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Mariame Kaba Quotes

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Famous Mariame Kaba Quotes

“There are many layers of fear associated with this abandonment: fear of what would happen if the system no longer managed our lives, fear of being devoured by the system ourselves, fear that we cannot win, and perhaps most dauntingly, the fear that we cannot do any better than this, that our hopes to the contrary are the utopian dreams of childish idealists.”

FearIdealismActivism Quotes
Book:Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care
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“We can’t get seduced by the idea that if only we just rebuild the DNC we’ll be fine. We really have to jump in now to shape the narrative. The starting point—and this is the gift that abolition as an ideology and a practice has given me—is the idea that the system isn’t actually broken. Right? Because then I’m not preoccupied with trying to fix it. That’s not my goal. All I want to do is abolish and end it, therefore the imperatives of what I’m trying to do—the training, the questions, the analysis—all have to be geared towards that, and then this doesn’t force me to run around in circles plugging my fingers in the dyke everywhere as the water is just threatening to overwhelm all of us. Also, this allows me to think of how we can crowd out the current system by building the things that we want to see in the world, that will promote our well-being.”

AnalysisAbolitionBetter World
Author:Mariame Kaba
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“That does not mean, however, there should be no consequences. It means real consequences. Consequences that really matter. It means transforming the conditions that exist in the first place for this to even have happened. It is really critical for people to think about the difference between punishment and consequences. Punishment often is actually not the same as transformation. Even though it feels good to wear the “kill the rapists” T-shirt, that isn’t the thing that is actually going to get us the world we want to live in.”

JusticeActivismAssaultAbolition
Book:We Do This 'til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice
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