If not prisons and police, then what? Abolitionists advocate for a varied ecosystem of approaches to reducing harm and building safer communities, Divesting from policing and prisons and investing in communities is a core tenet of abolitionism. Transformative justice is another key area of focus.
Creative Interventions Toolkit by 
Fumbling Towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Facilitators by 
Challenging the Prison-Industrial Complex: Activism, Arts, and Educational Alternatives by
Building an abolition democracy; or, the fight against public fear, private benefits, and prison expansion / Erica R. Meiners -- Poem. Another day in the Champaign County Jail / Dennis Mansker -- Militarizing the police : Officer Jon Burge, torture, and war in the "urban jungle" / Julilly Kohler-Hausmann -- Poem. Gotta be careful where ya plant ya feet / Marvin Mays -- Killing democracy; or, how the drug war drives the prison-industrial complex / Daniel Mark Larson -- Poem. Another day / Erika Baro -- Teaching you to love fear : television news and racial stereotypes in a punishing democracy / Travis L. Dixon -- Poem. In search of salvation / William T. Smith -- Diagnosing the schools-to-prisons pipeline : maximum security, minimum learning / Rose Braz and Myesha Williams -- A piece of the reply : the Prison Creative Arts Project and practicing resistance / Buzz Alexander -- Poem. The poet's corner / George Hall -- Each one reach one : playwriting and community activism as redemption and prevention / Robin Sohnen -- Poem. Devil talks / Robert "Chicago" McCollum -- Fostering cultures of achievement in urban schools : how to work toward the abolition of the schools-to-prisons pipeline / Garrett Albert Duncan -- Poem. January 3, 2009 / Nicole Monahan -- Humanizing education behind bars : Shakespeare and the theater of empowerment / Jonathan Shailor -- Poem. Anger / Kenneth Sean Kelly -- Breaking down the walls : inside-out learning and the pedagogy of transformation / Lori Pompa.
Feminist Accountability by
Explores accountability as a framework for building movements to transform systemic oppression and violence. What does it take to build communities to stand up to injustice and create social change? How do we work together to transform, without reproducing, systems of violence and oppression? In an age when feminism has become increasingly mainstream, noted feminist scholar and activist Ann Russo asks feminists to consider the ways that our own behavior might contribute to the interlocking systems of oppression that we aim to dismantle. Feminist Accountability offers an intersectional analysis of three main areas of feminism in practice: anti-racist work, community accountability and transformative justice, and US-based work in and about violence in the global south. Russo explores accountability as a set of frameworks and practices for community- and movement-building against oppression and violence. Rather than evading the ways that we are implicated, complicit, or actively engaged in harm, Russo shows us how we might cultivate accountability so that we can contribute to the feminist work of transforming oppression and violence. Among many others, Russo brings up the example of the most prominent and funded feminist and LGBT antiviolence organizations, which have become mainstream in social service, advocacy, and policy reform projects. This means they often approach violence through a social service and criminal legal lens that understands violence as an individual and interpersonal issue, rather than a social and political one. As a result, they ally with, rather than significantly challenge, the state institutions, policies, and systems that underlie and contribute to endemic violence. Grounded in theories, analyses, and politics developed by feminists of color and transnational feminists of the global south, with her own thirty plus years of participation in community building, organizing, and activism, Russo provides insider expertise and critical reflection on leveraging frameworks of accountability to upend inequitable divides and the culture that supports them.
Making Abolitionist Worlds: Proposals for a World on Fire by
Making Abolitionist Worlds gathers key insights and interventions from today's international abolitionist movement to pose the question: what does an abolitionist world look like? The Abolition Collective investigates the core challenges to social justice and the liberatory potential of social movements today from a range of personal, political, and analytical points of view, underscoring the urgency of an abolitionist politics that places prisons at the center of its critique and actions. In addition to centering and amplifying the continual struggles of incarcerated people who are actively working to transform prisons from the inside,Making Abolitionist Worlds animates the idea of abolitionist democracy and demands a radical re-imagining of the meaning and practice of democracy. The Abolition Collective brings us to an Israeli prison for a Palestinian feminist reflection on incarceration within settler colonialism; to protest movements in Hong Kong and elsewhere, that use "abolition democracy" to advocate for the abolition of the police; to the growing culture of "aggrieved whiteness" in the United States, which trucks in fear, anger, victimhood, and a demand for vengeance to maintain white supremacy; to the punitive landscapes that extend from the incarceration of political prisoners to the mass deportations and detentions along the U.S. southern border. Making Abolitionist Worlds shows us that the paths forged today for a world in formation are rooted in antiracism, decolonization, anticapitalism, abolitionist feminism, and queer liberation.
Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity during This Crisis (And the Next) by
Mutual aid is the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world. Around the globe, people are faced with a spiralling succession of crises, from the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change-induced fires, floods, and storms to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, racist policing, brutal immigration enforcement, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. As governments fail to respond to--or actively engineer--each crisis, ordinary people are finding bold and innovative ways to share resources and support the vulnerable. Survival work, when done alongside social movement demands for transformative change, is called mutual aid. This book is about mutual aid: why it is so important, what it looks like, and how to do it. It provides a grassroots theory of mutual aid, describes how mutual aid is a crucial part of powerful movements for social justice, and offers concrete tools for organizing, such as how to work in groups, how to foster a collective decision-making process, how to prevent and address conflict, and how to deal with burnout. Writing for those new to activism as well as those who have been in social movements for a long time, Dean Spade draws on years of organizing to offer a radical vision of community mobilization, social transformation, compassionate activism, and solidarity.
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex by
A $1.3 trillion industry, the US nonprofit sector is the world's seventh largest economy. From art museums and university hospitals to think tanks and church charities, over 1.5 million organizations of staggering diversity share the tax-exempt 501(c)(3) designation, if little else. Many social justice organizations have joined this world, often blunting political goals to satisfy government and foundation mandates. But even as funding shrinks and government surveillance rises, many activists often find it difficult to imagine movement-building outside the nonprofit model. The Revolution Will Not Be Funded gathers original essays by radical activists from around the globe who are critically rethinking the long-term consequences of this investment. Together with educators and nonprofit staff they finally name the nonprofit industrial complex and ask hard questions: How did politics shape the birth of the nonprofit model? How does 501(c)(3) status allow the state to co-opt political movements? Activists or -careerists? How do we fund the movement outside this complex? Urgent and visionary, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded is an unbeholden expos of the nonprofit industrial complex and its quietly devastating role in managing dissent.
Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction by
Liberatory Harm Reduction is one of the most important interventions of the 20th century, and yet a compilation of its critical stories and voices was, until now, seemingly nowhere to be found. Saving Our Own Lives, an anthology of essays from long-time organizer Shira Hassan, fills this gap by telling the stories of how sex workers, Black, Indigenous, and people of color, queer folks, trans, gender non-conforming, and two-spirit people are - and have been - building systems of change and support outside the societal frameworks of oppression and exploitation. At a political moment when Liberatory Harm Reduction and mutual aid are more important than ever, this book serves as an inspiration and a catalyst for radical transformation of our world.
Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair by
Danielle Sered, the executive director of Common Justice and renowned expert on violence, offers pragmatic solutions that take the place of prison, meeting the needs of survivors and creating pathways for people who have committed violence to repair harm. Critically, Sered argues that reckoning is owed not only on the part of individuals who have caused violence, but also by our nation for its overreliance on incarceration to produce safety--at a great cost to communities, survivors, racial equity, and the very fabric of our democracy. Although over half the people incarcerated in America today have committed violent offenses, the focus of reformers has been almost entirely on nonviolent and drug offenses. Called "innovative" and "truly remarkable" by The Atlantic and "a top-notch entry into the burgeoning incarceration debate" by Kirkus Reviews, Sered's Until We Reckon argues with searing force and clarity that our communities are safer the less we rely on prisons and jails as a solution for wrongdoing. Sered asks us to reconsider the purposes of incarceration and argues persuasively that the needs of survivors of violent crime are better met by asking people who commit violence to accept responsibility for their actions and make amends in ways that are meaningful to those they have hurt--none of which happens in the context of a criminal trial or a prison sentence.
