Red Emma’s

To posit the spirituality of abolition is to consider the ways historical and contemporary movements against slavery; prisons; the wage system; animal and earth exploitation; racialized, gendered, and sexualized violence; and the death penalty necessitate epistemologies that have been foreclosed through violent force by Western philosophical and theological thought. It is also to claim that the material conditions that will produce abolition are necessarily Black, Indigenous, queer and trans, feminist, and also about disabled and other non-conforming bodies in force and verve.

SPIRITUALITY AND ABOLITION asks: what can prison abolition teach us about spiritual practice, spiritual journey, spiritual commitment? And, what can these things underscore about the struggle for abolition as a desired manifestation of material change in the worlds we currently inhabit? Collecting writings, poetry, and art from thinkers, organizers, and incarcerated people, the editors trace the importance of faith and spirit in our ongoing struggle towards abolitionist horizons.

SPIRITUALITY AND ABOLITION, coedited by Roberto Sirvent (AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM AND AMERICAN INNOCENCE: A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF FAKE NEWS—FROM THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR TO THE WAR ON TERROR) and Ashon Crawley (BLACKPENTECOSTAL BREATH: THE AESTHETICS OF POSSIBILITY [Fordham University Press]; THE LONELY LETTERS [Duke]), asks: what can prison abolition teach us about spiritual practice, spiritual journey, spiritual commitment? And, what can these things underscore about the struggle for abolition as a desired manifestation of material change in the worlds we currently inhabit? Collecting writings, poetry, and art from thinkers, organizers, and incarcerated people, the editors trace the importance of faith and spirit in our ongoing struggle towards abolitionist horizons.

ABOLITION: A JOURNAL OF INSURGENT POLITICS (The Abolition Collective) is a collectively-run project supporting radical scholarly and activist ideas, poetry, and art, publishing and disseminating work that encourages us to make the impossible possible, to seek transformation well beyond policy changes and toward revolutionary abolitionism.

Panelists: Ariana Katz is the founding rabbi of Hinenu: The Baltimore Justice Shtiebl, a warm and joyful new congregation in Baltimore, MD. Rabbi Ariana graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in the spring of 2018. She is a queer white Ashkenazi femme 4th-generation Philadelphian who sees rooted ritual and radical organizing as her Jewish legacy. Rabbi Ariana was the creator and host of KADDISH, a podcast about death and identity, and co-host of the forthcoming podcast GOD CRUSH with Pastor Lura Groen. She is the co-author, with Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg, of FOR TIMES SUCH AS THESE: A RADICAL’S GUIDE TO THE JEWISH YEAR, out March 2024 from Wayne State University Press. She is passionate about abortion clinic escorting, diaspora-made Judaica, radical Jewish calendars, care webs, and queer aesthetics.

Heath Pearson, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of Anthropology and Justice & Peace Studies at Georgetown University. His first book, CONFINEMENT & CAPITAL, is forthcoming from Duke University Press.  He has organized with others on numerous campaigns against the US police state. He is a book review editor at Current Anthropology and a member of the Abolition Collective.

Rev. Harold Dean Trulear, Ph.D., is Assistant Pastor of Empowered Ministries, Inc. where his wife, Brenda J. Trulear, is Senior Pastor. An Associate Professor of Applied Theology at Howard University School of Divinity, his professional associations include the Correctional Ministries and Chaplains Association, Just Leadership USA and Community Corrections for Youth. A graduate of Morehouse College and Drew University, he directs a national research and demonstration project called "Healing Communities USA," mobilizing congregations to support those returning from incarceration through the establishment of family and social support networks. He was a 2017 Leading with Conviction Fellow at Just Leadership USA, a movement of formerly incarcerated leaders committed to reducing the prison population by 50% by the year 2030.

