We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2021

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Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

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Part 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3: “The State Can't Give Us Transformative Justice”

Part 3, Chapter 1 Summary: “Whether Darren Wilson Is Indicted or Not, the Entire System Is Guilty: In These Times, November 2014”

At the time of writing, the country was awaiting news about whether a grand jury in St. Louis would indict Darren Wilson, a police officer accused of killing 18-year-old Michael Brown. Many would regard an indictment as a sign that justice is being served, and while Kaba understands the symbolic value, she does not think Wilson’s indictment would make any meaningful difference to the condition of Black people in America. According to Kaba, it may only reinforce the idea of murderous police officers as “bad apples” (54): problematic individuals whose removal will enable the system to work as intended. Kama is not opposed to people like Wilson being indicted, just skeptical that it will make any substantive difference to the underlying systems of “anti-Blackness, social control, and containment” (55). The killing of Black or brown person at the hands of the police, reasons Kaba, triggers a familiar cycle of outrage, public discourse, and talks of moderate reform, and then the cycle begins again without structural change.

Looking to practices that might bring about real change, Kaba advises people never to call the police and for communities to push for a decrease to the police budget. Every time the police harm someone, they need to be held accountable, says Kaba. Whatever can build “power among those most marginalized in society holds the possibility of radical transformation” (56). Activists should neither cheer if Darren Wilson is indicted nor despair if he is not indicted. Whatever happens, Kaba states that activists must continue to build power to defend victims of oppression and challenge the structures of power.

Part 3, Chapter 2 Summary: “Sentencing of Larry Nassar Was Not ‘Transformative Justice.’ Here’s Why: With Kelly Hayes: The Appeal, February 2018”

In January 2018, Larry Nassar, the former team doctor of the US Olympic Gymnastics Team, received a severe sentence for sexual abuse of many athletes in his care, with a scathing denunciation from the presiding judge. Many embraced this moment as “transformative justice” (58), but, according to Kaba, those who recognize the fundamental injustice of the prison system should not praise that system when it convicts a widely hated person. Instead, truly transformative justice exists outside of punitive systems, focusing first on centering the person harmed and finding ways to heal. The person doing the harm should not be deprived of their humanity, and they should be able to take responsibility for their actions outside the threat of state-sponsored violence. Kaba notes that, in Nassar’s case, the person doing the harm also emerged from institutions that permitted such harm by failing to act on early reports.

Furthermore, no matter how guilty Nassar is, prison is not a place where justice is done, and, more importantly, the majority of people who harm people in the way Nassar has never faced legal accountability of any kind. Rather than celebrate the punishment of a person who has done terrible things, Kaba claims that we must “call people to a new version of justice” (61). While the precise dimensions of that justice remain unclear, Kaba states that it is clear that the present model is woefully deficient. Exploring possible alternatives, Kaba observes that some Indigenous peoples in the United States, whose traditional ways of administering justice were obliterated by American colonization, have been able to revive new ways of rehabilitation and reconciliation as a means of resolving intracommunal disputes. Kaba emphasizes that, rather than fret over the dangers of abolishing prison, we should envision all the evils that can be overcome in their absence.

Part 3, Chapter 3 Summary: “We Want More Justice for Breonna Taylor Than the System That Killed Her Can Deliver: With Andrea J. Ritchie: Essence, July 2020”

Activists are calling for arrests for the police who shot and killed Breonna Taylor. Kaba supports efforts to fire the officers involved, defund the police, and provide restitution for the families, but she argues that the system that killed Taylor is not going to secure justice or accountability against its own agents who pulled the trigger. Kaba adds that, on the rare occasions where police officers are punished, they usually receive light sentences that do nothing to heal the harm inflicted.

According to Kaba, the law will always protect its own, especially in cases involving Black people who lack the right of self-defense due to the presumption of their inherent criminality. The handful of police who are punished “represent an exception to the rule: the rule is impunity” (64). Activists must therefore be consistent in their evaluation of the system as violent and corrupt, and come up with “new structures of accountability beyond the system we are working to dismantle” (65). Instead of punishment, activists should commit themselves to an approach dedicated to “repair, restoration, acknowledgment, cessation, and nonrepetition” (66). The killers should be prevented from ever again being able to harm another, and the families should be able to express their hurt and have access to resources and services without having to endure the additional trauma of a litigation process. Victims such as Taylor deserve a “bold expansive version of justice” rather than a reification of the system that killed them (68).

Part 3 Analysis

Where the previous section interrogated the notion of the “perfect victim” who must be a moral exemplar in order to be considered unworthy of injustice, here Kaba shifts attention to the perfect criminal, someone whose terrible actions provoke a desire for payback among the public. This is especially true when the case involves high-profile figures, such as Harvey Weinstein’s predatory behavior in Hollywood or Nassar’s long-term abuse of beloved Olympic athletes, and, as with the last section, Kaba again turns to concrete examples to bolster her arguments. Given how much perception of the criminal justice system is shaped by fiction (Kaba mentions Law & Order earlier in the book as a particularly egregious source of misinformation), it is tempting to look at these cases through the lens of drama, where conflict and suspense ultimately give way to catharsis. But even for those who are (at least in the public perception) most deserving of incarceration or even death, Kaba insists on resisting this impulse and instead she champions Accountability Over Punishment for all. Hence, as with the previous section, Kaba wants to push back against common intuitions about what bad people deserve or what good people don’t deserve in order to demonstrate that the issue is not about people but rather about the system as a whole.

Kaba is forthright about the fact that many people’s intuitions are at odds with her claims and thus her arguments might seem implausible. Kaba therefore frequently works to anticipate objections and give persuasive rebuttals. For instance, she admits that the nature of accountability is much vaguer, especially when there is already an entire network of institutions and norms that exist for the sake of punishment. The urge to inflict evil in response to evil actions is a powerful one, especially when the precise alternative to punishment remains unclear. Kaba is clear that “our vision is incomplete […] we simply do not know, and cannot know, what the occurrence, prevention, or resolution of harm could look like in our society under more just conditions” (61). Speaking to The Value and Limits of Reform, Kaba argues that what we do know, however, is that more just conditions will not and cannot be brought about by current institutional arrangements.

Kaba interrogates common intuitions about justice and punishment to make the case that these intuitions are not reliable. She observes, for example, that although people feel like criminal convictions are a way of holding people accountable for the harm they have caused, this is far from the truth. Furthermore, the way that the criminal justice system handles criminal convictions actually undermines the project of accountability: The threat of interrogation, an elaborate courtroom, and incarceration keeps far more people away from accountability than the handful it is able to punish.

Kaba similarly reframes the contention that a system based on accountability is vague, a contention that people often make to argue that abolition is unreasonable or utopian. According to Kaba, even if the precise details need to be hashed out as society itself progresses in a more just direction, it is possible to imagine a situation where those who have hurt others “hear and [are held] accountable to their pain, know the full value of the life they took, and make amends to our collective satisfaction” (66). Where punishment is doled out by the state, accountability is a genuinely communal action that refuses to reduce human beings to the wrongs they have committed or endured. If this vision requires greater elaboration, then it is the actions of communities that will help to make it more concrete. Hence, Kaba reframes the idea that a system based on accountability is vague by suggesting that people do in fact have a sense of what accountability looks like and a simple willingness to explore this idea further can generate a more concrete and robust understanding of what accountability can look like.