REIMAGINING THE REVOLUTION

A Jewish journalist introduces the fundamentals of the prison abolition movement.

After a career “covering the criminal legal system as a beat reporter,” Lehman-Ewing wanted to do more than just write about the American carceral system’s many failures. Consequently, she joined the organization All of Us or None of Us, where she wrote “a newspaper amplifying the voices of currently and formerly incarcerated people.” This work put the author in touch with an array of imprisoned artists and activists, including Ivan Kilgore, who funds a successful nonprofit called the United Black Family Scholarship Foundation while behind bars; and Heshima Denham, who suffers solitary confinement and other penalties because of the popularity of his abolitionist writing. Lehman-Ewing’s activism also led her to a variety of prison abolition activists like the members of Critical Resistance, who are leading campaigns to close California’s prisons. The author contextualizes the movement with research about such exploitative practices as forced prison labor and analyses of the oppressive systems that perpetuate the mass incarceration of Black men. “It is not enough to learn how we got here,” writes Lehman-Ewing. “We must start to imagine where we go from here.” The author’s passion for her cause and affection for the individuals she profiles makes this book an excellent introduction to the modern prison abolition movement. However, her nearly exclusive focus on cis-hetero Black male prisoners narrows the text’s focus, making the book feel more like a starting point than a complete resource. In her foreword, activist Ilyasah Shabazz, daughter of Malcolm X, urges readers to “organize with strategy so that sixty years from now, we will not find ourselves in the same space as we were sixty years ago when my father was alive, simply insisting on liberty and justice for all.”

A well-researched beginner’s guide to a growing movement.