Abolitionists in Action: Transformative Justice and the University

Featuring Mariame Kaba (author of We Do This ‘Til We Free Us and founding member of Project NIA, Survived and Punished, and the Chicago Freedom School), Dara Kwayera Imani Bayer and Camila Pelsinger (both from Brown University’s Transformative Justice Practitioner Program), and Sofia Meadows (Unity Circles).

Che Gossett describes abolition as “an ongoing project against the general institutionalization of the afterlife of slavery and its carceral and racial capitalist topology: from the site of the prison to the site of the psych ward, from the neoliberal corporation of the university to the detention center and more.” If abolition demands a world without police, prisons, or punishment, transformative justice is the organized effort to imagine and enact the structures that will take their place. This work is rooted in the movement to end sexual violence, and it is quickly gaining steam, especially in schools and universities. What does it look like for a movement with DIY origins to be embraced by educational institutions, such as Harvard or Brown? Transformative Justice Futures brings together an intergenerational panel of practitioners and theorists who have approached this work from different positions of institutional access. It features Mariame Kaba, author of the NYT bestselling We Do This ‘Til We Free Us, who has played a leading role in the movement for decades, founding and co-founding the organizations Project NIA, Survived and Punished, and the Chicago Freedom School. Kaba will be in conversation with Dara Kwayera Imani Bayer and Camila Pelsinger, who helped launch Brown University’s Transformative Justice Practitioner Program, the first such program at a U.S. university. Joining them will be Sofia Meadows, a participant and facilitator in the Brown program who is now a board member of the Boston-based, youth-focused transformative justice organization, Unity Circles.