ABOLITION
JOURNAL


EVERYDAY SH!T: THE PILOT ISSUE

  1. Editors’ Notes: On Direction & On Poetry | Christopher R. Rogers and Gabriel Ramirez
  2. Abolition is a Brick: On the Origins of the Du Bois Movement School | Geo Maher
  3. The High School Lunch Table Reimagined | David A. Gaines
  4. Relearning the Language of Care | Alexandrea Henry
  5. Tossed About the Room | Tongo Eisen-Martin
  6. From Abolition School to Palestine | Farwa Zaidi in convo w/ Nneka Azuka & Talia Charidah
  7. Movement Moments: PAO Rally Speech | Nneka A.
  8. protest | Raina J. León
  9. The Kids | Alyesha Wise
  10. All (Purchasing) Power to the People | Saskia Kercy
  11. (communique #1) | S. R. Lalo
  12. From Intention to Liberation | Abbas Naqvi
  13. Standardized Test | Taylor Alyson Lewis
  14. The New Republic of Kindergarten | Hiwot Adilow
  15. Lost Lady. Found Niece. | Kiian Dawn
  16. Holding the Jagged Edges | Shantell Missouri
  17. Prison Radio Suite x Abolition Journal |  Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, KnowledgeBorn GodAllah, Krystal Clark, & Spoon Jackson
  18. “Ultimately, What Any of Us Want is Structural Change” | No Arena in Chinatown x Abolition Journal Roundtable
  19. Healing “Body & Soul” | Jake Sonnenberg of Healthcare Workers for Abolition
  20. Abolition Starts at Home | frenchy, Han & zara of the The Philly Childcare Collective
  21. Maximizing Study & Struggle between Haiti and Philadelphia | Talie Cerin & James Beltis x Woy Magazine
  22. Migrant Justice, Border Abolition & The Resistance of Now | Sterling K. Johnson in convo w/ Viktoria Zerda
  23. Movement Life-in-the-Along & the Grand (Re)Vision of Abolition Journal | Christopher R. Rogers



THE KIDS | ALYESHA WISE


The kids are a mirror across this plane, cheap wood desk 
The kids join me on Tuesdays, carrying reflection 
To a hospital-lit room, the kids are a surveilled walk 
To workshop, the kids are a lot of laughs, say 
Yea, we don't really like Black people, but let me explain 
And the kids emerge, me an explanation, birthed 
From a system’s grift, they are generations 
Factory-packed into a hell of a detention camp 
And I don't get it, but I get them, yet I don't 
But like, yea, I too have been a boiling pot 
I have been taught to cut first 
Just so I don't have to cut back, I have been 
Taught prevention as if it were a constant avoidance 
Of funk flying past someone's stank teeth, instead of the root 
Cause of the smell, get past me 
We’re growing in love with our own 
Watering mouths, the kids are a thirst for their own 
But conflate water for drown, for wade, for 
Gone, for lonely, for of course, a white flag 
And I am also not a fan of surrender, yet I am 
Frantically waving all that I have learned of letting go 
Across this desk, into a story that don't match mine 
But when we speak our shit, honestly 
It's pretty much the same 






Alyesha Wise is a poet, teaching artist & TEDx speaker from Camden, N.J. Alyesha currently resides in Los Angeles where she is the co-founder of Spoken Literature Art Movement - an organization providing poetry education and extensive programming for poets, and The Director of Program Development for Street Poets - a non-profit mostly serving juvenile injustice-involved youth. Alyesha served as the Da Poetry Lounge slam team head coach from 2017-18, co-coaching both teams to final stage at The National Poetry Slam. She also served as the Get Lit-Words Ignite youth slam team co-coach from 2014-2017. Wise is a 2-time Women of the World Poetry Slam finalist and has been featured on different platforms and publications such as OWN, BET, Huffington Post, Afropunk, PBS, LA Times, Buzzfeed, Free Speech TV and more. She has collaborated with The Nantucket Project, the ACLU of Southern California, Brave New Films and additional major platforms, having featured in the Google Interstellar Project, in conjunction with the hit film Interstellar. Ron Howard once wrote about Alyesha's work, "Very Powerful."