MPD150: Resources

Aside from our own resources, like the “Enough Is Enough” report, our Frequently-Asked Questions zine, and our “Community Policing and Other Fairy Tales” comic, we wanted to share more resources and readings: books, articles, essays, news items, toolkits, and much more. We hope it can be useful.

For anyone looking for a more focused list, we’ve also put together a kind of “top 25 list” of #AbolitionReadings here.

Finally, we are currently sharing the most recent writing and resources on abolition via our linktree. You can also find a chronological list of links and resources from our linktree here.

Of course, this list is not exhaustive; but these are some great places to start if you’re looking to learn more about what a world without police might look like, and how we might get there.

BOOKS

Are Prisons Obsolete? By Angela Y. Davis
The End of Policing by Alex Vitale
Abolition Now! Ten Years of Strategy and Struggle Against the Prison Industrial Complex (Anthology; also available directly from Critical Resistance here)
Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America by Kristian Williams
Policing the Planet (Anthology)
Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? (Anthology via Truthout)
Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California by Ruth Wilson Gilmore
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
Police Unbound: Corruption, Abuse, and Heroism by the Boys in Blue by Anthony V. Bouza
Prison by Any Other Name by Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law
Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement (Editors Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha)
We Do This ’til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice by Mariame Kaba
Abolition for the People essay collection edited by Colin Kaepernick
Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom by Derecka Purnell
“Prisons Make Us Safer” And 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration by Victoria Law
Abolition. Feminism. Now. by Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners, and Beth E. Richie
A World Without Police: How Strong Communities Make Cops Obsolete by Geo Maher
Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation by Ruth Wilson Gilmore
No More Police: A Case for Abolition by Mariame Kaba and Andrea J. Ritchie

Note: as more and more books get released, one other resource is Micah Herskind’s Forthcoming Abolitionist Books list.

WHAT IS ABOLITION? EXPLAINERS AND INTRODUCTIONS

“Defund Police” explainer video from Project NIA
Police Abolition 101: Messages When Facing Doubts from Project NIA and Interrupting Criminalization
Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police (New York Times)
Deep Dive: Police Abolition (The Takeaway)
What Is Abolition, And Why Do We Need It? (Vogue)
#8ToAbolition Is Advocating to Abolish Police to Keep Us All Safe (Teen Vogue)
Calls to reform, defund, dismantle and abolish the police, explained (NBC News)
What Does It Mean to Defund or Abolish the Police? with Patrisse Cullors, Josie Duffy Rice, Sam Sinyangwe, Mychal Denzel Smith and Alex S. Vitale (The Daily Show)
“Isn’t That Public Safety?” graphics
The Emerging Movement for Police and Prison Abolition (Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor in conversation with Mariame Kaba)
Building a Police-Free Future: Frequently-Asked Questions (MPD150)
#AbolitionReadings Zine (MPD150)
What are we talking about when we talk about “a police-free future?” (MPD150)

MAKING THE CASE FOR ABOLITION

Ruth Wilson Gilmore Makes the Case for Abolition (The Intercept)
Why Arguments Against Abolition Inevitably Fail (Angela Y. Davis)
To Stop Police Violence, We Need Better Questions—and Bigger Demands (Mariame Kaba)
Defund the Police (The New Yorker)
Incremental Change is a Moral Failure (The Atlantic)
How I Became a Police Abolitionist (The Atlantic)
Why “Crime” Isn’t the Question and Police Aren’t the Answer (Current Affairs)
No More Money for the Police (New York Times)
The Only Solution Is to Defund the Police (The Nation)
The answer to police violence is not ‘reform’. It’s defunding. Here’s why (The Guardian)
Defund the Police Now (The Appeal)
“We don’t have time to wait:” Minneapolis anti-police brutality organizer Kandace Montgomery on defunding the police (The Intercept)
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’s June 7 (2020) show on policing (Last Week Tonight)
Cities Ask if It’s Time to Defund Police and ‘Reimagine’ Public Safety (New York Times)
Minneapolis City Council members consider disbanding the police (City Pages)
Movement to defund police gains ‘unprecedented’ support across US (The Guardian)
A New World Is Possible: Defund Police And Fund Black Lives (Essence)
The Time Is Now, Whatever It Costs (Yes!)
Black MPLS Public Safety Convo
The Abolitionist Movement (Vanity Fair)
Even A Pandemic Couldn’t Stop Police Shootings. Activists Explain Why Abolition Must Be Our Goal. (Refinery29)
Defund the Police Is a Demand—and We Should Heed It (Bitch Media)
The Fantasy of Community Control of the Police (The Forge)
Police Convictions Are Not the Goal. Abolitionists Have Bigger Dreams. (Truthout)
Why We Don’t Say “Reform the Police” (Mariame Kaba and Andrea J. Ritchie)

