Making Abolitionist Worlds

Abolition: A Journal of Insurgent Politics is a collectively-run project supporting radical scholarly and activist ideas, poetry, and art that encourages us to make the impossible possible, to seek transformation well beyond policy changes, and toward revolutionary abolitionism.

"This brilliant and absorbing collection of rigorous research, thoughtful political interventions, and innovative works of art is immensely important to the practice of committed scholars, activists, and organizers. There is much that teaches, fortifies, motivates, and mobilizes here."—Laleh Khalili, author of Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula and Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies.“The Abolition Collective offers a unique, revolutionary lens through which to view, analyze, and fight against capitalism and patriarchy on the terrain of the prison-industrial complex. It aims to combine an abolitionist message with a democratic production process that prioritizes participation of those directly affected by incarceration. What a welcome and needed approach! I am confident the project will help intellectuals build ties of solidarity across race, class, gender, nationality, and other borders that block liberation and in its finest moments will help teach us, as Mumia says, to ‘fight with light in our eyes.’”—James Kilgore, author of Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People's Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time

• IntroductionManifesto of the Abolition JournalDis-Organizing Prisons and Building Together, Inside/Outside—Stevie WilsonIt Has to Burn Before It Can Grow: An Interview with Amanda Priebe—Brooke LoberBurn It Down: Abolition, Insurgent Political Praxis, and the Destruction of Decency—Katherine, Kelly, and AbrahamAlready Something More: Heteropatriarchy and the Limitations of Rights, Inclusion, and the Universal—J SebastianDemocracy Against Representation: A Radical Realist View—Paul RaekstadA Family Like Mine—Shana L. RedmondAbuse Thrives on Silence: The #VaughnRebellion in Context—Kim WilsonFrom the Vaughn Uprising: “For a Safer, More Secure, and More Humane Prison.” On Behalf of the Prisoners at James T. Vaughn Correctional CenterAggrieved Whiteness: White Identity Politics and Modern American Racial Formation—Mike KingAbolitionist Democracy: Fear, Loathing, and Violence in the 2016 Campaign—Joy JamesThe Pitfalls of White Liberal Panic—Dylan RodríguezAs the US Oligarchy Expands Its War, Middle Class White People Must Take a Side—Robert NicholsNotes on Photography, Power, and Insurgent Looks—Stefanie FockWe Can Be Here Another Five Hundred Years: A Critical Reflection on Shiri Pasternak’s Grounded Authority—Nick EstesHow Does State Sovereignty Matter?—Shiri Pasternak’s Response to Nick EstesZionism and Native American Studies—Steven SalaitaI Will Kiss the Ground of My Cell… As It Is Part of My Homeland, Spatial Politics and Gender: Israel’s Carcerality of Palestinian Women—Nicole PrintyIs Marxism Relevant? Some Uses and Misuses—David Gilbert, political prisoner.Meeting Mumia Abu-Jamal: The Most Well-Known Political Prisoner in the US—Robyn C. Spencer Art by: Heidi Sincuba, Amanda Priebe, Nilda Brooklyn and Adrien Leavitt, Priti Gulati Cox, Jesus Barraza and Melanie Cervantes, and Jess X. Snow