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Practicing New Worlds: Abolition and Emergent Strategies
An exploration of how emergent strategies can help us meet this moment, survive what is to come, and shape safer and more just futures.
Practicing New Worlds explores how principles of emergence, adaptation, iteration, resilience, transformation, interdependence, decentralization and fractalization can shape organizing toward a world without the violence of surveillance, police, prisons, jails, or cages of any kind, in which we collectively have everything we need to survive and thrive.
Drawing on decades of experience as an abolitionist organizer, policy advocate, and litigator in movements for racial, gender, economic, and environmental justice and the principles articulated by adrienne maree brown in Emergent Shaping Change, Changing Worlds , Ritchie invites us to think beyond traditional legislative and policy change to create more possibilities for survival and resistance in the midst of the ongoing catastrophes of racial capitalism—and the cataclysms to come. Rooted in analysis of current abolitionist practices and interviews with on-the-ground organizers resisting state violence, building networks to support people in need of abortion care, and nurturing organizations and convergences that can grow transformative cities and movements, Practicing New Worlds takes readers on a journey of learning, unlearning, experimentation, and imagination to dream the worlds we long for into being.
Practicing New Worlds explores how principles of emergence, adaptation, iteration, resilience, transformation, interdependence, decentralization and fractalization can shape organizing toward a world without the violence of surveillance, police, prisons, jails, or cages of any kind, in which we collectively have everything we need to survive and thrive.
Drawing on decades of experience as an abolitionist organizer, policy advocate, and litigator in movements for racial, gender, economic, and environmental justice and the principles articulated by adrienne maree brown in Emergent Shaping Change, Changing Worlds , Ritchie invites us to think beyond traditional legislative and policy change to create more possibilities for survival and resistance in the midst of the ongoing catastrophes of racial capitalism—and the cataclysms to come. Rooted in analysis of current abolitionist practices and interviews with on-the-ground organizers resisting state violence, building networks to support people in need of abortion care, and nurturing organizations and convergences that can grow transformative cities and movements, Practicing New Worlds takes readers on a journey of learning, unlearning, experimentation, and imagination to dream the worlds we long for into being.
336 pages, Paperback
First published July 11, 2023
116 people are currently reading
3411 people want to read
About the author
Andrea J. Ritchie
7 books102 followersAndrea Ritchie is a Black lesbian immigrant and police misconduct attorney and organizer who has engaged in extensive research, writing, and advocacy around criminalization of women and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people of color over the past two decades. She recently published Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color now available from Beacon Press.
Ritchie is a nationally recognized expert and sought after commentator on policing issues. She has testified before the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, the White House Council on Women and Girls, the Prison Rape Elimination Commission, and several United Nations Treaty Bodies. She has appeared regularly in the New York Times, as well as on MSNBC, C-Span, NBC Nightly News, NPR, Al-Jazeera, and Mother Jones. Her blogs and opinion pieces have been published in The New York Times, The Root, Colorlines, Rewire, Cassius Life, Portside, Praxis, Bilerico and TruthOUT.
Ritchie is currently Researcher-in-Residence on Race, Gender, Sexuality and Criminalization at the Social Justice Institute of the Barnard Center for Research on Women. In 2014 she was awarded a Senior Soros Justice Fellowship to engage in documentation and advocacy around profiling and policing of women of color – trans and not trans, queer and not queer.
Ritchie is also the co-author of Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women (African American Policy Forum July 2015); A Roadmap for Change: Federal Policy Recommendations for Addressing the Criminalization of LGBT People and People Living with HIV, (Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School 2014); Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States (Beacon Press 2011), Stonewalled: Police Abuse and Misconduct Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People in the United States (Amnesty International 2005); and Surviving the Streets of New York: Experiences of LGBT Youth, YMSM and YWSW Engaged in Survival Sex, Urban Institute. 2015; and author of Law Enforcement Violence Against Women of Color, in The Color of Violence: The INCITE! anthology (2006, South End Press).
