I had noticed that several of the key protesters had died violent deaths and, as an Italian, I immediately thought of Mafia-style revenge killings by the cops. I first met Derecka about three years ago, when I was looking for someone to write a book about the aftermath of the Ferguson protests. Below, Astra House Editorial Director Alessandra Bastagli explains how she and Purnell came to know each other, and how Becoming Abolitionists, released October 5, came to be. 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. Calling them felt like something, and something feels like everything when the other option seems like nothing.īecoming Abolitionists details how multi-racial social movements rooted in rebellion, risk-taking, and revolutionary love pushed her and a generation of activists toward abolition. Louis, let alone the nation. But the police were a placebo. She saw too much sexual violence and buried too many friends to consider getting rid of police in her hometown of St. Initially, however, Purnell was skeptical about police abolition. Derecka Purnell‘s Becoming Abolitionists, which bestselling author of The New Jim Crow Michelle Alexander called “an essential reading for our times,” invites readers to envision new systems that work to address the root causes of violence.
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