Reciprocity & Redistribution in Social Movement-Led Research

Q & A with Nadine Naber

“Amplifying Mothers of Police Violence Survivors,” a Humanities Without Walls Grand Research Challenge-funded project, equips family members and loved ones of those impacted by state violence to create political change through advocacy and activism. This project is a collaboration between the Chicago-based organization Mothers Activating Movements for Abolition and Solidarity (MAMAS) and the University of Illinois Chicago. Nadine Naber, the project PI, shared details on the project’s history, accomplishments, challenges, and future.

Can you describe the aims of your Grand Research Challenge project, Amplifying Mothers of Police Violence Survivors and how this collaboration between MAMAS and UIC emerged?

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This project builds on work I did with feminist organizations in Egypt during the Revolutions in 2013, where my collaborators and I created an archive focused on the roles of women in the Revolution of 2011. The women on the front lines of the Revolution were often mothers of young children and conducted labor that, while essential to the Revolution, was largely invisiblilized. The patterns that emerged from analysis of interviews and archive materials revealed an overlap between the labor of mothers and the skills necessary to sustain revolutionary spaces, which gave way to the idea of Radical Mothering in its potential for a revolution.

As a mom, lifelong activist, and professor, I was part of conversations that began with other mothers in Chicago movement spaces about how activists who become mothers often get pushed to the side in these spaces. From these conversations, MAMAS was born as moms from different movements, such as Palestinian migrant justice and police and prison violence, came together to share their experiences and discuss how to enact change.

There was one group of moms that became more established than others including mothers whose kids were tortured by Chicago police and/or framed for crimes they didn’t commit. These moms would often see each other at meetings happening in the city to organize people around bringing police violence survivors home. In MAMAS, they all became a community together. One of the dynamics that a lot of the moms started talking about was how movements sometimes have a tendency to exploit the moms of the police violence survivors. There was this trend where moms would be asked to speak at a rally, but they didn’t have a seat at the table, neither in the meetings nor the movement spaces. They would be asked to come and in sort of a “the tears of the mom” type of position to pull on heartstrings of crowds or help mobilize more people to join the movement. When it came to movement leadership and decision-making processes, however, their voices were absent. From there, conversations began about a project focused specifically on providing resources to that group of moms and developing their movement leadership, so that they wouldn’t be in those positions, and so the project came about with the partnership. They named themselves Mothers of the Kidnapped, and that became the main collective within MAMAS that was part of the partnership with me at UIC.

In what ways do methodologies of reciprocity and redistribution lend themselves to fostering collaboration in this work?

A lot of times when we think and talk about university-community collaborations, there is already a severe power imbalance, especially when we’re talking about working class immigrant communities and communities of color. It’s important to start there, because we can’t fully talk about reciprocity without committing to disrupt such structural asymmetries of power. Starting with that in mind, and because all of my research is always with activist movements I’m a part of, I think a lot about ways of working with movements in ways that help build alternatives to existing academic norms when it comes to community-based work.

Through this and other projects, I have developed a framework called social movement-led methodologies, which doesn’t necessarily depend upon the idea of there being a researcher who is “engaged with” community or social movements, but instead shifts toward honoring knowledge production that is already embedded within communities of color and our social movements and working with communities to activate knowledge towards transforming power and changing society according to movement goals and visions. Thus, the main principle for reciprocity is that the movement is the project’s center of gravity—not the university. The questions stem from the movement and the main purpose of the research is to contribute to the movement’s goals. This draws on the notion that social movements are not dependent on academic researchers to discover community based knowledge. Instead, the researcher, as part of the movement, is able to leverage the resources of the university and use their skillsets to activate the knowledge that already exists toward the goals of the movement.

