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

At the time of Kaba’s writing, the singer R. Kelly was in jail facing serious criminal penalties after having long been accused of committing many acts of sexual assault. Given his high profile and the severity of his alleged crimes, many expressed joy at the prospect of his imprisonment, but as Kaba bluntly states, abolitionism is “not about your fucking feelings” (132). Without at all taking away from the agony facing survivors of sexual violence, Kaba states that those who claim to be abolitionists must uphold a consistent ethic. All forms of organized incarceration are unjust, no matter how deserving the perpetrator may seem to be. Prisons do not deliver justice to anyone, and they have demonstrably failed in addressing the problem of sexual violence in the US.

According to Kaba, a good start to a better alternative would be stripping Kelly and his enablers of the power to harm people and financially benefit from the industry that enabled them to prey on women for so long. Context matters, too: Kaba notes that, at the time (2019), Donald Trump sat in the White House despite openly bragging about sexually assaulting women.