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

Mariame Kaba is an American activist who has become a public figure of the movement to abolish prisons. Born in New York City to Guinean immigrants, she received a bachelor’s degree in sociology from McGill University in Montreal. Pursuing graduate studies in sociology in Chicago, she began a career as an activist, joining and founding a host of organizations, including the Rogers Park Young Women’s Action Team, which organized mostly Black high school girls to protest street harassment and carceral practices in schools. Kaba also founded the still-operating Project NIA (meaning “with purpose” in Swahili), which seeks to end the practice of juvenile incarceration.

Kaba’s activism focuses on police brutality, the criminalization of self-defense, sexual assault in prisons, and a transformative model of justice. Kaba’s model of community activism seeks not only to make legislative changes but to empower communities—especially young people—to become the agents of change themselves. Kaba is also an experienced educator with a master’s degree in library and information science. After many years writing as a blogger and publishing the children’s book Missing Daddy about the pain facing children of incarcerated parents, We Do This Till We Free Us became a New York Times bestseller. In 2022, Kaba published another children’s book, See You Soon, and No More Police with Andrea J.