Fascism at the Door, Neighbors in the Street: Abolition in Practice

"We're very aware that things are awful ... That means that we're alive, and that we want something different. That's a really important starting point, is just to even have that kind of repulsion and to have that awful feeling about things," says Tamara Nopper. "So, I want more of that energy, but I want more of that energy to be connected to some more skills."

"Tamara is a sociologist, writer, educator, and editor. She is the editor of Mariame Kaba's bestselling book We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice, and a researcher and writer of several data stories for Colin Kaepernick's Abolition for the People series. Tamara has also created and produced political education lectures on crime data in collaboration with organizations such as the Asian American Writers' Workshop, Haymarket Books, and Interrupting Criminalization."

Abolition work demands urgent political education in a rising fascist climate. People learn through direct engagement with state violence and through collective street experience. Movement energy and repulsion toward current systems are important starting points. That energy must be paired with concrete skills, data literacy, and shared analysis to build durable organizing capacity. Recruitment and intentional counter-recruitment are necessary to grow movements against policing and deportations. Political education can translate lived outrage into strategic, sustained practice and help movements develop collective frameworks for action and retention.

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