Featuring interviews with current and formerly incarcerated political prisoners, archival material, and essays on how the terrain of abolitionist organizing has changed over the last twenty years—from the War on Drugs to the War on Terror to the uprising in 2020—the Human Rights Coalition reminds us of the necessity and power of love and relationships in our struggle for abolition.

The Human Rights Coalition, conceived by prisoners at SCI Greene in 2001, first took shape as a small group gathered in a mother’s home. Operating from the belief that each prisoner has at least one family member who loves them, the organization grew as prisoners brought their loved ones into the fold struggling to end solitary confinement and abolish the prison industrial complex.

Lessons in Love and Struggle traces the struggle of the Human Rights Coalition's twenty year history organizing against prisons and police. From its beginnings as the first abolitionist organization in Pennsylvania to organize family members; to the creation of a quarterly news publication distributed throughout Pennsylvania prisons; to organizing rallies on the outside on behalf of prisoners; to freeing Russell Maroon Shoatz before his untimely passing. Throughout, the Human Rights Coalition has been carried by the relationships between its members, though separated by prison walls: parents, children, spouses, siblings, mentors and mentees.