We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice: 1 (Abolitionist Papers, 1)

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Some of the arguments she makes can be challenging to understand, particularly because they go against the Western pro-punishment system we are used to, but Kaba recognizes this and encourages the reader to be open-minded and imaginative. A central tenant in prison abolition is challenging how society views and understands punishment, harm and violence. This section focuses on differentiating between accountability and punishment. What follows are some lessons and takeaways from We Do This ‘Til We Free Us, a small slice of the wisdom the book offers the world. As Naomi Murakawa puts it in her foreword to the book, “Kaba’s abolitionist vision burns so bright precisely because she refuses to be the single star, dazzling alone. Why be a star when you can make a constellation?” If some of these points sound familiar, it is likely because Kaba and her collaborators, as stars in the constellation of abolitionists organizing and educating tirelessly over the past several decades, have worked so hard to popularize, concretize, and practice them: As Mariame shows time and time again, a potential for transformation and for change cannot just be the basis of positive rhetoric, but must be enacted—this involves risk. And in short, we must experiment. To this end, several pieces in this book seek to inform readers of how we can practice abolitionist organizing. Whether the battle and historic victory for reparations for survivors of police torture in Chicago, the campaign to hold Chicago Police Department officer Dante Servin accountable for the murder of Rekia Boyd, defense campaigns for criminalized and incarcerated survivors like Marissa Alexander, the #NoCopAcademy campaign in Chicago, and, in response to the murder of Breonna Taylor, a call for reparations and repair rather than the prosecution of officers—all are committed to abolitionist praxis. Part 1 finishes with Kaba focusing on the importance of hope as a grounded practice in prison abolition work. In an interview by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein, Kaba states, “I always tell people, for me, hope doesn’t preclude feeling sadness or frustration or anger or any other emotion that makes total sense. Hope isn’t an emotion, you know? Hope is not optimism” (p. 26). Kaba views hope as something you practice, a philosophy that is essential in the sustained fight for prison abolition. Part 2: There Are No Perfect Victims

This suite of essays and interviews blends the verve, insight, skill, and generosity of one of the most brilliant abolitionist thinkers, curators, and organizers of our time. Marked by lush imagination, care, and strategic acumen, We Do This ’Til We Free Us is a manual for all those who want to create new collectivities and new futures from the ashes of entire systems of carcerality, racism, sexism, and capitalism. Always teaching us how to ‘have each other,’ there is no wiser or more inspirational figure in the fight for justice than Mariame Kaba.” — Sarah Haley, author, No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity Mariame also shares that she is grappling more with punishment and revenge as elements of carceral logic, even when enacted outside of the criminal legal system. One of Mariame’s touchstones, Angela Y. Davis, has said, Mariame’s wisdom trues my restorative justice compass. The restorative justice movement has much to learn from Mariame’s steadfast commitment to protecting our approaches to harm and healing from state cooptation and control. Her unwavering belief in ‘we got us’ offers powerful inspiration to imagine, ground, and elevate our practice. What a gift!” — sujatha baliga, Restorative Justice Practitioner All three of these cases feel like a singular “win,” but still feed into a toxic system that doesn’t serve, and instead repeatedly hurts, those communities. As long as the criminal justice system exists as we know it today, this individualization of stories is not helpful in the fight for abolition, as they provide nothing for the collective transformative and restorative justice-focused restructuring of society. Participatory defense campaigns, or campaigns to free individuals from prison, are a key abolitionist practice. They are most effective when operating from an abolitionist framework which insists that all people must be freed, rather than holding up one individual as innocent and therefore not deserving of the suffering faced by the guilty. Participatory defense campaigns create containers for mass action in support of criminalized individuals through tactics including letter writing, direct financial support, prisons visits, and other forms of coordinated care.

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Organizers, on the other hand, “... can’t exist solo. Because who the hell are you organizing? You can’t just decide to wake up one morning and be like, ‘I’m just going to do this shit.’ If you’re organizing, other people are counting on you, but, more importantly, your actions are accountable to somebody else.” (p 180). I'm very conscientious about not being the main person anywhere," Kaba said. "I don't want that. I want to work with other people. I very carefully and deliberately choose how I'm going to show up in the world. I always want to make sure I'm always opening the door for other people. That, to me, is really important. We always need more people." Brimming with organizing insights and burning questions, this collection is a must-read for those engaged in or looking to learn more about the movement to abolish the prison-industrial complex. We Do This ‘Til We Free Us so clearly and beautifully shows us that the road to abolition is paved in collective struggle, solidarity, accountability, love, and ‘a million different little experiments.'” — Emily Thuma, author, All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence

