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Abolition

This guide explores what prison abolition is, an overview of the movement, and resources.

Watch Videos about Abolition

Ruth Wilson Gilmore is the author of Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (2007). She is Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the City University of New York Graduate Center where she is Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences. A co-founder of many grassroots organizations including California Prison Moratorium Project, Critical Resistance, and the Central California Environmental Justice Network, Gilmore is working on several book projects. She has lectured in Africa, Asia, Europe, and across North America. Recent honors include the Association of American Geographers Lifetime Achievement Award (2020). Novelist Rachel Kushner profiled Gilmore in a New York Times Magazine feature on abolition in April 2019. Photo credit ©DonUsner.

Below are Parts 1, 2, and 3 of Covid-19, Decarceration, and Abolition, live streamed on April 16, 2020. "How can we achieve urgently needed decarceration for the millions of people caged in jails, prisons, and immigration detention centers?"

The following video is a special conversation between Angela Davis, Distinguished Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies, UC Santa Cruz, and Gina Dent, Associate Professor of Feminist Studies, History of Consciousness, and Legal Studies, UC Santa Cruz.

Abolition Then & Now with historian & cultural theorist Robin D. G. Kelley & artist & filmmaker Isaac Julien, co-presented with McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, is the next event in Visualizing Abolition.

In a web exclusive conversation, we speak with prison abolitionist Mariame Kaba about Cyntoia Brown being granted full clemency by Republican Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam after serving 15 years in prison, the failures of the criminal justice reform bill known as the First Step Act, and the fight against NYC jail expansion as Mayor Bill de Blasio proposes building four new jails. Kaba is an organizer and educator who has worked on anti-domestic violence programs, anti-incarceration and racial justice programs since the late 1980s. Kaba is the co-founder of Survived and Punished, an organization that supports survivors of violence who have been criminalized for defending themselves. She’s also a board member of Critical Resistance. Presented by Democracy Now.

Abolitionist Toolkits

Abolitionist Readings & Study Guides

Abolitionist Organizations

Prison Writing