Melting the Ambiguity and Power of ICE

By Canyon Ryan

In less than a week, the people of the world have forced the President of the United States of America to no longer allow detained immigrants to intentionally be separated from their family members. Such an inhumane practice has been permitted at more than 400 detention facilities supervised by ICE agents in the United States.

What this piece aims to do is delineate ICE as an organization and provide a critical analysis of U.S. foreign-policy initiatives, the proposed solution to the ICE facility attention, and an honest call to action.

ICE: Its History and Functions

When discussing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), there is an ambiguity in consideration to its foundation. We know that ICE is the problem, but what is ICE?

ICE was born in 2003, in accordance with the Homeland Security Act of 2002 following the events of September 11, 2001. Since, ICE has become the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security, the second largest body of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the second largest "criminal investigative agency" in the U.S. (trailing the FBI). There are more than 20,000 ICE employees in over 400 offices in the U.S. and in 46 countries abroad.

ICE has two primary arms: Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO). Each are equally important.

There are approximately 6,500 HSI agents. HSI agents have the authority to enforce the Immigration and Nationality Act ( Title 8 ), U.S. Customs Laws ( Title 19 ), general federal crimes ( Title 18 ), Controlled Substances Act ( Title 21 ), as well as Titles 5, 6, 12, 22, 26, 28, 31, 46, 49, and 50 of the U.S. Code .

The HSI agents are to investigate national-security threats such as human rights violations, human trafficking, drug trafficking, document and benefit fraud, transnational gang activity, cash smuggling, money laundering, and the like.

Their international offices are used to combat transnational criminal activities and work with governments abroad to prevent such activities from entering the U.S. This policy framework can be considered something similar to the "National Security States" used in Central America to repress what was then considered a communist infiltration, known as the supposed "Real Terror Network". Today, we must keep in mind that we've passed the "end of history". Communism is out, terrorism is in. With terrorism at the frontline is bred the dehumanization of the migrants, no longer the Reds. The war on communism has morphed into the war on terror; and ICE, with its HSI agents, are spearheading this new war.

There are other functions of the HSI, but this synopsis should do. Next, we will investigate the ERO.

The ERO are the ones primarily responsible for the current national spotlight. Their function is to capture illegal immigrants and assure their removal from the U.S. In the time between this removal, the families being expedited are held in government and "charity-sponsored" detention camps, or in the case of the Brownsville Detention facility in Texas, a shelled-out Walmart.

The ERO has been strengthened by the Immigration and Nationality Act Section 287(g) , which allows ICE to cooperate with state and local law enforcement agencies. In doing such, it authorizes the Secretary of Homeland Security to also work with state and local law enforcement agencies, permitting officers to perform immigration law enforcement functions. As such, ICE provides these law enforcement officers with the training to identify, process, and detain immigrants.

In detainment, the so-called aliens are placed in the detention centers (similar to jails) mentioned above. Something very important to note here is that, as of 2009, the U.S. Congress has mandated that ICE detention centers must have at least 34,000 people confined each night. Thus, by law and similar to prisons again, there is a requirement (quota) for detention.

Between 2003 and 2007, 107 people died in ICE custody. The New York Times reported that in some cases officials used their supervisory roles to cover up evidence of mistreatment and avoid media coverage of "substandard care or abuse". Between 2010 and 2017, The Intercept reported that 1,224 sexual assault complaints had been made in ICE detention facilities, with only 3% being investigated.

U.S. Foreign Policy: Fighting "Terrorism" with Terrorism

Considering the youth of ICE as an agency, as well the timing of its inception, ICE is undoubtedly a component of the "war on terror." Created by the Bush administration, emphasized and vastly expanded by the Obama administration, and now mushrooming under the Trump administration, we must recognize that ICE is part of a much larger conglomerate. While it is ICE that is attracting much attention, it is not just ICE that we should call into question. Its purpose is to refuse all "aliens" who are "infesting" the U.S., but it is simply a bullet in the gun.

We must see this segment of the government as piece of their new war against the people of the world. The wars that the U.S. have escalated abroad, causing mass refugee migration crises in Central America, the Middle East, and Africa, are primarily responsible for such successions. With the rise of climate change as well, we will soon have a world unstable to support current and expected living standards.

Clearly then, ICE's purpose is to fend off migrants and refugees developed from the wars promoted by the US's other militaristic forces. Last year, people were worried about Syrian refugees flooding the states. Today, the focus is back on the Mexican border. In the future, expect further crises in Africa. HSI operates abroad, they are the international eyes for the ERO. Working with both foreign and domestic law agencies, ICE has created in less than two decades a global force of supervision and detention.

This analysis goes along with the U.S. Commission on National Security which stated , "In the new era, sharp distinctions between `foreign' and `domestic' no longer apply." Accordingly, former President Barack Obama noted , "there is no distinction between homeland and national security". The importance here lies in the conundrum considering that U.S. foreign policy initiatives have been disastrous, for the soldiers sent abroad, for the world in general, and for democracy as a whole. The same values the U.S. government claims to represent in every war it initiates are those which it refuses to allow develop without its supervision, and what ICE and the quotes above illustrate is that the leaders of our country are very aware of their dwindling control over the masses, and specifically who the masses are that they must control. But this conundrum posed appears common knowledge, thus we begin to ponder why we keep making the same mistakes?

