ABOLISHING STATE VIOLENCE is an urgent and accessible analysis of the key structures of state violence in our world today, and a clarion call to action for their abolition.
Connecting movements for social justice with ideas for how activists can support and build on this analysis and strategy, this book shows that there are many mutually supportive abolition movements, each enhanced by a shared understanding of the relationship between structures of violence and a shared framework for challenging them on the basis of their roots in patriarchy, racism, militarism, settler colonialism, and capitalism.
This book argues that abolition is transformative. It is about defunding, demilitarizing, disbanding, and divesting from current structures of violence, but also about imagining new ways to organize and care for each other and our planet, and about building new systems and cultures to sustain ourselves in a more equitable, free, and peaceful way. It shows that change is possible.
Ray Acheson (they/them) is an activist and writer. They are the author of
Abolishing State Violence: A World Beyond Bombs, Borders, and Cages
(Haymarket Books, 2022), which analyses the connections between police,
prisons, surveillance, borders, war, nuclear weapons, and capitalism and
highlights ongoing organizing efforts for their abolition. They also wrote
Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021),
which offers a first-hand account about the work of activists and diplomats to
outlaw nuclear weapons and challenge the nuclear orthodoxy.
Ray is the Director of Reaching Critical Will, the disarmament program of the
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the world’s oldest
feminist peace organization. They also serve on the steering group of the
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which won the 2017
Nobel Peace Prize for its work to ban nuclear weapons. Ray provides analysis
and advocacy at the United Nations and other international forums on
matters of disarmament and has written and spoken extensively about
weapons and war, offering an intersectional feminist and queer perspective
on these issues.
Ray has an Honors BA from the University of Toronto in Peace and Conflict
Studies and an MA in Politics from The New School for Social Research. They
are currently a Visiting Researcher at Princeton University's Program on
Science and Global Security.
ISBN: 9781642596939
Publication date: July 26, 2022
Praise for Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy:
“This is a powerful and encouraging approach to an often overlooked concern, an informative work that will inspire readers to pay close attention to and even consider participating in the nuclear weapons disarmament movement.”
—Booklist
“Hooray for the peacemakers, who prevail in the end! They—and Acheson—have gifted us with a deliciously relevant organizing model for challenging any status quo.”
—CODEPINK: Women for Peace
“Ray Acheson tells a profoundly important and timely story of movements and resistance, of protest and vision, of diplomats and activists who have committed to banning the bomb. This book will make you understand the urgent need to prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons.”
—Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation
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