Practical

What does this look like on the ground, and what are people doing about it now?

See the pedagogy document for what this lens does across all themes.

Racial capitalism is not only a history. It is a mortgage denied, a sentence handed down, a wage withheld, a neighborhood policed, and it is also the movements that have risen against all of these. This lens brings the theme into the present and the local: the racial wealth gap, the carceral system, the Movement for Black Lives, and the organizing traditions of abolition and mutual aid. Much of the best knowledge here is in the room, in what people have lived and what they are already doing.

Anchor questions

• What does racial capitalism look like where you live, in housing, policing, work, and health?
• What are people near you doing about it, and what are they up against?
• What is the difference between reforming the police and abolishing them? What does abolition actually propose?
• What does mutual aid provide that the state and the market do not?
• How do movements avoid being divided, absorbed, or worn down?

Materials

Free unless marked otherwise. Many of these documentaries stream free with a library card through Kanopy or Hoopla.

Journalism and reporting

• The Marshall Project (2014 to present). A nonprofit criminal-justice newsroom with Pulitzer-winning, data-driven reporting on incarceration, policing, and immigration enforcement. Free to read and free to republish, so a group can circulate pieces without a paywall. Free: themarshallproject.org
• Colorlines (Race Forward, 1998 to present). Daily racial-justice news and analysis written from the perspective of community rather than power brokers. Pairs well with the Momentum podcast from the same organization. Free: colorlines.com
• The Appeal (2018 to present). A worker-led nonprofit newsroom on the criminal legal system that elevates solutions and organizing, and the home of the Justice in America podcast. Free: theappeal.org

Case studies and accounts of organizing

• Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (2016). A contemporary synthesis linking anti-Black state violence, neoliberalism, and class, and arguing that Black liberation requires anticapitalist politics. The clearest bridge from movement to analysis. Not free; publisher page.

Practical handbooks and how-to material

• The CR Abolitionist Toolkit (Critical Resistance, 2004). A 126-page free toolkit of political-education exercises, role plays, and organizing tools for people working toward prison-industrial-complex abolition. Built for exactly the kind of adult political education this school runs. Free: criticalresistance.org
• Interrupting Criminalization resource hub (Mariame Kaba and Andrea J. Ritchie). A searchable catalog of free toolkits, curricula, zines, and workshop materials for organizers challenging policing, punishment, and criminalization. Practical facilitation material from two of the movement’s most-used authors. Free: interruptingcriminalization.com

Films and documentaries

• 13th (Ava DuVernay, 2016, 100 min). The documentary tracing slavery through Jim Crow to mass incarceration via the 13th Amendment’s punishment clause. A central text for the abolition strand, posted free in full on Netflix’s own YouTube channel with about 16 million views. Free: youtube.com/watch?v=krfcq5pF8u8
• Whose Streets? (Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis, 2017, 102 min). A first-person account of the Ferguson uprising after the police killing of Michael Brown, told by the residents and organizers who lived it. Free via library Kanopy or Hoopla; film page: pbs.org
• The Black Power Mixtape 1967 to 1975 (Göran Olsson, 2011, 100 min). Swedish television footage of Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis, and the Black Panthers, giving movement history in the activists’ own voices. Free with a library card on Kanopy: kanopy.com

Podcasts and interviews with organizers

• Momentum: A Race Forward Podcast (Chevon Drew and Hiba Elyass, 2019 to present). Movement voices, stories, and organizing strategies for racial justice across environmental justice, public safety, and democracy. Built for practitioners, so it maps closely onto folk-school aims. Free: raceforward.org
• Justice in America (Josie Duffy Rice and Clint Smith, The Appeal, 2018 to 2020). Each episode explains one piece of the criminal legal system, bail, prosecutors, plea deals, mass incarceration, in plain terms for newcomers and organizers alike. Free: theappeal.org
• Code Switch (Gene Demby and Shereen Marisol Meraji, NPR, 2016 to present). A weekly show on how race shapes politics, pop culture, history, and everyday life, hosted by journalists of color. An accessible entry point for mixed-experience groups. Free: npr.org

Explainers on video

• “Explained: Racial Wealth Gap” (Netflix, Vox, 2020). Roughly 16 minutes, about 1.6 million views. Connects slavery, redlining, and discriminatory policy to today’s Black-white wealth divide. A concrete practical opener. youtube.com/watch?v=Mqrhn8khGLM
• “The Racist Origins of the U.S. Police Force” (AJ+, 2020). Roughly 7 minutes, about 82,000 views. Traces policing from slave patrols through Jim Crow enforcement to present-day tactics. A short grounding for the reform-versus-abolition debate. youtube.com/watch?v=ayUQmnLCHEg

Further reading

For resources behind a paywall, see the note on access.

• Interrupting Criminalization, Building Your Abolitionist Toolbox. Worksheets and exercises for groups turning abolitionist principles into an actual campaign. The practical companion to Kaba’s primer. Free: interruptingcriminalization.com
• Project NIA, Educational Resources (Transformative Justice curriculum, PIC 101). Free curricula on the prison industrial complex and transformative justice, including a PIC 101 built for community groups rather than classrooms. Free: project-nia.org
• Zinn Education Project, Rethinking Schools, Teaching for Black Lives (study guide). A study guide to the Rethinking Schools volume, with session plans and discussion questions. Written for teachers and adaptable to a study circle. Free: zinnedproject.org
• African American Intellectual History Society, Prison Abolition Syllabus 2.0. A scholar-assembled reading list tracing abolition from emancipation to the present. The deepest bibliography on the strand, for a group that wants to go past the primers. Free: aaihs.org
• Marcia Chatelain, Teaching the #FergusonSyllabus. The historian who started the #FergusonSyllabus on how to teach a police killing while it is still happening. Useful when the room needs to talk about the news. Free: whobuiltamerica.org
• Pulitzer Center, The 1619 Project Curriculum. Free lesson plans, reading guides, and activities built around The 1619 Project, and a live object of the fight over how this history gets taught. Free: pulitzercenter.org

Status

First pass, and it may be a while before there is a second. Contributions welcome, especially accounts from groups that have run local sessions, and material on housing and tenant organizing, immigrant justice, and reparations campaigns.