Simply put: the U.S. is the producer of terror. It is the producer of terror abroad and thus the engineer of the very terrorism it aims to fight. This is not the result of stupidity. This is its purpose. Such social stratification is ideal for the ruling class. If they can decimate countries abroad, they can go in and offer their assistance. This assistance of course comes with loans. Those loans of course come with interest. Yes, the U.S. is the most indebted nation, but it also makes its money by indebting other nations! These are not mistakes, they're markets.

The terrorism that the U.S. has promoted in the overthrow of governments in Mexico, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, Haití, Greece, Syria, Iran, Iraq, and so on, is on a scale never seen in history. This is what the U.S., as the main facilitator of the global capitalist system, strives for. The U.S. just passed a $716 billion defense budget. The U.S. allowed the Pentagon to misplace $21 trillion in 17 years. Across the world, the U.S. has promoted right-wing, ultra-conservative, authoritarian regimes, reaping the benefits while the workers of these countries are murdered and forced to live at starvation wages. Even today, the U.S. operates with approximately 75% of the world's dictatorships. Our policy is not democracy, it is detention. Thus, the same military that caused many to flee their homelands is now being asked to detain them at home.

A quick historical contextualization of the "Mexican immigrant crisis" is needed. The U.S. under President James K. Polk went to war with Mexico over territory and conquered 525,000 acres of land in 1848. Afterwards, the Native Mexicans, now Americans, were exterminated by a California state-sponsored genocide that massacred over 80% of their population. Come 1914, the U.S. intervened after the Mexican Revolution, toppling the government in order to protect its imperial interests in Mexico's oil, mines, and railroads, which were predominantly owned by USAmericans. In 1938, after discussions of reparations which were not paid to Mexico after the U.S. invasion, Mexico decided it would nationalize its oil reserves. Consequently, President Franklin D. Roosevelt decided not to imperialistically intervene, though during the great depression the U.S. did expel between 400,000-2,000,000 Mexicans from the U.S. (60% of who were birthright citizens). In 1982, during the world oil crisis, the nearly 150% drop in oil's worth meant that Mexico's foreign debt more than doubled . This foreign debt was owed to the U.S.-sponsored World Bank. And after NAFTA passed in 1994, Mexico's government became so reliant on the U.S. that now over 88% of its exports go directly to its neighbor, the U.S.

NAFTA has made it more difficult for Mexican workers to organize, thus wages have plummeted and corruption has run wild in the country. This is perfect for the neocolonial empire as it creates an austere society, with money coming from the top to colonialists, who then protect those giving them money if threatened. By destabilizing Mexico, they allow the society to fight itself at the bottom, while the corrupted officials remain floating above the general public.

What CIA-trained forces did during Operation Condor in Central America has passed. The Japanese internment camps during World War II were temporary. But what they have being built now, these ICE detention facilities, they are here to stay. They are here to stay unless we stand up and fight back against such terror. We cannot become desensitized to these detention facilities, as we have with the creation of a military industrial complex, the prison industrial complex, and the slaying of innocent young black men. We must fight.

Trump's Solution: A Crumb to the Beggars

President Trump recently signed an Executive Order that will no longer allow families to be separated unless criminal laws say otherwise. For this, I have seen liberal praise. We must reject such gains as "wins". Such an order goes along with another liberal argument I've seen that separating families in the detention facilities is morally wrong. Yes, indeed it is. But so is the blanket detention of non-violent immigrants. So is the containment, isolation, entrapment, and debilitation of so-called aliens. The liberal "resistance" seemingly wants us to settle for allowing them to be in cages so long as they are together in these cages.

What this Executive Order does not do is mend the separation that has already taken place. Moreover, it seeks to indefinitely detain these families-- calling for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to file a request in court to change the settlement in Flores v Reno. What's more, it calls for families to be detained at military facilities, as well. The same military that has brutalized the world, trained torturers, tortured others themselves, and killed on mass scale, is now being called upon to "care for" detained immigrants. This is a scary revelation. The average citizen cannot just walk on to military facility grounds. We cannot walk into jails for inspection, let alone military facilities. What they hid before, they will hide again.

Such detainment facilities are beyond just immoral, they are abhorrent. They are heinously inhumane and such institutions should not exist anywhere. There are borders today, yes. There are laws and rules, and there are important procedures in place to protect our citizens from potential terrorists. This, however, does not require the detention and deportation of all "illegal" families. In fact, prior to 2012, such a notion was not only unheard of, it was structurally impractical.

Our Solution: A Call to Action

The protest-blockade against the ICE facility in Portland, Oregon is unprecedented. Here, protesters have effectively shut down and ICE detention facility by sheer will of the human body. They blockaded the garages so that ICE vehicles could not exit. For a while, ICE employees even could not exit the facility. Eventually police were called in to escort them out of the building.

Such direct action should set as a reminder that we the people have the power. In numbers, when organized, we have the potential to shut down each facility in the U.S. Approximately 1,000 citizens surrounded the building, the garage, and even ICE employee's cars (provoking the police to arrest one demonstrator) in Portland. These protestors were so effective that the ICE center was actually shut down indefinitely, due to security concerns!

These protests were against Trump's separating of families. What is important is not allowing this Executive Order to calm the fire. We must fight ICE at every step, we must melt ICE. Starting with preventative care, we can help our immigrant communities know their rights by circulating literature on how to defend from ICE raids. It is also important that we verify when ICE is in the neighborhood and document it. We owe gratitude to Sam Lavigne, who doxxed the Linkedin profiles of the majority of people working as ICE agents. We now we know who our enemy is. We have the locations of ICE detention facilities (via ICE's own website), we know where they are stationed. What happened in Portland can just as easily happen in any US city!