Ritchie was lead counsel in Tikkun v. City of New York, groundbreaking impact litigation challenging unlawful searches of transgender people in police custody, contributing to sweeping changes to the NYPD’s policies for interactions with LGBTQ New Yorkers. She also served as co-counsel to the Center for Constitutional Rights in Doe v. Jindal, a successful challenge to Louisiana’s requirement that individuals convicted of “crime against nature by solicitation” register as sex offenders, and Doe v. Caldwell, the class action filed to remove all affected individuals from the registry, resulting in relief for over 800 class members.
Ritchie is a nationally recognized expert and sought after commentator on policing issues. She has testified before the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, the White House Council on Women and Girls, the Prison Rape Elimination Commission, and several United Nations Treaty Bodies. She has appeared regularly in the New York Times, as well as on MSNBC, C-Span, NBC Nightly News, NPR, Al-Jazeera, and Mother Jones. Her blogs and opinion pieces have been published in The New York Times, The Root, Colorlines, Rewire, Cassius Life, Portside, Praxis, Bilerico and TruthOUT.
Ritchie is currently Researcher-in-Residence on Race, Gender, Sexuality and Criminalization at the Social Justice Institute of the Barnard Center for Research on Women. In 2014 she was awarded a Senior Soros Justice Fellowship to engage in documentation and advocacy around profiling and policing of women of color – trans and not trans, queer and not queer.
Ritchie is also the co-author of Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women (African American Policy Forum July 2015); A Roadmap for Change: Federal Policy Recommendations for Addressing the Criminalization of LGBT People and People Living with HIV, (Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School 2014); Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States (Beacon Press 2011), Stonewalled: Police Abuse and Misconduct Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People in the United States (Amnesty International 2005); and Surviving the Streets of New York: Experiences of LGBT Youth, YMSM and YWSW Engaged in Survival Sex, Urban Institute. 2015; and author of Law Enforcement Violence Against Women of Color, in The Color of Violence: The INCITE! anthology (2006, South End Press).
Ritchie was lead counsel in Tikkun v. City of New York, groundbreaking impact litigation challenging unlawful searches of transgender people in police custody, contributing to sweeping changes to the NYPD’s policies for interactions with LGBTQ New Yorkers. She also served as co-counsel to the Center for Constitutional Rights in Doe v. Jindal, a successful challenge to Louisiana’s requirement that individuals convicted of “crime against nature by solicitation” register as sex offenders, and Doe v. Caldwell, the class action filed to remove all affected individuals from the registry, resulting in relief for over 800 class members.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
August 14, 2023
The non-fiction entries of the emergent strategy series have been a real mixed bag for me. Strangely enough, many entries by the creator herself have left me unsatisfied. For that reason, I'm very glad that she has communicated with so many other contributors to the series, including Andrea J. Ritchie. I'm a big fan of Ritchie's work, so when I saw that Practicing New Worlds was coming out, I was excited to see what her contribution would look like. In the intro, adrienne marie brown mentions thinking that she and Ritchie were both part of the same struggle but in very different ways: in essence, Ritchie was doing the practice of legal struggle and systemic change while amb was involved in the imaginative side of things. Ritchie herself is more accustomed to organizing and writing that is very praxis based, always with a "10 point plan." However, two of them found that there was great overlap between these two things, emergent strategy being a huge influence on just how those plans and practices came to be. This, in my opinion, has resulted in one of the best- if not the best- entries in the nonfiction realm of the ES series.
If you are familiar with Ritchie's work, it will come as no surprise that this book provides a very well researched account of various conferences and practices of recent years. It is chock full of excellent quotes from a variety of artists and organizers. The emergent strategy side of things allows Ritchie to be more imaginative in her writing of this. I enjoyed seeing more of the creative side of Ritchie's work in this book. It resulted in the expression of many ideas about tactics that could be tried based on the wisdom gained from things that already have been. The abolitionist goals expressed in this text are equal parts ambitious and idealistic, while also being grounded and rational.
