Mariame Kaba

Mariame Kaba is an American activist, grassroots organizer, and educator who advocates for the abolition of the prison industrial complex, including all police. She is the author of We Do This 'Til We Free Us. The Mariame Kaba Papers are held by the Chicago Public Library Special Collections.

Early life and education Mariame Kaba was born in New York City to immigrant parents. Her mother emigrated from the Ivory Coast;

Mariame grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and attended Lycée Français. As a child, she viewed the world through a black nationalist framework and looked for ways to help others. Kaba received a B.A. in Sociology from McGill University in 1992. In 1995 she moved to Chicago to study sociology at Northwestern University. She completed her master's degree in Library and Information Science at Pratt Institute.

Career In Chicago, she founded the Chicago Freedom School, the Rogers Park Young Women's Action Team (YWAT), Chicago Alliance to Free Marissa Alexander, and We Charge Genocide (WCG). In 2009, Kaba founded the organization Project NIA, which advocates to end youth incarceration.

Kaba views prison abolition as the total dismantling of prison and policing while building up community services and opposes the reform of policing. Her work has created the framework for current abolitionist organizations including Black Youth Project 100, Black Lives Matter Chicago, and Assata's Daughters. This project grew out of efforts to free Marissa Alexander.

Writing Kaba maintained a blog, US Prison Culture, beginning in 2010. She has been active on Twitter under the account @prisonculture.

In 2012, she wrote Resisting Police Violence in Harlem, a historical pamphlet detailing the policing and violence in Harlem.

In March 2018, she wrote Lifting As They Climbed: Mapping A History Of Black Women On Chicago's South Side with Essence McDowell. Started in 2012, the book is written as a guidebook that maps the history of the influential Black women who contributed to the development of Chicago during the 19th and 20th centuries. In a review for the Chicago Reader, Ariel Parrella-Aureli described it as "a collection of talks, interviews, and past work that can serve as an initial primer on the PIC [prison-industrial complex] abolition and community building rooted in transformative justice."

In 2023, Kaba published Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care, co-written with fellow organizer Kelly Hayes. In the book's introduction, Kaba described it as "one that I wish I had as a young activist. It's our attempt to distill some of the lessons we've learned about organizing over the past few decades and to include some lessons from other organizers. We wrote it with new activists and organizers in mind." The book was recommended by the New York Times and was reviewed in The Nation, The Chicago Reader, and elsewhere. The book is named after a tweet of Kaba's that took hold as a slogan on the left: "Let this radicalize you rather than lead you to despair."

Awards 2010 7th District Community Award from Illinois State Senator Heather Steans 2012 Courage Tour Award from A Long Walk Home 2013 Ed Marciniak Bright Star Award from the Bright Promises Foundation 2014 Impact Award from the Chicago Foundation for Women 2014 Women Who Dared Award from Chicago NOW 2014 Partner in Justice Award from Lawndale Christian Legal Center 2015 Women to Celebrate Award 2016 AERA Ella Baker/Septima Clark Human Rights Award 2016-2017 Soros Justice Fellow. 2017 Ron Sable Award for Activism 2017 War Resisters League Peace Award 2022 Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters awarded by Chicago Theological Seminary 2022 Marguerite Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar 2022 Ann Snitow Prize

Anti-violence projects A World Without Prisons Art Exhibit curated by Project NIA and Free Write Jail Arts & Literacy Program. Restorative Posters Project Co-curated No Selves to Defend. Co-curated Blood at the Root – Unearthing the Stories of State Violence Against Black Women and Girls. Co-curated Making Niggers: Demonizing and Distorting Blackness Co-curated Black/Inside. Black/Inside: A History of Captivity & Confinement in the U.S. Art Exhibit on display at African American Cultural Center Gallery

Publications

"To Live and Die in "Chiraq."" The End of Chiraq: A Literary Mixtape. Eds Javon Johnson and Kevin Coval. Northwestern University Press. "Bresha Meadows Returns Home After Collective Organizing Efforts." Teen Vogue. "For Mother's Day, Activists Are Bailing Black Mamas out of Jail." Broadly. Introduction, Trying To Make the Personal Political, with the Women's Action Alliance, Lori Sharpe, Jane Ginsburg and Gail Gordon, and Jacqui Shine. Half-Letter Press. 2017. Foreword, As Black As Resistance: Finding the Conditions for Liberation, by Zoé Samudzi and William C. Anderson. AK Press. 2018.

Foreword, How to Abolish Prisons: Lessons from the Movement Against Imprisonment, by Rachel Herzing and Justin Piché. Haymarket Books. 2024. Kaba, Mariame; Ball, Jane (April 8, 2025). Prisons Must Fall. Illustrated by Olly Costello. Haymarket Books.