We must take a stand. Times are ripe, people are awakened to the monstrosities of this administration because it is Trump, and because it is Trump it is profitable for the media to "uncover." The capitalists only think of money, not the substance. And this substance is accidentally revolutionizing our country. Come an economic collapse, which we are due for as it's been 10 years since the 2008 recession, the honest Left should and will be ready. We must begin organizing and fighting now, and it starts against ICE.

South Carolina Prisoners Reflect on Causes of Violence in Prisons, and Solutions

By Jared Ware

The deadliest incident of violence in a United States prison in a quarter century took place at the Lee Correctional Institution in South Carolina on April 15, 2018.

According to multiple reports , including SCDC Director Bryan Stirling's own, prison guards and EMTs made no attempt to break things up or lend medical aid from moment the fight commenced until hours after it was over, while imprisoned people were beaten and stabbed to death. Seven people were killed and dozens were injured, with at least twenty two requiring hospitalization.

On April 22, I interviewed three individuals from various prisons inside the South Carolina Department of Corrections. One of the prisoners identified himself as a member of Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, a group of imprisoned human rights advocates that has made national calls to action for a prisoner-led strike in response to the conditions they feel are truly responsible for the violence and hopelessness within prisons across the United States. The strike is expected to begin on August 21st, 2018.

Throughout our conversation, these three individuals, who are identified only as D, S, and E to protect their identities and prevent retaliation by prison officials, highlight the impacts of policies pushed by President Bill Clinton's administration and implemented by states across the country. They also point to the dehumanization of prisoners and challenge our conception of "gangs," which does not take into account the ways in which incarcerated people are forced to create their own collective means for safety, survival, and camaraderie in a situation where hope is the scarcest commodity.

They also urge the public to reconsider the nature and source of violence within prisons and the absence of human dignity and a rehabilitative environment within our nation's prisons. They present actionable solutions to mitigate some of the harm caused by prisons on our ultimate path toward shedding carceral responses to legitimate societal needs.

As I write this introduction on May 2nd, 2018, South Carolina prisoners have confirmed that all Level 2 and 3 facilities have remained on a statewide lockdown since April 15th. This means people imprisoned in facilities have been denied any freedom of movement, regular access to showers, recreation, or meals outside the confines of their cells.

We grant permission for individuals and news organizations to republish this interview in its entirety for their audiences. It is imperative that we deepen conversations around the causes of violence in prisons and the real impacts of incarceration on all people, inside and outside the walls.

Editor's note: this transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Jared : Firstly, for context for folks who are reading this, there have been a lot of things that have gone down in South Carolina prisons over the last year or two, if you guys could lay down some of that context for people, because I think a lot of people don't understand some of the things that prisoners throughout South Carolina have been dealing with and how those conditions might contribute to prisoners really feeling a sense of hopelessness?

D : I'm going to take you back a little step here, to 1996 at least. I'll cover it a little bit, and I'll be as brief as possible. Prior to Bill Clinton's Prison Litigation Reform Act, anti-terrorism act, these acts that went into full effect in 1996, initiated what is known as the 85% or Truth In Sentencing [1] throughout most of the states inside this nation today. It's not just necessarily something that incubated inside the South Carolina, it was actually national. There was a domino effect, okay? But in 1996, specifically, the reason why I'm pinpointing that is because at that particular point in the state of South Carolina, there was no such thing as a natural life sentence in the department of corrections. There was no such thing as a forever-type sentence, where individuals thought that they weren't going to be able to get out.

Even if you had a violent offense, or a labeled-violent offense, you still had something known as a work release date. You still would have some type of eligibility to go to work release, and that also meant the eligibility to go to work at some place on the street, or go home even on the weekends in the state of South Carolina. They had opportunity to make state pay [2] during that particular time period. Even when you [were] at what was known as the max yard. These yards [were] clearly open, everybody could roam and move around free.

But when 1996 set in, and you had this mindset that started to kicked in, that was known, as Hillary Clinton called [it], as locking down these "super predators." They called it also the War on Drugs, which I call the war on the Black and Brown community. All these things is playing into effect at that particular time period, and that created the environment inside.

We found fences starting to be wrapped into the prisons, we found prisoners that was labeled as violent offenders, was sent into these fences, and caged into buildings all day. We found that the food started deteriorating, we saw the clothes removed, and we saw the ways that [imprisoned people] could make money removed out of the system. There was no longer any type of state pay. Even though state pay was very minimal, it was still an opportunity to buy a bar of soap or a Honey Bun or something like that. We saw that visitation was being restricted.

It was just a host of things that started being incubated. And then the hopelessness set in. Because what happened then is we started having these life sentences coming through under 85 percent, where prisoners knew they were never going to see daylight again. We started having what we call "football numbers:" 80, 100, 150 years coming through 85 percent [time served, where prisoners knew they were] never going to see daylight again.

So this is where actually a lot of the problems started accumulating. And not only that, but actually education was removed by the prison system. Any type of Pell Grants, all that was gone. Education, technical colleges, everything was removed. So that's a little bit of a picture of what kind of started to shape the environment back here.

Jared : Thank you, so that changed obviously the overall conditions of how prisons across the country changed and sort of the hopelessness that set in. Can you talk to me a little bit though of some of the specific things that happened in South Carolina over the last couple of years?

D : And this is when the most sadistic mindsets start to set in. Prisoncrats… And I'm going to [let] the brother answer that one.

