This past year, I’ve felt apprehensive seeing old organizational structures creak under the weight of Covid-19 and a nation-wide racial reckoning, particularly regarding racism against Black folks. Abolition: How We Keep Us Safe is an electrifying response to this tension. Abolition Action, a New York City-based collective leveraging creativity to actively resist the practices and mindsets of incarceration, authors this zine. Offering actionable and thoroughly-explained steps towards establishing radically inclusive community norms, the zine’s pages hold guides to thwarting an undercover ICE ruse, de-escalating conflict, and responding to crises without calling the police. In addition to straightforward steps for building solidarity networks in an accessible way, Abolition meditates on the ways in which systems of oppression necessitate constructive conflict in their deconstruction. At its core, this zine communicates that while abolition means shattering harmful practices, it is an act of creating something new. Abolition: How We Keep Us Safe provides its reader with a vitally important call to action and a blueprint for change. The zine is available to read here!
Alexa Easter (she/her) is a sophomore studying psychology remotely from Ann Arbor, Michigan who loves rugby, zines, and glitter. You can find her on Instagram @aeastr.
