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bookshelf

92 posts in ‘bookshelf’

excerpt

No Refuge

Many women escaping violence in their home countries find themselves trapped in the formal violence of the asylum system.

Carol Cleaveland & Michele Waslin

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books

Raising Abolitionists

A new anthology invites parents into the work of building a world without prisons.

Kim Wilson, Maya Schenwar & Bill Ayers

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law & policy

Don’t Talk to the Cops

Your right against self-incrimination is not safe in a criminal system that cares more about coercing convictions than about finding the truth.

Justin Brooks

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racial capitalism

Mass Criminalization as Religion

The deification of whiteness and property has long legitimized the containment of Black, Indigenous, and other racialized peoples.

Andrew Krinks

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public health

The Prescription Police

Placing criminal system tools in health-care providers’ hands causes irreparable damage to patient care and public trust.

Elizabeth Chiarello

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A closer look

Whitewashing Police Violence

'Excited delirium syndrome' is a tool the state invented to evade accountability whenever people of color die at the hands of police.

Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús

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Local jails

Reforming Sheriffs

Electing progressive sheriffs only goes so far toward curbing the structural forces that sustain mass incarceration.

Jessica Pishko

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abolition

A Thousand Possibilities

Abolition requires the world-building work of imagining all the many life-affirming alternatives to incarceration.

Bill Ayers

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law & policy

Breaking the Chains

Ending prison slavery and giving fair wages to incarcerated workers are necessary steps on the pathway to justice.

Tommaso Bardelli, Andrew Ross & Aiyuba Thomas

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excerpt

No Good Prison

An incarcerated writer and advocate in California implores: “Don’t waste my time trying to make it more comfortable for me in here.”

Paula Lehman-Ewing

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abolition

The Transformation of Justice

What does genuine safety look like? And what will it take to prioritize it rather than simply managing inequality and other injustices?

Philip V. McHarris

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organizing

People-Powered Defense

Participatory defense gives families and communities an opportunity to protect their own in courtroom spaces that have long robbed them of power.

Raj Jayadev

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abolition

Community Is a Verb

Defund gives us a platform and pathway to reimagine a society with less police, more care, and services that meet the needs of all.

CalvinJohn Smiley

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Futures

Abolitionist Social Work

Social work must be anti-carceral, against oppression, and committed to ending the systems, structures, and ideologies that cause people harm.

The Network to Advance Abolitionist Social Work

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Policing

Safety Without Police

Even before the uprisings in Minneapolis, communities have been radically reimagining a world that doesn’t depend on policing.

Michelle Phelps

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Q&A

Picturing the Crisis

A new book uses art to make the horrors of mass incarceration as visual, and visceral, as possible.

Vic Liu, James Kilgore & Adam McGee

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culture

A Narrative of Control

Mass incarceration rests on false narratives that carceral institutions themselves control. But some of us are fighting back.

Lyle C. May

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Beyond Reform

Disability Justice Demands Abolition

When people need care, then the solution should be to get them care, not increase the risk of police violence.

Katie Tastrom

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Futures

Abolition as Human Liberation

A hopeful, practical new book shows how abolitionist organizers today are building the world anew.

Rachel Herzing, Justin Piché & Maya Schenwar

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Essay

Hip Hop Is My Life

I spit bars on Death Row to preserve the legacy of our people, what’s been done to us, and how we’ve fought back.

Alim Braxton

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excerpt

Dare to Report

The D.A.R.E. program turned students into snitches, leading to the arrest and incarceration of friends and loved ones who used drugs.

Max Felker-Kantor

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abolition

How We Rode the Storm

After Hurricane Katrina, law enforcement criminalized sex work and Black women like never before. We fought back—and won.

Laura McTighe & Women With A Vision

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Policing

The ‘Bad Guys’

Police academies socialize officers into an us-versus-them mentality—particularly when it comes to activists—and harden them to any attempts at reform.

Samantha J. Simon

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public history

Imprisoned by War

Racialized and violent, modern U.S. warmaking is inextricably linked with our history of mass incarceration.

Jason A. Higgins

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excerpt

Unmaking Prison Walls

Reacquainting ourselves with practices that made prisons more permeable can be a step toward ending mass incarceration.

Reiko Hillyer

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Policing

Unsafe on Campus

Policing on college campuses falls hardest on formerly incarcerated students, leaving them and the broader community unprotected.

Ryan Flaco Rising

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Big Data

Borders and Bytes

So-called “smart” borders are just more sophisticated sites of racialized surveillance and violence. We need abolitionist tools to counter them.

Ruha Benjamin

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Futures

Abolition Can Mend Our Democracy

How might we reimagine our rights and liberties in the absence of incarceration?

Angela Y. Davis

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Crimmigration

Decriminalizing Migration

Taking criminal law out of immigration enforcement is a step toward safer, healthier communities. But is it enough?

Cristian Farias

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book review

Outsmarting a Monster

Jails are everywhere, trapping people and resources belonging to communities. And everywhere, there are organizers contesting that reality.

Charlotte Rosen

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