Scan barcode
A review by ivanainthecity
We Do This 'til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice by Mariame Kaba
5.0
Endlessly hopeful and enlightening, Mariame Kaba’s WE DO THIS ‘TIL WE FREE US: ABOLITIONIST ORGANIZING AND TRANSFORMING JUSTICE is an essential read for anyone interested in the abolition of the prison industrial complex. This was a natural next book for me after I finished Angela Davis’s brilliant book, ARE PRISONS OBSOLETE? back in May. I took my time with this one —7 months, to be exact! The book is just under 200 pages, but every essay, speech, and interview is jam-packed with so much knowledge and wisdom that I had to force myself to stop and just let her ideas simmer and marinate.
Kaba inspires us to collectively use our imaginations to envision a world without police and prisons. It’s true that “[a]s a society, we have been so indoctrinated with the idea that we solve problems by policing and caging people that many cannot imagine anything other than prisons and the police as solutions to violence and harm.” But why rely on a system that is so deeply rooted in anti-Blackness and continues to cause so much harm? And how do we rid ourselves of the “cops in our head and hearts”?
Kaba invites us to think about the difference between punishment and consequences. We are conditioned to think about ~justice~ in terms of punishment, and not in terms of accountability, repairing harm, and questioning the root causes of the harm: “When a civilian has committed an egregious harm, the national solace we are taught to seek is to see them suffer. They must be thrown in a cage, and once they are, justice is considered to be done, and we can all move on with our lives without ever asking questions like: Why did this happen? Why does it keep happening? And is there something we could change that would make this tragedy unthinkable in the first place?” Justice is not about revenge, or as Kaba more aptly puts it: “Abolition is not about your fucking feelings.”
(There is so much more to unpack in this nuanced gem of a book, esp regarding feminism and abolition, and I highly recommend this one to fans of Mikki Kendall’s HOOD FEMINISM.)
Kaba inspires us to collectively use our imaginations to envision a world without police and prisons. It’s true that “[a]s a society, we have been so indoctrinated with the idea that we solve problems by policing and caging people that many cannot imagine anything other than prisons and the police as solutions to violence and harm.” But why rely on a system that is so deeply rooted in anti-Blackness and continues to cause so much harm? And how do we rid ourselves of the “cops in our head and hearts”?
Kaba invites us to think about the difference between punishment and consequences. We are conditioned to think about ~justice~ in terms of punishment, and not in terms of accountability, repairing harm, and questioning the root causes of the harm: “When a civilian has committed an egregious harm, the national solace we are taught to seek is to see them suffer. They must be thrown in a cage, and once they are, justice is considered to be done, and we can all move on with our lives without ever asking questions like: Why did this happen? Why does it keep happening? And is there something we could change that would make this tragedy unthinkable in the first place?” Justice is not about revenge, or as Kaba more aptly puts it: “Abolition is not about your fucking feelings.”
(There is so much more to unpack in this nuanced gem of a book, esp regarding feminism and abolition, and I highly recommend this one to fans of Mikki Kendall’s HOOD FEMINISM.)