PRISM: “Political education plays a critical role in movements for social justice by helping to guide strategy and direction. Philadelphia’s W.E.B. Movement School for Abolition and Reconstruction, better known as Abolition School, tackles this informative work by training next generation leftist organizers.

Launched in 2023 and named after civil rights leader, historian, and writer W.E.B. Du Bois, the organization offers a foundational, community-based abolitionist curriculum to new and existing community organizers. Broadly, Abolition School’s programming is designed to support those already involved in movement work and locals engaged in political struggles across the city by deepening their understanding of key abolitionist texts.

‘The importance of an abolitionist education is to break apart what we call hegemony, a common sense understanding of how the world works, and getting people to realize that the world that we have now comes from a certain historical trajectory,’ said Nneka Azuka, a facilitator and educator for Abolition School. ‘It wasn’t something that just happened naturally as history developed.’

The abolitionist organization Critical Resistance, co-founded by activist and academic Angela Davis, professor and prison scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and organizer and activist Rose Braz, defines political education as “the collective process of study, research analysis, and learning that we need to engage in together in order abolish the [prison industrial complex] and achieve collective liberation.” This type of instruction differs drastically from the top-down teaching used in both K-12 and higher education. Most notably, political education happens in community and outside of a traditional classroom. According to organizers who spoke to Prism, this gives political education radical potential, while also subverting the traditional hierarchical structures found within the U.S. education system.”

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