We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice

One of Kaba’s preeminent forms of activism, a participatory defense campaign involves community action in response to the unjust imprisonment of one of their members. Kaba often specialized in cases where Black women were criminalized for defending themselves against the police or an abusive partner, as well as women criminalized and subjected to especially cruel treatment for minor offenses or merely engaging in sex work. These campaigns are among the most rewarding that Kaba has participated in, even when they do not secure their desired outcome of freeing the person, because they are an especially potent way of bringing communities together in solidarity with one another and in defiance of the state. Kaba claims that participatory defense campaigns are among the most promising models of what an alternative system of justice could ultimately look like.

This is a term Kaba and other activists use to describe how prisons and business interests are effectively allied in the propagation of a system designed to keep large numbers of people incarcerated, mainly for profit or political influence. It is derived from the phrase “military industrial complex,” famously used in the farewell speech of President Dwight Eisenhower, who likewise feared that a large military budget would serve the interests of key interests while actually making the country less rather than more safe. Policies that feed into the broader prison-industrial complex include the so-called War on Drugs, which disproportionately targets Black and brown men, and a draconian immigration system that incarcerates hundreds of thousands of people who have crossed the border into the US.

The “school-to-prison pipeline” describes the phenomenon whereby increased police presence at schools makes it more likely that disciplinary issues in school become matters of criminal punishment. There are several reasons why police in schools helps lead to worse outcomes for such students. It turns those schools into places of punishment rather than learning, particularly for Black students. Increased budgets for police also often coincide with decreased funding for schools. Therefore, students do not receive needed support throughout their education, making them unprepared for adult life, thus increasing the odds that they will become a victim of the prison system. The term has become common for activists seeking to separate children from police and judicial punishment, on the basis that police presence is actually a source of harm rather than protection, especially for marginalized communities.