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Mariame Kaba is an organizer, educator and curator who is active
in movements for racial, gender, and transformative justice. She is
the founder and director of Project NIA, a grassroots organization
with a vision to end youth incarceration. Mariame is currently a
researcher at Interrupting Criminalization: Research in Action at
the Barnard Center for Research on Women, a project she co-founded
with Andrea Ritchie in 2018.
Mariame has co-founded multiple other organizations and projects
over the years including We Charge Genocide, the Chicago Freedom
School, the Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls and Young
Women, Love & Protect, the Just Practice Collaborative and Survived
& Punished.Mariame serves on the advisory boards of the Chicago
Torture Justice Memorials, Critical Resistance and the Chicago
Community Bond Fund.
about the impacts of incarceration on children and families.
"Mariame Kaba is a humble phenom in the most important of
traditions - abolition. What we have in these pages is a wide
ranging account of abolitionist theory in action - and that is no
easy feat. Through Kaba’s rigorous commitment to humanity, we are
reminded that another future is possible. We are fortunate that
Kaba’s praxis is accounted for in this compelling and incisive
text. For those of us who are eager to bring about a world where
Black lives matter, this is required reading."— Opal Tometi,
Co-Founder #BlackLivesMatter and founder Diaspora Rising
“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
“Mariame Kaba’s clarity, firm-but-gentle guidance, embracing
spirit, deep creativity, and love of laughter, demonstrate how
abolition is, in deed, presence. Thank goodness for this urgent
book.” —Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author, Change Everything
"One of the most fascinating developments during this age of Black
Lives Matter is how ‘abolition' has been integrated into mainstream
debates on how to change the United States. Yet there is still so
much not known or understood about the history, politics and
practice of abolition-informed politics. Longtime organizer and
educator, Mariame Kaba, is one of the most important voices in the
emergent abolitionist movement. We have all been waiting on this
book! Kaba and her collaborators write with urgency, while imbuing
critical insights with clarifying analyses into what it means to
demand an end to the reflexive impulse toward punishment that
defines much of our society." —Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author,
From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation
“Much of the vast living archive that is Mariame Kaba’s amazing
career as an abolitionist-feminist organizer, people’s
intellectual, movement strategist, and Black freedom fighter, is
not in written form. It is inscribed in her praxis: the many
campaigns she has crafted, the young people she has mentored, and
the organizations she has founded. But in this unique collection of
essays, interviews and transcribed speeches, we get a glimpse of
that brilliant and powerful body of work, and it is awe-inspiring
and instructive: a must-read for anyone serious about the struggle
for freedom and justice in the 21st century.”— Barbara Ransby,
historian, author, activist
“This book writes a political genealogy of one of our movement
era’s most significant intellectuals and community organizers and
her people into the record of a feminist and abolitionist Black
Radical Tradition. Kaba invites us all into a 500-year clock
through reflection, assessment, and celebration of the people who
dedicate their lives to social change. Yet again, she teaches us to
praise the choir, appreciate vulnerability and be disciplined in
service of transforming ourselves and the world in which we live.”—
Charlene A. Carruthers, author, Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and
Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements
"This is a long awaited book. For the throngs of people who have
been inspired by Mariame Kaba’s work, we now have – in one place –
her words, her keen analysis of criminalization, her relentless
critique of the carceral state and seemingly limitless optimism
about the possibilities of social transformation. For anyone who
has not yet been moved by her work, the search for a serious
discussion of abolitionists organizing is over. At once an urgent
call to action, a step-by-step guide to the practice of
transformative justice, a collection of inspirational interviews
and a few lighthearted reflections, this book will significantly
advance radical justice work. We Do This ‘Til We Free Us is just
what we need and it has arrived right on time." — Beth Richie,
author, Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America's
Prison Nation
"Mariame Kaba isn't trying to save the world. Instead, this
collection of liberatory practice serves as a building block for a
new kind of existance, filled with the hum only evolved humanity
can sound. Kaba returns questions unanswered; Kaba spirits the
flame untethered; Kaba is the water well in the middle of a thirsty
town. And in her unyielding abolition work, Mariame Kaba reveals
our reflection's purpose. She is generous in offering us a
blueprint to save ourselves."—Mahogany L. Browne, author, Chlorine
Sky, Woke: A Young Poet's Call to Justice and an Art for
Justice Bearing Witness Fellow
“So many of us have been introduced to abolition - or invited into
a deeper understanding and practice of abolitionist politics -
through Mariame Kaba's words, work, and vision, as well as her
brilliant sense of humor, skillful use of Twitter, love of poetry,
