Years of police violence against racialized people in the United States and Canada has recently renewed conversations around achieving justice in the face of oppressive systems. But what does justice truly look like when it comes to violent state institutions?

In Where the State Lies, Hafsa Ahmed breaks down the critical difference between reform and abolition. She makes the case for police abolition as a way to achieve true liberation and justice from systems that are inherently oppressive. Ahmed investigates how state institutions such as the police and prison systems are tools for oppression, state control and exploitation. She details what abolition can look like in practice, and why reform is not a real solution to state violence.

Ahmed also explores how Western nations are not truly democratic but rather apply “democracy” selectively to privileged groups. Countries like the U.S. and Canada are violent, settler-colonial states that continue to oppress Indigenous and marginalized groups within their borders. They function as imperialist forces not only on the land they occupy but also abroad.

In Where the State Lies, Ahmed documents a case study of the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to show how “chaos” is a direct product of the state. True liberation, Ahmed argues, will come from the “destruction” of the state and its institutions and the building of a new world where people can organize themselves from the ground up, rather than be ruled from the top down.