Our schools were never meant for our Black, brown, and poor youth and families of color to be free and or for liberatory education. Schools have always been sites of surveillance, punishment, and control for Black, Brown and poor youth and families of color by systematic design and origin. From police in schools to standardized testing and purposeful underfunding of classrooms, the US educational system is built to uphold white supremacy and racial capitalism and push poor and working-class youth of color to the margins. We reject educational reforms that sustain school carcerality and and learn from youth, parents, community and radical educators in how abolition is central for liberatory education and freedom. 

We understand abolition not only as the dismantling of prisons and policing, but as the abolition of carcerality itself- the deeply embedded systems designed to punish, contain, and control Black, Brown and poor communities of color. These carceral structures include slavery, policing, prison, white supremacy, racial capitalism, colonialism, anti-Blackness, US imperialism, and occupation of lands. Black, Brown, and poor communities of color feel the impact of each of these carceral structures  in our schools, housing, neighborhoods, food access, healthcare, job security, and life. We question what it means to build liberatory education without understanding its deep link to being our basic needs of food, shelter, housing, and dignity.