Becoming Abolitionists

Description

Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

By Derecka Purnell
Astra House

For more than a century, activists in the United States have tried to reform the police. Millions of people continue to protest police violence because these “solutions” do not match the problem: the police cannot be reformed.

In her critically acclaimed first book Becoming Abolitionists, Purnell draws from her experiences as a lawyer, writer, and organizer initially skeptical about police abolition. She saw too much sexual violence and buried too many friends to consider getting rid of police in her hometown of St. Louis, let alone the nation. But the police were a placebo. Calling them felt like something, and something feels like everything when the other option seems like nothing.

Purnell details how multi-racial social movements rooted in rebellion, risk-taking, and revolutionary love pushed her and a generation of activists toward abolition. The book travels across geography and time, and offers lessons that activists have learned from Ferguson to South Africa, from Reconstruction to contemporary protests against police shootings.

Here, Purnell invites readers to envision new systems that work to address the root causes of violence. Becoming Abolitionists shows that abolition is not solely about getting rid of police, but a commitment to create and support different answers to the problem of harm in society, and, most excitingly, an opportunity to reduce and eliminate harm in the first place.

“With deep insight and moral clarity, Purnell shares her compelling journey of political education and personal transformation, inviting us not only to imagine a world without police, but to muster the courage to fight for the more just world we know is possible. Becoming Abolitionists is essential reading for our times.”—Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

“One of the most perceptive and passionate thinkers of any generation, Derecka Purnell, has written a genuinely revolutionary text for our times—one that resists easy answers or solutions and never shies from the hard questions. She proves that abolition is not an event or a utopian dream-state, but rather a journey of assembly struggling to create new worlds of freedom as we fight the unfree world we inhabit. Beautifully written, passionate, honest, Becoming Abolitionists charts a journey we all must take if we plan to survive, let alone live together.”—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Hammer and Hoe

“At once specific and sweeping, practical and visionary, Becoming Abolitionists is a triumph of political imagination and a tremendous gift to all movements struggling towards liberation. Do not miss its brilliance!”—Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine

“Becoming Abolitionists is part memoir & part manifesto for our times. Beautifully written, the book takes the reader on a personal journey from the Midwest to South Africa with a pit stop in New England. As a member of the ‘Trayvon Generation,’ Derecka offers us invaluable insights into how young activists are navigating and challenging current injustices. If you’ve been curious about the modern abolitionist movement, this book is a must read!”—Mariame Kaba, author of We Do This ’til We Free Us and No More Police

“Becoming Abolitionists brilliantly lays out the connections between policing and other forms of oppression and shows why even well-meaning ‘reforms’ won’t get us where we need to go. This profound, urgent, beautiful, and necessary book is an invitation to imagine and organize for a less violent and more liberatory world. Everyone should read it.”—Astra Taylor, co-author of Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea

“Blending trenchant social critique with intimate stories from her own upbringing, Purnell’s text marks a necessary installment in the larger tradition of abolitionist writing.”—Dean Spade, author of Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)