practice of hope, and appreciation of art. For those of us new to
abolition, this book is the primer we need. For those of us who
have been on an abolitionist journey, it is full of the reminders
we need. No matter where and how you enter the conversation, We Do
This ‘Til We Free Us brings all of us infinitely closer to creating
a world premised on genuine and lasting safety, justice, and
peace.” — Andrea J. Ritchie, author, Invisible No More: Police
Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color
"Mariame’s book is a treasure. Beginning with a tribute to her
father and her family's revolutionary roots in the struggle for the
liberation of Guinea to the countless organizing campaigns that
mark the small and large victories of the contemporary abolitionist
movement in the U.S. – Mariame demonstrates the importance of
history, the urgent need for abolition, and, most importantly, the
possibilities for abolition in the here and now. This collection of
articles and interviews educates, inspires, and sets the course for
future abolitionist collective action. In page after page, Mariame
offers her unique and brilliant combination of unrelenting realism
and optimism, calling all of us to join in common struggle – one,
she constantly reminds us, that we can and must win." —Mimi
Kim
“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 Dream
“Mariame has the rarest of gifts: the ability to imagine a better
future, the skills to help construct it, and the courage to demand
it. For years, Mariame has been thinking through some of the
toughest questions about society's addiction to punishment, and We
Do This Til We Free Us showcases the extraordinary depths of her
knowledge about our criminal legal system. This book could not
arrive at a better time –as more people become familiar with
abolition, Mariame's words are especially critical. But it is
not just a book about systems. It's a book about people, the
powerful and the struggling. And, ultimately it is a book about
each of us— the values we possess and the choices we make. Mariame
has the uncanny ability to illuminate the murky and complicated
elements of who we are and give them voice. As an abolitionist,
Mariame is not just calling for the destruction of old systems, but
the creation of a new world. This book will change the way you
think about your community, your relationships, and yourself.” —
Josie Duffy Rice, writer
"Mariame Kaba is a people's historian, an ultra-practical problem
solver, and a visionary prophet whose work dreams and builds a
world made by collaboration and healing where putting people in
cages is unimaginable. We Do This 'Til We Free Us is packed with
Kaba's brilliant insights and detailed examples of how the work of
abolition is put into practice in grassroots campaigns. Kaba's
boundless creativity is rooted in her rigorous study of resistance
and inspiration, and the wisdom of her words is woven through with
poetry, literature, history and music, so that her offerings are
both grounded in practical discernment and inclined toward our most
robust imagination of what freedom could mean. This book will be
both a practical tool and a source of comfort in hard times for
change-makers and world-builders."— Dean Spade, author, Mutual Aid:
Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)
“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
“We Do This ‘Til We Free Us is an organizer’s gift: a vision of
abolition that is also a practice of it and a roadmap. Essay by
essay, Mariame Kaba guides us through the abolitionist futures she
has created in real time by turning questions into experiments,
learning from failures as much as successes, and doing everything
with other people. Let her words radicalize you, let them unlock
your imagination, let them teach you how to practice hope, and let
them show you why the everyday is the terrain of our greatest
abolitionist creations. We Do This ‘Til We Free Us is not a book to
be read; it is a portal to a collective project of liberation that
literally requires every last one of us.” — Laura McTighe, Front
Porch Research Strategies and Assistant Professor, Florida State
University
“In her new book, We Do This ‘Til We Free Us Mariame Kaba
demonstrates the ways that discipline—in intellect, in practice, in
relationship—leads not to despair, but to hope. The far-ranging
series of essays and interviews draws on her deep practice as a
seasoned organizer who persistently distills the questions
surrounding abolition to basic human decisions about the world we
want to inhabit and how we will go about building it. Abolition, as
Mariame sees and practices, is fundamentally both generous and
pragmatic and her writing will move both seasoned abolitionists and
those just now asking these questions for the first time to join in
her conclusion that ‘your cynicism is unrealistic.”—Danielle Sered,
author, Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road
to Repair
“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
“The intertwined analysis and collective organizing archived in
this invaluable collection provides crucial entry points in the
everyday work of abolition. Engaging the most pressing questions of
our time with clarity and commitment, as always, Mariame makes
abolition irresistible, and as imperatively, doable.”— Erica R.
Meiners, author, For the Children: Protecting Innocence in a
Carceral State
“Working through a range of concepts and struggles – from the
criminalization of self-defense to what is needed to inspire our
imaginations toward abolition – We Do This ‘Til We Free Us truly
demonstrates Mariame Kaba’s teachings that ‘hope is a discipline.’
