Monday, December 11, 2006

Angela Davis

Remember Angela Davis?
From today's paper

Davis was in town as a guest of Critical Resistance, a national anti-prison organization that views the American way of incarceration as a misguided attack on the poor and working class. Davis was the keynote speaker for a conference that called for amnesty for "prisoners of Katrina," including the 6,000 or so inmates evacuated days after New Orleans fell into horror.

Okay, Mizz Davis, we'll send them all to your hometown.

Anti prison organization indeed.

Info on Critical Resistance from wikipedia:
Critical Resistance is a national, member-based grassroots organization that works to build a mass movement to dismantle the '"prison-industrial complex"'. Critical Resistance has three offices (Oakland, New Orleans, and New York City), and nine chapters across the United States.
Critical Resistance was founded by Angela Davis, Rose Braz, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and many others. The organization is primarily volunteer member-based, with only five staff members: Rose Braz, Kai Lumumba Barrow, Robert "Kool Black" Horton, Ari Wohlfeiler, and Pilar Maschi, with three part-time staff members for the LA, Oakland and New Orleans chapters.
Critical Resistance popularized the idea of the prison industrial complex after their first conference in 1998, which drew thousands of former prisoners, family members, activists, academics and community members, and by many accounts re-invigorated anti-prison activism in the United States.
Excerpt from the Critical Resistance website [1]:
"Critical Resistance works to build an international movement to end the Prison Industrial Complex by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe."


I'm having a difficult time in accepting anything LESS than the "prison industrial complex" for people who rob, rape and kill.
If I were in charge Joe Arpaio would be the Prisoner Tsar of the country

Call me whatever you will, but I'm on the side of the VICITIMS. But that's just me.

6 comments:

Jason Brad Berry said...

She missed the systemic root of our high incarceration rates....the worst public schools in the country.

If she want's to empty prisons, let's start with education, that will remedy the majority of Louisiana's woes.

Anonymous said...

They gave you sunshine
They gave you sea
They gave you everything but
the jailhouse key

Lyric from John Lennon's Anegela from the LP Sometime in New York City, of course John was singing about Angela's incarceration, the lyric is kind of ironic when associated with her current cause.

Anonymous said...

The U.S. has over 2.2 million people in prison, mostly poor people of color, imprisoning more people than any country in the world. You might want to take a look at Angela Davis' writing--Are Prisons Obsolete? is a great start--to learn about the history of imprisonment in this country, and how our fear-mongering culture is used to justify the targeting of communities at the bottom of the economic ladder. The book argues that things like basic housing, education, employment, and healthcare is what our communities really need, not to be locked away in cages. I think we should all make sure we are as informed as possible before we make inflammatory comments like the post above.

Anonymous said...

Do the CRIME-Do the TIME!

Anonymous said...

Pilar-Stop being a "victim" -it is hereditary, Don't pass it on......AGAIN!

Anonymous said...

Pilar-
Your mother was a "victim".......... your father a "victim" BUT HE HAD CHOICES. You hate the police because "they" killed him with a 9 mm when you were 17 years old? Was he an innocent bystander? I miss HIM EVERY SINGLE DAY OF MY LIFE but I am also fully aware of the choices he made. Still loving him, grieving for him, PLEASE do not use him for YOUR CAUSE! Free will-
his chosen path to ease the pain of life ended his life.

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