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Officially known as the W.E.B. Movement School for Abolition and Reconstruction, the organization grounds local organizers in historical knowledge, theory, and rigorous analysis
Political education plays a critical role in movements for social justice by helping to guide strategy and direction. Philadelphia’s W.E.B. Movement School for Abolition and Reconstruction, better known as Abolition School, tackles this informative work by training next generation leftist organizers.
Launched in 2023 and named after civil rights leader, historian, and writer W.E.B. Du Bois, the organization offers a foundational, community-based abolitionist curriculum to new and existing community organizers. Broadly, Abolition School’s programming is designed to support those already involved in movement work and locals engaged in political struggles across the city by deepening their understanding of key abolitionist texts.
“The importance of an abolitionist education is to break apart what we call hegemony, a common sense understanding of how the world works, and getting people to realize that the world that we have now comes from a certain historical trajectory,” said Nneka Azuka, a facilitator and educator for Abolition School. “It wasn’t something that just happened naturally as history developed.”
The abolitionist organization Critical Resistance, co-founded by activist and academic Angela Davis, professor and prison scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and organizer and activist Rose Braz, defines political education as “the collective process of study, research analysis, and learning that we need to engage in together in order abolish the [prison industrial complex] and achieve collective liberation.” This type of instruction differs drastically from the top-down teaching used in both K-12 and higher education. Most notably, political education happens in community and outside of a traditional classroom. According to organizers who spoke to Prism, this gives political education radical potential, while also subverting the traditional hierarchical structures found within the U.S. education system.
“Catch and organize”
Abolition School’s real origin story traces back many years before its official launch. Geo Maher, who serves as the organization’s coordinator and facilitates its reading seminars, was a political educator for years and witnessed firsthand the escalating movements fighting anti-Blackness nationwide, including the 2012 murder of Trayvon Martin and the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, after the police killings of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray.
Then, in 2020, the George Floyd uprisings shook Philadelphia.
“On the one hand, Minneapolis launched abolition into the mainstream, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of people nationwide, but on the other, it wasn’t clear what people meant when they said ‘abolition,’” elaborated Maher. “The moment demanded a double task: to catch and organize those who had been mobilized, and to sharpen our collective analysis of what abolition means and how to make it a reality.”
Maher was the primary force in bringing Abolition School to life. Naming the organization after Du Bois was important not just for the Black scholar’s important history in Philadelphia, but also because of the analysis he provides in his essay “Black Reconstruction in America.”
“Slavery was abolished but nothing else changed, so we end up with institutions like police and prisons that do the work of slavery under new names—which is why we say there can be no abolition without reconstruction, because we already saw, and we continue to see, what that means,” Maher said.
Once Maher secured a board and the Abolitionist Law Center as a fiscal sponsor, he began inviting trusted, respected community members and leaders to participate in Abolition School. This includes Philadelphia-based Amistad Law Project focused on ending mass incarceration, Jackson, Mississippi-based Cooperation Jackson focused on creating a solidarity economy, and Washington, D.C.-based popular education organization Claudia Jones School for Political Education, among others. Soon, Abolition School was joined by education and cultural worker Chris Rodgers, who also serves on the National Steering Committee for Black Lives Matter at School. Maher also called on Ant Smith, a well-known West Philadelphia organizer who taught in public schools.
Around the same time, Smith was on house arrest and fighting a federal court case for his participation in protests after the police murder of Floyd. Smith later served a one-year prison sentence.
“I put a lot of energy into the Abolition School launch event in August 2023 and the following first couple of cohorts while awaiting my sentencing and eventual incarceration,” Smith said. “Abolition School was very supportive of me during my time away and I’ve been dedicated to it ever since I made it back home.”
Broadly, there is an urgent need for awareness of how political power is shaped in the U.S. in order to better understand the country’s current material conditions under late stage capitalism. Even those who’ve attended well-resourced schools likely have a knowledge gap for radical topics—especially as it relates to decolonization and abolition, subjects not traditionally taught in the U.S. education system. In large part, organizers say this is because frameworks that are critical of capitalism are seen as a threat.
These frameworks provide the foundation of Abolition School’s teachings.
Overthrowing hierarchy
While not exactly the same as political education, adults in the U.S. have an alarming lack of civic literacy. A 2024 survey of 2,000 registered voters found that more than 70% of Americans fail a basic civic literacy quiz, with many lacking even a basic understanding of how the government is structured or functions. If you do not know how power is wielded, how can you analyze the systems and structures working against everyday people?
Students today also face an unprecedented learning environment under the Trump administration, which has targeted both K-12 education and universities for reported diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives aimed at fostering more equitable outcomes or otherwise teaching young people about marginalized communities and histories. But because of how institutions in the U.S. popularized and co-opted DEI initiatives, many DEI curriculums were merely surface-level teachings, often oversimplified versions of anti-racist, LGBTQIA+-inclusive education. While it’s important for education to include teachings on race and LGBTQIA+ issues, those with Abolition School say the erosion of DEI in education is just more evidence of how critical community political education is.
The dismal conditions shaping the country highlight the important intervention that politically educated community organizers and activists can make at a local level.
In part, this is why Abolition School isn’t intended to be a “home” for activists focused on direct action and campaign building, Azuka explained, but rather a place for organizers to sharpen their political analysis.
In addition to her work facilitating political education, she was previously involved in pro-Palestine solidarity work in Philadelphia. Like other facilitators in the organization, she believes political education work is most powerful when it operates in conjunction with on-the-ground movement building.
“It’s not only a space of learning, but a hub for exchange, understanding, and building connection,” she explained. “We’re not trying to be something we’re not. A lot of us on the team organize outside of Abolition School.”