With this book Kaba brings with her a community of organizers,
workers and writers to show us how abolition is a practice and to
guide our actions for liberation.” —Simone Browne, author, Dark
Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness
“For the last 25 years, prison abolitionists have been treated like
the Don Quixote's of social justice movements, chasing an
impossibly unrealistic vision. In We Do This 'Til We Free Us, Kaba
demonstrates through her work as an organizer and scholar, that
putting an end to the carceral state is not only necessary but
possible. This collection offers a remarkable history of
abolitionist organizing, and a roadmap for the work we must do to
make a new world and transform ourselves in the process.” — Kenyon
Farrow, Co-Executive Director, Partners for Dignity & Rights
"We Do This ’Til We Free Us is a beacon, a watch fire, a guidepost
for all of us who are seeking transformational and life-giving
change in a death-dealing society, Mariame Kaba is a force of
nature, unafraid to step into great storms of violence. As this
long-awaited collection of abolitionist essays, interviews, and
conversations demonstrates, Kaba knows that relationships are at
the center of everything; that new possibilities and insights arise
from the organized efforts of ordinary people; that only collective
endeavor can move us forward. This isn’t simply a book. It’s a
portal." — Kay Whitlock, co-author Queer (In)Justice: The
Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States
“Mariame Kaba’s We Do This ‘Til We Free Us exudes her brilliance as
an organizer, educator, and visionary. A primer in abolition as an
organizing vision, strategy and practice, this collection of essays
is rooted in a structural analysis of policing, incarceration, and
surveillance while uplifting collective strategies, actions, and
practices that lend themselves toward ending these systems. The
collection shares some of the amazing abolitionist projects she’s
initiated, organized, and nurtured, and is a testament to the power
of collectivity and community. This is a book for those who have
never thought about abolition and for those who have thought about
it for years. Through the lens Mariame Kaba offers, the
possibilities for abolition become quite tangible, possible, even
inevitable.”— Ann Russo, author, Feminist Accountability:
Disrupting Violence and Transforming Power
“If ever there was a time we needed Mariame Kaba’s words and
insights all in one place, it is now! Principled, pragmatic and,
most of all, visionary, We Do This ‘Til We Free Us not only casts
an unflinching light on our violent carceral system, but
illuminates real pathways towards justice and freedom. This book
should be read, studied, and acted upon by everyone committed to
seeding new worlds amidst the ruins of the old.” — Ruha Benjamin,
Princeton University
“We Do This Til We Free Us'' is a series of essays that operate as
gifts, reflections, and political interventions from the humbly
prolific organizer Mariame Kaba. Whether contending with
abolitionist organizing, the application of transformative justice,
or relationships as survival, she creates necessary guideposts for
all of us. This is a deliciously nuanced read, one that you will
pick up multiple times, and receive something new each time. And,
this is a book designed to accompany your political endeavors,
inspiring you to deepen your activism and organizing, and insisting
that you, alongside Mariame, have a place in the creation of a more
liberatory society.”— Ejeris Dixon, organizer, strategist,
facilitator, and co-editor of Beyond Survival: Stories and
Strategies of the Transformative Justice Movement
“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
“This long-awaited collection of the works of Mariame Kaba is what
the movement for abolition needs right now. Kaba blends radical
critique, historical analysis, ground theory and practical
application to help guide organizers building an abolitionist
future. There are very few scholars and/or organizers who are able
to seamlessly bring abolitionist and transformative justice theory
with practical organizing strategies as Kaba so successfully does.
