A concept just short of a program, accountability has been taken up as a core principle within leftist organizing and activity over the past quarter century. The term’s sudden, widespread adoption as abolitionist concepts began to circulate broadly in recent years cast light on certain shifts in its meaning, renewing the urgency of understanding its relation to militant leftist history and practice. After the George Floyd uprising, the Pinko collective gathered interviews with transformative justice practitioners, socialist labor organizers, incarcerated abolitionists, and activists on the left for a volume reflecting on accountability’s theoretical foundations and current practice, which was released in 2025 with Haymarket Books as After Accountability. This online discussion with interviewees and collective members will explore the lessons and tensions remaining to be drawn from this crucial movement concept.

***Register through Ticket Tailor to receive a link to the live-streamed video on the day of the event. This event will also be recorded and captioning will be provided.***

Speakers:

Lou Cornum is a diasporic Navajo writer and Assistant Professor of Native American Studies in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. Their work has appeared in Art in America, The New Inquiry and Read, Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island.

Kim Diehl is a labor communicator and member of Liberation Road Socialist Organization whose work is rooted in faith, solidarity, and the pursuit of collective liberation. With a Master of Divinity and a deep commitment to prison abolition, they help build beloved community—spaces grounded in mutual aid, care, and accountability, where safety is created through relationships, not policing. They are a queer Black mixed-race bridge connecting the spiritual and political, centering dignity, healing, and liberation for all.

Emi Kane is an educator, researcher, and organizer. She is a co-founder of Survived and Punished, a former member of the Allied Media Projects board of directors, and spent nearly a decade on the National Collective for INCITE! (formerly INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence).

M. E. O’Brien has been an organizer and writer since the 1990s. She has worked on three books, as the author of Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care, co-author of the abolitionist, post-revolutionary speculative novel Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072, and helped with the collective volume After Accountability through her role as an editorial collective member at Pinko.

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This event is sponsored by Haymarket Books and Pinko. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our important publishing and programming work.