Abolitionists in Action: Transformative Justice and the University

If abolition demands a world without police, prisons, or punishment, transformative justice is the organized effort to imagine and enact the structures that will take their place. This work is rooted in the movement to end sexual violence and it is quickly gaining steam, especially in schools and universities.

What does it look like for a movement with DIY origins to be embraced by educational institutions so mired in the afterlife of slavery, such as Harvard or Brown? Abolitionists in Action brings together an intergenerational panel of practitioners and theorists who have approached this work from different positions of institutional access.

Featuring Mariame Kaba (author of We Do This ‘Til We Free Us and founding member of Project NIA, Survived and Punished, and the Chicago Freedom School), Dara Kwayera Imani Bayer and Camila Pelsinger (both from Brown University’s Transformative Justice Practitioner Program), and Sofia Meadows (Unity Circles).

This program is hosted in collaboration with the Charles Warren Center For Studies in American History, Mindich Program for Engaged Scholarship, The Abolition Collaboratory, Mahindra Humanities Center, Phillips Brooks House Association, Transformative Justice Initiative, and Prison Studies Project.