With Charles Lewis and W. Wilson Goode, he is co-editor of the book MINISTRY WITH PRISONERS AND FAMILIES: THE WAY FORWARD (Judson Press 2011). His book, BALANCING JUSTICE WITH MERCY: AN INTERFAITH GUIDE TO CREATING HEALING COMMUNITIES was released in September 2021, while his newest book: WELCOME HOME: REFLECTIVE ESSAYS FOR RETURNING CITIZENS, is currently being used as pre-release curriculum in over 100 jail facilities. He began his teaching career in the correctional system as a member of the faculty of New York Theological Seminary in 1992, teaching a course on the theology of Martin Luther King. Since then, he has taught at a number of correctional facilities, and been certified by Inside/Out Prisoner Exchange Program. Dr. Trulear has pastored churches in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and formerly served as campus minister at Eastside High School in Paterson, NJ.

Brendane A. Tynes (she/her) is a queer Black feminist scholar and storyteller from Columbia, South Carolina. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University. Her dissertation examined the affective responses of Black women and non-binary people to multiple forms of violence within Black liberation movements in Baltimore. Her research interests include Black feminist anthropology, Black feminist critical theory, gendered violence, Black political movements, abolition, memory, and affect studies. Her scholarship has received generous support from the CAETR, Ford, and Wenner-Gren Foundations. She has published essays in Feminist Media Studies, SAPIENS, and in the edited volume RESEARCHING GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE: EMBODIED AND INTERSECTIONAL APPROACHES (NYU Press, 2022). She was the co-host of Zora’s Daughters Podcast, a Black feminist anthropological intervention on popular culture and issues that concern Black women and queer and trans people. She has worked with the Say Her Name Coalition and In Our Names Network to address sexual violence against Black women, femmes, girls, and gender-expansive people with an abolitionist lens. Outside her academic work, you can find Brendane dancing, singing, writing poetry, and creating healing spaces for interpersonal violence survivors, who sit at the center of her commitment to Black feminist anti-oppression work.

Yasmin Yonis is the in-house Healing Justice Movement Chaplain providing spiritual and emotional care to organizers, activists, and community members at the Washington, DC based Muslims for Just Futures (MJF), a Muslim, women-led abolitionist organization, and has served as a prison re-entry chaplain for people returning from incarceration in Brooklyn, New York.

Yonis also supports leftist and progressive groups across the movement ecosystem in the creative re-imagining of how to do justice work in more just ways as a strategist, facilitator, and funder.

A human rights advocate, Yonis has served in positions advocating for the rights of children at Children’s Defense Fund; lobbying the Obama administration on its foreign policy & advocating for global refugee and asylum rights as a Senior Associate at Human Rights Watch; serving as an organizing fellow at the Black Alliance for Just Immigration; resettling refugees at the International Rescue Committee; and providing spiritual care to formerly incarcerated community members as a Prison Re-Entry Chaplain at Osborne Association.

Yonis has a Master's of Divinity (MDiv) in Social Ethics from Union Theological Seminary in NYC—the home of Black Liberation Theology and Womanist Theology—where she studied the Black Radical Tradition, and has received chaplaincy training at The Jewish Theological Seminary. She has Bachelor degrees in Journalism and International Affairs from the University of Georgia.  She deeply cares about liberatory faith, justice, and helping others reimagine and embody a world in which all life is nourished.

Analysis (Min. Ken Brown, M.Div.) is a spoken-word poet, minister, bookseller and co-owner of Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse. He’s been the featured performer at venues across New England, the Mid-Atlantic and the world. A Baltimore native and alumnus of Howard University School of Divinity, he is the past Minister for Youth and Young Adult Empowerment, Justice and Witness Ministries of the United Church of Christ, where he helped young people develop their sense of faith and justice action as well as served on international anti-racism teams, and is a former staff member of the Center for New Community and Bread for the World. Analysis is the host of the quarterly event Red Emma's Mother Earth Poetry Vibe, and is the author of the book SOMEWHERE THROUGH THE HAZE and the album A COUPLE THOUSAND YEARS LATER.