Amna Akbar

1 month ago | publicbooks.org | Amna Akbar |Megan Cummins

The week after the election I talked on Zoom with Silky Shah, a friend and an incredible immigrant justice organizer. I have learned so much from Silky over the course of our long friendship, and it was an honor to talk with her about her new book. As I write in the foreword, Unbuild Walls is much more than a theoretical guidebook. It is a tool and sophisticated primer for activists, organizers, students, and intellectuals who hope to change the world.

Jan 16, 2025 | nplusonemag.com | Amna Akbar

Andreas Malm’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline was published on January 5, 2021, the day before the storming of the Capitol. Back then, the physical memory of being on the streets during the George Floyd rebellion loomed much larger than the phantasm of Nancy Pelosi kneeling in kente cloth with a promise of police reform. Hundreds of pages of policy recommendations from the Biden-Sanders unity task forces had made their way into the Democratic Party platform. Trump was out the door—almost.

May 22, 2024 | dissentmagazine.org | Tadhg Larabee |Eva Rosenfeld |Amna Akbar |Daniel Boguslaw

The Criminalization of Solidarity: The Stop Cop City Prosecutions Georgia’s sweeping and political application of conspiracy law echoes a tactic that shattered the left roughly a hundred years ago, when the U.S. government targeted socialist parties and militant unions with laws against criminal syndicalism, espionage, and sedition. and ▪ Spring 2024 Just after sunrise on November 13, 2023, hundreds of protesters gathered in Gresham Park on Atlanta’s outskirts.

Feb 12, 2024 | bookshop.org | Silky Shah |Amna Akbar

"Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I am going to fulfill my proper function in the social organism. I'm going to go unbuild walls."--Ursula K. Le Guin, The DispossessedDrawing from over twenty years of activism on local and national levels, this striking book offers an organizer's perspective on the intersections of immigrant rights, racial justice, and prison abolition.

Nov 4, 2023 | truthdig.com | Amna Akbar

ON A GRAY MORNING at the end of February, I stood outside the Supreme Court with a couple hundred people as the justices heard arguments about the presidential power to offer student debt relief. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. A who’s who of progressives in Congress appeared alongside a coalition of activists, predominantly young and Black.