Abolitionist Futures Digest: September 26
Abolitionist Futures Book Club 2026: ‘Unsafe’ by S. Lamble
A series of triangles with the title of "Unsafe: The Carceral Roots of the Anti-Trans Backlash” by Sarah Lamble.
Join the Abolitionist Futures collective for an online reading group to explore Lamble’s book Unsafe: The Carceral Roots of the Anti-Trans Backlash. We are hosting 4 online sessions, starting October 2026:
Session 1: Monday 19/10 7:30 GMT
Session 2: Sunday 15/11 7:30 GMT
Session 3: Monday 14/12 7:30 GMT
Session 4: Sunday 10/01 7:30 GMT
This is where you can purchase the book: Unsafe | HaymarketBooks.org. If the price is a barrier for you, or if you are unable to purchase the book, please get in touch with us and we'll be happy to discuss alternative options.
What to expect
We will ask you to read selected sections of the book ahead of each session. Don't worry if you're not able to complete all of the reading, you're still very welcome to attend.
We'll explore the key themes, arguments, questions, and contemporary relevance of the book
Curious about the book? Read our book review!
‘Unsafe: The Carceral Roots of the Anti-Trans Backlash’ by Sarah Lamble — Abolitionist Futures
If you have any questions or accessibility needs, feel free to reach out to us via email.
We look forward to reading and discussing the book with you!
Resources:
Justice Beyond Jails: Rethinking Criminalisation, Accountability, and Responses to Gender-Based Violence
In this episode of the Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters (SRHM) Podcast, Eszter Kismődi speaks with Subha Wijesiriwardena and Susana T. Fried, Co-Directors of Just Futures Collaborative, about their new campaign, Justice beyond Jails.
This important global initiative invites us to rethink dominant approaches to justice, accountability, and responses to gender-based violence—moving beyond narrow reliance on policing, prosecution, and incarceration, and opening broader conversations about more effective, rights-based, and community-grounded forms of safety and accountability.
The W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction
The W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction is a political education program for aspiring revolutionaries and movement leaders from those communities most impacted by poverty, policing, and mass incarceration. Our home is Philadelphia, crossroads of Harriet Tubman and Octavius Catto, W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Maroon Shoatz, a critical hub for abolitionist militancy in the past and a thriving and powerful movement ecosystem today.
Prison journalism project
The Prison Journalism Project shares news from inside prison, incorporating interviews and other third person reporting. They also host Prison Report and Witness sections, which are based on first-person experiences and observations. News stories are written by PJP reporters, who have applied the tools of journalism to verify their work.
Other Resources:
Death Panel Podcast
Beatrice speaks with Rachel Herzing and Justin Piché about how the fight to abolish prisons touches other movements, what abolitionist movement wins tell us about taking the long view in organizing work, and their new book How to Abolish Prisons: Lessons from the Movement against Imprisonment.
Find the book here: bookshop.org/a/118130/9798888900833
CALL FOR ACTION: The Public Inquiry into Undercover Policing is currently under threat.
The Home Office has launched a phony consultation into the Inquiry’s future - without consulting the survivors. It’s clear they hope to either scrap or severely limit the scope of the inquiry before it starts looking at more recent abuses by undercover police.
WE ARE CALLING ON EVERYONE TO BOYCOTT THE OFFICIAL CONSULTATION WEBSITE AND TO MESSAGE THE HOME OFFICE DIRECTLY. The spycops inquiry must be allowed to complete its work.
If you were personally affected by the spycops or you have direct experience of the issues the Inquiry is investigating you may want to send a more detailed submission about why it is important that the Inquiry completes its work. (We will be putting together materials to support you doing that, and if you would like more information please contact info@campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com)
We will need widespread public support to change the Home Office's mind, and we have set up an action page asking everyone to sign up to let the Home Office know there is support for our demands: http://ucpi.uk
For more information check out: #spycops, the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance & spycops.info
Events:
Gifts from the Arms Trade
An in-person book launch and conversation supporting the publication of Dr Jill Gibbon's 'Gifts from the Arms Trade'.
