Racism is usually always learned at home (parenting). Most Americans are not “poor” - they just don’t have all the toys they see on television, senseless consumerism/materialism is also learned at home.

We have the keys to change in our hands but do not use them. When you see bad behavior do you call the person on it? Or condone it, think it’s not your business, don’t want to get involved?

Americans will bitch about income inequality and spend the rent money on lottery tickets (numbers racket). Too many mothers will sit at home all day bitching about public schools but not try to home school. Too many families and communities do not want to be involved with one another. Not because of income and racism - but b/c folks are afraid others might see the cracks in their plastic lives.

Too many parents will bail out Johnny and Tyrone time after time until he finally gets hard time. I raised 5 and none ever had a run-in with the legal system - it can be done. I know more than a few of other mother’s sons in prison, and I feel sad for the wasted lives - but they put themselves there and deserve to be there. None are being rehabilitated - that’s what pisses me off - but many do not want to change, many non-violent became violent.

Should sentencing for non-violent drug offenses (cocaine/crack) be changed? Yes. But after the 15th arrest for dealing crack/cocaine and the perp is 40 and you ask him why he doesn’t get a job and he says “workin’ is for foos” (fools) - then what? Good parenting does not produce sons like that.

I think people are basically good - they’re just afraid to show it, as if it’s a sign of weakness. I don’t blame income disparity and institutions for that - we have done it to ourselves with petty greed, false lives, and ignorance.

I don’t see the “fear-mongering” regarding crime or “terrorism” in the media but could be b/c I limit my exposure to mainstream media crappola. And husband turns it off b/c I swear at the tube to the point he says sailors would run from the room.

Somewhat on the parenting subject and somewhat on why I didn’t provide my son with Marxist perspectives myself, I’ve always believed reality is stronger medicine that any taught political philosophy. And my contempt for “red diaper” ex-New-Leftists like Ronald Radosh is complete.

I was struck several years ago about how many books every year are published on incarceration, capital punishment, prisons, etc etc, and how few of them are read. How few make it to the Top 100 list, ever. It’s like there’s all these liberal publishers doing their duties, but middle Americans remain basically blind to the situation. Or just basically racist…

Regarding better neighbor relations, we’re all on the same page here. Evie has experience working with other cultures in South America and has a husband and family, but hosting in a dangerous neighborhood could never be easy.

I’ve spent a weekend plus a day in a jail but never longer and needless to add, never experienced a penitentary. The whole subject of incarceration makes me so angry that I can’t write about it. Black Agenda Report has had quite a few relevant pieces and open posts its readers comments.

Therefore, it is important to look at it as holistically as possible, and I thinking looking at family and community is key, as well as many things we may never have really considered, because I don’t think there has ever been many honest attempts to actually solve the problem. When the govt. says they’re trying to help things, they actually have other nefarious motives—so therefore at minimum the problem isn’t getting fixed with that approach, and more likely the system is making violent crime worse.

Lastly, I think we need to personally combat the psy-war of the corporate media’s fear-mongering regarding crime—-in the same way we must resist their fear of “terrorism” post 9-11 when they use that fear to justify all the terrible things they wanted to do already before 9-11 happened…

This psy-war is a weapon against communities uniting.

You can abolish capitalism and militarism but if parents are not parenting and schools not educating and jobs are low pay dead ends - any “ism” will still produce a large criminal class.

None of us will live to see the abolition of racism. I have seen improvement in my own lifetime - but most of mankind has a penchant to feel “better” than someone else.

Also, religion is a bitch. I respect other’s if they have a “need” for religion but it is a silly myth that works hand in hand with other problematic “isms.”

We would cure a lot of ills by simply starting at home.

Then, in the long term commit to finding a way to deal with societal violence. I think much of violent crime is a direct result of all the state and economic violence . I think in many was the PIC reproduces violent crime and feeds it, so I think finding honest alternatives and addressing the overall power structure will help the problem of violent crime much better than the PIC. Christian Parenti argues that:

“This politics of punishment works in two ways: it contains and controls those who violate the class-biased laws of our society, but prison also produces a predator class that, when returned to the street, frightens and disorganizes communities, effectively driving poor and working people into the arms of the state, seeking protection. Thus both crime control and crime itself keep people down.”

I don’t believe that ALL violent crime is from the domination of state, capital, and other oppressions—-but I do think it’s huge, and addressing these problems would be a huge step towards addressing the issue of violent crime. Then, I say, we could take several of the hundreds of millions of dollars of tax-money currently going towards such beasts as the military industrial complex and the PIC, and use this to research alternatives.

