ABOLITION AND RECONSTRUCTION: AN EMERGENT GUIDE FOR COLLECTIVE STUDY
FORTHCOMING, SHIPS AUGUST 2025
The W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition and Reconstruction
The systems we confront don’t want us to study–and they definitely don’t want us to study together.
Abolition and Reconstruction is the product–and the process–of the first year of work at the Du Bois Movement School, a community education project that came together in the wake of the 2020 uprisings. While the media embraced the language of abolition–if not the revolutionary practice–the state used violent tactics to repress activists as we fought in the streets and in public opinion for the abolition of prisons and police, of state violence and capitalism. Out of this moment a question emerged: What do we really mean when we say “abolition”?
Searching for the answer to this question required conversations with organizers and educators, the development of concrete organizing skills, and most of all a deeper understanding of history, economics, and power. In this pocket-sized volume, Abolition and Reconstruction offers a framework for 12 weeks of study on revolutionary abolition, decolonization, and struggles past and present, giving readers the tools to understand oppression and domination, and work together to build knowledge and solidarity.
PRODUCT DETAILS
Compiled and Edited by: The W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition and Reconstruction
Publisher: Common Notions
ISBN: 9781945335365
eBook ISBN: 9781945335372
Published: August 2025
Format: 5 x 7 in
Page count: 224 pages
Subjects: Abolition | Political Education | Movement Building
About THE AUTHOR
The W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction is a political education program for aspiring revolutionaries and movement leaders from those communities most impacted by poverty, policing, and mass incarceration.
Our home is Philadelphia, crossroads of Harriet Tubman and Octavius Catto, W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Maroon Shoatz, a critical hub for abolitionist militancy in the past, and a thriving and powerful movement ecosystem today.
Through participatory and collective study of political economy, the history of global resistance movements, and the theoretical and practical aspects of social change, we aim to teach a new generation of organic intellectuals not only how to understand the world, but more importantly, how to change it.
