Abolition and Dignity: Spiritual Resources for Revolution

Abolition and Dignity: Spiritual Resources for Revolution

How are spiritual and moral imaginations opening us to new, just worlds? Three writers and activists will open a conversation about this question: Jasmine Syedullah and Jared Ware, contributors to the book Spirituality and Abolition, and Vincent Lloyd, author of Black Dignity: The Struggle Against Domination. Bringing expertise organizing against incarceration and advancing racial justice, drawing on Buddhism, Christianity, African syncretic religions, and other traditions, the three speakers will explore the complex, ambivalent ways that religious and spiritual traditions hinder and help struggles to transform the world.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Vincent Lloyd is a professor at Villanova University, where he is an affiliate of Africana Studies and directs the Center for Political Theology. He is the co-author of Break Every Yoke: Religion, Justice, and the Abolition of Prisons and, most recent, the author of Black Dignity: The Struggle Against Domination.

Jasmine Syedullah is a theorist of abolitionist movement scholarship as well as coauthor of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love, and Liberation. As of 2019 she is the Vassar College Africana Studies first Assistant Professor, currently developing interdisciplinary Prison Studies curricula and programming. Her current book project “Negress Ex Machina” centers Harriet Jacobs’s 1861 abolitionist narrative as a protofeminist foundation for seeing how prophets from the margins shape abolitionist movement theory and practice.

Jared Ware is a cohost and producer of the podcast Millennials Are Killing Capitalism which covers revolutionary history, social movements, and political theory. He was a member of the media relations team for the 2018 National Prison Strike. He is also a freelance journalist covering prisoner movements and abolitionist struggles.