From Repeal to Permanence: Why Ending the Death Penalty Requires Constitutional Change
Historical Background The history of capital punishment in the United States reflects a cycle of reform, reinstatement, and continued controversy. In 1972, the Supreme Court’s decision in Furman ...
Death penalty in decline? : the fight against capital punishment in the decades since Furman v. Georgia - Austin Sarat editor
"This volume presents essays evaluating the similarities and differences between the legal, political, ethical, and practical landscapes confronted by the death penalty abolition movement at the time of the Furman v. Georgia decision and subsequent reversal and those confronted by the same movement today"--
Becoming abolitionists : police, protests, and the pursuit of freedom - Derecka Purnell.
"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 argues that police can not be reformed and 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"--Provided by publisher.
"In the wake of post-9/11 xenophobia, Obama's record-level deportations, Trump's immigration policies, and the 2020 uprisings for racial justice, the US remains entrenched in a circular discourse regarding migrant justice. As organizer Silky Shah argues in Unbuild Walls, we must move beyond building nicer cages or advocating for comprehensive immigration reform. Our only hope for creating a liberated society for all, she insists, is abolition. Unbuild Walls dives into US immigration policy and its relationship to mass incarceration, from the last forty years up to the present, showing how the prison-industrial complex and immigration enforcement are intertwined systems of repression. Incorporating historical and legal analyses, Shah's personal experience as an organizer, as well as stories of people, campaigns, organizations, and localities that have resisted detention and deportation, Shah assesses the movement's strategies, challenges, successes, and shortcomings. Featuring a foreword by Amna A. Akbar, Unbuild Walls is an expansive and radical intervention, bridging the gaps between movements for immigrant rights, racial justice, and prison abolition." --
Become ungovernable : an abolition feminist ethic for democratic living - H. L. T. Quan
Become Ungovernable is a provocative new work of political thought setting out to reclaim "freedom", "justice", and "democracy", revolutionary ideas that are all too often warped in the interests of capital and the state. Revealing the mirage of mainstream democratic thought and the false promises of liberal political ideologies, H.L.T. Quan offers an alternative approach: an abolition feminism drawing on a kaleidoscope of refusal praxes, and on a deep engagement with the Black Radical Tradition and queer analytics. With each chapter anchored by episodes from the long history of resistance and rebellions against tyranny, Quan calls for us to take up a feminist ethic of living rooted in the principles of radical inclusion, mutuality and friendship as part of the larger toolkit for confronting fascism, white supremacy, and the neoliberal labor regime.
Death Penalty Alternatives for Arizona (DPAA) is a non-profit educational organization working to inform the public about the injustices surrounding the death penalty and the criminal punishment system. DPAA consists of volunteers from around the State of Arizona organized into the Northern, Central, and Southern regions of the state.
A people's guide to abolition and disability justice - Katie Tastrom
"A People's Guide to Abolition and Disability Justice explains the history and theories behind abolition and disability justice in a way that is easy to understand for those new to these concepts yet also gives insights that will be useful to seasoned activists. The book uses extensive research and professional and lived experience to illuminate the way the State uses disability and its power to disable to incarcerate multiply marginalized disabled people, especially those who are queer, trans, Black, or Indigenous. Because disabled people are much more likely than nondisabled people to be locked up in prisons, jails, and other sites of incarceration, abolitionists, and others critical of carceral systems must incorporate a disability justice perspective into our work. A People's Guide to Abolition and Disability Justice gives personal and policy examples of how and why disabled people are disproportionately caught up in the carceral net, and how we can use this information to work toward prison and police abolition more effectively. This book includes practical tools and strategies that will be useful for anyone who cares about disability justice or abolition and explains why we can't have one without the other"--Amazon.com.
Terrorism on trial : political violence and abolitionist futures - Nicole Nguyen
"Terrorism on Trial examines the contemporary role that U.S. domestic courts play in the global war on terror and their use as a weapon of war. Retheorizing terrorism as political violence, Nicole Nguyen invites readers to carefully consider the role of power and politics in the making of armed resistance, addressing the root causes of political violence, with a goal of building toward a less violent and more liberatory world"--
Problem with capital punishment and why it should be abolished in America - Vincent R. Jones
"This book takes a harsh, critical look at capital punishment and points out the glaring flaws and misconceptions about its effectiveness. It makes a factual, legal, and moral argument for its abolition while refuting the main arguments in support of the death penalty"--
A fire at the center : solidarity, whiteness, and becoming a water protector : a memoir - Karen Irene Van Fossan
"In 1987, when Karen Van Fossan's teenage identity was stolen in a botched bank robbery, she maintained an unquestioning allegiance to the colonial legal system. In 2021, when she found herself in a jail cell on a Water Protector charge, she had long since been a resister of her own colonial culture. But what does it mean, as a descendent of colonialism, to seek to be un-colonial?"--
SNCC: The New Abolitionists influenced a generation of activists struggling for civil rights and seeking to learn from the successes and failures of those who built the fantastically influential Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. It is considered an indispensable study of the organization, of the 1960s, and of the process of social change. Includes a new introduction by the author.
Racism is America's original and most enduring sin, with well-known historic and contemporary markers: slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, redlining, mass incarceration, police brutality. Yet a resurgence of white racism in the twenty-first century, from white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, to the skyrocketing number of hate crimes being reported around the country, has also brought into sharp relief another uniquely American tradition: antiracism. In Anticracism, Alex Zamalin tells the powerful story of this political theory and practice. He examines the way in which the black antiracist tradition has strongly engaged questions of freedom, equality, justice, struggle, and political hope in dark times. Through a study of major figures, texts and political movements, he traces the history of antislavery abolition, black socialism, and the civil rights movement, leading all the way up to the contemporary Movement for Black Lives.