A couple points. I think that its a mistake to think of the prison as a separate institution within Davis' analysis, rather its tied to a larger disciplinary apparatus, tied in with the stop and frisk policies, for instance. Prisons are only one part of a web of disciplinary apparatuses, deeply linked into the ongoing project of racialization in this country (I'm thinking about the laws in Arizona and Alabama in the emphasis of this as an ongoing and mutating project.) Davis does some pretty good work spelling this out in her most recent work.
That being said, I accept that this isn't necessarily immediately apparent to portions of what Doug identifies as the 75%, which means that there are going to be folks in the movement who don't immediately get it, but isn't this why movements always have an educational component to them. As Adorno would point out, there's nothing radical about common sense.
robert wood
> On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 7:44 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>> If we can't mobilize a significant minority of the!
>> middle 75% of this society, then this movement will evaporate.
>
> This confuses me. Are you saying that those 75% have no connection to
> prisoners and those "with no social power"? I'd venture that really
> large swathes of black 75-percenters would contest that assertion. Or
> are you saying that the 75% would be repulsed by appeals to the
> incarcerated and powerless? Again, I bet you'd find a lot of
> disagreement with that, from everywhere. Ever more pointedly, if the
> 75% were repulsed by solidarity with prisoners, then fuck 'em. I don't
> want to be a part of their "movement."
>
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