To offer one of many examples, I really enjoyed the way she talked about decolonization. I have found myself frustrated at how some of the discussions around decolonization seem to convey a falsehood that there are two poles: a complete return to exactly the way things were in the past or strict adherence to everything the way it is now. Ritchie discusses the importance of decolonization being a new world- not a return to some specific (often incorrectly homogenized) culture. Decolonization means creating a culture based on all experiences to date. I like this framing of it much better as it creates more space for healing and it makes much more sense to me as something that can actually happen. It is an idea of a world that indigenous people deserve including their whole selves.
Something else that stuck out to me was something that I really needed to hear at this point in my life. It's not a new idea, but the way Ritchie said it helped me to internalize it more. You may have heard the phrase, "kill the cop in your head." Ritchie talks about how the way we internalize things and speak to ourselves bleeds into the rest of culture. The voice in my head can be one of the cruelest things on the planet and I never want to treat others the way that voice sometimes treats me. This got through to me the importance of me combating that voice not only for my own wellbeing, but to prevent myself from becoming that voice and enacting that mistreatment on others.
Throughout all of the practices, there is a great deal of humility and space for mistakes. This is also extremely important and welcome in a culture where there can be a current a fear that any mistake is a death sentence for one's ability to be a "good" radical. We can make space for mistakes and growth without sacrificing accountability.
Ritchie also includes two visionary fiction stories, this is a really cool exercise. I may try it myself even though I am not a good fiction writer. The point is not to write a masterpiece but to see how creativity gives you ideas that you may not come up with in a strictly real world based thought process.
It was truly enjoyable to see Ritchie's strict attention to detail, organization, and research be combined with exercises of creativity and art. The entire thing is truly a labor of love and one of the biggest assets to the entire emergent strategy series.
This was also posted to my blog.
If you are familiar with Ritchie's work, it will come as no surprise that this book provides a very well researched account of various conferences and practices of recent years. It is chock full of excellent quotes from a variety of artists and organizers. The emergent strategy side of things allows Ritchie to be more imaginative in her writing of this. I enjoyed seeing more of the creative side of Ritchie's work in this book. It resulted in the expression of many ideas about tactics that could be tried based on the wisdom gained from things that already have been. The abolitionist goals expressed in this text are equal parts ambitious and idealistic, while also being grounded and rational.
To offer one of many examples, I really enjoyed the way she talked about decolonization. I have found myself frustrated at how some of the discussions around decolonization seem to convey a falsehood that there are two poles: a complete return to exactly the way things were in the past or strict adherence to everything the way it is now. Ritchie discusses the importance of decolonization being a new world- not a return to some specific (often incorrectly homogenized) culture. Decolonization means creating a culture based on all experiences to date. I like this framing of it much better as it creates more space for healing and it makes much more sense to me as something that can actually happen. It is an idea of a world that indigenous people deserve including their whole selves.
Something else that stuck out to me was something that I really needed to hear at this point in my life. It's not a new idea, but the way Ritchie said it helped me to internalize it more. You may have heard the phrase, "kill the cop in your head." Ritchie talks about how the way we internalize things and speak to ourselves bleeds into the rest of culture. The voice in my head can be one of the cruelest things on the planet and I never want to treat others the way that voice sometimes treats me. This got through to me the importance of me combating that voice not only for my own wellbeing, but to prevent myself from becoming that voice and enacting that mistreatment on others.
Throughout all of the practices, there is a great deal of humility and space for mistakes. This is also extremely important and welcome in a culture where there can be a current a fear that any mistake is a death sentence for one's ability to be a "good" radical. We can make space for mistakes and growth without sacrificing accountability.
Ritchie also includes two visionary fiction stories, this is a really cool exercise. I may try it myself even though I am not a good fiction writer. The point is not to write a masterpiece but to see how creativity gives you ideas that you may not come up with in a strictly real world based thought process.
It was truly enjoyable to see Ritchie's strict attention to detail, organization, and research be combined with exercises of creativity and art. The entire thing is truly a labor of love and one of the biggest assets to the entire emergent strategy series.
