When Words Fail: The Use and Misuse of Narratives in the Prison Abolition Movement

Inspired in part by my experiences at that internship, and a newfound appreciation for the impact of stories, this paper explores the role of narratives in the way we talk and think about prisons. Narratives, or storytelling, are not neutral accounts of the way the world works but are rather informed by social structures of power and control, necessitating subjecting them to critique and analysis. When used for social movements, this becomes especially true. In this paper, I will analyze how narratives are written/spoken and disseminated as part of the abolition or criminal justice reform movement. In organizations and movements that are reformist, I demonstrate that narratives follow neoliberal logic, and are individualizing, rely on free market ideology, and depend upon short-term organizing. As a result, these narratives not only reflect the carceral state, but continuously uphold it. In opposition, narratives used by organizations that are expressly abolitionist resist individualization, short-term organizing, and recognize the carceral state’s operations as rooted in white supremacy, effectively pushing for abolition and improving the lives of incarcerated people. Overall, I argue that narratives are incredibly important tools for exposing the harsh conditions of incarceration and the truths of the carceral state; but when fighting for abolition, narratives must be subject to critique and analysis

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data