In short, I think this only will really happen when the overall realities of ruling class power are also addressed. Because, sincere attempts at prison abolition will only be a truly possible policy if the people in power have changed. In this regard it is much like challenging other evils that the ruling class benefits from like militarism, white supremacy, sexism, etc.

To quote Martin Luther King, its going to take an overall “revolution” and the PIC should be added into his 3 evils that he wanted to immediately abolish: capitalism, militarism, and racism.

I agree that private prisons are important to look at, but I’d like to take a clip from that above essay to answer you directly, and am interested to hear what you think.

—————–
This current phase of globalization has created a dramatic rise in the role of prisons in society. While in 1980, there were only 500,000 prisoners total in the U.S., that number has now exceeded 2 million. Many have explained this rise of the prison population by citing the growing economic incentive to expand the population by such lobbying forces as prison guard unions, companies that employ prison labor, prison construction contractors, and private prison corporations.

However, in his 1999 book Lockdown America, it is Christian Parenti’s assertion that while these interest groups do have an economic interest in the proliferation of the prison system, this alone cannot explain the dramatic escalation of the prison population. Instead, Parenti argues that prisons have become a way to control the superfluous population that has been created as a result of downsizing (wherein well-paying jobs are taking to the third world where state repression insures low wages) since the 1970s.

Parenti asserts that while social welfare programs can also help to control the politically dangerous classes, these programs help to empower the poor against their corporate masters. In contrast, the prison system serves to further the conquest of U.S. domestic colonies. While it costs infinitely more to jail someone than to offer social welfare programs (and may therefore seem inefficient) it is highly beneficial for ruling class control of poor people.

And Wall Street lived happily ever after.

Regarding Professor AY Davis, there was not reason I didn’t mention her… I was just trying to do a short interview… As I understand it, Davis is one of CR’s founders. I like Davis alot, and have some personal history there because the year after the 98 CR conference, I was fortunate enough to take a class with her on the PIC at UC-Santa Cruz. That class, as well as the 98 CR conference had a profound impact on me.

I would strongly encourage folks to check out Davis’ work on prisons, including her recent book “Are Prisons Obsolete?” as Davis is certainly one of the key theorists of the prison abolitionist movement.

Anywho, I’m by myself and 66 years old, and I’ve lost the touch of putting strangers at ease. But I’m trying real hard. Real hard to make communications replace police-relations in this neighborhood. But I’ve been “posted off” the across-the-street neighbor’s property by the cops, and my next-door neighbor’s incommunicado because I’ve reported their dog to the Animal Control (police, too). And since I live on a corner, there’s a traffic situation, and blah blah.

I could sell my home and move, and I’m getting closer to it every day. Neighborhoods differ, but neighbors are pretty much the same in my experience. They form an opinion of you, based on early experiences, and so they “know you,” and it’s real hard to change that opinion.

Thanks for the time and advice, evie.

A lady I graduated from Law School with in 1966 was from a little town in southwest Missouri on the Texas River, and I visited her that summer. What Beautiful Country!

Be the first on your block to get friendly. When we first moved in I had a backyard barbeque and beer - went door to door to invite neighbors. We sit on the front porch on summer evenings and most every passerby will stop and chat if you’re friendly. I walk the dog and met many of the neighbors. We help one another with clearing limbs after storms (yearly around here). We share food from gardens, help with DIY projects, etc.

I call those big white cops if other neighbors fight on the corner or are dealing dope over the back fence - someone threw bricks through our window but they take their fights and sell their drugs elsewhere now, or at least not in our sight. Husband and I figure if we want a better ‘hood it’s up to us, and it has gotten better and other neighbors now less hesitant about calling the police when need be.

The hardest part of knowing your neighbors is trying to avoid the gossip some want to engage in, and establishing a line between being neighborly and being someone’s doormat. Maybe that stops some folks - having to establish the boundary of what’s neighborly acceptable and what’s not.

I think a few folks thought we were odd at first for being “friendly” but they’re over it.

Speaking to the police who seem to administer my neighborhood, several weeks ago, I mentioned to a big, white one that neighbors don’t communicate much “around here.” He replied that all over town, neighbors don’t communicate much. I saw a female cop a couple of years ago in the hood, but since then, big white ones are the only ones I’ve had the pleasure of talking to.

It must be nice to live in a neighborhood where neighbors communicate.

Prison reform/rehab is one thing and is needed - but abolishing is something else.

Thanks for this interview, Hans Bennett. I notice that you did not ask Rose Braz if Professor Angela Davis participates in or has participated in Critical Resistance, or if the project owes her any antellectual debt. Any particular reason?

Can “violent” offenders live next to you? I really don’t want them as neighbors. You can have the child molesters too.