What is Abolition? A Reading List by Camila

Here are some (free/online) pieces that have shaped my understanding of abolition and what forms of ~real accountability~ we can collectively build to address and interrupt cycles of violence! This guide is almost all black & indigenous abolitionist writers because that is where this movement started. As people are starting to learn more about abolition, I hope we will continue to turn to the activists and thinkers that have been doing this work for years. I hope this is helpful in some small way! Please dm/email/txt me if you have an addition to the list, preferably free content! I am adding new sources to the list every day or so!

Explaining Abolition & Transformative Justice

• Chris Hayes Interview with Mariame Kaba explaining prison abolition for people who are skeptical. my go-to for people to introduce abolition!!! So incredible & accessible
• Mia Mingus, "Transformative Justice: A Brief Description" (short blog post)
• Mariame Kaba Interview, Towards the Horizon of Abolition (2017)

• “Has the current approach ended rape and murder? The vast majority of rapists never see the inside of a courtroom, let alone get convicted and end up in prison. In fact, they end up becoming President. So the system you feel so attached to and that you seem invested in preserving is not delivering what you say you want, which is presumably safety and an end to violence. Worse than that it is causing inordinate additional harm. The logics of policing and prisons are not actually addressing the systemic causes and roots of violence.”

• Dan Berger, Mariame Kaba, What Abolitionists Do succinct piece explaining prison abolition as a movement and praxis
• Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete: Why abolition is important and the history of prisons (longer since it’s a book, but incredibly useful for understanding the roots of prisons & policing in US history)
• Ruth Wilson Gilmore Interview: Case for Abolition During COVID on Democracy Now!

• Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind: a feature on Gilmore in NY Magazine if you are wanting to hear more about her!!

• Dean Spade, Prison Abolition Argument Chart: short chart answering the most common Qs about abolition (ie. “what about the rapists & murders?”)
• FAQ on Prison Abolition by K Agbebiyi with wonderful insights into people’s questions this week about abolition, including why demanding prosecution of cops is counterproductive to systemic change & abolition
• Security Does Not Mean Safety, short blog post by an incarcerated penal abolitionist

• “Being incarcerated, we know firsthand that policing and surveillance might create security, but they don’t create safety...I remind them that it is broken relations that enable harm. I stress that creating and maintaining safety requires developing and sustaining right relations.”

• The Folsom Prisoners Manifesto of Demands (1970): this document demonstrates the long history of the fight against the carceral state through the demands of incarcerated people 50 years ago that still have not been met (ie. “We demand an end to the tear-gassing of prisoners who are locked up in their cells, such action led to the death of Fred Billingslea on Feb 25, 1970 at San Quentin Prison.” THIS WEEK, COs pepper sprayed to death Jamel Floyd in his cell.) It is imperative to center the voices of currently & formerly incarcerated people in this struggle.
• For more writing by Mariame Kaba, an organizer, educator and leader in the abolition & Transformative Justice world (and the person who first introduced me to TJ!), go here to her website.

• Also, listen to this recent podcast, Justice In America Episode 20: Mariame Kaba And Prison Abolition, to learn more about Kaba’s journey into this work, the difference between transformative & restorative justice, & some visions for a future without prisons!

Police Abolition

• Derecka Purnell, How I Became a Police Abolitionist: this is the most succinct, deeply personal call for abolition I’ve read so far. If you read nothing else in this guide, READ THIS !!!
• Mariame Kaba, Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police history of why reform has never worked from the OG MK
• Alex Vitale, Policing and the Liberal Fantasy (why police reforms don’t work & policing is inherently violent/anti-black) this is my go-to for sharing with people who are calling for “police reform” rather than defunding or abolishing the police; helpful to explain why “bad apple” arguments about cops don’t hold

• For a deep-dive into this, Vitale’s book End of Policing 

• Alex Vitale, The answer to police violence is not reform. It’s defunding. Here’s why: most brief & recent piece on why reforms dont work, specifically examining failure of Minneapolis police reforms (very quick read)

• How Much Do We Need The Police? A Q&A with Alex Vitale from June 3rd, similar to the above sources but makes some great points about the current moment

• “Part of our misunderstanding about the nature of policing is we keep imagining that we can turn police into social workers. That we can make them nice, friendly community outreach workers. But police are violence workers. That's what distinguishes them from all other government functions. They have the legal capacity to use violence….So when we turn a problem over to the police to manage, there will be violence, because those are ultimately the tools that they are most equipped to utilize: handcuffs, threats, guns, arrests. That's what really is at the root of policing. So if we don't want violence, we should try to figure out how to not get the police involved.”

