By Kaagni Harekal Over the past year, ‘social work’ and ‘community building’ have become catch-all phrases in conversations about prison and police abolition. The presumption in deploying these terms is that a) they are capacious and resilient enough to accommodate… Continue Reading
By Shanelle Gordon In her piece, “Why Arguments Against Abolition Inevitably Fail,” Angela Davis described the historical tension between the concepts of reform and abolition, and how the dynamic between the two is presently changing: The insight that racism is… Continue Reading
By Brandon Vines Charles Monnet, Assemblée Nationale Abandon de Tous les Privileges, Etching (1790). Available from the Library of Congress. As every first-year law student quickly learns, property rights are a bundle of sticks. An absolute landowner has a full… Continue Reading
By Shanelle Gordon “Speak to the Past and It Shall Teach Thee.” –Inscription on John Carter Brown Library, Providence, Rhode Island. I used to walk past the John Carter Brown Library almost every day in college on my way from… Continue Reading
By Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak The collective project of the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought at Abolition Democracy 13/13 was on a) capital reparations, b) Black Lives Matter, and c) the global future. My interest is in the fact that… Continue Reading
By Sania Anwar Left: February 1968 front cover of a monthly student newspaper founded by the New York Urban League for students of Harlem Prep, Newark Prep, and the Street Academies. The inside page of this issue has an article… Continue Reading
By S. Shabzadeh “So, what do you think our chances of immigrating to Canada are?” he asked me as he attempted to bring his unruly son onto his lap. Looking at my cousin I could see the toll of years… Continue Reading
By Kedar Shrinivas Vishwanathan Central to the continuing movement for a better and more racially just and equal society, abolitionists have called for reparations. During the Reconstruction period, reparations were offered in land grants and then subsequently expropriated by white… Continue Reading
By Anita Yandle When first drafting this piece, I wanted to focus on imagination as an organizing tool: Dreaming of a better world that can guide us to create it. But then, a police officer killed Daunte Wright during the… Continue Reading