DATE/ TIME:17th September, 2026, 18:00 - 20:00 BST
PLACE: MayDay Rooms, London
How did continuous warfare become normal in the 21st century? How did police in many countries start using military hardware to manage ordinary crowds? Jill Gibbon’s new book Gifts from the Arms Trade reveals part of the answer to these questions: massive arms fairs, the trade shows for military equipment, which combine displays of the world’s most lethal tanks, missiles, and fighter jets with cute promotional gifts. She reports on the combination of drones hanging from ceilings and penetration bombs on the floor, all wrapped in a fun atmosphere of corporate hospitality sealed with chewable candy.
Collective Punishment: Four Years On
Collective Punishment addresses the impact of parental imprisonment on families, particularly children, across the UK.
DATE: Sat 19 Sept 1-4pm
LOCATION: London, Advocacy Academy (in person)
A reflective celebration, commemorating four years of progress, learning and community building through the Collective Punishment Campaign.
Over the last 4 years, The Collective Punishment Campaign has worked tirelessly with funders, organisations and decision makers to create change, build community and influence policy. We’ve worked to move from harm to healing for people with parents in prison or going through the UK legal system. Now, it’s time to celebrate what we’ve built together.
Join us to reflect on our work; what we’ve achieved together, what has changed, and what’s next.
Image of swirled background with details of the event occurring on 19th September 2026, 1pm at The Liberation Centre, 2 Beehive Place SW9 7QR
Community Organising, Co-production and Regenerative Governance
Explore power, liberation and regenerative governance with Abdirahim Hassan (Coffee Afrik) —beyond co-production, towards community power.
DATE/TIME: Wed 16 September, 12.30pm
PLACE: In person, London
Rather than presenting co-production as a methodology for improving existing services, this session interrogates something deeper: who holds power, who owns knowledge, who controls resources, and who gets to imagine what comes next?
Abdirahim will share lessons from Coffee Afrik on moving from participation towards shared governance, recognising lived experience as knowledge rather than testimony to be extracted, creating community-led accountability structures, and building relationships around trust, repair, healthy conflict, healing justice and collective care.
We'll also explore regenerative governance as an alternative to organisational cultures rooted in hierarchy, scarcity, urgency and control — including rest as resistance, succession planning, community ownership, and how to build institutions that don't simply reproduce the systems we're trying to transform.
To find out more about Coffee Afrik
Image of people talking with details of the Lunch & Learn event on 16th September 2026, 12.30pm
Care not cops and abolitionist health convergence
September 19-20, London.
Care Not Cops is a grassroots community group of healthcare workers organizing to remove police from healthcare settings and advocating to end healthcare policies and practices that promotes the involvement of police in health-related matters. We work towards the transformation of our healthcare system to one that is rooted in healing, justice, decolonization, and self-determination.
Speculative abolition: Art, documentation and medico-legal disruption
With this year's theme, we mull on what we can do to keep visions of a better world alive – where are the fissures in the spectacle? Place them. How do we resist and remember? Teach us a lesson. How do we all keep it going? This year's theme centres practical orientations in the present while we hold on to what we've got: will it be next year that the walls all come crashing down?
Ongoing Exhibition: 'Audrey Amiss: The Surviving Exhibitions'
Location: Wellcome Trust London
Till Jan 2027
'Audrey Amiss: The Surviving Exhibitions’ is the first museum exhibition dedicated to artist Audrey Amiss (1933–2013). Bringing together drawings, paintings and other exhibition materials, it explores Amiss’s work as both an artist and campaigner, revealing how she used her art to speak out against harmful treatment within the mental health system.
All notices, events and links are for sharing how abolition is at work in allied movements, organising and wider culture and not necessarily endorsements.