• Philip V. McHarris and Thenjiwe McHarris, No More Money for the Police: helpful article explaining why reforms like #8cantwait do not work and why the only solution to police violence is to defund departments immediately

• “More training or diversity among police officers won’t end police brutality, nor will firing and charging individual officers. Look at the Minneapolis Police Department, which is held up as a model of progressive police reform. The department offers procedural justice as well as training for implicit bias, mindfulness and de-escalation. It embraces community policing and officer diversity, bans “warrior style” policing, uses body cameras, implemented an early intervention system to identify problematic officers, receives training around mental health crisis intervention, and practices “reconciliation” efforts in communities of color. George Floyd was still murdered.”

• Critical Resistance, Chart of Policing Reforms vs Abolitionist Steps (helpful tool to distinguish between reforms in your community that will lead to an expansion or reduction of policing)

• Similar piece by Mariame Kaba, Police “Reforms” You Should Always Oppose: brief list of how to tell which reforms are moving toward abolition

• #DefundPolice Toolkit by Mariame Kaba, Andrea Ritchie, Woods Ervin explaining the strategy & concrete demands that move toward a horizon of abolition! Excellent resource to use while writing emails, pressuring city councilmembers  
• What does police abolition look like? Here are a few examples of alternatives to policing that will keep our communities safe! Compiled by Amber Hughson

• Why the Camden Model of “community policing” is not the way forward

• Micol Seigel, Violence Work: State Power and the Limits of Police: linked here is the introduction to this piece that redefines policing as “violence work,” demonstrating how understanding police as a civilian, public, and local institution legitimizes state violence while preserving the myth of state benevolence (bit more academic & dense than other texts in this guide)
• For historical context, the “We Charge Genocide” 1951 petition to the United Nations from Chicago-based activists organizing against police violence is an important read for those looking to understand the deep roots of anti-carceral organizing on the issue of police violence.

• “Once the classic method of lynching was the rope. Now it is the policeman’s bullet.  To many an American the police are the government, certainly its most visible representative.  We submit that the evidence suggests that the killing of Negroes has become police policy in the United States and that police policy is the most practical expression of government policy.”

• Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States (this collection of essays is free online from Haymarket Books right now for anyone looking for a deep dive of resistance against police violence!)
• For more reading on the subject: the resource hub For a World Without Police includes an in-depth description of the strategy of disarming, defunding & abolishing police, as well as more readings!

Explaining Abolition as Feminism: Transformative Justice 

• Mimi Kim, From Carceral Feminism to Transformative Justice (2018): 10 pages (this provides a brief historical framework for understanding carceral feminism and the emergence of restorative justice and transformative justice as means of addressing harm outside of the criminal legal system)
• Victoria Law, Against Carceral Feminism: similar to Kim’s article above, more brief & less academic insight into the history of carceral feminism and transformative justice
• Critical Resistance-INCITE Statement on GBV: Succinct introduction to the intersection of anti-violence and prison abolition movements
• Mariame Kaba, Podcast on Transformative Justice and #MeToo (1hrish deep dive into abolition & me too)
• Mariame Kaba video series Building Accountable Communities, including videos addressing: What does a survivor-centered response look like in practice? How can we support those who have caused harm without defaulting to punishment? What does real accountability look like?
• For stories about what these community accountability Transformative Justice processes can look like for gendered violence:

• Communities Against Rape and Abuse (CARA), Taking risks: implementing grassroots community accountability: starts with a set of values that guide community accountability processes and also includes examples of processes
• Ana Clarissa Rojas, Community Accountability as Pedagogical Strategy (this piece is about a community accountability process run in a university classroom while they were studying CARA's Taking Risks article. TW: gendered violence, intergenerational trauma and genocide)

• My friend’s a perp: what do I do? Zine by Wesleyan Students for Consent and Communication on how to have difficult conversations with people in your community that have caused harm
• For more on this topic, read the whole book: Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology (this is an incredible deep-dive into the intersection of state & gendered violence from multiple activists/writers, truly one of the most influential books I have ever read) AND/OR Abolition. Feminism. Now. by Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners, and Beth E. Richie (great overview of the history and theory behind abolition feminist thinking/organizing, very accessible writing)  

Capitalism, Abolition & Anti-Blackness

• Tweet thread by Boots Riley linking capitalism, police violence & anti-blackness in a succinct, accessible, logical, clear way WOWZA THIS WAS SO COMPREHENSIVE!!!!

