We Can Build a Different World was a weekly panel series throughout September 2020 exploring abolition and mutual aid in the UK. This panel series brought together activists, organisers, academics, artists, thinkers, and speakers for a weekly discussion event exploring abolition and mutual aid in the UK. We approached these sometimes difficult conversations with joy and warmth. We wished to celebrate our collective knowledge, indulge our curiosity, and to come together in a spirit of sharing and collaboration.

This series was programmed by Elio Beale and organised as a collaboration between Decriminalised Futures, Abolitionist Futures and Verso, with support from Arika.

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In the UK and globally, abolitionists struggle under the long shadow of empire. This panel explored the role of the British Empire in the development of carceral state apparatus, and how this specific colonial history (and present) relates to abolition work today.

How do we understand calls to defund the police, abolish prisons, or end anti-migrant enforcement in the context of the British Empire? How do calls to reinvest public funding in Britain into generative, life-giving alternatives to policing sit alongside the violent extraction of that wealth historically? How is the legacy of Empire enforced today, and what strategies do we have available to resist this?

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CONTRIBUTORS:

• Nadine El-Enany, author of (B)ordering Britain: Law, Race and Empire;

• Kojo Koram, editor of The War on Drugs and the Global Colour Line;

• Becka Hudson, researcher exploring mental health diagnosis within the UK prison system;

• Gracie Mae Bradley, writer on critical human rights, state racism, surveillance and abolition;

• and Stella Dadzie, teacher, writer, artist and education activist, co-author of The Heart of the Race: Black Women’s lives in Britain and founding member of OWAAD (Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent).