A Thousand Possibilities
Abolition requires the world-building work of imagining all the many life-affirming alternatives to incarceration.
76 posts in ‘bookshelf’
Abolition requires the world-building work of imagining all the many life-affirming alternatives to incarceration.
Participatory defense gives families and communities an opportunity to protect their own in courtroom spaces that have long robbed them of power.
Defund gives us a platform and pathway to reimagine a society with less police, more care, and services that meet the needs of all.
When people need care, then the solution should be to get them care, not increase the risk of police violence.
A hopeful, practical new book shows how abolitionist organizers today are building the world anew.
The D.A.R.E. program turned students into snitches, leading to the arrest and incarceration of friends and loved ones who used drugs.
After Hurricane Katrina, law enforcement criminalized sex work and Black women like never before. We fought back—and won.
Police academies socialize officers into an us-versus-them mentality—particularly when it comes to activists—and harden them to any attempts at reform.
Reacquainting ourselves with practices that made prisons more permeable can be a step toward ending mass incarceration.
Policing on college campuses falls hardest on formerly incarcerated students, leaving them and the broader community unprotected.
So-called “smart” borders are just more sophisticated sites of racialized surveillance and violence. We need abolitionist tools to counter them.
How might we reimagine our rights and liberties in the absence of incarceration?
Taking criminal law out of immigration enforcement is a step toward safer, healthier communities. But is it enough?
Jails are everywhere, trapping people and resources belonging to communities. And everywhere, there are organizers contesting that reality.
The oral histories of political prisoners shed light on their true character—and expose the darkness of the state.
As 2023 draws to a close, a look back at the books that informed, inspired, and empowered us to work for a world without mass incarceration.
How white, middle-class youth in the suburbs experienced the war on drugs is a largely untold chapter in the arc of mass incarceration.
The crisis of youth incarceration won’t be solved by cynical attempts to co-opt the language of grassroots organizing.
A new book centers prisons in the history of U.S. empire, reminding us of the need for international solidarity in the fight for freedom.
Anti-jail organizers scored important wins in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But their fight isn’t over.
Attica represents far more than a historic rebellion about prison reform. Its revolutionary abolitionist vision endures today.
In the criminal system, having your life constrained and restricted, even after your sentence is over, has become a fact of life.
The work of tearing down structures of harm while building the world we want can and must start small.
To truly provide justice for those with criminal records, we must question harmful binaries that separate “good” from “bad” immigrants.
The state spies upon and infiltrates social movements to keep people on guard, afraid, and second-guessing their every move.
Probation and parole in the United States don’t work. A longtime reformer and advocate has drawn a blueprint to end them.
When slain by police, Black women and girls rarely garner the same communal outcry or political response as their fallen Black brothers.
There are many forms of resistance undertaken by relatives and friends of incarcerated people, but the system renders them invisible.
Acting within the criminal legal system cannot be the solution, on its own, to the existence of the carceral state.
Organizing and collective acts of resistance allow us to not only imagine new understandings of justice and safety, but to live them out.