Articles
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Beyond Do No Harm: Health Justice and Abolition
Maria Thomas of Interrupting Criminalization reflects on the importance of health justice in abolitionist organizing, the Black Panthers and Young Lords, and her work to bring together healthcare workers and organizers to craft solutions to end the use of the healthcare system as an extension of the carceral state.
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Becker1999 via Wikimedia Commons No One is Disposable: Migrant Justice as Abolitionist Organizing
Angélica Cházaro argues that the Migrant Justice movement and the Abolitionist movement must be intertwined because the system of oppression they face is one and the same.
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House Our Neighbors Building Life: Housing Justice and Abolition
House Our Neighbors (HON!) organizers describe their efforts and victories in establishing a social housing developer in Seattle, influenced by an abolitionist framework, with the goal of providing affordable and dignified housing for all.
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Matthew T Rader via Wikimedia Commons Stories From the Frontlines of Abolitionist Organizing
The following are lightly edited transcripts of presentations made in the griot oral tradition by abolitionist organizers on the first day of the network gathering in response to two questions: What dreams did our ancestors need to have to make this moment possible? What dreams do we have for the future?
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Leslie Barlow, Taylan DeJohnette, Maiya Lea Hartman via Wikimedia Commons After the Uprising: In DC and Beyond
Three years after the uprising, Makia Green, a co-founder of Defund MPD & Harriet's Wildest Dreams, offers a stirring reflection on the profound challenges and real achievements realized by the modern abolitionist movement. Makia calls for unwavering investment and solidarity in the pursuit of community-led safety and true freedom.
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Critical Resistance Dismantle, Change, Build: Frameworks for Abolitionist Organizing from Critical Resistance
This is a lightly edited transcript of a presentation by Woods Ervin, Mohamed Shekh of Critical Resistance, and Andrea J. Ritchie of Interrupting Criminalization. For more resources on abolitionist organizing from Critical Resistance, please visit criticalresistance.org/resources/. For more information on No More Police: A Case for Abolition, please visit bit.ly/NoMorePolice.
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Antonio Gramsci (Wikimedia) Lessons from Gramsci for Social Movements Today
Gramsci's political thoughts and pragmatic strategies have yielded a collection of ideas that can be argued to have become even more relevant over time.
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OK, I’ve Seen Enough. This Time Is Different.
The labor movement has been preparing for this moment
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Addressing Unanchored Care: An Experiment in Developing Resilient Movement Organizations
The concept of "Resilient Futures" is introduced, a program designed to empower organizers and directors of Black, Brown, and Asian organizations, focusing on personal and professional well-being to sustain collective resistance.
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Nuts and Bolts for Building Resilient Organizations
Organizers discuss practical ways to deal with the challenges of non-profit culture.
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Image Courtesy of People's Action Democracy’s Antidote to Authoritarianism: An Organizing Revival
To defeat the rising tide of authoritarianism, organizations that are part of a pro-democracy movement must reground ourselves in relational, transformational, power-based community organizing
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Courtesy of Showing Up For Racial Justice Winning White People to the Fight Against the MAGA Right
To address the challenges our movements face in this time, we need to name white resentment as the fuel for the Right’s dramatic rise –– and offer white people a better option.
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March through Greensboro, NC protesting the acquittal of five men—neo-Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan—who shot and killed five anti-Klan protesters and wounded 10 more in the Nov. 3, 1979 Greensboro Massacre. Image via Wikimedia Commons, licensed CC Don’t Let the Chain of Freedom Break at Your Link
The last 45 years have seen the consolidation of the far Right — while “many white liberals have been so eager to put the ideology of white supremacy behind them that they declare it prematurely dead over and over again.”
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Melissa Ojeda, an Amazon warehouse worker and member of Inland Empire Amazon Workers United, speaks during a strike outside the corporation’s air hub in San Bernardino on Oct 14, 2022.” Credit: Warehouse Worker Resource Center Reining In Amazon to Build Up People-Powered Democracy
In preparation for the The 22nd Century Conference happening in Minneapolis, MN from July 6-9, leaders of the Athena Coalition, an organization created to tackle the growing global power of Amazon, explain why their work is important in the face of pressure from both corporations and the anti-corporate populists who aim to misdirect working people.
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Via Urupong To Build a Movement for Democracy, We Have to Win the Internet
In Preparation for the The 22nd Century Conference happening in Minneapolis, MN from July 6-9, 2023, Mariana Ruiz Firmat argues that pro-democracy organizers must treat the digital realm as a serious terrain of struggle and develop a near term strategy to seize the internet from tech libertarians and white nationalists.
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Finding Liberation and Belonging in Lessons from the Past
Black Muslim women in the United States, escpecially in Southern States, face unique discrimination due to intersecting marginalized identities. Organizers are making an intentional effort to make sure they're included in the national conversation around safety.
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A Sacred Trust: Being A Paid Staff Person of a Base Organization
The tensions Maurice Mitchell highlights in ‘Building Resilient Organizations’ operate differently in base organizations. The solutions will be different, too.
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Halfpoint Toward a People-Powered Democracy
The 22nd Century Conference will bring together the pro-democracy movement to plan what it looks like to block the rise of the authoritarian movement while also advancing pro-democracy strategies.
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What Does It Look Like When We Build Our Power and Fight the Right?
Four organizing leaders talk about unity and struggle with centrist allies, building our progressive and left alignment, and what can stand in the way.
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Photo credit: Ferran Nadeu Lessons from Barcelona’s 8-Year Experiment in Radical Governance
The activists who took over the city hall of Catalonia’s capital have changed one of Europe’s preeminent cities for good, while also confronting the limits of being in power.