• If you want a (more academic) deep dive into this intersection, the book Carceral Capitalism by Jackie Wang is a collection of essays on this, I particularly love the essay “Against Innocence” WOWZA Jackie Wang just offered to send a free pdf of the whole book if you donate to an abolitionist org or bail fund & email her the receipt. To find an abolitionist org to support check the bottom of this doc!

Immigration & Abolition

• Kelly Lyte Hernández, Amnesty or Abolition?: history of US immigration & mass incarceration intertwined through abolitionist lens

Resisting “Tech Fixes” to Mass Incarceration

• James Kilgore, Repackaging Mass Incarceration: explains carceral humanism & why we should be cautious of bipartisan criminal justice reform that expands surveillance of communities of color and widens the net of the carceral state (Kilgore is the director of the Challenging E-Carceration project of Media Justice’s #NoDigitalPrisons campaign)

• “While the punitive nature of ankle bracelet regimes is a cause for concern, the potential to implement exclusion zones with GPS-based monitors contains more serious long-term implications.  Exclusion zones are places where monitors are programmed not to let people go. This technology, which can be set up via smart phones, holds the possibility to turn houses, buildings, even neighborhoods into self-financing sites of incarceration.  In the meantime, firms like the GEO Group, which owns BI Incorporated, the nation’s largest provider of electronic monitoring technology and backup services, are experimenting with new target groups for ankle bracelets. In parts of California and Texas they’ve used electronic monitors on kids with school truancy records.”

• Michelle Alexander, The Newest Jim Crow: on criminal justice reforms that just serve to expand e-carceration

Disability Justice & Abolition (thank you to Stef from Project LETS for sending these resources! Amazing disability justice org with a mutual aid fund you can also support!)

• Mia Mingus, Brief Overview of Disability Justice: video with closed captioning
• Talila Lewis, Longmore Lecture on Ableism: links ableism with racism in US historical context (video of lecture also available at this link)
• Radio episode on Carceral Ableism & Disability Justice: Dr. Liat Ben-Moshe and Leroy Moore explain how ableism has been foundational to the development of the carceral state
• Talila A. Lewis, Disability Justice In the Age of Mass Incarceration: Perspectives on Race, Disability, Law & Accountability
• Talila A. Lewis, In the Fight to Close Rikers, Don’t Forget Deaf and Disabled People
• Accountable Reporting on Disability, Race, & Police Violence: letter collectively drafted by Leroy F. Moore Jr., Talila A. Lewis, and Lydia X. Z. Brown, with the support of over twenty Disabled Black/Indigenous people, the vast majority of whom are part of the Harriet Tubman Collective, also includes list of orgs doing work at this intersection
• Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu, We Don’t Need Cops to Become Social Workers: We Need Peer Support + Community Response Networks: Stef is the founder & director of Project LETS; explains carceral dimensions of the existing medical industrial complex & a vision of how to build networks of mental health support from the ground up

Words from abolitionist leaders in this resource list that have stuck with me.

• “Do you see law and order? There is nothing but disorder, and instead of law there is the illusion of security. It is an illusion because it is built on a long history of injustices: racism, criminality, and genocide of missions. Many people say it is insane to resist the system, but actually, it is insane not to.” – Mumia Abu Jamal
• “We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.” – Angela Davis
• “Abolition is in the present. We are doing it every single day in multiple kinds of ways. It’s not just a horizon we’ll arrive at some day. It’s constantly being made.” – Mariame Kaba
• “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” – Angela Davis
• “The failure of imagination rests in missing the fact that abolition isn’t just about absence...Abolition is a theory of change, it’s a theory of social life. It’s about making things.” – Ruth Wilson Gilmore
• “No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.” – Assata Shakur
• "People say, 'What about sexual violence, and what about domestic violence?' The people who are advocating defund police and abolish police are, for the most part, black women, girls, trans and gender nonconforming people. Many of us are survivors of all those forms of violence.  We are not proposing to abandon our communities to violence. We are naming policing as a form of violence that we all experience.”  – Beth Ritchie

Want to keep reading? Mariame Kaba’s Resource Hub is also a wonderful & much larger compilation of readings on abolition, transformative justice, and carceral feminism. Also, Critical Resistance made an abolition toolkit for community organizers! This Google Drive has a compilation of pdfs from @haaniyah_ of black revolutionary writers, please buy the texts if you are able though! I recommend Wretched of the Earth by Franz Fanon and Audre Lorde Master’s Tools for this moment.

Books about Abolition (buy them at Black-owned bookstores!!)

