It’s almost Abolition Week again, y'all. If you missed it last year, Abolition Week is a time when Scalawag focuses exclusively on efforts to end mass incarceration and create a prison-free South.

Last year, Abolition Week centered on the hidden reaches of prisons into our daily lives and the dangerous negligence that allowed COVID-19 to wreak havoc on those detained and in prison. This year, we’re partnering with PEN: America to provide new stories by incarcerated writers to help folks along their abolitionist journeys and illuminate both the possibilities and practices of broad-scale abolition in the South.

To that end, invite all our members, readers, and skeptics to join us in conversation next Wednesday, June 23 at 7 p.m. ET (6 p.m. CT) for our next virtual event: Realizing Abolition.

During the conversation and panel discussion, we'll hear from:

• Participants in this year’s women cohort of Ritual4Return—a program created with, by, and for survivors of the criminal justice system—about the unique conditions women face both on the inside and once they return.
• The founder of Growing Change, who is turning a former prison into something their community actually needs.
• Youth leaders promoting abolition in rural North Carolina.
• And other abolitionist organizers implementing creative alternatives to policing and incarceration.  

At the end of the event, attendees will have time in breakout rooms to meet with fellow abolitionists and folks on the journey to discuss how you can begin realizing a home, a country, and a world without prisons right where you are.

To create a world without prisons, we must first "imagine" one. But abolition takes more than imagination. It takes an everyday practice of solidarity. So drop in on Wednesday to Realizing Abolition. This event is free for Scalawag members and formerly incarcerated folks, but every donation of $10 will help pay all of our speakers working towards the end of prisons in America.