New York Times Bestseller
“Organizing is both science and art. It is thinking through a vision, a strategy, and then figuring out who your targets are, always being concerned about power, always being concerned about how you’re going to actually build power in order to be able to push your issues, in order to be able to get the target to actually move in the way that you want to.”
What if social transformation and liberation isn’t about waiting for someone else to come along and save us? What if ordinary people have the power to collectively free ourselves? In this timely collection of essays and interviews, Mariame Kaba reflects on the deep work of abolition and transformative political struggle.
With a foreword by Naomi Murakawa and chapters on seeking justice beyond the punishment system, transforming how we deal with harm and accountability, and finding hope in collective struggle for abolition, Kaba’s work is deeply rooted in the relentless belief that we can fundamentally change the world. As Kaba writes, “Nothing that we do that is worthwhile is done alone.”
Mariame Kaba is an organizer, educator, librarian/archivist, and prison industrial complex (PIC) abolitionist who is active in movements for racial, gender, and transformative justice. Kaba co-leads Interrupting Criminalization, an organization she co-founded with Andrea Ritchie in 2018. She has co-founded multiple organizations and projects over the years including Project NIA, We Charge Genocide, the Chicago Freedom School, the Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls and Young Women, Chicago Alliance to Free Marissa Alexander (now Love & Protect), Just Practice Collaborative, Survived & Punished, Sojourners for Justice Press and For the People Lefitist Library Project. Kaba is the author of the New York Times Bestseller We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (Haymarket Books, 2021) & most recently Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care with Kelly Hayes (Haymarket, 2023) among several other books that offer support and tools for repair, transformation, and moving toward a future without incarceration and policing.
ISBN: 9781642594287
Publication date: February 23, 2021
“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 Ewing, author, 1919
"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)
"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 that she’s initiated, organized, and nurtured, and is a testament to the power of collectivity and community.”
— Ann Russo, author,Feminist Accountability: Disrupting Violence and Transforming Power
“We Do This Until 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 Till 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 Till 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's 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
“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 Mariame 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 writing 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 publish books as a contribution to struggles for social and economic justice. We’re offering discounted books to grassroots organizations, unions, and reading groups.
by Tara Betts, Tempest Hazel, et al.
One of the best ways you can support Haymarket is by becoming a member of our subscription program. Receive up to 40 books per year and help ensure the future of radical publishing.
Join today and start your subscription with one or more of these new books!
