Blue Ridge ABC is excited to host a monthly, public discussion of issues pertaining to incarceration and the penal system in the USA through study and discussion of essays and zines by captured comrades and their allies. Based on the Oakland Abolition and Solidarity team-up with True Leap Press, we’ll provide links to or paper copies of zines for discussion. Readings, dates and more below.
Session 13: July 27, 2025
We’ll gather this month to discuss two zines, which will soon be available behind the counter at Firestorm for free. One is Tom Nomad’s A Call for New Lines of Conflict: Confronting the Second Trump Era (February 2024, online reading ). The second is It’s Safer At The Front from Crimethinc (January 2025, online reading + zine for printing). Starting in August, we’ll spend a few months reading Orisanmi Burton’s Tip Of The Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt, which can be purchased at Firestorm with a book club discount in-store.
Session 12: June 22, 2025
This month we’re discussing two zines relating to Palestine and prisoner support. The first is “Consciousness Molded or the Re-identification of Torture” by Walid Daqqa from Threat: Palestinian Political Prisoners in Israel (online reading + A4 printing). Then, we’ll read “An interview with Orisanmi Burton” (online reading + A4 printing) published on The New York War Crimes website which references and builds from Daqqa’s essay. Both zines are printed and available behind the counter at Firestorm if you ask for them.
Session 11: May 25, 2025
We’re finishing up The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now: Debating Left Politics and Black Lives Matter, edited by Cedric Johnson, chatting about next readings, a couple of articles that we’ll post up here in the near future and have printed zines behind the counter at Firestorm for free pickup (details forthcoming), along with announcements of our next, longer form reading
Session 10: April 27, 2025
This month we’ll be handling pp 91 – 121 of The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now: Debating Left Politics and Black Lives Matter, edited by Cedric Johnson. From 4-6pm, we’ll be chatting about Only Class Politics Can Save Us From Police Violence & Fascism: Lessons from Rosa Luxemburg and Cedric Johnson, In Defense of Black Sentiment: A Comment on Cedric Johnson’s Essay re: Black Power Nostalgia and Black Exceptionalism and the Militant Capitulation to Economic Inequality as we near the end of the book.
Session 9: March 23, 2025
We continue our reading of The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now: Debating Left Politics and Black Lives Matter, edited by Cedric Johnson. From 4-6pm we’ll be discussing up to page 89, finishing the first and 2nd essays.
Session 8: February 23, 2025
Our next project will be a discussion of Cedric Johnson book, The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now: Debating Left Politics and Black Lives Matter. Grab yourself a copy and join us 4-6pm starting the 4th Sunday of February and get read up through the preface, intro and page 37 (in chapter 1) by then.
Session 7: August 25th
This month’s Abolitionist Reading Club, we’ll be hitting three titles. Below are links for easy online reading (Online) or formatted for printing as a booklet (Zine). We’ll be meeting up the 4th Sunday of the month from 4-6pm at Firestorm books again.
Physical copies will be available behind the counter at Firestorm for free if you swing by and ask :
- How To Start Your Own Study Group In Prison ( Zine)
We also will be planning out a future inside / outside discussion of Beyond Cop Cities (edited by Joy James, Pluto Press 2024)
Session 6: June 23rd
- Prison Closure Divides Abolitionist Community in Washington State by Raymond Williams (Online / Zine)
- Anonymous thread on counterinsurgency (Zine)
- “Airbrushing Revolution for the sake of Abolition” by Joy James ( Online / Zine )
Session 5: May 26th
- “Eric King and Josh Davidson”, The Final Straw Radio interview, December 31, 2023 (Online / Zine / Audio)
Session 4: April 28th
- “Updated History of the New Afrikan Prison Struggle” by Sundiata Acoli (Zine)
- “Q&A on Jericho ’98” by Safiya Bukhari (from The War Before): (Online / Zine)
- “How Prison Officials Manufactured Gangs And Gang Wars In Virginia’s Prisons” by Kevin Rashid Johnson (Online / Zine)
Session 3: March 24th
- How Prisoners Use Zines To Express Themselves & Subvert The Mass Incarceration Slave System, 2017 (Zine)
- Women in Prison: How It Is With Us by Assata Shakur, published in The Black Scholar, April 1978 (Online / Zine)
- Handbook for Surviving Solitary Confinement by Khalfani Malik Khaldun* (Zine)
Session 2: February 25th
- Improvising On Reality: The Roots of Prison Abolition by Liz Samuels (Online)
- Free Us All: Participatory Defense Campaigns as Abolitionist Organizing by Mariame Kaba (Online / Zine)
- Radical Resistance For Prison Abolition by Comrade Frank Talk (a captive New Afrikan Revolutionary) (Online / Zine)
Session 1: January 28th
- ‘Dare to struggle, dare to win’: U.S. prisoners collectively resisting against systems of death (Online / Zine) by Ben Turk and Colleen Hackett (2019)
- Invisibility of Women Prisoner Resistance (Online / zine) by Victoria Law (2002)
- Ain’t I a Prisoner, Too? (Online / Zine) by Stephen Wilson (2019)
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