Abolitionist Futures: Building Solidarity and Power through Labor Organizing

• In Event: Collective Organizing and Scholarship for Social Justice

Abstract

This paper presents findings from a qualitative research study examining the urgent need to support teacher unions beyond reformist approaches and toward an abolitionist stance in the struggle for educational justice. Rooted in the current political moment—marked by the rise of youth-led abolitionist movements, growing critiques of carceral systems in schools, and increased scrutiny of institutional complicity—this research interrogates the role teacher unions play in sustaining or challenging punitive logics within education.
The study’s objectives are threefold: (1) to explore how teacher union members and leaders conceptualize safety and discipline in schools; (2) to identify tensions between restorative justice discourse and the maintenance of carceral practices; and (3) to propose frameworks for organizing unions toward abolitionist commitments. Drawing from Black feminist theory, critical labor studies, and abolitionist pedagogies, the study situates teacher unions as contested political spaces with transformative potential.
Methods include in-depth interviews with union organizers, educators, and rank-and-file members across multiple urban districts, alongside document analysis of union policy platforms, resolutions, and public statements. The analysis surfaces both resistance and possibility—highlighting how some union spaces reproduce punitive narratives of safety, while others are sites of radical reimagination and coalition-building with youth and community organizers.
The significance of this research lies in its call to action: if unions are to be forces for justice, they must confront their own entanglements with policing, surveillance, and exclusion. Abolitionist unionism requires a fundamental rethinking of safety—not as control, but as care, collective accountability, and liberation. This paper contributes to the growing scholarship and organizing work pushing for unions that not only defend educators' rights, but also align with the broader movements for racial justice, educational equity, and transformative change in and beyond schools.

Authors

• Erica R. Meiners, Northeastern Illinois University

• Therese M. Quinn, University of Illinois at Chicago