We Grow The World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition Chicago Book Launch

Join Maya Schenwar, Beth Richie, Nadine Naber, Jennifer Viets, and Anya Tanyavutti at Haymarket House for a celebration of this vital new anthology exploring the intersections between caregiving and abolition.

As we await a second Trump presidency, it's easy to feel frozen -- as if any action we take can't possibly be enough, and may be futile. Now is a moment to bring in the stories of folks who are taking action to build a liberatory world every day, sometimes in ways that go completely unrecognized: caregivers. In this heavy time, it's important to recognize the centrality of care to movement work. 

In their new anthology, We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition, Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson have drawn together the insights of a wide range of authors and organizers, including Dorothy Roberts, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Mariame Kaba, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, Beth Richie, Harsha Walia, Dylan Rodriguez, Victoria Law, adrienne maree brown and Autumn Brown, and many more. Together, these essays illuminate the ways in which caregiving and struggles for liberation intertwine, offering both transformative ideas and practical tools for building new worlds even in the direst of circumstances.

Michelle Alexander (author of The New Jim Crow) says of We Grow the World Together, "This is the book that I wish I had when my children were young! Taken together, these powerful essays offer an irresistible invitation to embrace the ‘soul work’ of parenting which is vital collective labor for a liberatory future.” Booklist writes, "With too many powerful and thought-provoking pieces to name, this collection will inspire caregivers of all kinds to imagine and work for a more interconnected, interdependent, and caring world.” Andrea Ritchie (author of Practicing New Worlds) writes, “The beautiful chorus of voices gathered in We Grow the World Together invites us to take up the work of parenting ourselves and each other toward becoming and bringing into being people who can live the liberation we long for. As we continue to enact and survive intergenerational trauma on a global and genocidal scale, the practice of parenting toward healing and uprooting all forms of violence, policing, and punishment in all our relationships is key to shifting the shape of societies toward the world we want."

We hope you glean some sparks of hope from this conversation, and from the book!

**We ask that all in-person attendees wear masks in the event space during the program for the health and well-being of the speakers and other guests. We will be providing childcare and light adult and kid-friendly dinner for attendees and books will be available for purchase at the event. Haymarket House is accessible, with a ramp and fully wheelchair accessible bathrooms, and all bathrooms are gender-neutral. ***

Speakers:

Maya Schenwar is director of the Truthout Center for Grassroots Journalism and board president at Truthout. She is the coauthor (with Victoria Law) of Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms and the author of Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We Can Do Better. Maya is also the coeditor (with Joe Macaré and Alana YuLan Price) of Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States, and has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, and numerous other publications. Maya is a cofounder of the Chicago Community Bond Fund and organizes with the Love & Protect collective. She lives in Chicago with her partner, child, and abolitionist cat.

Beth E. Richie is Head of the Department of Criminology, Law and Justice and Professor of Black Studies at The University of Illinois at Chicago. The emphasis of her scholarly and activist work has been on the ways that race/ethnicity and social position affect women's experience of violence and incarceration, focusing on the experiences of African American battered women and sexual assault survivors. Dr. Richie is the author of Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence and America’s Prison Nation (NYU Press, 2012) which chronicles the evolution of the contemporary anti-violence movement during the time of mass incarceration in the United States and numerous articles concerning Black feminism and gender violence, race and criminal justice policy, and the social dynamics around issues of sexuality, prison abolition, and grassroots organizations in African American Communities. Her earlier book Compelled to Crime: the Gender Entrapment of Black Battered Women, is taught in many college courses and is cited in the popular press for its original arguments concerning race, gender and crime. Dr. Richie’s work has been supported by grants from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Ford Foundation, and The National Institute for Justice and The National Institute of Corrections. She has been awarded the Audre Lorde Legacy Award from the Union Institute, The Advocacy Award from the US Department of Health and Human Services, and The Visionary Award from the Violence Intervention Project and the UIC Woman of the Year Award. Dr. Richie is a board member of The Institute on Domestic Violence in the African Community, The National Network for Women in Prison, A Call To Men and a founding member of INCITE!: Women of Color Against Violence. In 2013 she was awarded an Honorary Degree from the City University of New York Law School and in 2014 she was appointed as a Sr. Advisor to the NFL to work on their domestic violence and sexual assault prevention program.

Nadine Naber is a scholar-activist, founder of Liberate Your Research Workshops, and a Professor at UIC in Gender and Women. She works with INCITE! Palestine Force; and is a board member of the Arab American Action Network; Al-Shabaka; the National Council of Arab Americans; and the Journal of Palestine Studies. While mothering her children Kinan and Nile, She has authored/co-editoed six books, including Arab America and Arab; Arab American Feminisms; and The Color of Violence. She is the faculty founder, with students, of UIC’s Arab American Cultural Center. She regularly contributes OpEds on abolition, Palestinian liberation, and queer and feminist activism for sources like Truthout and the Chicago Reporter. Learn more about her at NadineNaber.com

Jennifer Viets has worked as a restorative justice practitioner for the past fifteen years. She is currently the Alternative Resolution Pathways Specialist in the Office of Student Protections for Chicago Public Schools. For the previous four years, she worked as a Restorative Practices Coach in the Office of Social Emotional Learning. Her work in the community involves training community Circle Keepers and supporting restorative processes. She has also worked as a multi- disciplinary teaching artist and arts administrator with children and families for the past thirty years, using the arts to reach, teach, and heal. This work has included designing programming for children and adults in hospitals as well as other institutional settings. She is also a proud mother and grandmother.

Anya Tanyavutti (she/her/ella/they) has over twenty-four years of experience working in the fields of education, nonprofit leadership, and community engagement. She has served as president, vice president, and member of the Evanston/Skokie D65 Board of Education, an engaged D65 parent participating in D65 Early Childhood programs, and facilitator and curriculum writer with Next steps for Transformation, NFP. Ms. Tanyavutti is the Executive Director of an Arts integration nonprofit serving Chicago Public Schools. She is a trained birthworker and also a three-time alum of the Jade T. Perry Cecilia Weston Spiritual Academy (2020-2022). Finally, Ms. Tanyavutti is the survivor of a tragic postpartum stroke, predicted only by her race. Thankfully surviving and making a full recovery, Ms. Tanyavutti is the proud parent of three amazing children who are the realization of their ancestors’ dreams and work every day to build a better, more decolonized world in big and small ways for and with the collective.

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This event is cosponsored by Haymarket Books. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our important publishing and programming work.