ABOLITION IN PRACTICE

10 Action Ideas for Building a Police-Free Future (MPD150)
I’m a Minneapolis City Council Member. We Must Disband the Police—Here’s What Could Come Next (Time)
What a World Without Cops Would Look Like (Mother Jones)
How the Police Could Be Defunded (New Yorker)
How Would Prison Abolition Actually Work? (GQ)
After four nights without police presence, neighborhoods protect themselves (Star Tribune)
Uprisings Are Driving a Surge in Mutual Aid in Minneapolis and Beyond (Truthout)
Minneapolis Organizers Are Already Building the Tools for Safety Without Police (Truthout)
The Reckoning Will Be Incomplete Without Black Women and Girls (The Atlantic)
How Prison Abolitionists Are Meeting the Moment (The Appeal)
We Want More Justice For Breonna Taylor Than The System That Killed Her Can Deliver (Essence)
The Problem With “Community Policing” (Slate)
Why Social Workers Cannot Work With Police (Slate)
Pollution, Police, Pandemic: How the fight for Black Lives in Minneapolis connects Anti-Incineration and Police Abolition (GAIA US Canada)
Ending Mass Incarceration Is Only the Beginning (The Nation)
What Public Safety Without Police Looks Like (The Appeal)
Defunding the Police Isn’t Punishment—It Will Actually Make Us Safer (Cosmopolitan)
What If We Just Stopped Calling the Cops? (Vice)
Practicing Abolition, Creating Community (Benji Hart)

ABOLITION IN PRACTICE: PART 2: SPECIFIC EXAMPLES

Health care workers replaced Denver cops in handling hundreds of mental health and substance abuse cases — and officials say it saved lives (CBS News)
Seattle cut its police budget. Now the public will decide how to spend the money (The Appeal)
Austin will use money cut from police budget to establish supportive housing (The Appeal)
San Francisco voters abolish mandatory staffing levels for police (The Appeal)
Five Days Without Cops: Could Brooklyn Policing Experiment be a ‘Model for the Future’? (The City)
Oakland Takes First Steps Toward Directing Some 911 Calls to Community Responders (The Appeal)
Minneapolis Defunds Its Police. Organizers Made It Happen. (Gen)
Los Angeles voters just delivered a huge win for the defund the police movement (Vox)
Where Calling the Police Isn’t the Only Option (Bloomberg CityLab)
Campaigns to Defund Police Have Seen Major Wins — and They’re Not Stopping (TruthOut)
What Traffic Enforcement Without Police Could Look Like (The Appeal)
The section on “city by city victories” (p.44) in Interrupting Criminalization’s The Demand Is Still Defund the Police: Lessons from 2020 Toolkit

HOW DID WE GET HERE? HISTORY AND CONTEXT

Enough Is Enough: A 150-Year Performance Review of the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD150)
What Time is it on the Clock of the Police Abolition Movement? (Ricardo Levins Morales)
“A portrait of systemic rot:” Minneapolis police making headlines (MPD150)
‘You Can Only Demean People So Much.’ Minneapolis Activists Aren’t Surprised a National Movement Started There (Time)
MPD150, Reclaim the Block, and the Black Visions Collective Have Been Fighting to Abolish Minneapolis Police for Years (Teen Vogue)
How decades of racist policies and “white mob violence” heightened tensions in Minneapolis (Salon)
Minneapolis Was Long Overdue for This Crisis (The Atlantic)
Minnesota’s decades-long failure to confront police abuse (Vanity Fair)
How Defund and Disband Became the Demands (The New York Review of Books)
The Rush to Redefine “Defund the Police” (The New Republic)
‘Abolish The Police’ Isn’t New. This Energy Is. (Huffpo)
The Minneapolis Group That’s Been Calling for Police Abolition Since 2016 (Next City)
‘We can enact the future we want now’: a black feminist history of abolition (The Guardian)
The New Wave of Young Black Activists (NYT Magazine)
After 100 Days of Protest, Writers and Photographers Reflect on What They’ve Witnessed (Harpers)
After Floyd (The Baffler)

