrete gains in improving people's lives? ; Harsha Walia • Has the tactic been effective in exposing or confronting a specific point within the system by either diminishing its moral legitimacy or undermining its functions? ; Critical Resistance • Will it expand the system we are trying to dismantle? • Will we have to undo this later? ; Marbre Stahly-Butts • Does this reform shift any power or resources? • Does it, in some way, acknowledge past harm? • Does it improve material conditions? • Does it create space for experimentation? • Are we able to try something new or different as a result? ; Mariame Kaba, in regard to police reform • Does it allocate more money to the police? • Does it advocate for more police and policing? • Is the reform primarily technology-focused? • Is it focused on individual dialogues with individual cops? == Reformist reform examples ==

s have been identified as a reformist reform because they have not fundamentally altered the outcomes of policing despite being implemented in some locations since the 1960s. Policies and rights frameworks regarding sexual orientation and gender identity in military service have been identified as reformist reforms that gained popularity among reformist sectors of the gay and lesbian community since the election of Bill Clinton in 1992. Harm and violence to gay and lesbian people within the military has been recognized as pervasive. At the same time, as described by scholar Nicola Field, "the discipline of capitalist military forces means that even if they allow lesbians and gays to serve, they cannot suddenly become a force for freedom, equality, and liberation". Gay marriage laws have been identified as an example of a reformist reform because it "leaves intact institutions of state violence by 'rejecting those objectives and demands—however deep the need for them—which are incompatible with the system". Although gay marriage has been recognized as providing important rights and protections to gay people, "it does not contest the violences imposed by institutionalized heteropatriarchy, including the police killings of transgender women of color". In other words, gay marriage laws have been identified as reformist reforms because they do not strive to eradicate the institutionalization of marriage law itself which perpetuates cisheteropatriarchal violence, but rather extends it. == Non-reformist reform examples ==

The prison abolition movement and empowering of communities to engage in restorative practices function as an example of non-reformist reform by activists such as Mariame Kaba. Kaba states that non-reformist reform in this regard would mean the creation of a new structure that "will allow people to feel safe, have their needs met, on our way to an abolitionist end". In a hypothetical example, scholar Brian Martin states "a strike for higher wages might simply buy off discontent and solidify capitalist control: it is a reform that strengthens the system. In contrast, pushing for greater worker control over shop-floor decisions can lay the basis for further worker initiatives: it is an example of non-reformist reform". == References ==