--- joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> That's what I keep saying: the prisons are
> important, even key, to a
> left platform.
>
[Ws:] If that is the case, I am getting off that train, because it will certainly derail, if it ever leaves the station. No sane person will ever aspire to a criminal status and prison life - so that has zero appeal to the majority of the population, save for some dysfuctional, deranged or fringe elements.
I think the left already made that mistake once when they thought that the status of the proletariat would appeal to the working class. It did not, as most workers aspired to the "middle class" status and its life style & goodies coming with it. That is one of the main reason why the left has been reduced to pathetic insignificance - not just in the US, but in most countries around the world.
As Doug aptly observed on this forum, only intellectuals (of certain kind) love poverty. The poor want a good life, and that is the reason for a social change. Ditto for criminal identity.
So fuck prisons and concentrate on what really matters - winning the hearts and minds of the ordinary people who constitute the great majority of the population. If "we" get that part right, the change in the living conditon of the people who now linger in prisons will naturally follow.
Wojtek
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