Kaba’s essays also demonstrate the transformation our movements
need to make so that they are guided by principles of love and care
that can sustain our communities into a different world. She
teaches how to build the discipline necessary so that we can be
guided by hope rather than despair. Kaba's work is a true gift to
the movement.” — Andrea Smith, Professor of Ethnic Studies,
University of California, Riverside
“Mariame Kaba is a political genius and truth-teller for our times,
as an abolitionist, political organizer, educator, and writer, she
is audacious in her dreams for our Black future freedoms. This book
says what needs to be said in this political moment as we reckon
with abolition in response to police brutality, white supremacy,
and a pandemic that is disproportionately killing People of Color
globally. Each chapter is a beautiful and archival testimonial to
the lineage of Black organizing, especially Black feminists, that
have led us to this political and cultural moment of mass uprisings
creating resilient, abolitionist, and transformative strategies in
the face of police brutality, massive incarceration, and the
genocidal state response to COVID19. We Do This ‘Til We Free Us is
a remedy for our collective survival, and a manifesto for
responding to harms and violence for our future.” — Cara Page,
founder of Changing Frequencies
“Mariame Kaba’s We Do This ‘Til We Free Us is a treasure trove of
essays and interviews which shares her knowledge, insights, and
wisdom developed over decades of organizing against the prison
industrial complex and supporting survivors of violence. In this
book, Kaba recounts scores of campaigns, projects, collaborations,
and activists that brought us to historic moments in 2020 and
beyond, and provides concrete steps people can take on the path to
abolition. A brilliant organizer, educator, political theorist, and
preeminent abolitionist of the 21st century, Kaba succinctly breaks
down the anti-Black foundations of the U.S. criminal legal system
and makes the case for abolition and transformative justice. This
book is a must read for anyone striving for more peace and justice
in this world.” — Joey Mogul, co-author, Queer (In)Justice: The
Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States
“This collection of writings embodies Mariame’s gifts to the
abolitionist movement, not only in content but in format. As
readers, we are invited into the conversations Kaba has been having
for decades as she lifts up countless stories that belong to the
larger movement of which she is an essential leader. We are offered
Mariame’s personal and also collaborative writing that highlights a
central message running throughout the book; we will not achieve
liberation alone. While there are no blueprints for abolition, this
text is a guiding light that offers crucial answers and an
expansive invitation for all to join in the work.”— Rev. Jason
Lydon, Second Unitarian Church of Chicago
“We Do This ‘Til We Free Us outlines an approach to transformative
politics that we have been hungry for: brilliant strategies that
are at once practical and prophetic. For decades, Mariame Kaba’s
pathbreaking leadership has steered us towards a horizon of radical
freedom that, as she has repeatedly demonstrated, is within our
reach. This remarkable collection is a powerful map for anyone who
longs for a future built on safety, community, and joy, and an
intellectual home for those who are creating new pathways to get us
there.”— Alisa Bierria, co-founder and co-organizer, Survived and
Punished
“Mariame Kaba's living example continuously teaches me that
accountability and abolition are daily internal and external
practices. We Do This ‘Til We Free Us is both timely and timeless.
This compelling collection is an offering of Kaba's thoughtful
experiential perspectives and insights about the strenuous,
compassionate, and rewarding work to not harm in response to
witnessing and/or experiencing harm. Kaba's words are a sacred
roadmap for an embodied praxis that invites all of us to imagine,
envision, and work collectively to co-create a society without
violence.” — Aishah Shahidah Simmons, creator, NO! The Rape
Documentary and author, Love WITH Accountability
“We Do This ‘Til We Free Us has so much wisdom to offer,
particularly at this unprecedented moment. Kaba not only challenges
the corrosive notions that only policing and prisons keep us safe,
but invites us to see abolition not as a far-away goal, but an
everyday adventure that we can embark upon in our daily lives.
Mariame Kaba is a galactic treasure. Her passion, dedication and
commitment to abolition, safety and accountability are
unparalleled. Read this book."— Victoria Law, author, Prison by Any
Other Name
“Mariame Kaba is one of the foremost grassroots intellectuals of
our time. She is a strategic, brilliant and practical genius whose
intellectual and on-the-ground-work is foundational to the past
twenty years of transformative justice and abolitionist theory and
practice. She's someone whose work I urge anyone to read who is
curious about exactly why and how we are going to dismantle prisons
and build the different future we need. I am so happy to have this
book in the world, collecting so many of my favorite pieces, to
give to new and old comrades alike.”— Leah Lakshmi
Piepzna-Samarasinha, author, Care Work: Dreaming Disability
Justice
"The miracle is Mariame's collaborative, accountable,
future-facing, legacy-bearing presence in our movements and her
intentional practice of evaluating how she can contribute to our
collective future. This book, which documents some of Kaba's most
important interventions, crucial conversations and paradigm
shifting ideas makes this ongoing miracle shareable, teachable, and
available for study in community. We Do This 'Til We Free Us is a
necessary offering towards the possibility of our intentional
participation in the actions that will create a more loving and
live-able world. Read this book, hold this archive, share this
journey, to nurture your own presence, practice and collaborations
towards the freedom we already deserve." — Alexis Pauline Gumbs,
author, Dub: Finding Ceremony
“Beautiful and timely, We Do This 'Til We Free Us is more than a
book. It is a gathering: a conversation, a coming together, a call
to be not only our best selves, but together in struggle. It is a
how-to gift for all who believe in freedom from violence. In a wide
ranging series of essays, interviews, and speeches, inveterate
organizer Mariame Kaba shares strategic wisdom from the
abolitionist frontlines. Read it, pass it on, and get to work!”—
Dan Berger, author, Rethinking the American Prison Movement
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