13 must-read race books like Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom by Derecka Purnell

Cover of Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom by Derecka Purnell

Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

By: Derecka Purnell

4.44

Format: 288 pages, Hardcover

For more than a century, activists in the United States have tried to reform the police. From commu…

"The systems responsible for our oppression cannot be the same systems responsible for our liberation."

-Derecka Purnell, Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

"The systems responsible for our oppression cannot be the same systems responsible for our liberation."

-Derecka Purnell, Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

"Campus police and street police are different strands of the same supremacy that plague our resistance."

-Derecka Purnell, Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

"Campus police and street police are different strands of the same supremacy that plague our resistance."

-Derecka Purnell, Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

If you liked the race plot in Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom by Derecka Purnell , here is a list of 13 books like this:

1. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California

By: Ruth Wilson Gilmore

3.75

Format: 368 pages, Paperback

read more

Similar categories in Ruth Wilson Gilmore's Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California book and Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

2. Are Prisons Obsolete?

By: Angela Y. Davis

4.15

Format: None pages,

With her characteristic brilliance, grace and radical audacity, Angela Y. Davis has put the case fo… read more

Similar categories in Angela Y. Davis's Are Prisons Obsolete? book and Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

3. Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement

By: Cornel West , Angela Y. Davis , Frank Barat

3.78

Format: None pages, Paperback

In these newly collected essays, interviews, and speeches, world-renowned activist and scholar Ange… read more

Similar categories in Cornel West's Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement book and Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

Cover of The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide by Steven W. Thrasher

4. The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide

By: Steven W. Thrasher

4.22

Format: 352 pages, Hardcover

From preeminent LGBTQ scholar, social critic, and journalist Steven W. Thrasher comes a powerful an… read more

Similar categories in Steven W. Thrasher's The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide book and Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

  • history
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • sociology
Cover of Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want by Ruha Benjamin

5. Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want

By: Ruha Benjamin

4.47

Format: 392 pages, Hardcover

An inspiring vision of how we can build a more just world--one small change at a time Long befor… read more

Similar categories in Ruha Benjamin's Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want book and Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

  • race
  • history
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • activism
  • sociology
Cover of Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire by Jehad Abusalim

6. Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire

By: Jehad Abusalim

4.70

Format: 279 pages, Paperback

Imagining the future of Gaza beyond the cruelties of occupation and Apartheid, Light in Gaza is a p… read more

Similar categories in Jehad Abusalim's Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire book and Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

  • politics
  • social justice
  • history
  • nonfiction
Cover of Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics by Marc Lamont Hill

7. Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

By: Marc Lamont Hill

4.21

Format: 227 pages, Hardcover

A bold call for the American Left to extend their politics to the issues of Israel-Palestine, from … read more

Similar categories in Marc Lamont Hill's Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics book and Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

  • race
  • history
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • activism
Cover of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017 by Rashid Khalidi

8. The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017

By: Rashid Khalidi

4.50

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US … read more

Similar categories in Rashid Khalidi's The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler-Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017 book and Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

  • politics
  • social justice
  • history
  • nonfiction
Cover of Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

9. Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)

By: Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

4.00

Format: 157 pages, Paperback

A powerful indictment of the ways elites have co-opted radical critiques of racial capitalism to se… read more

Similar categories in Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò's Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) book and Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

  • race
  • history
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • activism
  • sociology
"A philosopher Briana Toole clarifies, by itself, one's social location only puts a person in a position to know; 'epistemic privilege' or advantage, on the other hand, is achieved only through delibe…"

-Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)

"Elites do often make the environment worse and block solutions, but to blame the problem of elite capture entirely on their moral successes and failures is to confuse effect for cause. The true probl…"

-Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)

"To opt for deference, rather than interdependence, may soothe short-term psychological wounds. But it does so at a steep cost: it may undermine the goals that motivated the project--and it entrenches…"

-Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)

"As Carter G. Woodson realized, many of our decisions are shaped by decisions that someone with more power made before us. The whole social structure affects how institutional systems, like schools, f…"

-Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)

Cover of Palestine: A Socialist Introduction by Sumaya Awad

10. Palestine: A Socialist Introduction

By: Sumaya Awad

4.36

Format: 250 pages, Paperback

This edited volume makes an impassioned and informed case for the central place of Palestine in soc… read more