UNREFORMABLE: ON POLICE AND PRISONS

Blue Bloods: America’s Brotherhood of Police Officers (Vanity Fair)
The Authoritarian Instincts of Police Unions (The Atlantic)
The Police Don’t Change (Slate)
Angela Davis: ‘We knew that the role of the police was to protect white supremacy’ (The Guardian)
The Bad Cops: How Minneapolis protects its worst police officers until it’s too late (MN Reformer)
The Lies Cops Tell and the Lies We Tell About Cops (The New Republic)
The Enemy Within: Race and White Supremacy in American Policing (Rolling Stone)
Police and State Violence Have Secondary Impacts: Complex and Lasting Trauma (TruthOut)
Arrested, then traumatized: Black people on what comes after police encounters (NBC)
Getting Real About Prisons and Why They Don’t Make Us Safer (Movement Memos)
Police Departments Spend Vast Sums of Money Creating “Copaganda” (Jacobin)
After Uvalde, “Police Lie” Should Be the Default Position (Adam Johnson)
State: Probable cause that Minneapolis police engage in race discrimination (MN Reformer)
“A portrait of systemic rot:” Minneapolis police making headlines (MPD150)

ABOLITIONIST RESPONSES TO VIOLENCE

Aching for Abolition: As a survivor of sexual violence, I know prison isn’t the answer (The Cut)
How I Became a Police Abolitionist (The Atlantic)
We Have Already Stopped Calling The Cops: What we can learn about police abolition from domestic violence activists (Bustle)
‘Defund the police’ movement could offer sexual assault survivors a different path for justice, experts say (NBC News)
Responses to Violence Must Move Beyond Policing (The Appeal)
How Can We Reconcile Prison Abolition With #MeToo? (Filter)
The Domestic Violence I Survived Taught Me the Importance of Prison Abolition (Transform Harm)
Surviving Rape as a Prison Abolitionist (Transform Harm)
Transform Harm’s website, “a resource hub about ending violence”
Survived and Punished’s Analysis of Gender Violence + Police Violence + Incarceration
An Anti-Rape Movement Without Police (The New Republic)
What Does Accountability Look Like Without Punishment? (Yes!)
What About the Rapists? (Interrupting Criminalization)
Alternatives to Police and Prisons: Activists Share How to Better Address Violence (Teen Vogue)
The Dangerous Few: Taking Seriously Prison Abolition and its Skeptics (Harvard Law Review)

PRE-2020 ARTICLES (Minnesota-Specific)

Police, incarceration don’t equal public safety (Star Tribune, December 2019)
Manufacturing Consent: A Timeline of Policing and Propaganda in Minneapolis (streets.mn, October 2019)
Star Tribune Editorial : We must look beyond police for community safety (Star Tribune, March 2019)
Mpls. council moves to shift $1.1 million from police department (MPR, December 2018)
Minneapolis Police Department budget cut by $1M to fund public safety programs instead (City Pages, December 2018)
31 community groups tell St. Paul leaders: Don’t hire more cops, focus on investing in youth and communities (Pioneer Press, July 2018)
St. Paul Mayor Carter rejects police chief’s call for 50 new cops (Pioneer Press, June 2018)
More Cops for Who? (TC Daily Planet, March 2018)
Police Shooting of Justine ‘Damond’ Ruszczyk Exposes a Vicious Double Standard (Colorlines, July 2017)
Activists and organizers reimagine modern day policing in Minneapolis (TC Daily Planet, July 2017)
An Official Narrative, Built on Sand (Question the Premise, April 2016)
Dominant Narratives, White Media, and Jamar Clark (Question the Premise, December 2015)
Police Brutality 101 Online Course (Communities United Against Police Brutality)

PRE-2020 ARTICLES (Perspectives on Abolition)

Thinking about how to abolish prisons with Mariame Kaba: (Chris Hayes’ podcast & transcript)
Justice in America Ep. 20: Mariame Kaba and Prison Abolition (podcast & transcript)
Towards the horizon of abolition: A conversation with Mariame Kaba (The Next System Project)
Video: Why We Can and Should Abolish the Police and Prison-Industrial Complex (Films for Action)
What Does Police Abolition Mean? (Boston Review)
The Struggle to Abolish the Police Is Not New (Boston Review)
What Abolitionists Do (Jacobin)
This Study Found That Major U.S. Cities Spend Millions More On Policing Than On Social Programs (Blavity)
We Don’t Just Need Nicer Cops. We Need Fewer Cops (The Nation)
Policing doesn’t need reforming. It needs to be abolished and created anew (The Washington Post)
The Myth of Liberal Policing (The New Inquiry)
Abolish the police? Organizers say it’s less crazy than it sounds (Chicago Reader)
BEYOND REPAIR: While Republicans & Democrats Unite to Increase Police Power, Others Point to New Way Forward (Ricardo Levins Morales)
Is Prison Necessary? Ruth Wilson Gilmore Might Change Your Mind (New York Times)
A Jailbreak of the Imagination: Seeing Prisons for What They Are and Demanding Transformation (TruthOut)