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

In 2004, a 16-year-old girl named Cyntoia Brown was tried and convicted as an adult for the murder of a man who had picked her up for sex, showed her his weapons collection, and then began acting violently toward her, until she shot him in self-defense. Many years later, the case eventually gained the attention of celebrities such as Rihanna and LeBron James. While it’s unclear why there was such a gap between the events of the case and their going public, Kaba says that the case epitomizes many problems with the criminal justice system. Brown’s turn to sex work is a common consequence for youth (especially people of color and queer and trans youth) who leave home and lack any other means of support. Noting that not all sex workers are victims of trafficking, or even coerced, Kaba recounts how some well-meaning advocates referred to Brown as a “sex slave” to make her more sympathetic. Kaba believes, for victims of the prison system, such labels “further marginalize them by silencing their voices and complexities in service of pursuing a perfect-victim narrative” (37). Those who fall outside such narratives, or resist such labels, are subjected to terrible abuse by the state claiming that they somehow deserved it for immoral behavior.

Other advocates emphasized Brown’s status as a 16-year-old at the time of the incident and therefore described her as a child, suggesting that adults (which Brown now is at the time of Kaba’s writing) are less sympathetic. Kaba believes these ways of framing Brown detract from the essential point, which is that people do not deserve to be abused by the justice system, whether or not the public is inclined to view them as good and innocent. It is simply unjust that women engaged in sex work are criminalized for protecting themselves, and convenient narratives are only an additional source of confinement. The solution, argues Kaba, is to give such girls autonomy over their own bodies and help foster conditions that spare them from violence.

Kaba comments to the interviewer that the public conversation on sexual harassment and sexual violence has progressed a great deal since her early days as a college activist, when it was limited to support among friends rather than a public campaign. This changed with the film The Accused (1988), which helped bring the idea of sexual violence into the public conversation, but still tending to focus on “a certain kind of survivor and a certain kind of crime” (42). Working with those who have been subjected to sexual harassment and violence can be overwhelming, especially with the sense that one cannot do anything to remedy their situation, but Kaba navigates this by thinking about collective efforts to relieve collective pain, rather than putting it all on the individual.

Another source of demoralization is the reliance on the criminal justice system, which can often cause as many problems for the survivor as the perpetrator. Yet the cultural expectation of justice in the courts is so strong that people still feel a sense of betrayal when the system reveals the cruelty at its core. Kaba states that no one can hold another accountable for what they do; instead, “they have to decide that this is wrong” and be willing to make amends (44). In this vein, Kaba questions the authenticity of any admission made when someone is under threat of jail time.

Kaba states that the goal is instead to “make interpersonal violence unthinkable” (45), noting that even putting a rapist behind bars does not solve the problem, especially if they themselves become rape victims in prison, as is often the case. There is not a simple dichotomy between predators and survivors, but rather a wide spectrum of potentially abusive situations involving all kinds of people, and so being a part of such a situation should not constitute a “totalizing identity” (46). According to Kaba, there should be consequences for abusive behavior, but punishment simply recreates the abuse without addressing the conditions that gave rise to the abusive behavior. While placing people in prison does not make anyone feel safer, developing networks of support within the community can help people heal and lead those responsible to take accountability for their actions.

In 1855, an enslaved woman named Celia killed her enslaver, who had raped her repeatedly and forced her to bear children. This took place in Missouri, which had laws on the books allowing women to use force in self-defense, but it was argued that as an enslaved person, Celia was only property, and she was tried, convicted, and hanged within six months. Kaba observes that Black women are still fighting for the right to defend themselves—such as Marissa Alexander, who was convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon (which she owned legally) for firing a single warning shot to protect herself and newborn child from her abusive husband. Sentenced to 20 years in prison, she joined the ranks of incarcerated women who are disproportionately non-white and overwhelmingly victims of violence from an intimate partner. Many of those women are in prison because they tried to protect themselves or their children from violence, only for that to be treated as criminal behavior. Kaba states that this happens because the legal system does not see Black women as worthy of protection. She adds that freeing the countless women imprisoned for self-defense requires a direct confrontation with the “systemic and cultural issues that contribute to the criminalization of survival” for the women of marginalized communities (51).