Five years on, abolitionist zine ‘In the Belly’ continues to expand the conversation

At its core, In the Belly remains an abolitionist collective focused on printing revolutionary political education material by and for incarcerated people – a disclaimer it puts right up front in each print issue.

And yet, in the five years since its founding, In the Belly has continued to expand on this mission, growing a community of radically abolition-minded activists while also serving as a space in which incarcerated people can perhaps be introduced to a new reality, or at least be reminded of their shared humanity and potential while locked away in a place engineered to strip them of both. It’s this idea that Ya’iyr Carter hits on in a brief Letter from the Editor that introduces the 5-year anniversary edition of the print magazine, which In the Belly will celebrate with a release party at Holton Park (276 N. Eureka Ave.) from 2-5 p.m. on Sunday, June 29.

In the letter, Carter recalls how they wrote an essay in the wake of Minneapolis police murdering George Floyd, and how a comrade sent it to In the Belly, which printed the essay, “Cannibals,” in a subsequent issue. “That was the first time a publication printed something I wrote,” Carter writes. “It was raw, angry, and violent. The fact that In the Belly gave me a platform opened my eyes to a new way of reaching out to others. A way of connecting with people like me, struggling against systemic injustice.”

In a late June interview, a trio of In the Belly editors – Safear Ness, Jordan Mays, and Wren Morgana – described having gone through similar transformations in their time with the collective. Morgana said she had a limited understanding of abolition as a political theory when she first stepped into the group a few years ago and can now break it down on a molecular level. “In this process, we’re all learning, and we’re all teaching each other,” she said. “And the same goes with the people inside. … There are people inside, studying among themselves and sending it across the wall, and then people taking all of that stuff that came from inside and going out to all different parts of the country. … And all of that is deepening and sharpening people’s understanding about the problems with prisons and policing.”

Ness, meanwhile, said they are a completely different person now than they were five years ago, attributing much of this evolution to the radical community in which they’ve become so tightly interwoven. “Before In the Belly, in my mind, I was never a writer,” said Ness, who recalled how In the Belly’s Stevie Wilson obliterated this reality, impacting them in a way that has extended far beyond the page. “Stevie pushed me and mentored me through the writing process. … And I could see how my skills increased, how my analysis improved, how my relationships deepened.”

These personal evolutions, however, serve as a sidenote to the life-and-death push for collective justice that continues to drive the work done by In the Belly. Even the selection of Holton Park as the site of the release party was purposeful, owing to its relative proximity to the James A. Karnes Correction Center, a newly built prison located less than two miles away. A reminder, the group said, of the investment political leaders continue to make in expanding the powers of carceral state, which are wielded equally no matter who holds the levers. “This machinery that’s built up, and that the state is using right now, it’s not going to go away when Democrats are in charge,” Mays said. 

Indeed, this expansion continues unabated in Columbus, where Democrats have a firm grip on local power. Just this week, Columbus City Council approved nearly $6 million for the purchase of two new police helicopters, while Mayor Andrew Ginther proposed spending $14 million to build a new Columbus Division of Police substation at Easton.

“The increased militarization of the police and the increased repression of organizing-slash-activist communities is really coming to a head right now,” said Ness, who noted these tactics have been in place for decades, developed policing Black and Brown communities with the war on drugs and later with the war on terror. “What we have to do is figure out how in Columbus we can bring like-minded people together [in opposition] when the City Council starts to talk about buying new police helicopters, and when they start talking about expanding jails.”

Part of In the Belly’s mission also involves connecting people “over the wall,” as the collective described it, linking the incarcerated with people both outside of prison and in other facilities across the U.S., helping to foster a greater sense of community and an expanded awareness of the harms this system enacts. “The more people connect with people inside,” Mays said, “the more I think they start to get the bigger picture of what the fuck is going on and how the state is affecting our lives.”

Building this connection, however, can be both costly (the dollars can quickly add up when transmitting documents for back-and-forth for edits, for example) and difficult, with prisons often employing antiquated systems that Morgana said serve as purposeful barriers. “When we’re trying to communicate with people inside, the state holds all of the fucking cards,” she said. “If it’s email, they make the websites specifically difficult to use, where it looks like it was made in the ’90s and the software is not user-friendly.  … And with the mail, someone we’re working with is under investigation, so all of their mail is under a month delay both in and out. … Even when we are sending things in, there is censorship, and we need to be clever as a publication, as abolitionists, with how we’re trying to get around and through all of those systems.”

In the five years In the Belly has been in existence, the collective has seen the conversation around policing expand and deepen, usually spiking in response to horrific events, such as the murder of Floyd that led Carter to first press pen to paper and submit an essay to In the Belly.

“The more we start to talk about the violence of police, then the more we start to talk about prisons,” Morgana said. “And that’s when the word abolition comes in, and we can be like, ‘Hey, have you heard the good news? Let’s talk about what life might be like without this bullshit.’”