Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

Product Description
**CONVERSATIONS YOU NEED TO BE HAVING WITH YOUR FAMILY THIS HOLIDAY SEASON** *Named a Kirkus Reviews "Best Book of 2021"* "Becoming Abolitionists is ultimately about the importance of asking questions and our ability to create answers. And in the end, Purnell makes it clear that abolition is a labor of love—one that we can accomplish together if only we decide to."—Nia Evans, Boston Review\nFor more than a century, activists in the United States have tried to reform the police. From community policing initiatives to increasing diversity, none of it has stopped the police from killing about three people a day. Millions of people continue to protest police violence because these "solutions" do not match the problem: the police cannot be reformed.\nIn
Becoming Abolitionists, Purnell draws from her experiences as a lawyer, writer, and organizer initially skeptical about police abolition. She saw too much sexual violence and buried too many friends to consider getting rid of police in her hometown of St. Louis, let alone the nation. But the police were a placebo. Calling them felt like
something, and something feels like everything when the other option seems like nothing.\nPurnell details how multi-racial social movements rooted in rebellion, risk-taking, and revolutionary love pushed her and a generation of activists toward abolition. The book travels across geography and time, and offers lessons that activists have learned from Ferguson to South Africa, from Reconstruction to contemporary protests against police shootings.\nHere, Purnell argues that police can not be reformed and invites readers to envision new systems that work to address the root causes of violence.
Becoming Abolitionists shows that abolition is not solely about getting rid of police, but a commitment to create and support different answers to the problem of harm in society, and, most excitingly, an opportunity to reduce and eliminate harm in the first place.
Review
"An informed, provocative, astute consideration of salvific alternatives to contemporary policing and imprisonment." \n—Starred Review,
Kirkus\n"Part memoir, part essay, and part argument,
Becoming Abolitionists is an organizing tool itself, inviting in skeptics and offering a bridge to committed activists in other movements."\n—Lyra Walsh Fuchs, Dissent
"Far from avoiding the tough questions, Purnell dives in headfirst. Drawing from history, she deftly connects the roots of violence to the racial and economic hierarchies police are charged with maintaining, arguing that precarity cannot be eradicated by the people who are paid to protect it.
Becoming Abolitionists is ultimately about the importance of asking questions and our ability to create answers. And in the end, Purnell makes it clear that abolition is a labor of love—one that we can accomplish together if only we decide to."\n—Nia Evans, Boston Review\n"Drawing upon a Black radical tradition of social movements,
Becoming Abolitionists reveals the power of self-study, collective political education, and resistance to reform efforts to inspire a new generation of activists. Purnell offers a persuasive and warm invitation to us all to deliver on the promise
and potential of abolition."\n—Aida Mariam Davis,
Stanford Social Innovation Review\n"[Purnell] draws convincing parallels between the past and the present to demonstrate that today’s policing systems are vestiges of this oppressive framework ... She is in such command of her material [that] even if you disagree with her, you are compelled to listen."\n—The Guardian (UK)\n"Through deft historical research, political analysis, and gutting prose, the book uses a variety of approaches to map Purnell’s complex and fulfilling political evolution."
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The Cut
"Part memoir, part political and social commentary, the St. Louis native’s genre-bending book demonstrates her road to adopting abolitionist politics and makes the argument for why the new abolitioni