Mariame Kaba is an American activist, grassroots organizer, and educator who advocates for the
abolition of the
prison industrial complex, including all
police.[1] She is the author of We Do This 'Til We Free Us (2021). The Mariame Kaba Papers are held by the
Chicago Public Library Special Collections.[2]
Early life and education
Mariame Kaba was born in
New York City to immigrant parents.[3] Her mother emigrated from the
Ivory Coast;[3] her father was involved in the independence struggle in
Guinea.[4]
Kaba views prison abolition as the total dismantling of prison and policing while building up community services and opposes the reform of policing.[17][18] Her work has created the framework for current abolitionist organizations including Black Youth Project 100, Black Lives Matter Chicago, and
Assata's Daughters.[6] She also helped found the organization Survived and Punished, an abolitionist organization that seeks to end sentencing for victims of
intimate partner violence who defend themselves.[19] This project grew out of efforts to free
Marissa Alexander.[20]
Writing
Kaba maintained a blog, "US Prison Culture," beginning in 2010. She has been active on Twitter under the account @prisonculture.[21][22]
In 2012, she wrote Resisting Police Violence in Harlem, a historical pamphlet detailing the policing and violence in Harlem.[23]
In March 2018, she wrote Lifting As They Climbed: Mapping A History Of Black Women On Chicago’s South Side with Essence McDowell. Started in 2012, the book is written as a guidebook that maps the history of the influential Black women who contributed to the development of Chicago during the 19th and 20th centuries.[24][8]
In 2021, she published We Do This 'Til We Free Us with
Haymarket Books. It debuted at number nine on
The New York Times bestseller list for non-fiction paperbacks.[25] In a review for the Chicago Reader, Ariel Parrella-Aureli described it as “a collection of talks, interviews, and past work that can serve as an initial primer on the PIC [prison-industrial complex] abolition and community building rooted in transformative justice.”[26] Kaba was reluctant to write the book, but the
mass protests in the summer of 2020 persuaded her, in the interests of lending her tools for collective action to newly activated organizers.[26]
Awards
2010 7th District Community Award from Illinois State Senator
Heather Steans[27]
Co-curated Blood at the Root – Unearthing the Stories of State Violence Against Black Women and Girls.[46][47][48]
Co-curated Making Niggers: Demonizing and Distorting Blackness[49]
Co-curated Black/Inside. Black/Inside: A History of Captivity & Confinement in the U.S. Art Exhibit on display at African American Cultural Center Gallery[50]
"To Live and Die in "Chiraq."" The End of Chiraq: A Literary Mixtape. Eds
Javon Johnson and Kevin Coval. Northwestern University Press.[51]
"Bresha Meadows Returns Home After Collective Organizing Efforts." Teen Vogue.[52]
"For Mother's Day, Activists Are Bailing Black Mamas out of Jail." Broadly.[53]
Foreword, As Black As Resistance: Finding the Conditions for Liberation, by Zoé Samudzi and William C. Anderson. AK Press. 2018.[54]
Introduction, Trying To Make the Personal Political, with the Women's Action Alliance, Lori Sharpe, Jane Ginsburg and Gail Gordon, and Jacqui Shine. Half-Letter Press. 2017.[55]
Kaba, Mariame; Hayes, Kelly (2023). Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care.
Haymarket Books.
^Samudzi, Zoé; Anderson, William C.; Kaba, Mariame (June 5, 2018). As Black As Resistance: Finding the Conditions for Liberation. Chico, California:
AK Press.
ISBN9781849353168.