Similar categories in Sumaya Awad's Palestine: A Socialist Introduction book and Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

  • race
  • history
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • social issues
  • anti racist
  • sociology
"Interestingly, the "Zioness Movement" sprouted on the US activist scene with the explicit intention to counter feminists who were successfully denouncing Zionism. It chose the slogan, "Unabashedly pr…"

-Sumaya Awad, Palestine: A Socialist Introduction

"White/Western feminism's attempt at erasing the political context of Palestinian women's oppression was evident yet again around the 2017 Women's March on Washington, when liberal feminists objected …"

-Sumaya Awad, Palestine: A Socialist Introduction

"The Black radical tradition calls attention to the anti-Black racism essential to US society and casts doubt on the compatibility of Black freedom and the United States project. After all, the Black …"

-Sumaya Awad, Palestine: A Socialist Introduction

Cover of Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis (And the Next) by Dean Spade

11. Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis (And the Next)

By: Dean Spade

4.38

Format: 152 pages, Paperback

Mutual aid is the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world. Around… read more

Similar categories in Dean Spade's Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis (And the Next) book and Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

  • feminism
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • activism
  • sociology
"In the context of professionalized nonprofit organizations, groups are urged to be single-issue oriented, framing their message around "deserving" people within the population they serve, and using t…"

-Dean Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis (And the Next)

"When we feel bad, we often automatically decide that either we are bad or another person is bad. Both of these moves cause damage and distort the truth, which is that we are all navigating difficult …"

-Dean Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis (And the Next)

"Burnout is the combination of resentment, exhaustion, shame, and frustration that make us lose connection to pleasure and passion in the work, and instead encounter difficult feelings like avoidance,…"

-Dean Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis (And the Next)

Cover of Be a Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World--And How You Can, Too by Ijeoma Oluo

12. Be a Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World--And How You Can, Too

By: Ijeoma Oluo

4.46

Format: 256 pages, ebook

From the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of So You Want to Talk About Race and Mediocre, an ey… read more

Similar categories in Ijeoma Oluo's Be a Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World--And How You Can, Too book and Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

  • race
  • feminism
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • activism
Cover of We Do This 'til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice by Mariame Kaba

13. We Do This 'til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice

By: Mariame Kaba

4.67

Format: 240 pages, Paperback

"Organizing is both science and art. It is thinking through a vision, a strategy, and then figuring… read more

Similar categories in Mariame Kaba's We Do This 'til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice book and Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

  • race
  • feminism
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • activism
  • anti racist
"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 …"

-Mariame Kaba, We Do This 'til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice

Cover of The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale

14. The End of Policing

By: Alex S. Vitale

4.19

Format: 273 pages, Kindle Edition

The problem is not overpolicing, it is policing itself Recent years have seen an explosion of pr… read more

Similar categories in Alex S. Vitale's The End of Policing book and Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

  • race
  • history
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • social issues
  • anti racist
  • sociology
"Our standard of living is not declining because of migrants but because of unregulated neoliberal capitalism, which has allowed corporations and the rich to avoid paying taxes or decent wages. It is …"

-Alex S. Vitale, The End of Policing

"There is no question that American police use their weapons more than police in any other developed democracy. Unfortunately, we don’t have fully accurate information about the number or nature of ho…"

-Alex S. Vitale, The End of Policing

"As Jeffrey Reiman points out in the Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, the criminal justice system excuses and ignores crimes of the rich that produce profound social harms while intensely crim…"

-Alex S. Vitale, The End of Policing

"Heavy-handed immigration policing will not build a worker’s movement, it will shatter it. One of the mistakes that Trump supporters make is imagining that their own economic conditions will be improv…"

-Alex S. Vitale, The End of Policing

Cover of Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms by Maya Schenwar

15. Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

By: Maya Schenwar

4.44

Format: 240 pages, Hardcover

A crucial indictment of widely embraced “alternatives to incarceration” that exposes how many of th… read more

Similar categories in Maya Schenwar's Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms book and Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

  • race
  • history
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • activism
  • anti racist
  • sociology
"The same factors that propelled mass incarceration - racism, "law and order" politics, the war on drugs, the destruction of the social safety net - also propelled mass supervision."

-Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

"Monitors and house arrest aren't rehabilitative or transformative - they don't support people in making changes that would be helpful to their lives, gaining needed resources, addressing harm or viol…"

-Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

"Unlike prisons, psychiatric institutions can be entered voluntarily, and people often turn to them in pursuit of treatment. But when used involuntarily as prison replacements, hospitals mimic persons…"

-Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

"Many types of treatment claim to be about fixing the so-called problems of madness. The real problem is that certain ways of experiencing the world are seen as categorical threats— to normativity, to…"

-Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

Cover of Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care by Kelly Hayes

16. Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care

By: Kelly Hayes

4.64

Format: 296 pages, Paperback

What fuels and sustains activism and organizing when it feels like our worlds are collapsing? Let T… read more

Similar categories in Kelly Hayes's Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care book and Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

  • history
  • feminism
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • activism
  • sociology
Cover of Abolition. Feminism. Now. by Angela Y. Davis

17. Abolition. Feminism. Now.

By: Angela Y. Davis

4.31

Format: 150 pages, Paperback

An urgent, vital manifesto of intersectional, internationalist, abolitionist feminism, from leading… read more

Similar categories in Angela Y. Davis's Abolition. Feminism. Now. book and Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

  • race
  • history
  • feminism
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • activism
  • anti racist
  • sociology
Cover of Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas

18. Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen

By: Jose Antonio Vargas

4.30

Format: 256 pages, ebook

Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, called “the most famous undocumented immigra… read more

Similar categories in Jose Antonio Vargas's Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen book and Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

  • politics
  • race
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
"Home is not something I should have to earn."

-Jose Antonio Vargas, Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen

"Humanity is not some box I should have to check."

-Jose Antonio Vargas, Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen

"Here in America, the libraries were my church, and I was an acolyte."

-Jose Antonio Vargas, Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen

"Dear America, is this what you really want? Do you even know what is happening in your name?"

-Jose Antonio Vargas, Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen

Cover of Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom by Derecka Purnell

19. Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

By: Derecka Purnell

4.44

Format: 288 pages, Hardcover

For more than a century, activists in the United States have tried to reform the police. From commu… read more

Similar categories in Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom book and Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

  • race
  • history
  • feminism
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • activism
  • social issues
  • anti racist
  • sociology
"The systems responsible for our oppression cannot be the same systems responsible for our liberation."

-Derecka Purnell, Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

"Campus police and street police are different strands of the same supremacy that plague our resistance."

-Derecka Purnell, Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

Cover of No More Police: A Case for Abolition by Mariame Kaba

20. No More Police: A Case for Abolition

By: Mariame Kaba

4.59

Format: 416 pages, Paperback

An instant national best seller A persuasive primer on police abolition from two veteran organizer… read more

Similar categories in Mariame Kaba's No More Police: A Case for Abolition book and Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

  • race
  • history
  • feminism
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • activism
  • anti racist
  • sociology
Cover of "Prisons Make Us Safer": And 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration by Victoria Law

21. "Prisons Make Us Safer": And 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration

By: Victoria Law

4.22

Format: 240 pages, Paperback

An accessible guide for activists, educators, and all who are interested in understanding how the p… read more

Similar categories in Victoria Law's "Prisons Make Us Safer": And 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration book and Derecka Purnell's Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom

  • race
  • history
  • politics
  • nonfiction
  • social justice
  • social issues
  • sociology

14 Best history books like Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom by Derecka Purnell

Transform Your Habits

The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide

Steven W. Thrasher

4.22

Transform Your Habits

Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want

Ruha Benjamin

4.47

Transform Your Habits

Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire

Jehad Abusalim

4.70

Transform Your Habits

Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

Marc Lamont Hill

4.21

View all the books

14 best-selling politics books like Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas

Transform Your Habits

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

Matthew Desmond

3.37

Transform Your Habits

Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics

Marc Lamont Hill

4.21

Transform Your Habits

Poverty, by America

Matthew Desmond

4.27

Transform Your Habits

Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling

Jason De León

4.37

View all the books

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