What if social transformation and liberation isn’t about waiting for someone else to come along and save us? What if ordinary people have the power to collectively free ourselves? In this timely collection of essays and interviews, Mariame Kaba reflects on the deep work of abolition and transformative political struggle. All of a sudden, people had a real interest in abolitionist thinking and abolitionist organizing," Kaba said. She said she believed abolishing the prison-industrial complex, sometimes known as the PIC, "would be popular eventually. It was my belief that more people would want to engage an abolitionist vision and practice. I've always believed that. But I still think PIC abolition is an unpopular view … and we have a lot of work to do to bring more people in." The police have always undergone “reform” yet police violence has never stopped, because violence is inherent to — rather than an unfortunate byproduct of — policing. Give up on reform. When you say, ‘What would we do without prisons?’ what you are really saying is: ‘What would we do without civil death, exploitation, and state-sanctioned violence?’” (62). Abolitionism is not a politics mediated by emotional responses” (133). Advocating for someone’s incarceration, no matter who they are or how much you hate them, is not abolitionist. And you don’t have to be an abolitionist, but if you are, a key element of an abolitionist politic is opposing policing, prisons, and surveillance in every and any iteration.Cages confine people, not the conditions that facilitated their harms or the mentalities that perpetuate violence” (24). Prisons cannot, will not, and are not designed to prevent harm or provide healing. I want to say this is a ‘generation-defining’ book, but that feels wrong because I know it will be shaping political imaginations for a century or more. It's generations-defining. This is a classic in the vein of Sister Outsider, a book that will spark countless radical imaginations.” — Eve L. Ewing, author, 1919

Precision around what exactly we are opposing is key. Objecting primarily to police “militarization” can implicitly condone and normalize “regular” — yet routinely and supremely deadly — policing. When we draw one’s focus to the exceptional, we rationalize the normal. But the normal is lethal. We must aim to slash through the system as a whole, not trim at its perceived edges. Though tanks and military gear must of course be opposed, “old-fashioned, non-high-tech tools of surveillance are already destructive and devastating” (90). If you follow Mariame Kaba on social media, or even know a little bit about her resolute political work, it probably will not surprise you to learn that she was initially reticent about this book. Characteristically, Mariame wasn’t sure an entire project should be solely developed around her. Over the years, Mariame has declined previous requests from Haymarket Books to publish a collection of her writings. As summer 2020 approached, Haymarket asked again. Most organizers are activists also, but most activists are not organizers, and so we just have to be clear about what we’re trying to achieve” (p. 180). What if social transformation and liberation isn't about waiting for someone else to come along and save us? What if ordinary people have the power to collectively free ourselves? In this timely collection of essays and interviews, Mariame Kaba reflects on the deep work of abolition and transformative political struggle.

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Let’s #FreeCyntoiaBrown—not only from the cage she has unjustly been held in for the past thirteen years for fighting for her life, but also from narratives that take away her agency and police and control what it means to be a survivor of violence. And let’s do the same for all young people in the sex trade, and all survivors of violence. (p. 40)

This book makes the task in front of us ever-more urgent but ever-more doable. It reveals abolition to be something we must practice and build together, and something that many are already doing. Kaba points not to any single solution but rather offers on ramps to a thousand new experiments in liberation and care, experiments that learn from past failures and chart new terrains of freedom. Anyone and everyone who has had the privilege of learning from Mariame Kaba has been transformed into a better thinker, organizer, artist, and human. What Kaba does is light the path to abolition and liberation with equal parts intelligence and compassion, experience and hope. This book brings together the scattered pieces of her wisdom she has shared publicly in different venues so that those who don't have the pleasure of sitting and learning with her can absorb a small part of what makes Kaba one of the most impressive and important thinkers and organizers of our time. Let this work fortify those who are already engaged in the struggle and be an energetic spark for those just starting out on this path to freedom.” — Mychal Denzel Smith, author, Stakes is High: Life After the American DreamRestorative Justice: This is “focused on the importance of relationships. It is focused on the importance of repair when those relationships are broken when violations occur in our relationships. It is very much interested in community” (p. 148). Hopefully, though, many readers will come to this book with no clue who Mariame Kaba is, or with little knowledge of her significance to the contemporary abolitionist movement. Simply, we want as many people as possible to learn more about abolition, and Mariame’s writings and interviews provide a compelling introduction. The PIC, the courts, the state — none of these will ever be a source of true justice. On rare occasions, they may eat one of their own: a killer cop, a rich and powerful white male abuser, a perpetrator of immense financial harm. But more often, the harms committed by each of these groups (cops, abusers, corporations) are excused behaviors, many of which are legal and routine features of our system. It’s not wrong to feel what you feel — relief, or even happiness — when the system snaps up the powerful, but the only way to achieve real justice is to build it ourselves, outside of the system. We can and must collectively build a world without policing, prisons, surveillance, punishment, and capitalism––a world in which all are equipped with the tools to prevent and transform harm, one in which everyone has what they need to thrive in community with others.