Melanie Brazzell
melaniebrazzell.bsky.social
Melanie Brazzell
@melaniebrazzell.bsky.social
social movement research, postdoc @ Harvard
What Really Makes Us Safe? project on transformative justice: https://www.whatreallymakesussafe.com/
Building Democratic Structure Shapes project: https://www.p3researchlab.org/building_structure_shapes
Reposted by Melanie Brazzell
I am thrilled--always--when people take to the streets en masse. It demonstrates power, it imposes costs, it is great. But if the past decades have taught us anything--that's not enough to win. To win, you have to organize. You have to build structures of power that last after people go home.
June 14, 2025 at 6:26 PM
great news! for those who feared we were doing less to resist Trump in round 2 than in round 1, we've got solid evidence to the contrary. maybe it's the skewed mainstream media coverage (media kissing the ring) that got us thinking that way?
My team and I at the Crowd Counting Consortium (@djpressman@bsky.social, Soha Hammam, & Chris Shay) have a new piece out: wagingnonviolence.org/2025/06/amer.... In it, we show that through May 2025, the size and scale of anti-Trump protests have dwarfed those in 2017. 🧵
June 13, 2025 at 5:34 AM
Reposted by Melanie Brazzell
why is the president the only person testing the limits of his power? everyone should see what they can get away with. what if zookeepers gave helicopters to gorillas? nobody has tried this
June 10, 2025 at 2:50 AM
Reposted by Melanie Brazzell
It doesn't end with the illegal immigrants folks, it's actually just the beginning.
June 10, 2025 at 1:32 AM
Reposted by Melanie Brazzell
Reshare to scare the data bros and popularism acolytes
June 10, 2025 at 12:00 AM
Reposted by Melanie Brazzell
BREAKING: Federal agents in plain clothes and unmarked cars tried to snatch 1st graders from LA elementary schools—told staff they had “parental consent.”

They lied. When pressed, they HID THEIR IDS. DHS admits they sent them. This wasn’t a welfare check. It was a test run for a police state.
June 10, 2025 at 12:17 AM
So excited to cohost this with @dreanyc123.bsky.social next Wednesday!
🗓️ Wednesday, May 28 at 11 AM-12:30 PM ET: Please join us for the 2nd installment in our Transformative Justice Under Authoritarianism series! This time we'll be learning from organizers, advocates, and artists in India.

Learn more and register:
www.interruptingcriminalization.com/events/all/t...
May 20, 2025 at 10:30 PM
Reposted by Melanie Brazzell
🎙️We are so excited about this new podcast documenting oral histories of transformative justice! Check out @storiesforpower.bsky.social podcast for a journey across local communities that explores the last 25 years of building community accountability, transformative justice and abolitionist practice
STOP Podcast Introduction
Welcome to Stories for Power! Creative Interventions and Just Practice Collaborative joined forces to re-launch the StoryTelling & Organizing Project (STOP) project to document and collect histories…
www.creative-interventions.org
April 17, 2025 at 11:26 PM
I've been trying to bridge the horizontalist abolition feminism tradition I grew up in with all the powerbuilding I've witnessed in verticalist community & labor & tenant organizing. I'm studying the hybrids in the middle, and if you're curious too, come join this conversation about my research!
March 27, 2025 at 10:37 PM
i was also feeling worried after inauguration when the streets (and signal) felt quiet, but my hope that resistance was getting savvier the second time around found some evidence this week in @chenoweth.bsky.social & crew's new article. /1 wagingnonviolence.org/2025/03/resi...
Resistance is alive and well in the United States
Protests of Trump may not look like the mass marches in 2017, but they're far more numerous and frequent — and also becoming more strategic.
wagingnonviolence.org
March 25, 2025 at 2:30 AM
So excited to co-host this conversation on Wednesday with abolitionist comrades from Argentina! My current favorite slogan from Argentine protests against Milei's authoritarianism, which rhymes with Trump's:
"There are only two genders: fascist and antifascist"
This Wednesday 3/26 5-6:30 ET: Join us, @melaniebrazzell.bsky.social, and Yo No Fui for a discussion about abolitionist organizing rooted in transformative justice under the current context of authoritarian Argentina, drawing on lineages to push back, and more: www.eventbrite.com/e/transforma...
March 25, 2025 at 12:31 AM
Reposted by Melanie Brazzell
Some friends of mine were doing Springo boards, I thought it was a great idea, here is mine.
March 24, 2025 at 11:16 PM
“It will always remain one of democracy’s best punchlines: that to its mortal enemies, democracy itself provided the very means through which it was annihilated.”
- Joseph Goebbels, "The Stupidity of Democracy" from "The Attack. Essays from the Times of Struggle"
February 18, 2025 at 2:08 AM
Reposted by Melanie Brazzell
if we are all going to be forced to relive 2016, they should at the very least let us see mad max fury road in theaters again
January 20, 2025 at 7:05 PM
Reposted by Melanie Brazzell
It's rare you get such a clear illustration of whose lives have value in America and whose don't
December 10, 2024 at 7:14 PM
Reposted by Melanie Brazzell
18 US Senators vote in support of blocking tank rounds to Israel, with 1 voting present.
Y: Heinrich, Hirono, Kaine, King, Markey, Merkley, Ossoff, Sanders, Schatz, Smith, Warren, Welch, Durbin, Van Hollen, Shaheen, Lujan, Warnock, Murphy.
P: Baldwin

The rest vote to continue arming war criminals
November 21, 2024 at 3:21 PM
Sharing a new resource I created for Interrupting Criminalization! @dreanyc123.bsky.social @prisonculture.bsky.social
📁 Transformative Justice Knows No Borders: Learning From Community-Based Responses to Harm Around the World
➡️ bit.ly/TJKnowsNoBorders 1/
November 20, 2024 at 9:13 PM
"break generational curses" - that gave me chills - healing justice starts here @darknessrising.bsky.social
November 20, 2024 at 8:42 PM