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

Kaba examines various proposals for police reform. According to Kaba, if proposed reforms involve giving the police more money or more technology (such as body cams), people should oppose these reforms. Furthermore, taxpayer dollars should not subsidize “dialogue” between communities and the police nor approach policing in terms of individual wrongdoers (70). There should instead be reparations for victims of police violence, a redirection of funds from police departments to other social goods, efforts to disarm the police, and other measures that will ultimately pave the way toward abolishing the police entirely.

As a self-described abolitionist, Kaba is dedicated to the dismantling of the prison system and the establishment of an entirely new social order, which, among other things, must do away with capitalism. Kaba notes that prisons were originally meant as a reform, an improvement on capital and corporal punishment, but it has since become a dumping ground for social undesirables. Since the end of the Civil War, Black people in particular have relentlessly been targets of the prison system; Kaba claims that this is due to the fact that Black people have been considered incapable of enjoying their newfound freedom responsibly.

The expansion of the prison system in the late 1960s coincided with the rise of the Black Power movement and a series of urban uprisings against police brutality and other social injustices.