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For example, at the start, one of the power imbalances that existed was around skillsets such as public speaking and analysis. I bring in a lot of experience with talking about politics and oppression, and so one of the big parts of the project’s reciprocity was equipping the moms with resources in these areas so their own voices could be amplified. This included training in writing the op-eds you can see on the MAMAS website as well as developing resources related to policy and navigating systems such as the state’s attorney’s office and applying pressure there. The project also equipped the mothers in the use of storytelling to achieve policy and social change. They documented their stories of enduring grave violence through their kids’ experiences and submitted them to the United Nations. Another big milestone that the United Nations responded—there were several special rapporteurs who supported the moms and did a research study with them, which led to the publication of a communication that they then shared with the state of Illinois, the city of Chicago, and the federal government. All of this leads back to the central point that social movement-led reciprocity and research, within this framework, is never just research. It can’t be. If you are doing research as part of a movement, it is always embedded in a web of all the other movement work—going to protests, pressuring elected officials, international bodies to support the work, speaking to the media, and so on. One informs the other and they are never separate.

How has the Grand Research Challenge funding impacted the scope of this project?

The project would not be at all where it is without the Grand Research Challenge. Finding funding for this type of work is challenging, because, in academia, social movement-led research is often scrutinized and not recognized as “real” research. The nature of the project necessitates nontraditional activities, and the Grand Research Challenge encourages this sort of work. The types of knowledge produced by the project required activities that included research, interviews, constant study of the law, and analyzing history and politics surrounding the issues. These activities took place while the moms and I were all involved in multiple simultaneous initiatives necessary to keep the research going—including writing op-eds, meeting with the state’s attorney, doing policy work, and continually doing trainings and resource sharing around all of this.

While the work is still ongoing, all of these components shaped a new analysis of radical mothering as a social movement framework for abolition and justice. As result of this work, there now exists mounds of documentation about how prison violence extends beyond prison walls into families, communities, and neighborhoods, and it shows that mothers and caregivers are the ones carrying that labor. With the mamas, we have also documented the invaluable practices mothers contribute to social movements —from mutual aid to collective power building. With the mamas, we are co-authoring a book that names these contributions Radical Mothering (Haymarket Press, 2026). This collectively produced knowledge results from the Grand Research Challenge supporting these types of nontraditional approaches to critical reflection and the collection, circulation, and sharing of research and knowledge. Additionally, the Grand Research Challenge has supported the MAMAS website, social media, and the staff needed to sustain the organizing work in which all of the work of skill-sharing and the activation of embedded, lived forms of knowledge was embedded.

Can you speak to some of the theoretical and practical considerations and challenges you and your collaborators have encountered? How has the project evolved throughout those considerations and challenges?

Theoretical considerations and themes have centered around wanting to put forth an alternative to how mothers, especially mothers of color are understood. There are frameworks that enact mother-pitying and mother-shaming, and even within movement spaces a lack of attention on the ways in which police and prison violence extend, in varying degrees, to the loved ones of incarcerated individuals living on the outside of prison walls. The mental, emotional, and physical burdens of this violence often go unseen, but they impact every aspect of the lives they weigh upon.

There are multi-layered and deeply nuanced ways of approaching issues of police and prison violence from feminist and abolitionist frameworks, and the tensions between theoretical conversations and practical action steps aren’t always simple to navigate. This also speaks to the ways the project has evolved—through political conversations and education, discussions about abolition and justice, the mamas have activated different areas of embedded knowledge and enhanced various skillsets from that knowledge, leading them to take strategic action and affect change. It’s also evolved in the way the mamas lead the work. Current initiatives are aiming to support the moms in having each of them run their own team of people who are going to be a community-based team that supports the defense of their child. This both centers the voices of the mamas and builds up community power, implementing feminist and abolitionist strategies.

What’s next for the project?

The mamas will continue leading the work as the project moves forward. Building on current initiatives, the next phase of the project’s work is a participatory defense hub in Chicago, a center focused on equipping communities to lead the defense of their loved ones in court. It’s in early stages. The hub will be a space where the mamas will be with other people who also have loved ones on the inside, so it will contribute to their power building, because it will have more mutual aid and sharing of knowledge on a community level. I am also currently working on a book with another collaborator on social movement-led methodologies which will be published by np: press.

Published on November 11, 2025