A collection of short pieces written (or in some cases co-written) by Mariame Kaba, an abolitionist organizer in the US. Over her many years of involvement, she has done an incredible amount of work that exemplifies that quintessential abolitionist synthesis of the radical and the practical. She has thought deeply about what she does (and has also put a great deal of effort into mentoring younger organizers), and the pieces collected here are part of her sharing those insights with a larger public. As I’ve mentioned in prior reviews, I don’t like reading collections as much as I used to, but this one seemed well curated and I didn’t mind its collection-ness. It is very accessible and readable – there is something about Kaba’s voice and writing sensibility, perhaps her keen moral/political and rhetorical clarity, that feels to me to be just as much a product of refinement through struggle as her politics and organizing skills. Overall, I would say it’s a book that is well worth reading for understanding contemporary struggles around policing and prisons, both for those who are new to such things and in a different way for those who are more familiar. I would bet, though I have certainly not read widely enough to say this definitively, that it is among the better resources published in the last couple of years attempting to popularize abolitionist ideas.
Also…this is a bit of an aside, but given how deeply embedded such ideas are in settings constructed through shared experiences of struggle and collective practices, I wonder a bit about what impact their current rapid uptake in so many non-movement (or at least non-abolitionist) contexts is having. But, still, the risk of being misunderstood, or of having vocabulary appropriated by those who refuse the core but want the appearance of the relevant politics, is no reason not to say what needs to be said, and hopefully careful reading of Kaba’s careful articulation of these ideas will help them change minds and radicalize hearts as they travel.
Originally posted by Scott on Goodreads.