S: So for one, as the brother was just telling you with the "football numbers," prisoners got a lot of time to serve, but actually with nothing to do. When they took away all the privileges, they took away a lot of the programs. Stuff like that, it leads to just standing around with nothing to do, except to indulge in negative behavior, and reactionary behavior, and just all different forms of escapism--whatever they can do to pass the time.

They drug test you so they can take away your privileges. Why do they need drug testing inside the prisons? People are already in here doing time, it's irrelevant. I can see if somebody's getting ready to go home for parole or something like that and you're going to test them, but just to constantly test them, that's kind of like a waste of money. They always waste their funds on things they don't need to waste their funds on. [1]

We have no means of supporting ourselves because there's no state pay. Because we have no state pay, we have no way to eat. As the brother said, even though it was just a little bit of money, but it still was something. You still could buy some hygiene [products].

When they do lockdown, they're supposed to give you showers Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, whatever the lockdown be for. But they don't ever honor it. They want to do one cell at a time, and it'll take you a whole week before you get a shower. You have some prisons where the water system is messed up. Particularly at Lieber [Correctional Institute], their water system has been messed up forever. When you flush the toilet or pour your water, it smells like rotten eggs. They say it has sulfur in it or whatever, but it eats up the actual metal, and causes mold and stuff to be all over the prison. If they were to go do a tour through that prison right now, and they go all the way from the lock-up to the yard, the ceiling is falling in, metal hanging down, it's dripping all over the place, mold is all over the place, people who are in prison for 15-20 years are dying from cancer. But they don't have no cigarettes inside, you feel me?

We're confined to a cell a lot. They do a lot of counts and the counts always last for a long period of time. The purpose of counting is to make sure that we're here. In all reality, they should just count us and then let us back out for recreation. If you count from the time you eat dinner on a Friday night to your next meal on a Saturday, it's 17-18 hours before you get your next meal. And on the daily basis, you're talking about 12 to 13 hours from when you get your first meal to your next meal, that's almost like a half a day, that's a long time.

So you eat up all your [food purchased from the] canteen, which forces you to go the canteen and spend a lot of money on a bunch of a junk that they price gouge, that's super high, but this money is coming from their family members who are out there working hard to help support you as well.

D : One of the things that has not fully been addressed in South Carolina is the nature and culture of disrespect from the officers inside the South Carolina Department of Corrections, as well. They have completely in my eyes mastered the art of dehumanizing prisoners. Once again, we have to keep in mind they intentionally went into an overdrive of taking the prisoners clothes. Not only taking the prisoners clothes, cutting the prisoners hair the same way, had it to where you can't have your money in your pocket, just a number of things to take away your individuality. And in the process of taking away your individuality, they begin to treat you as if you were garbage. What I mean by treat you as garbage, just by dehumanizing us it makes it easier for them to abuse us, and this abuse a lot of times takes place as physical abuse.

We had in the Super Max Units out in Columbia, South Carolina maybe about a year or two ago, guards bumrush a prisoner inside his cell, stab him up. We've always had a number of incidents with regards to them cuffing prisoners, then cut prisoners up, slamming prisoners on their heads. In some cases we've had some mysterious deaths, some hangings that prisoners are clearly not comfortable with labelling them as hangings on these maximum security prisons.

We've also had incidents where prisoners, when he speaks of recreation, understand something about this recreation a lot of places and a lot of areas right now, prisoners are no longer getting rec at all. It's like every blue moon before we even see any sunlight or daylight to be able to get rec. What we are finding is that, that itself is causing a lot of attitude problems. A lot of aggressiveness.

When we talk about the food, we don't get any fruit, no real fruit anyway. At one time they actually had salad bars; they removed all of that over two decades ago. Now you get nothing. Some of the food is labeled "not for human consumption." So these are normal things that we are actually dealing with inside the prison system.

For visitation, there's no contact with your visitor, with your loved ones. One kiss in, one kiss out. Rather than a hug, sit down, embrace each other. Be in the comfort of each other's company. We're finding that is moving further and further away, and I'm very fearful that we're moving to the stage of video visits very soon, in the very near future.

Jared : Talk a little bit about the angle of this around technology. Bryan Stirling has been for at least a year now, probably more, he's been on this kick about getting cell phones out. You know there was this sort of fairly high profile escape less than a year ago, and they blamed cell phones for that. And they're also blaming this riot on cell phones. They're talking about phone jammers. So just talk a little bit about cell phones in relation to the prisons and what they mean or provide to prisoners and how realistic some of these narratives or fears that are being stated by SCDC are.

S : SCDC's main reason for not wanting the phones inside the prison system is because the phones got camera access, video access, and the phones can expose the things that they do. When they're using extreme force - the same way people are using cell phones out on the street when they're catching certain things that cops aren't supposed to be doing and stuff like that - see they can be exposed, they can't hide when we've got the phones.

The prisoners utilize the phones to communicate with their family members. The phone system that [SCDC has], the phone prices are entirely too high, nobody would use that. They get money off it, too, and everybody knows that. And prisoners use the phone as a means of staying connected to their families, fathers staying connected to their children. Some fathers back here are raising their children from prison by staying in contact with them. [2]

So SCDC just wants the phones out of the prisons because they don't want to be exposed. They don't want the videos of the fights and stabbings to be shown. There's other things prisoners are shooting videos of. They're showing videos of the brown water, they show videos of the mold inside the buildings. They show videos of the prisoners who've been dead in the bed for two hours and the guard ain't come and check on the man yet. So it's a fly on the wall for them, that's why they don't want them in here.

