On the Road to Abolition: Archiving Resistance to the Carceral State
Simon Balto and Emily Thuma, in conversation with Mariame Kaba, will discuss their new books on histories of resistance to prisons and policing in the U.S. from 1919 through the 1970s.
Balto’s book, Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power (2019), examines black Communists’ rejections of police enforcement of Depression-era austerity politics, and the Black Power-era fight for community control of the police, among related issues. Thuma’s book, All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence (2019), explores 1970s radical newsletters that cut across prison walls, abolitionist fights for prisoners’ and psychiatric patients’ rights, and defense campaigns to free survivors of sexual and gender violence.
Together, these works offer questions and lessons for contemporary struggles.
About the Speakers
Simon Balto is Assistant Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Iowa. He is the author of Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power (University of North Carolina Press, 2019).
Emily Thuma is Assistant Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence (University of Illinois Press, 2019).
Mariame Kaba is an organizer, educator, curator, and BCRW Researcher-in-Residence. She is the founder of several organizations and projects including the Chicago Freedom School, the Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls and Young Women, Love & Protect and most recently Survived & Punished.
Events are free and open to the public. RSVP is preferred but not required. Seating is available on a first-come, first-seated basis.
Image credit: ‘Free Dessie Woods – Smash Colonial Violence’, National Committee to Defend Dessie Woods, Atlanta, Georgia, [late 1970s]. Associated with the African People’s Socialist Party. From Brad Duncan and Interference Archive, Finally Got the News: The Printed Legacy of U.S. Radical Left, 1970-1979. Brooklyn: Common Notions, 2017.