• Mariame Kaba and Andrea Ritchie, No More Police 
• Victoria Law and Maya Schenwar, Prison By Any Other Name (concise, accessible, and convincing overview of why so many PIC reforms and “alternatives” to prisons/courts are harmful)
• INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology (this is an incredible deep-dive into the intersection of state and gendered violence from multiple activists/writers, truly one of the most influential books I have ever read)
• Critical Resistance, Abolition Now! Ten Years of Strategy and Struggle Against the Prison Industrial Complex (free online now at this link!)
• Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Abolition Geography: Essays to Liberation (compilation of RWG essays, pretty academic and dense)
• Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (how CA came to be “the biggest prison building project in the history of the world”)
• Abolition. Feminism. Now. by by Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners, and Beth E. Richie (great overview of the history and theory behind abolition feminist thinking/organizing, very accessible writing)
• Emily L. Thuma, All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence 
• Beth Ritchie, Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence and America’s Prison Nation 
• Naomi Murakawa, The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America
• Kelly Lytle Hernández, City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965: how histories of native elimination, immigrant exclusion, & black disappearance drove the rise of incarceration in Los Angeles
• Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California: explains how the California prison building project developed from surpluses of finance capital, labor, land, and state capacity
• Joy James, The New Abolitionists: (Neo)Slave Narratives and Contemporary Prison Writings (collection of writings by twentieth-century imprisoned authors examining confinement, enslavement, and political organizing in prison; more academic than other pieces in this list)
• Andrea J. Ritchie, Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color: examination of how Black women, Indigenous women, and women of color experience racial profiling, police brutality, and immigration enforcement
• Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women and Queer Radicals
• INCITE, The Revolution Starts at Home: (free at this link!) collection of essays by TJ organizers addressing sexual and intimate partner violence within their communities without relying on the carceral state
• Zoé Samudzi, William C. Anderson, As Black as Resistance: Finding the Conditions for Liberation
• Mumia Abu-Jamal, Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? 
• Inside This Place, Not Of It: Narratives From Women’s Prisons: Thirteen narrators in this book recount their lives leading up to incarceration and their experiences inside– ranging from forced sterilization and shackling during childbirth, to physical and sexual abuse by prison staff. Together, their testimonies illustrate the harrowing struggles for survival that women in prison must endure.

Now what? Join the movement!!!

Talk to your friends/family/community members about pieces you’ve read that have moved you! Send them around! While you’re at it, maybe use this email template by Marie Lachance to send your extended family about what is going on & how to support! If you are white, maybe use this template letter by Mara Dolan to send to your neighbors about BLM. This is a collection of crowdsourced, multilingual, and culturally-aware letter templates about BLM translated into a ton of languages! Use MPD150’s guide of 10 Action Ideas for Building a Police-Free Future. The most important work we can all do is in our own communities!

Start to critically examine the media you are consuming on the BLM movement and protests. Pivot towards a variety of sources that uplift the voices of organizers involved in the movement, rather than media that focuses on the voices of police & public officials. Here is a list of news sites I use to stay informed:

• Democracy Now! has a daily 1hr video/audio show/podcast with the news, always bringing on organizers to help explain the current moment.
• The Intercept: in-depth investigations and analysis focused on politics, war, surveillance, corruption, the environment, technology, criminal justice, & the media
• The Appeal: journalism about criminal justice that engages the public and holds officials to account
• The Nation: independent journalism, national magazine

Twitter has been a place for resource sharing and disseminating footage from organizers/protesters that mainstream media news outlets often don’t show. Below is a list of some Twitter accounts that I follow, which have provided me with useful & reliable information about the protests, as well as critical analyses of media portrayals of the BLM movement. This is by no means comprehensive, but hopefully a good place to start!

• @survivepunish: movement to end the criminalization of survivors of domestic & sexual violence 
• @OsopePatrisse: patrisse cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network, artist, organizer, educator, author of When They Call You a Terrorist
• @dnbrgr: Dan Berger, author & editor of several works on the history of prisons and prisoner organizing
• @jaybeware: co-founder of Beyond Prisons, podcast on incarceration & prison abolition that elevates people directly impacted by the system
• @dereckapurnell: human rights lawyer, writer, & organizer working to end police & prison violence
• @avitale: Alex Vitale, author of The End of Policing; Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College
• @C_Resistance: national grassroots organization working to abolish policing, imprisonment, & surveillance
• @miamingus: writer, educator and community organizer for disability justice and transformative justice
• @elisabeth: Elisabeth Epps is a Black abolitionist in Denver and director of the Colorado freedom fund
• @zhaabowekwe: Tara Houska is a tribal attorney who fights for indigenous rights & justice
• @jduffyrice: President of the The Appeal, lawyer in Atlanta; host of Justice in America podcast
• @melissagira: staff writer at The New Republic; author of Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work
• @UR_ninja: Unicorn Riot, commercial-free, viewer supported, independent media & live video streams
• @akhan1437: Adnan Khan, formerly incarcerated activist & Executive Director of Re:Store Justice
• @davidminpdx: David Menschel, criminal defense attorney, social activist, documentary filmmaker, movement strategist
• @ashapoesis: Black queer feminist, abolitionist, founding member of byp100
• @IndyaMoore: actor & social activist
• @ClintSmithIII: writer, teacher, and the author of Counting Descent

