Part 2, Chapter 1

Kaba’s goddaughter asks her about Marissa Alexander, on whose behalf Kaba has helped to organize an activist campaign. Marissa has already endured years in jail and more time in house arrest, all for firing a gun into the air to frighten an abusive husband—no one was harmed. Kaba’s goddaughter asks what Kaba will do if Marissa returns to jail, an acute reminder of a very real possibility. Around the same time that juries were about to announce the verdict for the police officer who killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Kaba contemplates the long history of anti-Black attitudes that permeate the criminal justice system. The experience of slavery in the United States helped to implant the idea that Black bodies are inferior and can be abused at will. According to Kaba, this makes it crucial to connect cases like Michael Brown and Marissa Alexander to call attention to the full scope of state violence against Black people. Marissa Alexander agreed to a plea deal to return to her family as quickly as possible, but this does not change the fact that “the courts punished and criminalized her for surviving domestic violence, for saving her own life” (32). Kaba has never met Marissa Alexander, but for Kaba that does not matter—Alexander is a person who was unjustly targeted, and therefore someone must undertake the effort to set her free.

Part 2, Chapter 1 Summary: “Free Marissa and All Black People: In These Times, November 2014”

Part 2, Chapter 2

Part 2, Chapter 2 Summary: “Not a Cardboard Cutout: Cyntoia Brown and the Framing of a Victim: With Brit Schulte: The Appeal, December 2017”

Part 2, Chapter 3

Part 2, Chapter 3 Summary: “From ‘Me Too’ to ‘All of Us’: Organizing to End Sexual Violence Without Prisons: Interview by Sarah Jaffe with Marime Kaba and Shira Hassan, January 2017”

Part 2, Chapter 4

Part 2, Chapter 4 Summary: “Black Women Punished For Self-Defense Must Be Freed From Their Cages: The Guardian, January 2019”

Part 2 Part 2 Analysis

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “So You’re Thinking About Becoming an Abolitionist”

Part 1 We Do This 'Til We Free Us Part 1 Summary & Analysis

Part 2: “There Are No Perfect Victims”

We Do This 'Til We Free Us Part 2 Summary & Analysis

Part 3: “The State Can't Give Us Transformative Justice”

Part 3 We Do This 'Til We Free Us Part 3 Summary & Analysis

Part 4: “Making Demands: Reforms for and Against Abolition”

Part 4 We Do This 'Til We Free Us Part 4 Summary & Analysis

Part 5: “We Must Practice and Experiment: Abolitionist Organizing and Theory”

Part 5 We Do This 'Til We Free Us Part 5 Summary & Analysis

Part 6: “Accountability Is Not Punishment: Transforming How We Deal With Harm and Violence”

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

Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “There Are No Perfect Victims”

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