A vital anthology exploring the intersections between caregiving and abolition

Abolition has never been a proposal to simply tear things down. As Alexis Pauline Gumbs asks, What if abolition is something that grows? As we struggle to build a liberatory, caring, loving, abundant future, we have much to learn from the work of birthing, raising, caring for, and loving future generations.

In We Grow the World Together, abolitionists and organizers Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson bring together a remarkable collection of voices revealing the complex tapestry of ways people are living abolition in their daily lives through parenting and caregiving. Ranging from personal narratives to policy-focused analysis to activist chronicles, these writers highlight how abolition is essential to any kind of parenting justice.

Contributors include:
Beth Richie
Harsha Walia
EJ, 6 years old
Dorothy Roberts
Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Dylan Rodríguez
Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn
Shira Hassan
Victoria Law
Mariame Kaba
The PDX Childcare Collective
adrienne maree brown and Autumn Brown
and more

With a new afterword from the authors, the critically praised indictment of widely embraced alternatives to incarceration

But what does it mean--really--to celebrate reforms that convert your home into your prison? --Michelle Alexander, from the foreword

Electronic monitoring. Locked-down drug treatment centers. House arrest. Mandated psychiatric treatment. Data driven surveillance. Extended probation. These are some of the key alternatives held up as cost effective substitutes for jails and prisons. But in a searing, cogent critique (Library Journal), Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law reveal that many of these so-called reforms actually weave in new strands of punishment and control, bringing new populations who would not otherwise have been subject to imprisonment under physical control by the state.

Whether readers are seasoned abolitionists or are newly interested in sensible alternatives to retrograde policing and criminal justice policies and approaches, this highly praised book offers a wealth of critical insights that will help readers tread carefully through the dizzying terrain of a world turned upside down and make sense of what should take the place of mass incarceration (The Brooklyn Rail).

With a foreword by Michelle Alexander, Prison by Any Other Name exposes how a kinder narrative of reform is effectively obscuring an agenda of social control, challenging us to question the ways we replicate the status quo when pursuing change, and offering a bolder vision for truly alternative justice practices.

A vital anthology exploring the intersections between caregiving and abolition

Abolition has never been a proposal to simply tear things down. As Alexis Pauline Gumbs asks, What if abolition is something that grows? As we struggle to build a liberatory, caring, loving, abundant future, we have much to learn from the work of birthing, raising, caring for, and loving future generations.

In We Grow the World Together, abolitionists and organizers Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson bring together a remarkable collection of voices revealing the complex tapestry of ways people are living abolition in their daily lives through parenting and caregiving. Ranging from personal narratives to policy-focused analysis to activist chronicles, these writers highlight how abolition is essential to any kind of parenting justice.

Contributors include:
Beth Richie
Harsha Walia
EJ, 6 years old
Dorothy Roberts
Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Dylan Rodríguez
Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn
Shira Hassan
Victoria Law
Mariame Kaba
The PDX Childcare Collective
adrienne maree brown and Autumn Brown
and more

An analysis of the U.S. prison system through real-life stories, and a look at the complex work of community-based social justice projects.

Through the stories of prisoners and their families, including her own family's experiences, Maya Schenwar shows how the institution that locks up 2.3 million Americans and decimates poor communities of color is shredding the ties that, if nurtured, could foster real collective safety. As she vividly depicts here, incarceration takes away the very things that might enable people to build better lives. But looking toward a future beyond imprisonment, Schenwar profiles community-based initiatives that successfully deal with problems--both individual harm and larger social wrongs--through connection rather than isolation, moving toward a safer, freer future for all of us.

Maya Schenwar's stories about prisoners, their families (including her own), and the thoroughly broken punishment system are rescued from any pessimism such narratives might inspire by the author's brilliant juxtaposition of abolitionist imaginaries and radical political practices. --Angela Y. Davis, author of Are Prisons Obsolete?

Locked Down, Locked Out paints a searing portrait of the real-life human toll of mass incarceration, both on prisoners and on their families, and--equally compellingly--provides hope that collectively we can create a more humane world freed of prisons. Read this deeply personal and political call to end the shameful inhumanity of our prison nation. --Dorothy Roberts, author of Shattered Bonds and Killing the Black Body

This book has the power to transform hearts and minds, opening us to new ways of imagining what justice can mean for individuals, families, communities, and our nation as a whole. Maya Schenwar's personal, openhearted sharing of her own family's story, together with many other stories and real-world experiments with transformative justice, makes this book compelling, highly persuasive, and difficult to put down. I turned the last page feeling nothing less than inspired. --Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

Through the stories of prisoners and their families, including her own family's experiences, Maya Schenwar shows how the institution that locks up 2.3 million Americans and decimates poor communities of color is shredding the ties that, if nurtured, could foster real collective safety. As she vividly depicts here, incarceration takes away the very things that might enable people to build better lives. But looking toward a future beyond imprisonment, Schenwar profiles community - based initiatives that successfully deal with problems - both individual harm and larger social wrongs - through connection rather than isolation, moving toward a safer, freer future for all of us.