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Podcast

Abolitionist Social Work: Possibilities, Paradox and Praxis

Join us for a conversation about challenging carceral social work through the development and practice of an abolitionist social work. As demands to defund the police often look to social work as an alternative, panelists Tanisha "Wakumi" Douglas, Mimi Kim, Kirk "Jae" James and Cameron Rasmussen discuss the cautions of and possibilities for abolitionist social work. Social work, historically and today, has been deeply embedded in systems of carceral control. With social work's legacy of ties to policing and oppressive family regulation through the child welfare system, the social work community is actively imagining and working towards a social work rooted in abolition, turning to traditions of resistance that also characterize its history. This conversation, organized by the Network to Advance Abolitionist Social Work (NAASW) in partnership with Haymarket Books will look at challenging carceral social work through the development and practice of an abolitionist social work. The Network to Advance Abolitionist Social Work (NAASW) is a group of social workers from different parts of the US, building a year-long initiative to support abolitionist work in the field of social work. The initiative includes ongoing political education, research / knowledge generation around carceral and abolition social work, developing an online hub of abolitionist social work resources, and broader organizing and advocacy efforts to build abolitionist ideas and practices into social work. ---------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Tanisha “Wakumi” Douglas is the daughter of an undocumented immigrant who served 33 years in prison. Tanisha “Wakumi” Douglas has dedicated her life to building leadership among youth most impacted by mass incarceration and other oppressive systems. Wakumi is Co-founder/Executive Director of S.O.U.L. Sisters Leadership Collective, which builds leadership with systems-involved girls & TGNC youth, in both Miami and NYC. She has worked as a restorative justice circle keeper, social worker, community organizer, trainer, and popular educator for organizations including the Dream Defenders, Harlem Children’s Zone and Children’s Defense Fund. Her work has been featured in Huffington Post, NPR, and Miami New Times and her books include Sing a Rhythm, Dance a Blues (Morris), and Making Change (Kruse). Mimi Kim is the founder of Creative Interventions and a co-founder of INCITE! She is a long-time activist, advocate and researcher challenging gender-based violence at its intersection with state violence and creating community accountability, transformative justice and other community-based alternatives to criminalization. Mimi is also an Associate Professor of social work at California State University, Long Beach and co-editor in chief of Affilia. Her recent publications include “The Carceral Creep” and “From Carceral Feminism to Transformative Justice". Kirk “Jae” James is a Clinical Professor and Human Rights activist at the NYU Silver School of Social Work. He completed his doctorate from the School of Social Policy and Practice at The University of Pennsylvania on May 2013. Dr. James’s primary research and publications focus on deconstructing issues related to mass incarceration. Cameron Rasmussen is a social worker, educator and facilitator. He is the Program Director at the Center for Justice at Columbia University, a doctoral student in the Social Welfare Program at the CUNY Graduate Center and a Publics Fellow at the Publics Lab at the CUNY Graduate Center. This event is sponsored by Network to Advance Abolitionist Social Work (NAASW) and Haymarket Books. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/JZxUeSAmIXo Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

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May 18, 2026

Ukraine’s Anti-Imperialist Struggle

February 24th marked the fourth anniversary of Russia’s imperialist invasion of Ukraine. Right now, it is bombing the country’s energy system, cutting off heat and electricity for millions in the depths of a bitterly cold winter. At the same time, the Trump administration is trying to bully Ukraine into a land for peace settlement that rewards Putin’s aggression and, with the willing collaboration of Ukraine’s oligarchs, puts the country up for sale to Western multinationals. Join this webinar to hear about Ukraine’s struggle.

Speakers:

Artem Chapeye is the author of Ordinary People Don’t Carry Guns (Washington Post 2025 best non-fiction) and The Ukraine. He is a writer, translator, activist, and, after the 2022 invasion, an enlisted member of the Armed Forces of Ukraine .

Tanya Vyhovsky is a Ukrainian American, Vermont State Senator, member of Vermont’s Progressive Party, and also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Denys Bondar is a native of Ukraine and an associate professor of physics at Tulane University as well as a member of the Ukraine Solidarity Network and Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction.

May 18, 2026

We Are Each Other's Liberation: Black and Asian Feminist Solidarities

Join editors and contributors of We Are Each Other's Liberation, a major anthology that illuminates historical and contemporary solidarities between Black and Asian feminists.

A collaborative project between Black Women Radicals and the Asian American Feminist Collective, We Are Each Other's Liberation envisions a cross-racial and internationalist politics that explicitly addresses solidarity between Black and Asian feminists. Bringing together organizers, artists, journalists, poets, novelists, and more, this collection introduces readers to new ways of understanding and reflecting on race and feminism.

Drawing out lessons from the revolutionary work of movement forebearers—including the Combahee River Collective, Claudia Jones, Grace Lee Boggs, Yuri Kochiyama, and Third World Women’s Alliance as well as struggles today—We Are Each Other’s Liberation offers an urgent call for the just future we might build together.

Get a copy of We Are Each Other's Liberation from Haymarket: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2519-we-are-each-other-s-liberation

Speakers:

Rachel Kuo is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and cofounder of the Asian American Feminist Collective, which engages intersectional feminist politics grounded within Asian diasporic communities.

Jaimee A. Swift is the creator and executive director of Black Women Radicals, dedicated to uplifting and centering Black women and gender-expansive people’s radical activism in Africa and in the African diaspora.

TD Tso is a feminist writer, editor, cultural organizer, and cofounder of the Asian American Feminist Collective.

Pratibha Parmar’s films have shaped the politics of feminist, queer, and diasporic visual cultures for over four decades. From experimental shorts to activist documentaries and feature-length works, Parmar’s cinematic language operates as an act of visual justice. Her practice engages the image as a site of struggle—challenging the power relations that determine who is seen, how they are represented, and what forms of visual expression are made possible. Her films are a site of narrative transformation, where memory, activism, and artistic expression converge to resist erasure and imagine new futures. Pratibha is a published author and editor of of several anthologies. The Institute of Contemporary Arts (London) and Sming Sming Books published, Our Eyes as Commonly Tender: Visual Justice in the Filmmaking of Pratibha Parmar in 2025.

Margo Okazawa-Rey is an activist-educator working on issues of militarism for over 30 years. She has long-standing activist commitments in South Korea and Palestine, with Du Re Bang and Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling, respectively. She is a founding member of the International Women’s Network against Militarism and Women for Genuine Security, its US group. She also hosts feminist radio program Women’s Magazine, broadcast on KPFA Berkeley California station of the Pacifica Radio network, and is known as DJ MOR Love and Joy, transnational feminist virtual dance party DJ.

Dr. Beverley Bryan is a lifelong educator and political activist, who is co-author of the classic book Heart of the Race: Black Women’s Lives in Britain (1985) which detailed the experiences of Black women and their fight for equality from post-war up to 1980s Britain. Dr. Bryan was a founding member of the Brixton Black Women’s Group and the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD); a Saturday school organiser, a mainstream primary school teacher who pioneered Black history teaching in her classroom in the 1970s and a member of the British Black Panther Movement. A lifelong educator, Dr. Bryan is a retired Professor of Language Education from the University of the West Indies, Jamaica.

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