This was also posted to my blog.
January 9, 2024
I absolutely needed this to start the new year. Andrea J. Ritchie’s Practicing New Worlds: Abolition and Emergent Strategies provides an alternate approach to addressing the many problems of injustice and inequality plaguing our society. We’re dealing with climate catastrophe and injustice, the destruction of communities, ecocides, genocides in the Congo, Palestine, Sudan, etc., fascism, mass incarceration, bloated funding of the prison-industrial complex, racial capitalism, the consequences of extractive and settler colonialism, & the rise of police states (Cop City in Atlanta) to name a few. This book’s unique approach criticizes top-down solutions that further perpetuate centuries worth of white supremacy and cisheteronormativity. The author provides in-depth examinations of abolition, community organizing, grassroots movements, kinship with all beings, and love as ways to heal our toxic society.
Harriet Tubman did not wake up one day with a strategy. She woke up from a dream: she saw that her people were free. They were seven or eight generations into slavery at that point? There was no guideline to be like, “We can be free.” She imagined it. And then she bent reality. I think we all have to do that.— adrienne maree brown
Bending reality is key! First, we must realize that our society isn’t functioning for the benefit of all. Next, we have to imagine a world that we want to live in based on our principles and values. Lastly, we have to take the steps ourselves to make that vision a reality. While it may seem daunting and unrealistic, the toolkits and ideas associated with Emergent Strategy and abolition (provided within these pages) help guide its readers toward creating new worlds for the benefit of all!
Boycott
Divest
Protest
Spread ❤️
Disrupt Everything
Free 🇵🇸
Harriet Tubman did not wake up one day with a strategy. She woke up from a dream: she saw that her people were free. They were seven or eight generations into slavery at that point? There was no guideline to be like, “We can be free.” She imagined it. And then she bent reality. I think we all have to do that.— adrienne maree brown
Bending reality is key! First, we must realize that our society isn’t functioning for the benefit of all. Next, we have to imagine a world that we want to live in based on our principles and values. Lastly, we have to take the steps ourselves to make that vision a reality. While it may seem daunting and unrealistic, the toolkits and ideas associated with Emergent Strategy and abolition (provided within these pages) help guide its readers toward creating new worlds for the benefit of all!
Boycott
Divest
Protest
Spread ❤️
Disrupt Everything
Free 🇵🇸
October 29, 2023
So so so so good. From one Capricorn 10-point plan preferrer to another, I am so grateful for this book right now. As we struggle through our first own book on abolition, this book gave me the pieces I had been missing…a way to be both a planner and a dreamer. Those are not mutually exclusive and both are required. As I work in spaces that demand a 10 point plan, I can do both. And feel validated in doing so. So many times in this book, I felt seen. And ready to keep going.
February 6, 2024
What a phenomenal book! I will be thinking about it and reworking through it for years to come. This book came to me when I called. I went to my local bookshop for a book on transformative justice and felt it was the right one for this moment. I will be reading the rest of this series after how helpful this book was to rethinking my organizing and my own (what I now call visionary fiction!) writing.
One minor complaint was that ideas are repeated a LOT. At a certain point in the chapter intros I was like yes i get it, but other than that, great book. The essays and articles included from other works are equally as phenomenal and helpful. How is there only 28 reviews on here at the time of my writing!?
One minor complaint was that ideas are repeated a LOT. At a certain point in the chapter intros I was like yes i get it, but other than that, great book. The essays and articles included from other works are equally as phenomenal and helpful. How is there only 28 reviews on here at the time of my writing!?
July 20, 2024
This book has everything you need to ask yourself deep and informed questions about abolition. I would suggest using it almost like a textbook, would be a good book club read.
November 27, 2024
Emergent strategy is about changing the material conditions as opportunities arise, even if there's no ultimate plan. Such an encouraging read in many ways, but the work ahead is tough and we will need to center love, kindness, patience, and imagination. There is also a lot of internal work that needs to be done at an individual level - speaking from my own experience, I have worked with fellow world-changers who did not yet have the capacity to start moving towards transparency and love.
