Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice
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**A reflection on prison industrial complex abolition and a vision for collective liberation from organizer and educator Mariame Kaba.**
“Organizing is both science and art. It is thinking through a vision, a strategy, and then figuring out who your targets are, always being concerned about power, always being concerned about how you’re going to actually build power in order to be able to push your issues, in order to be able to get the target to actually move in the way that you want to.”
What if social transformation and liberation isn’t about waiting for someone else to come along and save us? What if ordinary people have the power to collectively free ourselves? In this timely collection of essays and interviews, Mariame Kaba reflects on the deep work of abolition and transformative political struggle.
With a foreword by Naomi Murakawa and chapters on seeking justice beyond the punishment system, transforming how we deal with harm and accountability, and finding hope in collective struggle for abolition, Kaba’s work is deeply rooted in the relentless belief that we can fundamentally change the world. As Kaba writes, “Nothing that we do that is worthwhile is done alone.”
Reviews with the most likes.
Reading this was a very powerful experience and I'm glad that I took a couple of weeks to read through it at my lunches at work.
I am in awe of Kaba's humility, generosity, and hopefulness around prison industrial complex abolition. Her words have given me a lot to think about like the fact that police don't prevent or solve (most) crimes, that punishment isn't necessarily justice, that thinking about these issues is a process, that we are only limited by our imagination of what a future without prisons and police would look like. It also made me think a lot about being in a position to do surveillance and have power over teens at work.
Finally, if you're a true crime fan, as I am, I definitely recommend you check this out as a way to think about crime, punishment, and what justice actually could be.
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