We Grow the World Together

“This is the book that I wish I had when my children were young! Taken together, these powerful essays offer an irresistible invitation to embrace the ‘soul work’ of parenting which is vital collective labor for a liberatory future. By reimagining what parenting can and should be, and by challenging us to see all children as our own, these authors demonstrate that we can build the world we want with love and inspire young people to embrace the freedom we all deserve.”
—Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

“Everyone who raises a child imagines a bright future for that precious being. This beautiful book teaches us how to imagine a bright future for all of us: children, families and communities. Abolition is liberation and love. I recommend this work for every reader.”
—Imani Perry, author of South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation 

“The beautiful chorus of voices gathered in We Grow the World Together invite us to take up the work of parenting ourselves and each other toward becoming and bringing into being people who can live the liberation we long for. As we continue to enact and survive intergenerational trauma on a global and genocidal scale, the practice of parenting toward healing and uprooting all forms of violence, policing, and punishment in all our relationships is key to shifting the shape of societies toward the world we want. Whether you are raising children, building families, or creating communities of care and resistance, abolition requires each of us to answer their call.”
—Andrea J. Ritchie, author of Practicing New Worlds: Abolition and Emergent Strategies and coauthor of No More Police: A Case for Abolition

“We Grow the World Together is an antidote to the death-dealing systems of police, prisons, and war. This poignant and playful collection celebrates abolitionist worldmaking through the everyday interactions between parents, children, and caregivers of all types. Each chapter is a reminder: life is precious, no one is disposable, and with care and intent we will change the world.”
—Dan Berger, author of Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power Through One Family's Journey

“This is a book that a lot of people have been waiting for, whether they know it or not. Our movements are always stronger when we take the complex needs of parents and caregivers into account, and We Grow the World Together is a fine example of that principle. This book will enrich our movements and our relationships. Bringing our change-making values into our familial relationships is essential if we truly hope to cultivate new ways of living and being together. Loving relationships are one of the contexts in which prefiguring the world we want makes the most sense, and yet, many of us are still unprepared to do so. We need books like this one that help us contemplate such personal work. To love with an eye toward transformation in a hostile world is a brave pursuit. This book offers some accompaniment in that journey.”
—Kelly Hayes, coauthor of Let This Radicalize You

“In the home, school, streets, organization and behind the walls, caregiving is an essential part of any abolitionist praxis. Finally, we have a text that highlights the forms and function of the work that makes the work possible.”
—Stevie Wilson, currently imprisoned abolitionist organizer and facilitator

“Crossing genres, generations, and prison walls, We Grow the World Together is a beautifully moving meditation on caregiving and prison industrial complex abolition. A vulnerable, practical, and deeply inspiring must-read collection for anyone reaching toward an abolitionist future.”
–Emily Thuma, author of All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence

“Our children and grannies are so very precious. This beautiful book, page after page, author after author, generously shares ways that we can support and teach our children and grannies to live together, to build transformative communities together that do not rely on carceral logics. This book brings me such joy, to know the world our children and grannies reimagine will be how they will live free from all harm.”
—Debbie Kilroy, founder, Sisters Inside

“This book is a revelation! Both parenting and organizing for a radically transformed world can be very lonely tasks. But reading this collection of brilliant and insightful offerings is like being welcomed to a long, deep, heart-opening conversation at a kitchen table—with elders you can’t wait to learn from, peers who help you see your own life with fresh compassion, and kids who pry open your imagination. As an anti-Zionist and abolitionist organizer, and likewise as a parent, these essays gave me so many fresh ideas to try on.”
—Stefanie Fox, executive director, Jewish Voice for Peace