Featuring interviews with current and formerly incarcerated political
prisoners, archival material, and essays on how the terrain of
abolitionist organizing has changed over the last twenty years--from the
War on Drugs to the War on Terror to the uprising in 2020--the Human
Rights Coalition reminds us of the necessity and power of love and
relationships in our struggle for abolition.
The Human Rights Coalition, conceived by prisoners at SCI Greene in
2001, first took shape as a small group gathered in a mother's home.
Operating from the belief that each prisoner has at least one family
member who loves them, the organization grew as prisoners brought their
loved ones into the fold struggling to end solitary confinement and
abolish the prison industrial complex.
Lessons in Love and Struggle traces the struggle of the Human Rights
Coalition's twenty year history organizing against prisons and police.
From its beginnings as the first abolitionist organization in
Pennsylvania to organize family members; to the creation of a quarterly
news publication distributed throughout Pennsylvania prisons; to
organizing rallies on the outside on behalf of prisoners; to freeing
Russell Maroon Shoatz before his untimely passing. Throughout, the Human
Rights Coalition has been carried by the relationships between its
members, though separated by prison walls: parents, children, spouses,
siblings, mentors and mentees.
