W Magazine | January 20, 2021
In 2019, the activist, artist, and author Patrisse Cullors wrote an article for the Harvard Law Review that fused abolitionist history and theory with her own abolition practice. As a cofounder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation with years of experience working alongside at-risk youth, fighting for prison reform, and participating in social movements around the world, Cullors had plenty to say on the subject. But it was the first time the 39-year-old put on paper a step-by-step breakdown outlining the way she integrated abolition into her daily life. “I thought about what I would have wanted to see as a young abolitionist,” Cullors tells me on a recent phone call from her native Los Angeles. “I would’ve wanted to read someone say, These are the things that make abolition possible. So I said, Let me tell you how I do it.”
That article was the bones for what became Cullors’s latest book, An Abolitionist's Handbook: 12 Steps to Changing Yourself and the World. Out January 25, the handbook is just that: a text that can be revisited as reference material for how to inject abolitionist theories into your life. Although An Abolitionist's Handbook contains instructions on how to enact Black liberation and the liberation of underserved communities; how to fight imperialism, white supremacy, and colonialism, and details on dismantling the prison industrial system and other harmful structures, it’s also imbued with stories from Cullors’s upbringing as a young Black woman in the United States, her experiences in the Black Lives Matter movement, and the lessons she’s learned along the way. Additionally, Cullors ends each chapter of the book by spotlighting other activists and associates who have inspired the way she approaches abolition today.
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