As a politic and a practice, abolition increasingly shapes our political moment — halting the construction of new jails and propelling movements to divest from policing. Yet erased from this landscape are not only the central histories of feminist — usually queer, anti-capitalist, grassroots, and women of color — organizing that continue to cultivate abolition but a recognition of the stark reality: abolition is our best response to endemic forms of state and interpersonal gender and sexual violence. Amplifying the analysis and the theories of change generated from vibrant community based organizing, Abolition. Feminism. Now. surfaces necessary historical genealogies, key internationalist learnings, and everyday practices to grow our collective and flourishing present and futures.

Get the book, Abolition. Feminism. Now.: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1546-abolition-feminism-now

This event is free but please donate money (even $5 makes a difference), learn from and with, and support grassroots organizations which are making the world we need, now. For example - support Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project (https://p-nap.org/donate/); Love & Protect (https://loveprotect.org/); Critical Resistance (http://criticalresistance.org/).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Speakers:

Angela Y. Davis is Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies at UC Santa Cruz. An activist, writer, and lecturer, her work focuses on prisons, police, abolition, and the related intersections of race, gender, and class. She is the author of many books, from Angela Davis: An Autobiography (now available in a new edition from Haymarket Books) to Freedom Is a Constant Struggle.

Gina Dent (Ph.D., English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University) is Associate Professor of Feminist Studies, History of Consciousness, and Legal Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Currently, she is Faculty Fellow at the UCSC Institute of the Arts and Sciences, working as a consultant for the Barring Freedom exhibition (San José Museum of Art) and as co-convener of the Visualizing Abolition series of events, which includes the video collection Music for Abolition (https://visualizingabolition.ucsc.edu).

Erica R. Meiners is a professor of education and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Northeastern Illinois University. A writer, organizer, and educator, Meiners is the author For the Children? Protecting Innocence in a Carceral State, coauthor of The Feminist and the Sex Offender: Confronting Sexual Harm, Ending State Violence, and a coeditor of The Long Term: Resisting Life Sentences, Working Toward Freedom.

Beth E. Richie is Head of the Department of Criminology, Law and Justice and Professor of Black Studies at The University of Illinois at Chicago. The emphasis of her scholarly and activist work has been on the ways that race/ethnicity and social position affect women’s experience of violence and incarceration, focusing on the experiences of African American battered women and sexual assault survivors. Dr. Richie is the author of Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence and America’s Prison Nation, which chronicles the evolution of the contemporary anti-violence movement during the time of mass incarceration in the United States and numerous articles concerning Black feminism and gender violence, race and criminal justice policy, and the social dynamics around issues of sexuality, prison abolition, and grassroots organizations in African American Communities.