Follow & $upport/donate to black and indigenous-led abolition and transformative justice orgs in your community, including, but certainly not at all limited to:

• Critical Resistance member-based grassroots org that works to build a mass movement to dismantle the prison-industrial complex based in Oakland, CA
• INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence
• Black and Pink: prison abolitionist organization supporting LGBTQ and HIV-positive prisoners
• Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective: community collective of individuals, based out of Oakland, CA working to build and support transformative justice
• Just Practice Collaborative: exists to build our communities’ capacity to effectively and empathically respond to intimate partner violence and sexual assault without relying primarily on police or other state-based systems through trainings, resources, and structures of support for facilitators (such important work, I have gone to multiple workshops on TJ by this org!)
• Youth Justice Coalition works to build a youth-led movement to end police violence, mass incarceration & criminalization of youth of color in L.A. & beyond
• California Coalition for Women’s Prisoners: monitor & challenge the abusive conditions inside California women’s prisons; fight for the release of women & trans prisoners; support women & trans people in process of re-entering the community
• People’s Breakfast Oakland: Black Socialist Grassroot organization serving the people of Oakland
• Families for Justice & Healing: Ending the Incarceration of Women and Girls in Massachusetts
• The Jericho Movement: movement to free all political prisoners
• Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN): network to organize & empower community residents to work collectively to change the relationships of power that affect their community
• List of Community Bail Funds around the US by Changing Womxn Collective

• This also includes a list of black-owned businesses to support

• Community Bail Funds Donation that splits your donation between 40 community funds across the US

• LGBTQ Freedom Fund posts bail to secure the safety & liberty of people in jail & immigration detention
• Fang Collective Community Bail Fund Providence-specific
• People’s Breakfast Oakland: bailing out black folks in Oakland & Alameda
• Message/text me if you want me to add other bail funds to this list!

Email your mayors & city council members asking them to propose and approve budgets that defund the police/prisons, and instead invest in community resources i.e. education, housing, etc. For a wonderful guide on specific demands to include, check out the 8 to Abolition Campaign. Also, the Database for Police Abolition (D4PA) is a database-in-progress aiming to track nationwide proposals to defund, disarm, and disempower police departments, and to empower alternatives to policing.

• Defund12.org: Emails to defund police & reinvest in communities for cities around the US
• If you are in/from Los Angeles, click on this link that will automatically create an email draft supporting the People’s Budget in LA, all you have to do is sign and send!!!!! Huge thank you to Tenbit who coded this trick!!!
• For NYC people, this link automatically drafts an email to every single New York City Council Member, asking them to deny the mayor’s budget that overfunds NYPD. Just have to add your name and neighborhood! (TY to montanasimone.com for sharing)
• For Providence people, this link has an email addressing Governor Raimondo, Mayor Elorza, and the members of the City Council’s Finance Committee demanding they defund the Providence Police.
• Maya Frieden made a template email for people to send to school districts to get cops out of schools! Easy to copy and edit to make more applicable to your community!

Sign petitions & email governors to grant incarcerated people clemency during this pandemic and beyond. Survived and Punished has a list of petitions for Gov. Gavin Newsom to finally grant clemency to survivors of sexual & domestic violence incarcerated for self-defense. Start there!

If you have the financial means, maybe find ways to make this work part of your life! Abolition needs people in every field to create the conditions for safety in our own communities and to dismantle state violence piece by piece. For me, this work has helped me to reflect on the ways that I can align all of my relationships & work with my political values. Still working on this of course!

“The work of abolition insists that we foreground the people who are behind the walls—that we listen to them, that we take their ideas seriously. It insists that we address things like the surveillance state and economic and environmental justice. That we have to transform the relationships that we have with each other so we can really create new forms of safety and justice in our communities. Mainly it insists that it is necessary that we change everything. It necessitates asking questions of everybody involved about what can we do instead of prisons and police. In that way, a big part of the abolitionist project that I’ve been involved in now for over a decade and a half at least, is unleashing people’s imaginations while getting concrete—so that we have to imagine while we build, always both.” - Mariame Kaba, Towards the Horizon of Abolition (2017)