Abolition Coalition

Abolition Coalition

📖 Reading group: Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
đź’° Free. Please RSVP at inciteseminarsphila@gmail.com to receive ZOOM link and PDF of the book.

đź“– Meets every Tuesday starting  July 12th 6-7:30pm

  • Tuesday July 12th 6-7:30pm (Introduction and Chapter 1)
  • Tuesday July 19th 6-7:30pm (Chapter 2)
  • Tuesday July 26th 6-7:30pm (Chapter 3)
  • Tuesday August 2nd 6-7:30pm (Chapter 4)
  • Tuesday August 9th 6-7:30pm (Chapters 5 and 6) 

What is prison abolition?

This a movement of organizations and individual activists that hope to reduce or to at most get rid of the current prison system. Many organizations such as the Marshall Project, Critical Resistance, Black and Pink, and an organization that also goes by the name INCITE! (Women of Color Against Violence) advocate for the abolition of the prison-industrial complex. Local chapters of the Black Lives Matter movement also advocate for prisons to be abolished. The chapter in Philadelphia is one of the main groups that speak on this.  

While this topic is one that makes people uncomfortable it is one that needs to be amplified even more as the United States has the highest rate of incarceration, most people have heard the media discussing how “the United States represents 5% of the world’s population, but represents 25% of the world’s prison population”. Most will ask how did we get here? Michelle Alexander, a legal scholar, and a civil rights litigator, clears the path for us as we get to where we are now in her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. 

Incites’ new reading group will answer many of the questions that people have about the prison abolition movement. Debunking the myth that prisons keep us safer, and that we should reform the system instead of abolishing it. Alexander argues reform is not possible. We will conquer the questions of: How did we get here? What do we do now? Can we actually abolish the current prison system? 

This book can be related to current issues facing the country, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the seeds of social control are sprouting day by day and many activists have expressed that this has been a long time coming.   

Facilitator: Ebru Bukovalli is Incite Seminar’s amazing summer intern! She is currently a student at Penn State and a rising criminal justice researcher with interests in prisoner populations and the prison abolition movement.

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