Jared : I've heard some reporting on how high the death numbers are from South Carolina over the past couple years, but I've also heard from some prisoners that they believe the death numbers are actually much higher than what's being reported. For example, I've had a prisoner tell me that, even though SCDC is officially stating death toll numbers in the teens over the last year, and these numbers are very high based on national averages, that the numbers are actually higher but they believe SCDC is only reporting certain kinds of deaths.

S : Yeah they are only reporting certain kinds of deaths, not including some deaths that they have caused themselves. And just to give you an example, they have a cell in the area they call the RHU (Restrictive Housing Unit) that's supposed to be the area they put people that get in trouble or whatever. And they've got a cell that's called a CI (Crisis Intervention) cell. That's where they strip you, make you get butt naked you got no clothes on, no nothing, and when they do bring you something, they'll bring you a suicide blanket only.

So you had a guy years ago, where he said he was going to kill himself, so they put him in the CI, so the guy told one of the Lieutenants later on that night he was cool. The Lieutenant gave the man a sheet and then they say the man hanged himself. That's what they said. But by policy and by rule, nobody is supposed to have [any] sheets in [any] CI cell and everybody know that, especially the Lieutenant, who's a supervisor. So that's their fault. He was a mentally ill patient. That's on them. So of course you know when they write it up, or they give the information to the public or his family, they [aren't telling those] people that.

D : Absolutely. I'd like to add to that as well. One of the reasons why the number is probably higher as well is they're dealing with medical neglect. So I'll give you an example. I saw a guy that fell out of his seat. And the guard looked over the guy, but the prisoner was the only one that responded and started to give the guy mouth to mouth resuscitation. Well, come to find out the guy who was giving him resuscitation, his face started turning blue. Five minutes later the nurse arrives, and they lean over and they tell the guy and tell the officer they'd been giving mouth-to-mouth the wrong way. I honestly sat there and saw them kill this man for that particular incident.

And we've also seen incidents where guys fall out, no medical treatment whatsoever. I consider those direct murders, as well, of the state. When staff are failing to respond or respond and say, "Oh, you're faking it, you're not having a heart attack," and you fall out and die right there. We saw that happen several times as well. So this also would account for why some of the prisoners would say that these numbers definitely would be higher, after they are witnessing some people being allowed to die, the way that they're being allowed to die.

If I can, I wanted to kind of backtrack on the question you asked earlier on cell phones.

Jared : Sure.

D : First things first, I always have to understand the basic fundamental nature of today's prison system throughout this nation is slavery. We understand that it's based on the 13th Amendment of the United States constitution, we can't get around that. There's a profit business, so it's all about profit, it's about the profit margin. That's what fuels the numbers in the prisons across this nation. It's no different in the state of South Carolina.

Technology, with prisoners having access to communication, the phone business has lost billions literally, in this state right here alone. Billions! They have put in certain rooms in here, they've put these machines in called kiosks, they are getting no play. This is where you're supposed to be able to send out literally something like text messages to your people. They thought this was going to be a booming industry, nobody is using it. This is a loss of revenue.

We have these same phone companies that are investing in the department of corrections, literally for free, giving them equipment to find cell phones. Giving them equipment to search our families at the front gate when they come in to visit us, giving them equipment to monitor the gate areas. So they're giving them this. This wasn't just a free handout, but this was because [they] need to make money, [they] need to get these phones out of the system. That has always been understood.

Even now, I'm hearing that, even with the jamming equipment that Bryan Stirling is requesting and supposed to have a hold of for Lee County right now, I think the company is called "Tech something," I'm not really sure exactly, but my understanding is that the parent company is GTL.

Jared : I heard that rumor as well.

D : So, I have to do my research on that, [but] this is definitely what I'm hearing. This is all about business, this is all about money. The minute they can wipe out, it's like using one stone to kill two birds at the same time. You kill that communication gap, that gap where they've been reporting on, because most of the time, when they come out with a lot of frivolous things, it's immediately refuted by us, by some pictures or some videos or something. Saying, "No, this is what happened." This is unusual. This is something that's very revolutionary, [a] very new generation in the prison system. They are not used to that; they had all communications with media locked down.

Keep in mind, SCDC has a policy where we are not allowed to converse with the media unless it's authorized by the South Carolina Department of Corrections. And I have a big beef with that.

Jared : Absolutely. So let's pivot a little bit because there's a lot of talk right now about violence. So there's a couple of questions I wanted to ask related to that. One is, what do you all see as the source of violence within prisons? And then the other one is about gangs and this idea - because I think that people don't really think about this very thoroughly - about why someone might join a gang in prison and why they might be even more likely to join one in prison versus when they're out on the outside?

E : I would have to say dealing with the gangs… Well, I'm going to start first with what the brother asked about what stimulates the violence. Me personally, I feel that the violence is stimulated by the overt oppressive nature of the beast and what they're doing. Like y'all already had mentioned, they're constantly taking [things] away and keeping us confined to a box. And you take three or four different tribes, who normally may get along, or see eye-to-eye on a business level or whatever the terms may be, but you put them in a box and you don't separate them or give them anything to be… So you may know that this area may be predominantly this culture, or that area may be predominantly that culture, but I'm going to take them all and mix them up, just so I can make it confusing. Because to me, it seems like they stir the violence up because that's the type of media they need to put their spin on things.

