On Apr 4, 2009, at 3:56 PM, Joanna wrote:
> chuck wrote
>
> "The way to get to understanding how prisons function and their
> social place is to re-conceptualize crime. And the way to do that
> is to get back to what defines a crime, which is law."
>
> Or, as Blake put it:
>
> Prisons are built with stones of law.
> Brothels, with bricks of religion.
>
> Most people who are in U.S. prisons right now are there because
> they are poor, black, disabled, or drug users. The fact that they
> committed a "crime" is not actually the key factor. I personally
> know plenty of middle class to upper middle class to rich white
> people who have also committed crimes who are not in prison. These
> crimes include: drug manufacture, incest, rape, murder, theft,
> extortion -- most of these, serious, violent crimes.
>
> Yes, there will always be the Dahmers; but they will be a mere
> handful -- they represent less than 1% of the current prison
> population.
>
> One of the reasons I deeply respect Angela Davis is because she
> stood out among the radical left to have taken up the issue of
> prisons, which she has been working on for over a generation.
>
> Joanna
Thanks. There other things that are interesting and important to remember about Davis and this whole topic. She was socially constructed as a criminal, via the anti-communist loyalty oath rules of the UC system. She was then socially constructed as a violent criminal through owning a gun involved in a prison escape (George Jackson?). then she was constructed as a terrorist.. . when she had to escape and go underground...
So she has been down a long road of construction attempts to make her both the justification and the product of the prison industrial complex. This in turn gave her great insights into the Panthers and their struggle to re-define themselves as political prisoners---- while the Oakland cops and political establishment were hell bent on keeping them defined as thugs and criminals. I think a lot of people forget that Huey Newton and I think Bobby Seal started off as middle class black kids going to Laney (local JC). How do you get from there to the heights of arch criminal terrorist?
The whole story and history actually illustrates the dialectic between race, class, criminality and institutions of power under the capitalist state machine.
CG