Mariame Kaba

Mariame Kaba is an organizer, educator, curator, and prison industrial complex (PIC) abolitionist who is active in movements for racial, gender, and transformative justice. Kaba is the founder and director of Project NIA, a grassroots abolitionist organization with a vision to end youth incarceration. Mariame is currently a researcher at Interrupting Criminalization: Research in Action (https://www.interruptingcriminalization.com) at the Barnard Center for Research on Women (http://bcrw.barnard.edu), 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. Kaba is a current Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom fellow. Mariame’s leadership, organizing and influence extend widely as she offers a radical analysis that influences how people think and respond to how violence, prisons and policing affect the lives of people of color. Kaba is the author of Missing Daddy (Haymarket 2019). Her current book, We Do This Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice was published by Haymarket Press in February 2021.