The Abolitionist Reading Club is a community lead project whose purpose is to provide a space to reimagine our world. Each month we will gather (virtually) on the last Saturday of the month, to discuss readings and materials written by abolitionists, including theoretical and historical works, strategy, and reports from community-led abolition efforts. 

Within the last year, through the on-going pandemic, civil rights uprisings, Freedom to Thrive Oak Park’s work to reimagine community safety, and general political frustration, we found few real or virtual spaces to actively reimagine our world. In this space, we will center abolitionist and Black Abolitionist work from a variety of sources. To encourage engagement and promote access we will use the public library’s resources, work with the Book Table (our local bookseller) to purchase materials to support Black writers, and provide websites and pdfs to reduce as many barriers as we can. We will also collect readings/media/toolkits/syllabi from the amazing work already done by abolitionist organizers: One place to start is this list.

In addition to being a reading club, we will create a space for teach-ins, where we can learn from abolitionist organizers, representatives of abolitionist political and social movements, and other community leaders. This reading club is organized on democratic, intersectional feminist, and abolitionist principles. To this end, we have an open suggestions process for reading materials; rotating facilitation; and feminist meeting processes. Our goal is to create a space for participation and a climate where the least confident among us feels safe to speak up, and also where Black, Indigenous and people of color don’t need to share their trauma in order for white people to understand the content of materials. This is not a space where we will center white comfort. This is a space where we will all engage in purposeful uncomfortability, so that we can all work together to reimagine our world.

Abolitionist Reading Club Meetings

“We Do This ‘Til We Free Us” Series

Reading

Book: “We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice”, by Mariame Kaba

May Reading Club: Parts 1 & 2

Part 1: So You’re Thinking About Becoming an Abolitionist, pages 2-29

Part 2: There Are No Perfect Victims, pages 30-53

June Reading Club: Parts 3, 4, and 5

Part 3: The State Can’t Give Us Transformative Justice

Part 4: Making Demands: Reforms for and Against Abolition

Part 5: We Must Practice and Experiment: Abolitionist Organizing and Theory

July Reading Club: Parts 6 & 7

Part 6: Accountability is Not Punishment: Transforming How We Deal With Harm And Violence

Part 7: Show Up and Don’t Travel Alone: We Need Each Other

Previous Reading Club Sessions

April 2021

Mychal Denzel Smith, "Amid police reform failures, activists lay out 8 steps to abolition"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M6OmUuhhVs

Derecka Purnell, "The George Floyd Act wouldn't have saved George Floyd’s life. That says it all"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/04/the-george-floyd-act-wouldnt-have-saved-george-floyds-life-thats-says-it-all

Alex Vitale, The Limits of Police Reform, from The End of Policing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hDqDNMbDa9EyYv15zmxHEmS7mEMExOMM/edit

February 2021

The Case for Prison Abolition: Ruth Wilson Gilmore on COVID-19, Racial Capitalism & Decarceration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HWqYANmWLY&ab_channel=DemocracyNow%21

Seattle Cut It's Police Budget. Now The Public Will Decide How To Spend The Money: https://theappeal.org/politicalreport/seattle-participatory-budgeting-defund-police/

Austin Will Use Money Cut From Police Budget to Establish Supportive Housing: https://theappeal.org/austin-cut-police-budget-supportive-housing-homelessness/

January 2021

Mariame Kaba's NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html

Amna Akbar's Harvard Law Review response: https://harvardlawreview.org/2020/12/demands-for-a-democratic-political-economy/

Project NIA Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT0YpOmk8NA&feature=youtu.be

Tactical strategy: Critical Resistance poster