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

At an extremely busy time for activism (only two months after the murder of George Floyd), Kaba finds herself both saying no to some opportunities and accepting new challenges. There is no predicting what will happen or what her proper place within events might be: “[M]y only conviction is that we ought to be organizing steadily always. All of the time” (164-65). There is no way to predict when decades worth of activism will finally hit the mainstream, but they must be ready when it does. Kaba believes that there will be failures, and just as failure is normalized in the tech or banking space, it should be normalized in the activism space as well. Everyone expects Kaba and her fellow activists to have everything planned out, but “the problem with policing, prisons, and surveillance is that it’s a one-size-fits-all model” and they are not looking to replicate the same logic (166). What matters is building a space where creative alternatives can flourish. Activist groups are not trying to create models, so much as experiment, learn, and collaborate with others. Many groups are based around specific communities and circumstances, and so what they do may not be applicable to others.