This website highlights six abolitionist principles that guide the life of Sashi James and the work of Families for Justice as Healing.

Content was developed through a series of conversations between James and postdoctoral fellow for Wellesley College’s Anti-Carceral Co+Laboratory (ACC) K. Melchor Quick Hall. In a series of conversations, Hall interviewed James about these principles, in order to learn more about her work and life as an abolitionist; the current course draft was created halfway through the interviews. Quotes from these conversations with James about the first three principles are interspersed throughout; the principles do not follow a linear logic, and each of the conversations referenced other principles.

The Mass Abolition course content is meant to be engaged, critiqued, and updated by women impacted by the carceral system. Hall’s “Gender, Race, and the Carceral State” (Spring 2025) class are giving their feedback and suggestions during the month of April 2025. During the same month, James and the young women who make up FJAH’s “shifters” who do door-to-door organizing to engage and raise awareness among Roxbury residents will have a public conversation about the course content. Finally, we look forward to running a pilot version of the course with (formerly) incarcerated women (and their families), as funding becomes available.

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