Then it goes back to the [cell phones], and we come and tell the truth on the fact and that's a problem for them, because they're going to say [the violence] is because of a cell phone, or it's because of this and that. They're not going to sit there and tell you it's because [they] keep oppressing us, and taking away from us, and not giving us any outlets to do and be about positive things. [3]

Nowadays, you got the tribes, or the "gangs" as some may say, coming up with positive ideas to do and bring together and unify, despite what the police or the officers are doing. They're steady trying to take away all our hope, but we still got brothers and organizations coming together, still trying to rectify unity on a level where we don't even have nothing to look forward to. So you can only imagine how discouraging it gets when it's like we're striving to do so much better and so much greater but we're still getting a foot on our neck. Me personally, that can ignite [drama] any time, any place, on the street, in the penitentiary, wherever.

So I have to say, it's incited by them, themselves. I feel like they feel like, if enough violence goes on, they can put their spin on it and they can basically - like my comrade said - bring lock-up to the yard. They keep us locked down for nothing. Every little thing, they blame it on [staff shortages]. They don't give us showers, they blame it on [staff shortages].

If an incident goes on, there's no officers there to protect anybody. That's another thing about the gangs. Nowadays, you don't know, these young brothers might need protection. They can't look at the officers and say these officers are going to protect me and keep me safe. It ain't no such thing as that. You gotta fend for yourself back here. So I look at that, that's another reason why people are joining these gangs like that. Not everyone, but you can only imagine, you've got kids coming back here 16, 17, have nobody. You're throwing them in here with [prisoners] in a maximum security prison with a 100 year [sentences]. You're going to have to have somebody or some type of way to get around. Or some people just lose hope and just fall by the wayside, and just do whatever they've got to do to get through, but you got some people that try. And to me, it's like sometimes the gangs [are] a better outlet for them, because then they don't have to worry about people taking advantage of them.

Because like I said, it's fend for yourself back here. It ain't like it used to be where you had enough officers and stuff. [Back then], something might pop off, it might go down, and it gets broken up and under control. Nah, now the officers are running the opposite way.

You might try to escape from being hurt, they'll lock you on the wings and cause your death. That's exactly why they're trying to take these phones, because we're the ones who are putting that out there and letting people know this is what they're doing. This man live could've been saved, but the officers didn't do their job.

S : People aren't born criminals. They are criminalized by the environments they are socialized within. United States Constitution's 13th Amendment is proof alone that the mass amount of the warehousing of prisoners is not by accident. And even prisoners convicted of violent crime or who may be involved in violent activities, they may one day return to society still. People's cases can be overturned, some of these guys got max-out dates, some may make parole. So wouldn't it be wise for them to be implementing programs that would better the prisoners, not make them worse? They should want to heal anything that they consider to be sick or whatever.

Society itself promotes and produces violence. People ain't getting like that in prison, they're already like that out there. [4] Television, movies, video games, comic books, novels, cartoons alone. They are indoctrinating this psychological behavior. They're doing that out there in society.

Like the brother said, some of these guys that are locked-up in here are juveniles. That's a learned behavior, they weren't born violent. And in regards to the survival thing, we create our own means of survival, because the state don't provide us with adequate supplies of anything. They give us one roll of tissue a week. One roll a week, that's it. It's 15-18 hours between meals in here sometimes. That's just reality.

Only prison industries workers get paid for working. Everybody else's work is free labor. But we're looking at these other prisoners going to work, knowing that they're getting a paycheck, they even file taxes. They can pay child support and provide for their families on it. All prisoners should get paid for all work, not just prison industries.

They're making millions of dollars off federal prisoners and state prisoners across the country through prison industries. That's facts.

D: Very true. Most prisoners, when they come to prison, come with the mindset that they want to get themselves together, and I think a lot of people miss that right there. Even the ones that are labeled violent--and when I hear people say "violent," we have to be careful with that term. Because a lot of times people are using this term "violent," and we're seeing politicians saying "well, we're not going to be supporting violent offenders." It's a new theme now, where we just promote policies [that benefit] non-violent offenders. And that kind of sickens me because, at the end of the day, who determines what's violent? Who determines what's a violent offender? To me, that's a bunch of people making up these laws, and they determine what's violent and what is not. And a lot of times people have non-violent offenses and these are straight up violent offenses in my eyes. You know, so I'm very careful with that term non-violent versus violent offenders.

The people that they want to categorize and label as violent offenders for the most part, these brothers and the women that come into prison, they come in with the mindset that they want to do the right thing. I think the minute they enter through those gates, and the minute they begin to observe their surroundings, they begin to recognize immediately, that any change they wanted to do, they don't need to do it, because they're going to be perceived a certain way and they're going to be handled a certain way, you know, and it's going to be a lose-lose situation for them. And people have to really understand that humans are entering through these gates and becoming prisoners, and in the process of that, the environment back here is making it worse. It is creating something in these prisoners that is a lot worse than when they came in for a lot of these guys and women.

Because, once again, they may have done some terrible things out there, but for the most part, when they start going through and they recognize the days ahead of them, they want to change, they want to do something different. Hell, I know I was about that when I came in here until I went through the reception and evaluation center, and saw it wasn't going to work out that way.

That is another reason why some people want to group up. Some people want family back here as well. I like to call them street formations [as opposed to using the term gang]. A lot of times, people need someone that can look out and care for their best interests, too. Not just in the protection role, but also somebody that gives a damn, because the system is so cold. So when you're sitting back here, and you're drinking, you're smoking, you're dabbing, you're talking about your loved ones with your homeboy there, that's a different feeling versus when you can get outside that cell and you're looking at the prison itself, and the environment itself, which is a cold place.

