We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice

Kaba’s goddaughter asks her about Marissa Alexander, on whose behalf Kaba has helped to organize an activist campaign. Marissa has already endured years in jail and more time in house arrest, all for firing a gun into the air to frighten an abusive husband—no one was harmed. Kaba’s goddaughter asks what Kaba will do if Marissa returns to jail, an acute reminder of a very real possibility.

Around the same time that juries were about to announce the verdict for the police officer who killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Kaba contemplates the long history of anti-Black attitudes that permeate the criminal justice system. The experience of slavery in the United States helped to implant the idea that Black bodies are inferior and can be abused at will. According to Kaba, this makes it crucial to connect cases like Michael Brown and Marissa Alexander to call attention to the full scope of state violence against Black people.

Marissa Alexander agreed to a plea deal to return to her family as quickly as possible, but this does not change the fact that “the courts punished and criminalized her for surviving domestic violence, for saving her own life” (32). Kaba has never met Marissa Alexander, but for Kaba that does not matter—Alexander is a person who was unjustly targeted, and therefore someone must undertake the effort to set her free.