Notes from Angela Davis' talk in Auckland

The following is a paraphrase of Angela's talk, based on notes scribbled in a notebook as I was listening. It is meant to supplement my previous post about the talk.

"The Prison Industrial Complex"

("When I talk to my students about remembering the sixties or seventies, they look at me as if I'm crazy. But I'm not talking about personal memory but rather collective, historical memory.)

The past few decades have seen the continuous strengthening of the "security state", whose ideology is based on the production of fear in the general population: fear of crime, fear of evil people who will invade our space.

Why don't we feel the same fear of narco-capitalism? of homophobia? of George Bush? of the redefinition of democracy by privatisation? of war? of disaster capitalism?

(Halliburtion... Cheyney's company... was installing themselves in New Orleans almost before I had darkly imagined that they would exploit the situation.)

of the profitability of the punishment process?

The overwhelming proportion of the prison population is made up of people of colour.
The prison system is the most effective affirmative action programme ever instituted by the the U.S. government.


(People glorify "diversity" as if it were a primal social goal. I have problems with the concept...We do after all have one of the most diverse governments in American history with the Bush cabinet. )


When I saw Condaleeza (Rice) , when I listened to her, I thought "That sounds like my life."

She imagined herself as an individual victory against racism. What a victory! She is even more bellicose than her boss.

The difference between her and me is the difference between an individual and a community struggler. My survival of capital charges was the victory of thousands, of millions of people.


When I compare our situation with the 60s, I think racism is even worse now; now it is a racism that hides behind the structures that dominate our society.

The prison system is the poisonous heart of that racist system. Because poor people cannot afford attorneys, the vast majority of black people in prison are there without having had even the ghost of a trial, much less a fair trial.

White people do more drugs and deal more drugs than coloured people, but who gets put in prison? [She backed that statement up with some refereneces.]

In a society transformed by globalisation and de-industrialisation, the prison system is the dumping ground for all those who do not have a role in the emerging status quo.

Prisons remain the ghost of slavery.

There is a constant escalation of the intensity of the prison system, with super-maximum security prisons being a foretaste of ever more grotesque caricatures of tough institutions.


Women are the fastest-growing section of the prison population.

This is an era when the social programmes, which have historically helped poor people, are being systematically disestablished, while the army and prisons remain.


One black soldier who joined the army to escape from the gang culture of L.A.:

"I joined Uncle Sam's gang to get out of the L.A. gangs."

Prison functions as the default solution for people considered at the "refuse of society".

[Angela got into a long riff about gender classification in the prison system which she had trouble getting out of.]


If it were not for the disenfranchisement of black males through the criminal justice system, Bush would never have won in Florida.


We should aim to abolish imprisonment as the dominant form of punishment.

The vast majority of prisoners do not need to be in prison. Many prisoners retain the potential for brilliance and love which is unrealised in the system.


Questions:

What about the kupapa (collaborators) who support the building of prisons on waahi tapu (sacred ground)?

Indeed. The "participators" will always be with us, in every community.


What about all the heroes of the struggles of the past? How have they survived?

Many didn't. The results of struggles are never the ones you think they'll be.

[A reference to the GDR? ]


The best way to abolish prisons is to crowd out the need for prisons by answering the human needs of the prisoners and they communities they live in.

We need to start using a new vocabulary: "decarceration", or "excarceration" for instance.


What about the really bad bastards?

Indeed.