In this episode, we speak with two former employees of Abolitionist Teaching Network (ATN), a now-defunct organization that was suddenly shuttered in late 2024 after staff reportedly raised concerns about the founder and Board.
In this conversation, using ATN as a case study, our guests discuss the ways in which the non-profit industrial complex facilitates movement capture, the celebritization of academics, and weaponized identity reductionism to dilute liberatory political objectives. They also discuss the deep contradictions between the organization’s stated abolitionist politics and the legal retaliation and intimidation former staff faced after airing their grievances with the founder and Board. Both of our guests have requested to be anonymized due to this legal retaliation, which they say has been an issue since before publishing their statement entitled “Former Abolitionist Teaching Network Workers On the Organization’s Abrupt Dissolution” in June.
We end with a generative conversation of what a true abolitionist praxis can look like in these times and discuss how former ATN staff are applying these lessons to their ongoing organizing efforts with the newly-formed Abolitionist Education Collective (AEC), which just launched last week. Check out their website as well as their upcoming workshop series!
Other resources mentioned in the episode:
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The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex by INCITE!
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Current GoFundMe in support of the former ATN staff
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Can We Please Give the Police Department to the Grandmothers? by Junauda Petrus
