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.