organizing
What Solidarity Looks Like
A collaboration between the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago and Northwestern University is helping to save lives by honoring multiple forms of expertise.
community organizing
44 posts in ‘community organizing’
activism
Iron Bars to Iron Will
People ask me now, three years since my release, what freedom feels like. It feels like the protests in Minneapolis.
activism
“I Was Just a Body”
Temp agencies rely on a constant stream of formerly incarcerated workers to keep jobs unstable and wages low.
advocacy
Ending Felony Disenfranchisement
More than half of states do not automatically restore voting rights upon release from prison. A short film contributes to the effort underway in Georgia to end this anti-democratic practice.
culture
The Prison Spectacle
How reality TV turns incarceration into entertainment—and helps strengthen the very systems of violence it claims to expose.
Futures
The Fight Over Prison Flipping
As shuttered jails and prisons become luxury venues, a growing movement is calling for community-led alternatives that honor the sites’ violent histories.
A closer look
Stop Cop City’s Deep Roots
For 150 years, Atlanta has endured racist policing that has served the interest of the city’s economic elite. The fight to resist this “Atlanta way” goes back just as far.
democracy & power
The Canary in the Coal Mine
A number of factors—including a willingness of law enforcement to collude with federal authorities—make Los Angeles a distressing bellwether of a country succumbing to authoritarianism.
abolition
Finding the Opportunity in Crisis
The public’s appetite for meaningful change ebbs and flows. When it peaks, how do organizers capture that energy and channel it into the fight to end mass incarceration?
abolition
Following the Money
Attempts by carceral authorities to shield their funding sources from public interference are proof that working to interrupt money flows is an effective way to oppose prisons.
abolition
Organizing the Already Mobilized
People involved with labor justice, grassroots community-building, and independent watchdogs make obvious allies for abolitionists—but how do we win them to our cause?
abolition
Custody and Power
Those wishing to abolish prisons must understand the legal and financial mechanisms through which the carceral state organizes itself to hold people against their will.
abolition
Abolition and Environmental Justice
Solidarity between abolitionist and environmental justice organizers doesn’t just happen. It results from careful, long-term work to unearth a shared set of goals.
abolition
Uneven Expansions
In the fight to abolish prisons, it’s vital to attend simultaneously to the scale of U.S. mass incarceration and how it manifests differently in specific regions.
abolition
Abolitionist Lessons from the Prison Belts
In a six-part series, we look at how organizers can adapt lessons learned in twenty-five years of abolitionist organizing to their own political terrains, with examples from Appalachia, California, and…
interventions
Changing Courts from the Ballot Box
In Los Angeles, judges are elected, and most are lifelong prosecutors. Community members are now fighting this carceral status quo by working to elect career public defenders.
In Depth
Turning Death into a Commodity
ShotSpotter has leveraged gun violence into a multimillion-dollar business that promises safety but delivers only increased policing and drain on the public’s resources.
Criminalizing Dissent
The Tools of Repression
The sweeping conspiracy and terrorism indictment of Stop Cop City activists reveals the new playbook for state suppression of protest. But we can still win.
culture
Punishment TV
We are fighting to end carceral reality TV—including shows such as ‘60 Days In’—because no one should profit from punishment.
activism
Back to the Basics
At a time of political realignment, progressive movements need to get back to building relationships, across differences, and growing their base.
organizing
Build Your Fortress
Now more than ever communities must protect our own, even as we prepare for a long battle.
Essay
The Ferguson Decade
A decade on, Ferguson remains central for those working toward a world free from the harms of policing and prisons.
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.
social control
Safety from Surveillance
In their fight to get ShotSpotter out of Chicago, organizers have emphasized the ways that for-profit technology can never deliver on its promises to make communities safer.
Policing
Safety Without Police
Even before the uprisings in Minneapolis, communities have been radically reimagining a world that doesn’t depend on policing.
organizing
A Safer, Healthier Boston
In seeking funding for non-carceral mental health crisis response, we're hoping to bring a small piece of our abolitionist horizon to our city.
organizing
Letcher Is Us
A new prison won’t fix the many problems that afflict our community. Only a vision for, and investment in, a different future will.
abolition
For the People’s Health
Abolition and public health go hand in hand. Organizers are embracing both as they pursue decarceral projects that center everyone’s well-being.
Futures
Abolition as Human Liberation
A hopeful, practical new book shows how abolitionist organizers today are building the world anew.
advocacy
Back to Appalachia
They were incarcerated in Eastern Kentucky, far from home. Now they’re free and back, hoping the region won’t build a new prison there.