About
Education rootedin movement.
The Abolitionist Challenge is a workshop series designed to develop rigorous, grounded frameworks for understanding and challenging systems of power — and for building something different.
Our Mission
Serious education for serious times.
The Abolitionist Challenge was founded on a simple premise: that the work of dismantling systems of punishment, surveillance, and exclusion requires more than good intentions. It requires rigorous analysis, historical grounding, and a willingness to sit with complexity.
Our workshops are designed for people who are already engaged — in organizing, in advocacy, in their communities — and who want to deepen their analytical and practical frameworks. We draw on the intellectual traditions of Black radical thought, critical theory, and popular education to create learning experiences that are both intellectually serious and practically oriented.
"Abolition is not a destination. It is a practice — a daily commitment to building the world we need while dismantling the one that harms us."
Methodology
How we structure the learning arc.
Examine
We begin with rigorous historical and structural analysis — tracing the roots of contemporary systems of power, control, and exclusion. Participants develop a shared vocabulary and analytical framework before moving to critique.
Understand
We situate current conditions within longer trajectories of struggle and resistance. This means reading the present through the lens of Black radical thought, political economy, and the intellectual traditions that have shaped abolitionist movements.
Challenge
We interrogate dominant narratives and reform-oriented frameworks that leave the underlying logic of punishment and exclusion intact. Participants develop tools for identifying and contesting these frameworks in their own contexts.
Transform
We move from critique to construction — examining real-world models of transformative justice, community accountability, and abolitionist organizing. Participants leave with a practical framework for ongoing engagement.
Our Values
What guides our work.
Rigor
We take ideas seriously. Our curriculum is grounded in scholarship and demands careful, sustained engagement from participants.
Accessibility
We believe transformative education should not be gatekept by cost or credential. Sliding scale pricing and open enrollment reflect this commitment.
Accountability
We hold ourselves to the standards we teach. That means ongoing reflection on our own practice, responsiveness to participant feedback, and transparency about our limitations.
Movement Rootedness
This work is not academic in the pejorative sense. It is grounded in and accountable to the movements and communities that have developed abolitionist theory and practice over generations.
Your Educator
Who brings this work to life.
LaDonna Sanders Redmond
Historian · Educator · Cooperative Leader · Organizational Consultant · Public Scholar
LaDonna Sanders Redmond is a historian, educator, cooperative leader, organizational consultant, and public scholar whose work explores the intersection of race, democracy, cooperative economics, restorative justice, and institutional transformation.
For more than three decades, LaDonna has worked with nonprofit organizations, cooperatives, public institutions, and community leaders to strengthen governance, build equitable organizations, and develop leadership grounded in dignity, accountability, and shared power. Her work combines historical analysis with practical strategies for organizational change, helping institutions move beyond intention toward meaningful transformation.
She is also the founder of Redmond Consulting, where she advises organizations on governance, leadership development, organizational culture, restorative practices, and equity. Her work has supported cooperatives, foundations, educational institutions, and nonprofit organizations across the United States.
LaDonna is completing a Master of Liberal Arts in History at Harvard Extension School. Her research focuses on Black women's testimony before the 1871 Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States — commonly known as the Ku Klux Klan hearings. Her scholarship examines how Black women used congressional testimony to articulate political knowledge, demand federal protection, and shape the meaning of freedom during Reconstruction.
A nationally recognized speaker and facilitator, LaDonna has spent her career helping people engage difficult questions with honesty, curiosity, and courage. Whether working in archives, classrooms, boardrooms, or community spaces, she believes that education is the foundation of democratic participation and that understanding history is essential to building a more just future.
"If we seek to dismantle systems of oppression, what must we build in their place?"
Ready to begin?