"[I]t is profoundly human to want to move toward joy, pleasure, connection, and hope, and it is profoundly demobilizing to operate exclusively from the cold numbness of fear or the quick fire of anger rather than the long, slow burn of love. Love is what gets us to what is transformative, resilient, and helps us create new possibilities we cannot otherwise imagine."
"[I]t is profoundly human to want to move toward joy, pleasure, connection, and hope, and it is profoundly demobilizing to operate exclusively from the cold numbness of fear or the quick fire of anger rather than the long, slow burn of love. Love is what gets us to what is transformative, resilient, and helps us create new possibilities we cannot otherwise imagine."
October 31, 2023
Practicing New Worlds is a beautiful & honest offering from Andrea J. Ritchie – we get to follow along with her as she navigates thinking beyond the boundaries of our current system and welcoming emergent strategies to imagine and start to shift towards a better world.
Some of my favorite takeaways:
Joy. This is a movement filled with love, centering pleasure and imagination. You can’t ignite change if you are stuck in despair; you can’t imagine brighter futures if you are sinking into devastation.
Change yourself first. Ritchie writes about her own journey clinging to top-down change, to the policies and rules of our present. But we can’t policy our way to abolition, and that’s a restrictive way of thinking. You have to let go of the old and be open to change. And this means yourself! You have to challenge your inner thoughts & resolve your own contradictions before you can go bigger and impact others.
Emergent strategies are accessible. This book makes it easier to imagine how we can have an impact on massive, powerful systems. We are part of a smaller network that can ripple its way to larger shifts. This allows us to take an active role in shaping changes, and puts abolition in the realm of our imagined possibility.
Planning plus spontaneity. You have to be open to shifts and unexpected new visions, but this doesn’t mean tossing away all preparation. In order for this movement to be inclusive, there has to be some planning. Just don’t be afraid to adapt.
Fiction is revolutionary. Sci-fi allows us to dream. And you can’t leave all the imagination up to others - start challenging yourself to expand your perspective.
I also really enjoyed the fictional inserts towards the end of the book.
CW: mentions of police brutality, incarceration, confinement, murder, death, grief, racism, ableism, homophobia
Follow me on TikTok for book recommendations!
(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)
Some of my favorite takeaways:
Joy. This is a movement filled with love, centering pleasure and imagination. You can’t ignite change if you are stuck in despair; you can’t imagine brighter futures if you are sinking into devastation.
Change yourself first. Ritchie writes about her own journey clinging to top-down change, to the policies and rules of our present. But we can’t policy our way to abolition, and that’s a restrictive way of thinking. You have to let go of the old and be open to change. And this means yourself! You have to challenge your inner thoughts & resolve your own contradictions before you can go bigger and impact others.
Emergent strategies are accessible. This book makes it easier to imagine how we can have an impact on massive, powerful systems. We are part of a smaller network that can ripple its way to larger shifts. This allows us to take an active role in shaping changes, and puts abolition in the realm of our imagined possibility.
Planning plus spontaneity. You have to be open to shifts and unexpected new visions, but this doesn’t mean tossing away all preparation. In order for this movement to be inclusive, there has to be some planning. Just don’t be afraid to adapt.
Fiction is revolutionary. Sci-fi allows us to dream. And you can’t leave all the imagination up to others - start challenging yourself to expand your perspective.
I also really enjoyed the fictional inserts towards the end of the book.
CW: mentions of police brutality, incarceration, confinement, murder, death, grief, racism, ableism, homophobia
Follow me on TikTok for book recommendations!
(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)
Read
April 17, 2024I am so glad I read this book with the Virtual Socialism Reading Group. It was inspiring and interesting to talk to other people about it.
The main concepts that I took away from this book are:
- We can all start working towards abolition/a future we want now. It is as easy as getting to know your neighbors, strengthening relationships, practicing the accountability in your own life that you want to see on others’, getting creative.
