Synopses & Reviews
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 Strategy: 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.
Review
"Andrea Ritchie demonstrates her brilliance and generosity through her broad and deep respect for a vast expanse of teachers and comrades, woven intricately and intimately throughout this book." — Mimi E. Kim, founder of Creative Interventions and cofounder of INCITE!
Review
"In Practicing New Worlds, Ritchie brings her wisdom — drawn from decades of researching, theorizing, organizing, and convening movement spaces — into an altogether new kind of dream work. In a feat of originality, Ritchie stretches the conceptual paradigms of emergent strategy into entirely new places, grounding it deeply in struggle: specifically, Black feminist, abolitionist movement work. In doing so, she accomplishes a rare feat, gifting us a text that is expansively visionary and pragmatic." — Robyn Maynard, author of Policing Black Lives
Review
"Practicing New Worlds is essential reading for all who don't merely dream of a better world but who have embraced the daunting task of bringing one into being. Ritchie draws insights from organizing victories, setbacks, and especially the tireless groundwork--behind the scenes and out of the spotlight--required for all advances in social justice. She emboldens us to address the burning questions Grace Lee Boggs posed to movement builders, 'How can we make the ideal more real? How can we make the real more ideal?'" — Scott Kurashige, coauthor of Grace Lee Boggs's The Next American Revolution
About the Author
Andrea J. Ritchie is a Black lesbian immigrant survivor who has been documenting, organizing, advocating, litigating, and agitating around policing and criminalization of Black women, girls, trans, and gender nonconforming people for the past four decades. She is cofounder of Interrupting Criminalization and the In Our Names Network, a network of over 20 organizations working to end police violence against Black women, girls, trans and gender nonconforming people. In these capacities and through the Community Resource Hub, she works with dozens of groups across the country organizing to divest from policing and invest in strategies that will create safer communities. She is a nationally recognized researcher, policy analyst, and expert on policing and criminalization. Ritchie lives in Detroit, Michigan.