Rather than positioning the teacher as the sole authority, Abolition School encourages participatory education, allowing students to engage with one another. By reflecting on their own experiences and discussing them with others, the students help shape and deepen the collective educational space. This model echoes what Marxist educator Paulo Freire advocates in his seminal work, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” where knowledge is produced collectively, rather than delivered from an authority figure.
“My starting point is not to overestimate formal university education, which mostly exists to reproduce the hierarchical structures of any given society,” explained Maher, who also facilitates the organization’s reading seminars. “I’m not interested in that, but I am interested in how those ideas can be turned against hierarchy, to disrupt and even overthrow it. ”
Maher brings a wide range of teaching experiences, mostly with students from different cultural backgrounds. In addition to teaching at colleges and universities in the U.S., he has also taught in a prison and worked with movement organizers at Caracas’ Escuela Venezolana de Planificación, or the Venezuelan School of Planning, a revolutionary initiative launched under the administration of Hugo Chávez focused on training locals to support people power. Across these settings, Maher said he learned as much from his students as they learned from him and that the crux of political education is “translation.”
Education—and political education in particular—is always a question of translation, but one that doesn’t take the ‘original’ too seriously. Useless ideas should be abandoned, while useful ones should be preserved.Geo Maher
“The question is always one of translation: making ideas available to analyze the world, making them useful to communities in struggle,” he said. “Education—and political education in particular—is always a question of translation, but one that doesn’t take the ‘original’ too seriously. Useless ideas should be abandoned, while useful ones should be preserved.”
Maher focuses on this translation most during his hybrid seminars on decolonial texts. Over 12-week semesters, his weekly seminars meet in-person for 90 minutes, and these sessions are simultaneously livestreamed on Haymarket Books’ YouTube channel. Abolition School has cultivated a relationship with the publisher since Maher spoke at Haymarket’s annual Socialism Conference in 2025.
In previous sessions, Maher facilitated discussions on “Black Reconstruction in America” by W.E.B. Du Bois and “The Black Jacobins” by Marxist historian, activist, and journalist C.L.R. James. This spring, Maher is leading a seminar on the works of political philosopher Frantz Fanon, featuring excerpts from Fanon’s most well-known works, including “Black Skin, White Masks,” “Towards the African Revolution,” “A Dying Colonialism,” and “The Wretched of the Earth.”
“I have joked that Du Bois, C.L.R. James, and Fanon constitute a sort of ‘holy trinity,’ but I’m only half joking,” Maher told Prism. “These are three incredibly important thinkers for the Black and anti-colonial revolutionary tradition, and each in their own way is dedicated to the task of rethinking and reshaping Marxist categories to fit their own reality.”
Alongside Azuka and Maher, Smith serves as a facilitator and educator within the organization. He helps facilitate the core program, Abolition 101, which runs over a 13-week semester each fall and spring. The cohort meets once a week for two and a half hour sessions, covering the development of the U.S. prison system, the history of racial capitalism, and the evolution of American slavery—focusing specifically on how it never disappeared, as illustrated by Du Bois’ work.
Smith told Prism that he went from teaching in predominantly Black public high schools where students experience “system failure” every day, to teaching Philadelphia’s organized left. Abolition School students convene from all across the city, and from different racial, gender, and sexual identities. Many are new to movement spaces, while some are experienced organizers.
“There is some overlap, but there’s something specifically about the energy—the authentic feedback, the resistance to bureaucracy and power trips, and the unlimited desire for fun—that I will always miss about the [K-12] classroom,” Smith reflected.
The local organizer also played a key role in developing Abolition School’s youth program. Drawing on his experience teaching social studies in Philadelphia public schools, he helped create an abridged version of Abolition 101 specifically designed for younger learners. These sessions are ad-hoc, hour-long classes facilitated by middle and high school teachers, who can invite Abolition School facilitators into their classroom as guest lecturers.
Smith views this work with young people as a platform to highlight the academic limitations Philadelphia public school educators face. In particular, he has spoken out against the racist and Zionist campaign to remove anti-colonial lessons from classrooms—especially those addressing Palestine. Philly Educators for Palestine, a collective of educators, parents, and other stakeholders in the region operating under the umbrella of the Racial Justice Organizing Committee, teaches students about Palestine through a decolonial framework.
“Connect the harms you see internationally to the harms you see locally and never divorce the two,” Smith said.
Azuka, Maher, and Smith all emphasized that Abolition School isn’t particularly unique. While the organization is sustained by talented organizers with deep relationships in the community, it relies on an educational model that’s intended to be replicated. As just one example, San Francisco, California’s Center for Political Education takes a very similar approach aimed at making sure organizers are grounded in historical knowledge, strong theory, and rigorous analysis. Broadly, the curriculum for these political education organizations relies on accessible readings, facilitated discussion, and a commitment to collective learning. This approach makes it possible for organizers in any city to build a similar space, because community-based political education can happen anywhere.
“You too can convene friends around the select readings of our contemporary revolutionaries and our legendary ancestors,” emphasized Smith. “The key word here is ‘commitment.’ Regardless of how you do it, political education is imperative as a partner to political action. We cannot make the mistake of taking one without the other.”
Editorial Team:
Tina Vasquez, Lead Editor
Lara Witt, Top Editor
Kyubin Kim, Copy Editor
Adryan Corcione is a white queer essayist and journalist living on occupied Lenape land. Their writing has appeared in Teen Vogue, Truthout, Filter Mag, and more, covering topics like harm reduction, policing, and LGBTQ+ issues. They also write about technology and online culture on Substack at adryancorcione.substack.com. Adryan is currently seeking representation for their hybrid memoir about growing up online in the mid-’00s. Follow them on Bluesky at @adryancorcione.bsky.social and learn more about their work at adryancorcione.com.
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