So everybody looks for some sense of comfort, some sense of love, which is another reason I think the prison system eliminating our contacts, our family ties, is really detrimental to prisoners re-entering society successfully, but that's another subject.

S: Let me do a quick rebuttal on what he said on the non-violent versus violent offenders, because I like what he said. Out there in society, when they're talking about what people are incarcerated for--like if somebody is convicted for murder--that's considered to be a violent offense. But that could've been a first time offense. And then he comes to prison, he's been in prison for fifteen years, and he ain't never had another violent offense on his record, he ain't never had a violent offense in prison, he's not involved in any violent activity [on the inside], so why is he still considered to be a violent person? Just because he's got a violent charge on his record, that don't mean that he's indulging in violent activities. Because sometimes, the people in prison that have non-violent charges, sometimes they're the ones involved in violent activities back here.

Jared: Lee Correctional Facility is named after the county, Lee County. And that county is named after Robert E. Lee. So you have a Confederate General and a former slave owner and you have a facility that is in his name, that really, as you all have mentioned, really carries on that same tradition into 2018. To what degree do you think this registers with prisoners? What does it mean to prisoners that make that connection?

D: And when did Lee open up, 1994?

Jared: Yeah in that era. [3] And just to give a little more context, the county was first named Lee County in the 1890's after Reconstruction had ended.

S: My only response to that is that the prisoners, who were probably from the Bishopville area who may have had that information through the educational system, or conscious prisoners who read and research things--those prisoners might be aware of that, but for the vast majority of prisoners, that don't have any significance to them because most of them are not aware of that.

D: I would have to second that. I don't think prisoners for the most part have any awareness of that. Matter of fact, to be honest with you, as much reading as I have done, as much cultural reading as I have done, I was very ignorant of that up until very recently, up until the last several weeks. I just learned this information.

As far as the effect, I can tell you for me, personally, it says something about progress and where we were at mentally. When this prison came about, I think between '92 and '94, for you to still name a prison after that during that time period... Although, don't get it wrong, we all know a prison is nothing more than a modern day plantation. So we understand that fact, so really it's quite fitting. But still, it would seem you wouldn't want to name one of your state institutions after this right here. It seems like someone would raise their hand and say, "No."

I think that also tells me, as a Black man, how conditioned a lot of Black people are around in these southern areas as well. Because I'm sure that they knew what the Lee County name stood for, what the name represented. The ones that voted in this particular institution in that area, the ones that were saying it would hold this name, they knew, and they didn't say anything.

This is the type of mindset we're dealing with in the state of South Carolina today, which is why I'm constantly reminding people we have the highest rate as it relates to racial disparities in the nation. We are in the top six or seven states as far as racial disparities as it relates to sentencing and imprisonment rates in the nation. I think we're only like 20-30 percent of the population in South Carolina [4] and over 60-something percent of the prison population. [5]

They did a recent study not too long ago that told us that Black people specifically were being automatically over-sentenced by judges. It said if you were Black, you were 50 times more likely to get jail time for a minor offense versus if you were any other race. If you were compared to white defendants, you were over 70 percent more likely to be sentenced to longer sentences, based on your race. [6] Everybody knows the color of the state of South Carolina when you walk into the prison system. [5] I think all of this is an indicator of the nature of the beast that we are dealing with.

And I have to note that, even when South Carolina was going through their Reconstruction phase, all of these same Blacks that were a part of the Reconstruction phase were eventually thrown out of power, and that's because there was a compromise between the North and the South. And we have to always remember that right there. That's when we get back to 1865, that's when we get back to the 13th Amendment, that constitutional amendment and the compromise that was reached across the table. The power dynamics in the South has never changed. And I think we're seeing the rottenness of it in today's times. That's why I think we're seeing these extreme responses, these extreme reactions in the prison systems throughout these southern states.

S: Every time prisoners do strive to organize, to come together to make things better for themselves, the administration really doesn't give you much support or they attack you. For example, one of my comrades, he recently had been released from prison over the last year or so. He was housed at Lee County at one point and he was a coordinator on the compound.

He was able to organize over 150 members every week to come together positively, sit down and have discussions, and things of that nature. Whenever there would be any type of altercations or whatever, they would try to talk over things first and most often if they couldn't, then they would handle it like men and knuckle it up. But there wasn't so much knives, and people getting killed or stabbed up. All of that was calmed down for a while. So you had the STG (Security Threat Group) supervisor from headquarters and he got with the warden at that time, and they called him to a conference and they wanted him to explain to them how is it that you could have Crips, Bloods, Muslims, etc., in the same room every week and there's never any violence going on? The [STG] told [the warden] that [the prisoners] were up to something, that's how they felt. And what did they do to [the prisoner coordinating the program]? They shipped him to another institution.

When they moved him to another institution, they started to do things on the Lee County yard from a program perspective. To make a long story short, [the coordinator] was eventually sent home. While he went home, now you had other things popping off at other yards, who didn't have these types of positive things going on. They moved these guys around, piled all these guys up on one yard, all on one side, waited for one thing to happen. Boom! You get the worst thing that happened in the last 25 years. That was strategically implemented.

D: Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that's very important to note that, back to Lee County very briefly, that all of this right here is not by accident. None of it is by accident. That's the sad part about it. [6]

S: Yeah, they were used as lab rats. One more thing with regards to laws and stuff like that: a lot of times in South Carolina, people get convicted unjustly. And whenever somebody discovers that--and it's something that affects a lot of prisoners--and they put it into the courthouse and they pass a law or something on it, and they know they've done a lot of wrong to a lot of people, but what they'll do is they'll slide a word in it so that [it doesn't take effect] retroactively. Because if they had to [implement it] retroactively, they'd have to let a lot of people go, because they convicted a lot of people unjustly. They've been doing that for the longest.