- You don’t have to have everything planned out. If one attempt doesn’t work, learn from your mistakes, make adjustments, create new iterations and ideas. The fact is that the current system set the bar very low — no need be afraid of failing when the current system already is lol
- bottom up instead of top down organizing means there is room for lots of ideas, flexibility, resilience, and experimentation. Room for all kinds of folks to have a try at making their ideas come to life.
And I kept thinking about how my church has a lot of these concepts down! That made me proud. Sure, there is a noticeable problem with organization haha. But I think that comes with the territory of having so many different people leading different initiatives and having leadership pretty decentralized.
The main concepts that I took away from this book are:
- We can all start working towards abolition/a future we want now. It is as easy as getting to know your neighbors, strengthening relationships, practicing the accountability in your own life that you want to see on others’, getting creative.
- You don’t have to have everything planned out. If one attempt doesn’t work, learn from your mistakes, make adjustments, create new iterations and ideas. The fact is that the current system set the bar very low — no need be afraid of failing when the current system already is lol
- bottom up instead of top down organizing means there is room for lots of ideas, flexibility, resilience, and experimentation. Room for all kinds of folks to have a try at making their ideas come to life.
And I kept thinking about how my church has a lot of these concepts down! That made me proud. Sure, there is a noticeable problem with organization haha. But I think that comes with the territory of having so many different people leading different initiatives and having leadership pretty decentralized.
January 2, 2025
Overall this was so informative, thought-provoking, and actionable. It really made me reflect, take my time, and look around me. I felt like it got redundant at a point, and became less accessible, but overall I wish I had read it with others (a book club?). I kept having to excerpt bits and send them to people in my community so I could discuss them live, which I'd argue is part of the exercise of reading the book.
Definitely read this, but try not to read it alone. You will want to talk through things and mull through ideas live, especially if you have a large context of social issues and background to pull from.
Definitely read this, but try not to read it alone. You will want to talk through things and mull through ideas live, especially if you have a large context of social issues and background to pull from.
March 2, 2025
Lots to think about in here, and I want to pick this back up soon and dig a bit deeper into it. I have not read the original Emergent Strategies (although I also have a copy of that work), and I'm not sure if that should have been read first (I didn't realize there was a whole series of these nonfiction works, loosely connected around the theme of abolitionist futures).
I liked the approach here, especially because, like the author states, I'm so much of a × rules to follow or to do individual, but these top-down, one-way-for-everyone doesn't always serve us and the future we want to achieve.
I liked the approach here, especially because, like the author states, I'm so much of a × rules to follow or to do individual, but these top-down, one-way-for-everyone doesn't always serve us and the future we want to achieve.
November 8, 2024
Reimagining our Communities and our Countries
A timely book to help us use our imaginations, our relationships, our love, and our joy to reimagine and takes steps toward creating a better world free of war, oppression, racism, and hate.
A timely book to help us use our imaginations, our relationships, our love, and our joy to reimagine and takes steps toward creating a better world free of war, oppression, racism, and hate.
December 24, 2023
Strong recommend
February 6, 2025
"Safety is not the absence of threat but the presence of connection"
This felt centering. It helped me have a deeper understanding of this new politic, I am developing.
This felt centering. It helped me have a deeper understanding of this new politic, I am developing.
July 6, 2025
The fiction pieces throughout were really interesting.
August 20, 2025
3.5-4 stars
August 29, 2025
Stressing the importance of imagining the world people are organizing and fighting for seems timely.
To add on speculative fiction to this to better imagine the possibilities? Excellent.
To add on speculative fiction to this to better imagine the possibilities? Excellent.
September 24, 2025
3 1/2 stars. Some really good content, but also too much content. Could benefit from some editing.
July 24, 2025
I really liked the correlation between science fiction & the idea that reality can be reimagined; also, that a collective approach to providing community care would eventually make prisons obsolete.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews