Reflections from Abolitionist Organizing for Liberatory Workplace Praxis

In the struggle for justice and liberation, abolitionist organizing offers profound lessons that can transform our approach to workplace environments. As someone who has worked at the intersection of social justice movements and organizational development for decades, I've witnessed how abolitionist principles can reimagine professional spaces as sites of collective liberation rather than oppression.

Understanding Abolitionist Frameworks

Abolitionist organizing is rooted in dismantling systems of harm while simultaneously building life-affirming alternatives. It rejects reform in favor of transformation, asking us to envision and create worlds beyond those shaped by domination. Within workplace contexts, this means moving beyond superficial diversity initiatives or procedural tweaks to fundamentally reimagine how power operates within our organizations.

Abolition teaches us that we cannot simply improve harmful systems—we must replace them with structures designed for collective care and flourishing.

Centering Those Most Impacted

A core tenet of abolitionist practice is centering the expertise and leadership of those most directly harmed by oppressive systems. In workplace settings, this means creating decision-making processes that prioritize voices traditionally marginalized within organizational hierarchies.

When developing new initiatives or addressing workplace challenges, ask: Who bears the greatest burden under current conditions? How are their perspectives shaping our approach? Whose comfort is being prioritized in our decision-making?

Authentic liberation requires more than inviting marginalized colleagues to existing tables—it demands reconstructing those tables entirely, with leadership from those who understand systemic barriers most intimately.

Practicing Transformative Justice

Abolitionist organizing rejects punitive approaches to addressing harm in favor of transformative justice—processes that promote accountability while creating conditions for genuine healing and prevention. Within workplaces, this means moving beyond HR policies focused on liability minimization toward practices that address root causes of workplace harm.

When conflicts arise, transformative approaches ask:

• What conditions allowed this harm to occur?

• What does healing look like for all parties?

• How can we address patterns rather than isolated incidents?

• What structural changes would prevent similar harm?

This shift requires replacing cultures of blame with cultures of collective accountability and growth.

Building Life-Affirming Alternatives

Perhaps the most powerful aspect of abolitionist practice is its commitment to prefigurative politics—building models of the world we wish to create. For workplace liberatory praxis, this means developing concrete alternatives to extractive and hierarchical norms:

• Shared governance models that distribute decision-making power

• Economic practices that ensure equitable resource distribution

• Care infrastructures that support holistic wellbeing

• Conflict engagement practices that strengthen rather than sever relationships

These alternatives aren't abstract ideals—they're practical tools being implemented by organizations committed to liberation-centered work.

Embracing Incompleteness and Experimentation

Abolitionist organizing acknowledges that liberation is an ongoing process rather than a destination. Workplace transformation requires embracing experimentation, imperfection, and continuous evolution.

The most liberatory workplaces I've encountered maintain a posture of humility, recognizing that no single approach will resolve centuries of oppressive conditioning. They create spaces for regular reflection, adaptation, and reimagining.

Beyond Individual Transformation

While personal growth is valuable, abolitionist principles remind us that liberatory workplace praxis must transcend individual transformation. The systems that shape our professional environments are collective creations that require collective reimagining.

By bringing abolitionist frameworks into our organizational practices, we can move beyond performative inclusion toward genuine liberation—creating workplaces that serve as microcosms of the just world we're working to build. This work is challenging and often messy, but it offers our best hope for workplaces that nurture rather than deplete our full humanity.

The question before us is not whether creating such workplaces is possible, but whether we are willing to undertake the difficult, necessary work of making them real.