“Purnell is undoubtedly one of the most important writers and activists of our generation.” – Adam Elliott-Cooper
Derecka Purnell is a human rights lawyer, writer, organizer, and author of Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom. She works to end police and prison violence by providing legal assistance, research, and trainings in community-based organizations through an abolitionist framework.
In Becoming Abolitionists, Derecka draws from her own experiences and details how multi-racial social movements rooted in rebellion, risk-taking, and revolutionary love pushed her and a generation of activists toward abolition. Traveling across geography and time, Becoming Abolitionists offers lessons that activists have learned from Ferguson to South Africa, from Reconstruction to contemporary protests against police shootings.
As a Skadden Fellow, Derecka helped to build the Justice Project at Advancement Project’s National Office which focused on consent decrees, police and prosecutor accountability, and jail closures, providing community training, political education and legal representation to organizers. Her advocacy efforts led to the dismissal of over 3,000 cases based on unconstitutional policing practices. Additionally, Derecka supports several campaigns and grassroots organizations around the criminal legal system, electoral justice, and community investment, including Action St. Louis, Dream Defenders, Communities Against Police Crimes and Repression, the Ferguson Collaborative, and the Movement for Black Lives.
In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Derecka co-created the COVID19 Policing Project at the Community Resource Hub for Safety Accountability. The project tracks police arrests, harassment, citations and other enforcement through public health orders related to the pandemic.
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