TABITHA
Activist, story teller, trouble maker and dreamer
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​Tabitha is an abolition activist determined to disrupt and dismantle the colonial project, abolish the prison industrial complex, and annihilate racial capitalism - and she’s angry, channelling every bit of that rage towards the carceral state that caged her. As a criminalised woman, Tabitha knows the power of stories like hers being heard because voices like hers have largely been marginalised and erased by the lexicons of knowledge. Her presence, and indeed her voice, challenges the hegemony the colony continues to hold over ‘legitimate’ knowledge about so called Aboriginal criminality and those who ‘offend’ and counters the incessant reproduction of racialised dynamics and white stories favoured and valorised by the literati. Her work seeks to disrupt these canons, and challenges people to think differently about what people can teach us about state violence by changing the way we see stories being told, and by whom.
MEET TABITHA
I was born and raised on Kaurna country. I am a mother, a daughter, an aunty, a niece. I am a student, an artist, a writer, a poet and a dreamer.
I've been really fortunate to have had a diverse career  - I've been a primary school teacher, a cultural instructor, I worked in politics for a decade, managed Aboriginal health services, completed some work at the university... and now I'm writing again, because my story is not over, it has only just begun.
ACTIVISM
Tabitha Lean, Criminalised Abolitionist
I am an abolitionist.
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My activist work is centred on advocating for every single body that is criminalised in this country. I believe we are at a crucible moment in this country’s history. We are seeing a powerful, sustained condemnation of racism and carceral violence – I think it is an uprising, and the call to build a world in which the prison industrial complex is obsolete has never been louder.
My activism is focussed on making abolition of prisons a common sense goal. To this end, I’m raising my voice to make imagining a world without prisons irresistible, because the key to health, safety, stability and liberation has never and will never be found in punishment and imprisonment.
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Through my work, I want to challenge the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe. I want to invite people to imagine a different kind of world – a world free of punishment, imprisonment and exile, instead replaced with communities grounded in love and care and community.
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I want to be a part of conceptualizing new forms of justice, real justice...because right now the pull to vengeance is an impulse of the state and a colonial impulse we have internalized.
I see abolition as an invitation to think about how we want to be in a relationship with each other, with property and with institutions. This is exciting work, stand with us, and join the fight for a better world.
