Jasmine Martin, RCRC’s Summer Graduate Research Fellow, is a Master of City Planning student at MIT. At MIT, her work supports projects around housing justice and liberation geographies.

 

For Jasmine, abolitionist planning means relinquishing our reliance on systems of harm and violence and replacing them with those built upon care, accountability, and collectivity. “What has helped me along my journey as an abolitionist has been the practice of imagining better worlds that empower us to care for ourselves and each other. I’m deeply inspired and moved into action by the work of brilliant Black, feminist, radical, and queer scholars and activists whose work reminds us that these worlds are possible and attainable​in the present”. This summer, Jasmine will contribute to RCRC’s work to build a coalition for abolition in Louisville and push for more resources and infrastructure in communities historically negatively impacted by racial capitalism and structural racism.