Resources
Reading
- 8toAbolition
- Reform vs Abolition
- Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police by Mariame Kaba
- Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis
- Abolitionist Futures (full reading and course list)
- Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought
- Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind
- Letter to My Detained Family by Nathaniel Tan
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X
- The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
Reading Lists
Audio / Video
Organizations
- Critical Resistance
- Critical Resistance seeks to build an international movement to end the Prison Industrial Complex by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe. We believe that basic necessities such as food, shelter, and freedom are what really make our communities secure. As such, our work is part of global struggles against inequality and powerlessness. The success of the movement requires that it reflect communities most affected by the PIC. Because we seek to abolish the PIC, we cannot support any work that extends its life or scope.
- The Marshall Project
- The Marshall Project is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system. We achieve this through award-winning journalism, partnerships with other news outlets and public forums. In all of our work we strive to educate and enlarge the audience of people who care about the state of criminal justice.
- Movement 4 Black Lives (M4BL)
- The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) formed in December of 2014, was created as a space for Black organizations across the country to debate and discuss the current political conditions, develop shared assessments of what political interventions were necessary in order to achieve key policy, cultural and political wins, convene organizational leadership in order to debate and co-create a shared movement wide strategy. Under the fundamental idea that we can achieve more together than we can separately.
- Asian Prisoners Support
- The mission of the Asian Prisoner Support Committee (APSC) is to provide direct support to Asian and Pacific Islander (API) prisoners and to raise awareness about the growing number of APIs being imprisoned, detained, and deported.
- Abolish the NYPD
- A compilation of resources, information, and actions on defunding (and abolishing) the NYPD.
- Southerners On New Ground (SONG)
- SONG envisions a sustainable South that embodies the best of its freedom traditions and works towards the transformation of our economic, social, spiritual, and political relationships. We envision a multi-issue southern justice movement that unites us across class, age, race, ability, gender, immigration status, and sexuality; a movement in which LGBTQ people – poor and working class, immigrant, people of color, rural – take our rightful place as leaders shaping our region’s legacy and future. We are committed to restoring a way of being that recognizes our collective humanity and dependence on the Earth.
- SEAC Village
- SEAC is a grassroots-run, grassroots lead social justice organization. SEAC exists to reinforce and uphold integrity, empowerment, inclusion, tradition, leadership, and critical consciousness at the grassroots level.
- Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI)
- BAJI educates and engages African American and black immigrant communities to organize and advocate for racial, social and economic justice. Local BAJI Organizing Committees in New York, Georgia, California and Arizona build coalitions and initiate campaigns among communities to push for racial justice. At the local and regional level, BAJI provides training and technical assistance to partner organizations to develop leadership skills, works with faith communities to harness their prophetic voice, and initiates vibrant dialogues with African Americans and black immigrants to discover more about race, our diverse identities, racism, migration and globalization.
Organizations Working to free incarcerated people
- Free Them All 4 Public Health 2020
- Defunding and Abolishing NYPD = Ending all investments in borough-based jails. 1 billion in cuts to the city budget means nothing if 11 Billion goes towards incarcerating New Yorkers. We need a moratorium on jail building. #AbolishNYPD #CloseRikersNow
- Covid BailOut NYC
- COVID Bail Out NYC volunteer-run, grassroots initiative mobilized to bail out people from NYC jails and support them once they are released. We are not a charitable bail fund. We are not a bail bonds company.
- National Bail Out
- The National Bail Out collective is a Black-led and Black-centered collective of abolitionist organizers, lawyers and activists building a community-based movement to support our folks and end systems of pretrial detention and ultimately mass incarceration. We are people who have been impacted by cages — either by being in them ourselves or witnessing our families and loved ones be encaged. We are queer, trans, young, elder, and immigrant.
Organizations supporting and/or distributing COVID funds (prioritizing native/ undocumented / immigrant folx)
Mutual aid in NYC
- @ThePeoplesBodega
- A mutual aid project providing nutrition & supplies to The People
- @IOHNYC
- (In Our Hearts is a New York City based Anarchist network made up of autonomous collectives, projects and individuals who share the goal of building a culture of resistance in the City and beyond.)
- (In Our Hearts is a New York City based Anarchist network made up of autonomous collectives, projects and individuals who share the goal of building a culture of resistance in the City and beyond.)
- @NewBlackMutualAid
- The fund is for Black Theatre Artists to provide a safety net and financial support during a time of revolution and pandemic.