Mariame Kaba


Mariame Kaba is an American activist and organizer who advocates for the abolition of the prison industrial complex, including all police.

Early life and education

Mariame Kaba was born in New York City to parents who had immigrated from Guinea and the Ivory Coast. She grew up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and attended Lycée Français. As a child, she viewed the world through a black nationalist framework and looked for ways to help others.
In 1995 she moved to Chicago to study sociology at Northwestern University.

Career

In Chicago, she founded the Chicago Freedom School, the Rogers Park Young Women’s Action Team, Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls and Young Women, Chicago Alliance to Free Marissa Alexander, and We Charge Genocide. In 2009, Kaba founded the organization Project NIA, which advocates to end youth incarceration.
Kaba views prison abolition as the total dismantling of prison and policing while building up community services and opposes the reform of policing. Her work has created the framework for current abolition organizations including Black Youth Project 100, Black Lives Matter Chicago, and Assata's Daughters.

Writing

In 2012, she wrote Resisting Police Violence in Harlem, a historical pamphlet detailing the policing and violence in Harlem.
In June 2018, she wrote the foreword for, As Black As Resistance: Finding the Conditions for Liberation, a critical book by Zoé Samudzi and William C. Anderson that describes the importance of Black anarchist and abolitionist principles to contemporary social justice movements.
In 2019, she wrote Lifting As They Climbed: Mapping A History Of Black Women On Chicago’s South Side with Essence McDowell. Started in 2012, the book is written as a guidebook that maps the history of the influential Black women who helped develop Chicago.

Awards