The Role of Youth Defenders in Abolition

HyeJi Kim, at the Gault Center, wrote an essay on the critical role of youth defenders in building toward an interdependent future, where all children and youth are free to thrive. This essay is an ode to the youth defense community and offers a widened lens of how our work can fit into a broader strategy of abolition as we continue to evolve as a collective. 

You can read the essay here.

This essay offers five entry points for youth defenders to embrace an abolitionist ethos to build toward a horizon of interdependence, starting where you are:

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.

We hope you can use the article to grow actions toward Gault@60 and strengthen our efforts to bridge toward community. We are ever grateful for your continued fight for youth rights.