If we keep the structure that exists, we're gonna always have somebody who's going to need to be policed by the police. So that's why I'm saying it's critical to abolish capitalism, because otherwise you're not going to be able to create a situation where we are in a position of new social relations between ourselves and each other, that will allow us to build new forms of safety.

Organizer Mariame Kaba explores the politics of police and prison abolition - as a defense measure for the marginalized against the legacy of state violence and White supremacy, and a liberatory path towards a free and equal society - and calls for people to challenge the structures of power and punishment not only within the state, but within our own thoughts.

Mariame wrote the article Free Us All: Participatory defense campaigns as abolitionist organizing and the feature #Abolish for The New Inquiry.