kites-journal.org
1 April 2024
21st-century abolitionists have long struggled to explain how they would achieve their primary political objective, at best offering some half-baked logic about shifting funding from police to “the community,” with the nonprofit organizations that abolitionists work at receiving that funding on behalf of the community. Angela Davis’s forthcoming book, Achieving Abolition through Meditation on Martha’s Vineyard, which kites received an advance copy of, promises to solve this problem. In it, Davis explains how, with her success on the college lecture circuit, she was able to afford a vacation home on Martha’s Vineyard, and also received many invites to stay there at the homes of her closest supporters and friends. While meditating on the beach to the soothing sounds of gentle waves and the calm sea breeze, Davis realized that given the idealist logic underlying her abolitionist philosophy, achieving abolition through putting her mind over matter during meditation made perfect sense, writing “anything but the armed overthrow of the ruling class has defined my conception of revolution from my time in the CP down to today.”
Asked for comment on Davis’s new book, Geo Maher, author of A World Without Police, expressed consternation: “Publishing houses have been keen to publish abolitionist scholarship, no matter the quality, so I decided to get in on the action a couple years ago. I’m worried that, given Davis’s celebrity status, the publication of Achieving Abolition through Meditation on Martha’s Vineyard could crowd my book out of the market.”
Angela Davis’s new book will be released in Fall 2024, at which point she will be hitting the college lecture circuit to promote it. Until then, Davis fans can enjoy a free mp3 download of Davis reading chapter 3 of the book, titled “Self-serving acts are revolutionary,” over new age music.
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