The Social Justice Portal Project is excited to announce the release of Abolition, a short documentary and new song by artist Taína Asili, capturing the spirit of the growing movement for prison and police abolition in the United States. 

Taína Asili, 2021-22 Artist in Residence for the Social Justice Portal Project, is an acclaimed Afro-Puerto Rican singer, songwriter, filmmaker, and activist in New York state. As part of her residency, Asili is releasing a three-part series of music and film interventions based on the Portal Project themes of abolition, climate justice, and economic democracy. 

The first in the series, Abolition, invites viewers to envision abolition not only as the absence of police, prisons, and detention centers but as an opportunity to imagine possibilities for building more peaceful and just communities.  The film shares Asili’s original song and examines the visions and practices of abolitionist activists and Portal Project fellows  Derecka Purnell (author of Becoming Abolitionist), Greisa Martínez Rosas (ED of United We Dream), and Aislinn Pulley (Co-ED of The Chicago Torture Justice Project).

The next part of the series will take a look at the global movement for climate justice. Over the next year, the Portal Project will invite social justice artists to create works based on the think tank’s questions, conversations, and investigations. 

The Social Justice Portal Project, hosted by the Social Justice Initiative at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is a collaborative think tank created to bring together scholars, organizers, artists, and activists to address the urgent questions of racial and social justice.