Over the course of a 41-day occupation, a group of Chicago residents built a world where freedom was not managed, negotiated, nor defined by the police. Rather, their world was governed entirely by those unqualified to rule–the people themselves. Freedom Square was born when the #LetUsBreathe Collective occupied a vacant lot across from Homan Square, the infamous Chicago Police Department “black site” facility where thousands of residents have been illegally detained. What began as an act of civil disobedience against police brutality and corruption transformed into its own living and breathing community. The camp became “a laboratory for the politics of abolition,” offering protesters an arena to experiment with new ways to build capacity and resistance, while also providing its community with free resources and workshops. Ultimately, Freedom Square rendered concrete a collective imagination of a society where the state was replaced by the people.