Reimagining the Revolution: Four Stories of Abolition, Autonomy, and Forging New Paths in the Modern Civil Rights Movement

These are the architects of the modern civil rights movement: 4 profiles of revolutionary groups making change beyond protest

A radically different approach to sustaining social justice movements—4 strategies for abolition and liberation from the new architects of the modern civil rights movement

Many of us think, I don’t support the police. But what should take their place? Or: Prisons don’t keep us safe. But what new systems could?

A lot of books about racial justice ask us how we got here, but Reimagining the Revolution is different: award-winning journalist and activist Paula Lehman-Ewing presents an inside-access look at the activists redefining where we go from here. Readers will hear from:


- Ivan Kilgore, an incarcerated activist who founded the 501c3 nonprofit United Black Family Scholarship Foundation from behind prison walls
- Critical Resistance, one of the oldest grassroots organizations in the nation working to dismantle the prison-industrial complex
- The co-founders of Greenwood, a Black-owned financial technology institution designed specifically for Black and Latino people and businesses: Michael Render, aka Killer Mike, Amb. Andrew Young and Ryan Glover
- Incarcerated activist Heshima Denham on his grassroots efforts to build a society for Black and Brown people independent of the state 
- The Movement for Black Lives, the Alliance for Safety and Justice, BYP 100, and 8toAbolition
- Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated artists using art to heal from trauma, connect with other incarcerated people, and amplify abolitionist change


Lehman-Ewing frames each profile within two fundamental truths: The current system—built and sustained by oppression, extraction, and inequity by design—cannot be reformed. And, knowing this, we need abolition; we need creative solutions designed by the people most impacted by the systems they fight to change. Reimagining the Revolution is a call to action for each of us: if we can access the tools we have, we can dream bigger, think outside the box, and follow the paths laid out by change-making activists toward nothing short of revolution.