Dear John,

World BEYOND War's annual global conference is coming up next month on October 24-26 on Zoom! I’m in awe of this year’s inspiring line-up of leading abolitionist educators, organizers, and activists from all corners of the globe. We will explore abolition as a visionary and necessary approach to dismantling systems of violence, including police, prisons, militaries, and borders, while cultivating communities rooted in justice, care, and collective well-being.

Register for the #NoWar2025 Conference on October 24-26

Day 1 of the conference on Friday, October 24 will make the case for abolition. The opening panel features Andrea Ritchie, author, organizer, and co-founder of Interrupting Criminalization, and Ray Acheson, organizer, activist, and author of Abolishing State Violence: A World Beyond Bombs, Borders, and Cages, moderated by B. Arneson of the World Peace Foundation.

Grounded in feminist, anti-racist, and anti-colonial frameworks, this panel invites us to reimagine safety and security beyond punishment and control. It asks us to understand abolition not as an absence, but as a presence: safety without punishment, solidarity without surveillance, and peace without militarism.

Day 2 of the conference on Saturday, October 25 will explore examples of abolition movements and how to cultivate intersectionality.

The panel "Case Studies of Abolition" will be moderated by Sudanese writer and activist Reem Abbas, featuring Jorge Barrientos, history professor at University of Costa Rica, who will speak about how Costa Rica abolished its military; renowned anti-apartheid activist Shirley Gunn, who is the Executive Director of the South African Coalition for Transitional Justice; and Amelia Kirby, the director of the Sycamore Project, an initiative of the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky focused on reducing reliance on the prison industrial complex.

The second panel on Day 2 (October 25) will examine intersectional movement-building, featuring leading organizer, writer, and teacher Dean Spade, Hajera Begum, organizer with Abolitionist Futures in the UK and Ireland, and Sami Huraini, Palestinian human rights defender and co‑founder of Youth of Sumud, moderated by WBW Canada Organizer Rachel Small.

The concluding day of the conference on Sunday, October 26 will help us envision the abolitionist future, a world beyond war.

The panel on "Decolonial Futures: Indigenous Knowledge as Abolitionist Praxis" features 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), and Natividad Llanquileo Pilquimán, a Mapuche woman and lawyer from the Esteban Yevilao Mapuche community, moderated by Tabitha Lean, a First Nations abolitionist activist, whose work is grounded in her lived experience of criminal and psychiatric incarceration.

This panel brings together global Indigenous voices to explore how ancestral ways of knowing, being, and doing create liberatory pathways beyond prisons, policing, and punishment. Grounded in sovereignty, kinship, and care, speakers will share how Indigenous solutions resist colonial violence and nurture futures of justice, dignity, and freedom.

Register for the #NoWar2025 Conference on October 24-26 on Zoom

Other highlights of the #NoWar2025 Virtual Conference include:

Live music and poetry, including performances by Ilyari, an award-winning Peruvian-Dutch singer-songwriter based in Ecuador; El Jones, former Poet Laureate of Halifax; and Dana Dajani, award-winning Palestinian-American poet.
Skills trainings by DC Peace Team and Community Peacemaker Teams
Reports from World BEYOND War chapters around the world from Australia, Cameroon, Canada, Colombia, El Salvador, Gambia, Ireland, and the United States
Remarks by WBW Executive Director David Swanson and WBW Board President Kathy Kelly
Breakout sessions to network and strategize with conference participants from around the world

Visit the website to learn more & register for the #NoWar2025 Conference on October 24-26

Hope to see you at #NoWar2025 next month!

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.
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