Mariame Kaba
“Mariame Kaba is an American activist, grassroots organizer, and educator who is the author of We Do This 'Til We Free Us [2021]. She spent more than 20 years living and organizing in Chicago where she co-founded multiple organizations and projects including the Chicago Freedom School, the Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls and Young Women, the Rogers Park Young Women’s Action Team [YWAT] and our own Circles and Ciphers.. Her work focuses on ending violence, dismantling the prison industrial system, promoting transformational justice and supporting youth leadership development. Kaba views prison abolition as the total dismantling of prison and policing while simultaneously building up community services; she opposes the so-called “reform” of policing. This is because she understands systems using prisons, police, and I.C.E. sites to enable enormous amounts of violence which stem from their value in maintaining control of people. Kaba is interested in not only responding to incidents of violence, but in taking steps to change or transform the widespread conditions that allow these incidents to happen. In other words, she believes that we all must work to end social conditions such as capitalism, white supremacy, sexism, mass incarceration, poverty, gender oppression and all the elements present in our society that promote violence and abuse.”
For a more detailed presentation of these ideas, read
Transformative Justice: A Brief Description by Mia Mingus at transformharm.org