Dear John,

You're invited to our annual global conference, #NoWar2025: Exploring Abolition Movements, this October 24-26 on Zoom.

This year's conference theme is abolition. How do we move towards a world without wars, weapons, police, prisons, the death penalty, and borders? How can we work towards our collective liberation, recognizing that oppressions are interconnected? Come to #NoWar2025 to explore how we can join in solidarity across movements and borders to abolish these interwoven systems and build a world based on common security.

All sessions will be broadcast on Zoom. All times are listed in Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

• 3:00pm-3:30pm EDT: Welcome & Opening Remarks from WBW’s Co-Founder and Executive Director David Swanson
• 3:30pm-4:30pm EDT: Reports from WBW Chapters Around the World
• 4:30pm-4:45pm EDT: Break
• 4:45pm-5:00pm EDT: Performance
• 5:00pm-6:30pm EDT: Panel: Making the Case for Abolition, featuring:
  • Writer, organizer, researcher, & network weaver Andrea Ritchie, who is a co-founder of Interrupting Criminalization
  • Organizer, activist, and writer Ray Acheson, who is the author of Abolishing State Violence: A World Beyond Bombs, Borders, and Cages
  • Moderated by B. Arneson, an organizer and Program Director at the World Peace Foundation (WPF) at Tufts University
  • This panel is generously sponsored by the US Peace Memorial Foundation
• 6:30pm-7:00pm EDT: Breakout Rooms: What does abolition mean to you?

• 1:00pm-1:15pm EDT: Performance
• 1:15pm-2:30pm EDT: Panel: Case Studies of Abolition, featuring:
  • Shirley Gunn, Executive Director of the South African Coalition for Transitional Justice (SACTJ)
  • Jorge Barrientos, a Professor and Associate Researcher of Contemporary History at the University of Costa Rica, who will speak about how Costa Rica abolished its military
  • Moderator: Reem Abbas, Sudanese writer, journalist and feminist activist
• 2:30pm-2:45pm EDT: Break 
• 2:45pm-4:00pm EDT: Panel: Learning from Abolitionist Movements and Cultivating Intersectionality, featuring:
  • Organizer, writer, and teacher Dean Spade, who has been working to build queer and trans liberation and end policing, border enforcement, and war for the past 25 years
  • Hajera Begum, an organiser with Abolitionist Futures, a collaboration of community organisers and activists in the UK and Ireland who are working together to build a future without prisons, police and punishment
  • Sami Huraini, a Palestinian human rights defender from the village of At‑Tuwani in the West Bank, who is a co‑founder of Youth of Sumud
  • Moderated by Rachel Small, World BEYOND War’s Canada Organizer
• 4:00pm-4:15pm EDT: Break 
• 4:15pm-5:15pm EDT: Training: We Keep Us Safe: Preparing for Arrests and Building Communities of Abolition
  • As authoritarianism grows around the world, arrests of social justice practitioners are inevitable. The process of arrest is designed to individualize and isolate. This workshop will explore how we can prepare ourselves and build communities of abolition to respond to arrests. Trainer: Rachelle Friesen, Turtle Island Solidarity Network Coordinator with Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT).

• 12:15pm-12:30pm EDT: Performance by Dana Dajani, award-winning Palestinian-American poet
• 12:30pm-1:45pm EDT: Active Bystander Intervention and De-escalation Training
  • An active bystander training teaches effective skills for assessing, de-escalating, and diffusing a problematic situation, such as intimidation, harassment, abuse, physical violence, etc. Trainer: Sal Corbin, Board Chair for the DC Peace Team.
• 1:45pm-2:00pm EDT: Break
• 2:00pm-3:15pm EDT: Panel: Indigenous Restorative Justice, featuring:
  • Lance Ryan (Tūhoe and Ngāti Maniapoto), a lecturer at AUT Law School and former prison inmate
  • Connie Fontaine, Community Holistic Circle Healing (CHCH) at Hollow Water First Nation (HWFN)
  • Moderated by Tabitha Lean, a First Nations prisoner activist, whose work is grounded in her lived experience of criminal and psychiatric incarceration 
• 3:15pm-3:30pm EDT: Closing Words by WBW Board President Kathy Kelly 
• 3:30pm-4:15pm EDT: Breakout Rooms: What does a world beyond war look like to you? 

In solidarity,

Greta Zarro
Organizing Director
World BEYOND War
[email protected]

World BEYOND War is a global network of volunteers, chapters, and affiliated organizations advocating for the abolition of the institution of war.
Privacy policy.

World BEYOND War
513 E Main St #1484 | Charlottesville, VA 22902 | USA
PO Box 152 | Toronto PO E, ON, M6H 4E2 | Canada
CC Unicentro Bógota, Local 2-222 | Postal Code (Apartado Postal): 358646 | Colombia