Nicole R. Fleetwood

n the wake of the uprising against the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other unarmed Black people, many activists began to declare, “Abolish the police!” Signs calling for defunding and abolishing the police proliferated in media coverage. Many mainstream news outlets pondered whether the signs were a metaphor. Surely, people would not advocate for the dissolution of police forces across the country. To this query, Mariame Kaba, the well-known abolitionist activist and educator, replied, “Yes, we mean literally abolish the police,” in an op-ed in the . Kaba goes