Funny coincidence. Here is a clip of Richard on the set of "Stir Crazy" I posted on my tumblr account ( http://jworksarchive.tumblr.com ) last month that doesn't get as much play. (I think CG will appreciate a lot of my tumblr postings, but there is probably a little something for everyone on this list there.) As I said when I posted the Pryor link, this is some deep shit. Funny is somehow an understatement. Profound. Deeply sad as life. Brilliant. It’s like a spike in the vein. Pure Richard. I could write a book on all this 13:36 minutes contains.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EvSgPowOO8c
A couple things about Angela Davis. Did she end up getting a pass from most of the left for her ridiculous pro-Obama comments last month? I know blackagendareport.org called her on the carpet, but I didn't see much else. Have been busy, so was just curious if anyone had seen/written anything.
As far as her prisoner advocacy. I think she has done an admirable job. She has spent decades trying to bring the issue to the left and to the general public. Maybe abolishing prisons is not a good rallying cry - but we should abolish almost everything that makes up the prison system in this country. As most of them exist now, they are violent, corrupt, torturous places set up to increase profits every year - and it's not like federal and state run prisons are any better (of course they contract out as well). I mean, if you have rampant crime happening in prisons, from the guards to the prisoners, you have something rotten to the core. Generally, the only thing prisoners learn is how to be better criminals. When they get out, they are effectively non-citizens and have no real chance at decent employment. The reasons to throw the whole system out (which is really what Davis is saying) are myriad and seemingly unending. It doesn't mean
you let scary violent people run in the streets, I don't think anyone is making that argument.
If you want to talk policy, well, first, let all of the non-violent offenders go and put them in programs that might actually help them. Depending on whose numbers you use, that is well over half of the people in prison. It's not like people don't know what to do. The money is already being spent keeping them in prison. It wouldn't cost anymore than it does now - and it would be a boon to decent social work in this county which continues to be defunded (and corportizedbtw). While we're at it, let all of the "illegal immigrants" we are imprisoning go. Make it a policy that corporations cannot benefit from running gulags. After that, the prisons and prison companies need to be policed by a reliable government agency, i.e., regulated - of which there is very little now. If they can't get the crime out of a prison, shut it down. Make it a policy that venal, criminal, for-profit, quasi-monopolies can't buy politicians, serve wall street,
or...run prisons... If for some reason people wanted to continue to let private corporations run prisons as corporations, they would not be able to do it as a publicly traded company. They would be offered a decent profit every year if the prison was humanely run and met strict government guidelines - but I see no reason to make prisons a business in the first place...Indeed, that is one of the roots of the problem. Speaking of which, poverty is what leads most people to prison in one way or another - and that involves something more than a policy change. Just for fun, let's call that change crushing capitalism.
All the terms of debate here make me think of what city governments refer to as, "the homeless problem." Well, we've known what causes it and how to effectively deal with it for decades. That is not the problem, i.e., it's not a policy problem, it's the "political will" to enact the policies that would fix the problem - and the political will that creates the problems in the first place. I hate that phrase of course, because it puts a brick wall in front of any discussion. To me, lacking "political will" just means our corporate rulers don't give a fuck. As the marines like to say, kill 'em all, let god sort 'em out." I think that is the general attitude of our owners, and because that is the case, policy is not a real consideration when it comes to "fixing" problems. I feel stupid writing this to Marxists - or let's just keep it simple and say lefties - but there it is.
This may be a variation on what Carrol seems to say in various ways on the list - and what Doug takes issue with. To put it another way, talking policy is fun, but it doesn't seem to have any effect on late american capitalism. It seems even plain Jane liberal policy tweaking has gone out the window. I don't know, it feels like more rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic...This sort of brings us back to that controversial statement Doug makes when it comes to race in the u.s. Sorry if I'm not paraphrasing correctly and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it goes something like, "If we attack fundamental wealth inequality (or more generally, capitalism), it will take us much farther toward diminishing racial inequality than getting bogged down in racial politics." While I have my own opinions about that, I think we could say something similar about discussing proper policy in general: If we attack fundamental wealth inequality, it will
take us farther than discussing proper policy. Of course, that begs other questions, like what are we doing to attack wealth inequality...Don't get me wrong though, if there is some mechanism where working out good policy on the left ends up as actual policy please let me know. I'm not being facetious, I really just have a hard time seeing it in our current situation. When I think about policy as it is practiced on the state and federal level - and, who am I kidding: on the city level, it just seems like a powerful tool of control, e.g., any act with the word "reform" in it. If policy is wielded by the people, say in proposing to legalize marijuana, it ends up running into policy enacted by the powerful and is diluted or ignored or attacked. Then again, I can see the point of trying when it comes to issues like that. I'm not attempting to say no policy changes are worth attempting... When I look back to the late sixties, after all the big battles, I can see how the left having specific policy proposals contributed to forming the great society programs. At present, it's difficult to see anything like that dynamic.
Aloha,
J