SISTERS OF THE SOUTH
ON A SWELTERING ATLANTA SUMMER DAY in July 2016, Southerners on New Ground (SONG) co-director Mary Hooks led her fellow community organizers—each clad in black T-shirts emblazoned with the names of the various organizations, including Black Lives Matter Atlanta, the Racial Justice Action Center, Rise Up, and the Georgia Not1More Coalition—as they engaged in an irrepressibly abolitionist call-and-response aimed at a line of local police officers. The chant, developed in the height of the Movement for Black Lives and defiantly named “The Mandate,” demands a widespread divestment from prisons, courts, and jails.
“The vision of justice for us does not include cages. The vision of justice for us allows us to walk in our
