Practicing New Worlds

Andrea J. Ritchie is a Black lesbian immigrant survivor who has been documenting, organizing, advocating, litigating, and agitating around policing and criminalization of Black women, girls, trans, and gender nonconforming people for the past four decades. She is cofounder of Interrupting Criminalization and the In Our Names Network, a network of over 20 organizations working to end police violence against Black women, girls, trans and gender nonconforming people. In these capacities and through the Community Resource Hub, she works with dozens of groups across the country organizing to divest from policing and invest in strategies that will create safer communities. She is a nationally recognized researcher, policy analyst, and expert on policing and criminalization. Ritchie lives in Detroit, Michigan.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a poet, independent scholar, and activist. She is the author of Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals and Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity. She is the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and the recipient of the Whiting Foundation Winner in Nonfiction in 2022. 

adrienne maree brown is the author of Emergent Strategy, the New York Times best-selling Pleasure Activism, We Will Not Cancel Us, Holding Change, and Grievers. brown grows transformative ideas in public through her writing and art; she is a poet changing the world. She is the writer-in-residence at Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute.