On Abolition
Abolition reading list and tweets
First, prerequisite thoughts in On Black Liberation and prior articles. Reading those might be helpful prerequisites to the following books about abolition. This page is (so far) only going to contain links to others' work on abolition, in case you'd like to learn more about it. I haven't yet gotten to all these, so this list is also for my sake.
Reading List
If you're new to abolition:
If you need something concise & easy:
- "Prisons Make Us Safer": And 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration by Victoria Law
- Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis
If you're an academia nerd:
- Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation by Ruth Wilson Gilmore
If you wanna feel hopeful for the future:
- Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination by Robin D.G. Kelley
If you wanna understand how we got here:
- America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s by Elizabeth Hinton
- Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur
- Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson
Want to hear from a lot of different voices:
- Abolition For The People by Colin Kaepernick
Don't understand what comes after we get rid of the cops?
- Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement edited by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ejeris Dixon
- Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis (And the Next) by Dean Spade
- The Care We Dream of: Liberatory and Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health edited by Zena Sharman
Thanks to twitter user @RoomofOnesOwn for compiling this list.
Tweets
News citing obvious lies - Oct 27, 2022 (src)
David Kaib (@DavidKaib), who writes here, quotetweets WNYC Reporter Matt Katz (@mattkatz00):
This is an obvious lie in service of doing something indefensible. That prison and jail officials lie so blatantly and that journalists treat those lies as true is disgusting.
Citing fentanyl-soaked children’s drawings, love letters, prayer schedules, and T-shirts, NYC to ban incarcerated people from getting letters in the mail: Citing drugs at Rikers, NYC to ban incarcerated people from getting letters in the mail (via wnyc.org)
index tags: Reading List, Abolition, Communists, America, North America, Africa, Mass Incarceration, LGBTQ+, ACAB, Health(care), We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice, Mariame Kaba, Prisons Make Us Safer And 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration, Victoria Law, Are Prisons Obsolete?, Angela Y. Davis, Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, Robin D.G. Kelley, America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s, Elizabeth Hinton, Assata: An Autobiography, Assata Shakur, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, Heather Ann Thompson, Abolition For The People, Colin Kaepernick, Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Ejeris Dixon, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis (And the Next), Dean Spade, The Care We Dream of: Liberatory and Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health, Zena Sharman, @RoomofOnesOwn, Twitter, Backup, @DavidKaib, @mattkatz00
category tags: Media Lists