Abolition. Feminism. Now.

Description

In this landmark work, four of the world s leading scholar-activists issue an urgent call for a truly intersectional, internationalist, abolitionist feminism.

As a politics and as a practice, abolitionism has increasingly shaped our political moment, amplified through the worldwide protests following the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a uniformed police officer. It is at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement, in its demands for police defunding and demilitarisation, and a halt to prison construction. And it is there in the outrage which greeted the brutal treatment of women by police at the 2021 Clapham Common vigil for Sarah Everard.

As this book shows, abolitionism and feminism stand shoulder-to-shoulder in fighting a common cause: the end of the carceral state, with its key role in perpetuating violence, both public and private, in prisons, in police forces, and in people s homes. Abolitionist theories and practices are at their most compelling when they are feminist; and a feminism that is also abolitionist is the most inclusive and persuasive version of feminism for these times.

Abolition. Feminism. Now!

About the Author

ANGELA Y. DAVIS is Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies at UC Santa Cruz. An activist, writer and lecturer, her work focuses on prisons, police, abolition and the related intersections of race, gender and class. She is the author of many books, including Women, Race and Class and Freedom Is a Constant Struggle.

GINA DENT is associate professor of feminist studies, history of consciousness, and legal studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the editor of Black Popular Culture, and lectures and writes on African diaspora literary and cultural studies, postcolonial theory, and critical area studies. Her current project Visualizing Abolition grows out of her work as an advocate for transformative and transitional justice and prison abolition.

ERICA MEINERS is Professor of Education and Women s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Northeastern Illinois University. She is the author of several books including For the Children? Protecting Innocence in a Carceral State.

BETH E. RICHIE is Professor of Criminology, Law and Justice and Black Studies, Sociology, Gender and Women s Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her most recent book is Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence and America s Prison Nation.