Abolition Journal Working Group

Abolition / Black Liberation

The inaugural issue of the movement-focused and future-forward Abolition Journal quarterly after it was relaunched by the Philadelphia-based Abolition School.

This pilot issue of the revived Abolition Journal is produced by the Philadelphia-based W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction. It brings together two dozen urgent and timely interventions in political debates around abolition and aims to show how this abstract idea manifests itself in our daily lives.

These interventions, authored by a diverse cast of contributors, including academics and attorneys, so-called felons and physicians, artists and educators, and parents, playwrights and poets, explore the everyday experiences that come with trying to live out an abolitionist politics. In the words of the editors, these experiences include “the daily victories and errands, reflections and runarounds, gestures and drama, habits and heartbreaks, setbacks and surrenders, excuses and evasions, breakdowns and breakthroughs.”

The issue curates a variety of content, including political essays, short stories, poetry, interviews, and speeches, each resonating and reflecting in their own unique way on the central theme “Everyday Sh!t.” They offer thoughts and reflections on structure, practice, care, and direction to deepen existing movement knowledge and invite new audiences to see themselves mirrored within this work.

Without exception, these are stories of sincere experience mixed with radical poetic visions culled from the issue contributors’ plurality of pasts, presents, and prefigurative futures. Grounded in Philadelphia, yet looking out onto the whole wide world, Abolition Journal aims to reflect the lived complexity that can be messy and self-defeating, but equally authentic and inspiring.

J. M. Holmes

Fiction

A novel about family, scarcity, and what it means to sell out as the world ends.

The world hasn’t quite ended, but it’s getting there. Me and Mine imagines a not-so-distant future on the pre-apocalyptic shores of Lake Michigan. The West has dried up, the watershed has been contaminated, and water scarcity has driven most of the population inward from the coasts. Here, real estate interests run rampant and the possibility of snagging a house close enough to the Great Lakes to get fresh water has realigned global financial interests. And, as always, the working class is being pushed aside to make way for white and wealthy newcomers.

Amidst the chaos, three brothers try to navigate this swiftly changing landscape. As one seeks influence in politics, the younger two are drawn into the dangerous, shadowy world of private security and militias. In the precarious new world that these three brothers navigate, J. M. Holmes offers a grim yet familiar future in which scarcity fuels resentment, resentment sparks extremism, and extremism ignites around the racial tensions of our present.

Josh MacPhee

Abolition / Art & Culture / Partner Publisher

Part history lesson, part organizing tool, part sticker set, this publication traces the ark of reproducible political graphics over the past 100 years via a collection of 15 examples. Each of these—from the Russian Revolution's "Red Wedge Beats The Whites" to an 1980s squatting flyer featuring Bart Simpson—have been re-imagined as graphics mobilized to shut Rikers Island Jail Complex.

Katal Center
Josh MacPhee

Abolition / Social Movements / Art & Culture / Partner Publisher

Back in print in a new 2nd Edition with 4 additional pages of material and updated introductions.

Part history lesson, part organizing tool, part sticker set, this publication traces the ark of reproducible political graphics over the past 100 years via a collection of 15 examples. Each of these—from the Russian Revolution's "Red Wedge Beats The Whites" to an 1980s squatting flyer featuring Bart Simpson—have been re-imagined as graphics mobilized to shut Rikers Island Jail Complex.

The Katal Center provides a brisk introduction to Rikers Island and why it is one of the country's most notorious jails. MacPhee draws on both his extensive knowledge of political graphic history and his 30 years of designing within social movements to deftly connect the two via the bridge of the campaign to Shut Rikers.

In addition, each zine comes with a set of 16 stickers, ready to use!