Working Toward a Horizon of Interdependence: An Abolitionist Ethos for Youth Defenders

This Essay, written by HyeJi Kim at the Gault Center, details the role of youth defenders in abolition. The Essay offers five entry points for youth defenders to embrace an abolitionist ethos to build toward a horizon of interdependence:

1. Embrace a shared vision that points toward a horizon of interdependent thriving where all children are free to grow in communities of care,
2. Reckon with the juvenile legal system’s lineage of racialized social control and the need to shift power to communities,
3. Commit to a transformation within ourselves,
4. Engage in collective action toward a shared vision of interdependence, and
5. Courageously experiment with change.

This Essay is written both in honor of the youth defense community and for the youth defense community to offer a widened lens of how our work can fit into a broader strategy of abolition as we continue to evolve as a collective. This Essay is written from the perspective of the Gault Center, marking where we are in our emergent thinking and practice at this moment in time. In this offering, we remember “to keep a wide, long lens about our work. To remember, all of the time, that this moment is not the only moment,” as writer and activist adrienne maree brown teaches in her reflections on author and activist Grace Lee Boggs’s question: “What time is it on the clock of the world?”