Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
A well-argued case for rolling back racism by breaking police power Last summer tens of millions of people poured onto the streets, bringing with them a wholly new idea of public safety, common security, and the delivery of justice, communicating that vision in the fiery vernacular of riot, rebellion, and protest. A World Without Police transcribes these new ideas, written in slogans and chants, over occupied bridges and hastily assembled barricades, into a compelling, must-read manifesto for police abolition.
Fact-based and lyrically charged, A World Without Police flips what we think we know about policing on its head, and asks what safety and security might look like without the harassment, indignity, and racial terror that so routinely characterizes what we've got now. Surveying the post-protest landscape in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and Oakland, as well as territories that have experimented with alternatives to policing at a mass scale in Latin America, Geo Maher shows what kind of institutions we can count on if we cast policing in the dust-bin of history. Told against the backdrop of this heady, exciting new movement, A World Without Police outlines how stronger communities can make cops and the systems they enforce obsolete.
Synopsis
If police are the problem, what's the solution? Tens of millions of people poured onto the streets for Black Lives Matter, bringing with them a wholly new idea of public safety, common security, and the delivery of justice, communicating that vision in the fiery vernacular of riot, rebellion, and protest. A World Without Police transcribes these new ideas--written in slogans and chants, over occupied bridges and hastily assembled barricades--into a compelling, must-read manifesto for police abolition.
Compellingly argued and lyrically charged, A World Without Police offers concrete strategies for confronting and breaking police power, as a first step toward building community alternatives that make the police obsolete. Surveying the post-protest landscape in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Oakland, as well as the people who have experimented with policing alternatives at a mass scale in Latin America, Maher details the institutions we can count on to deliver security without the disorganizing interventions of cops: neighborhood response networks, community-based restorative justice practices, democratically organized self-defense projects, and well-resourced social services.
A World Without Police argues that abolition is not a distant dream or an unreachable horizon but an attainable reality. In communities around the world, we are beginning to glimpse a real, lasting justice in which we keep us safe.