Jared: So I want to give you all an opportunity to talk about change. What changes would you like to see in the prison system? What changes do you think could improve the situation? And then the second part of that is, what would you like to see people on the outside do to support? But let's start with the first part.

D: So what changes would we like to see in the prison system?

Jared: Yeah. I know some of you are abolitionists, but what can be done for immediate needs in terms of reforms.

D: Yeah, I'm always thinking about it as a dismantling process. I've been trying to push that for a while. We call it a dismantling process. And that gives the opportunity for other people to get in with their reform ideas, because I don't think we can go from one angle all the way to the other angle, like from zero to a hundred, it's just not going to happen like that. It is not going to play out like that.

Nonetheless, some of the things that I feel can actually improve. Improvement. First and foremost, sentencing. Sentencing reform in the state of South Carolina. It's not just sentencing reform in the state of South Carolina, it's actually sentencing reform across the nation. They need to get rid of that Truth-In-Sentencing deal, period.

We need an end of dehumanizing conditions, and that means food improvement. We need open yards again, not just enclosed rec yards, we need these open rec yards again, where prisoners can move. We need prisoners to start being treated like humans. We need more rights to our visits. We need education programs, I'm a big one on education programs, in particular Pell Grants, there's some other names, they need to be brought back to the prison systems again.

Not only that, but what the state of South Carolina did as the prison population fell they--instead of closing down the maximum security prisons, they closed down their work releases. We need work releases re-opened back up and expanded. Then we need one last thing: we need pay. We need prisoners to be able to be paid for their labor. If you're doing general labor, you need to be able to be paid for that labor, just the way it comes in at ending prison slavery. We need to end prison slavery, which I think is a trigger toward abolitionist work. But nonetheless, we need to end prison slavery to bring back a lot of these prisoners getting paid their wages. So I think those are immediate things that can be improved on. Was there another question beyond that?

Jared: The second question was, what can people on the outside do that actually care about the situation, care about the conditions of prisoners, care about what's going on in South Carolina?

D: On the outside right now, one of the biggest things we're moving into in particular in Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, we need to move into becoming more involved in the electoral process, in particular local politics. We need to become more involved in that. We're hoping that our loved ones outside that support us, we need to organize more ground support as it relates to prisons. We need to see more protests, we need to see more meetings with these directors, we need to see more organizing at state capitols. We need to see more support of what has already been initiated on the ground in the state of South Carolina.

We need to figure out how to get our local county jails and get people who are detained there registered to vote, and get the voting machines into these county jails, and get these prisoners the ability that they can have the vote. The problem with state of South Carolina is it's a good-old-boy system, and we need to change the face of it. And the only way we're going to be able to change it is we have to get more involved in the electoral process, but not just voting for a Democrat or Republican or Independent or whatever, but voting for people that have prisoner's best interests. [7] Every group of people have interests and we have to find people that have our interests at heart.

E: I really agree with what D said, that's all I was really going to say, really, about sentencing reform, more programs, even the better nutrition, and rec, let us get some physical exercise and more education.

S: I think we also need an outside grievance system. Because the grievance system is definitely not fair or impartial back here. The same people that work for the prison are the same people who are deciding if we should get results or not from our grievances. Everything else I think the brother already covered. But I also want to say for society, to them let he who has not sinned cast the first stone. Prisoners, some of us in here, have made mistakes and some of us did the things we did, but we made mistakes. But we have paid for our mistakes. Show some humanity. That's what we want society to do is show some humanity.

D: One last note that I wanted to add, the ground is vibrating right now for a national strike August 21st throughout the nation. We have a number of states that are already vowing to participate in this national strike, particularly in support of the state of South Carolina and the recent issues that just happened. They say South Carolina is an example of what's actually occurring throughout the nation. It just so happened that these particular people died here [at Lee Correctional] so they want to get in the back of this right here and they want to highlight it by mobilizing throughout the inside.

So we can ask those folks to support it on the outside, we need to support it on the outside to really support these actions. Let the people know that wherever prisoners may decide to have a strike or a sit in that the public is mindful and they are watching for any type of retaliatory actions that may take place throughout the process of this resistance that may be taking place across this nation, on August 21st.

Jared: Great, absolutely, is there anything else anyone wants to add about Lee or any of the other points where we might have missed something?

E: I would just like to add that in the aftermath of the incident that happened over at Lee, and all over the state, we're being massively punished. No showers, power is being cut off all this time, we've been locked down for a week, almost going on two weeks, and we've only had one shower and that was like, they cut the hot water off. What type of inhumane thing is that?

Jared: Are there other conditions you want people to know about since the incident at Lee that haven't been addressed?

S: One of the things is they have the metal plates on the window where you can't see outside, you can't see the sunlight, you can't see the grass or the daylight. They got it sealed out where you can't get no oxygen through it, the ventilation is all messed up, these are things that they just recently did. They're putting flaps on the doors so you can just slide the meal through it. They are animalizing the prisoners.

Jared Ware is a freelance writer and advocate for the rights of incarcerated peoples. He is also the producer of the prison abolitionist podcast Beyond Prisons, and co-host and co-producer of the anti-capitalist podcast Millennials Are Killing Capitalism.

Notes

[1] Truth In Sentencing Laws were part of a national movement in the mid-nineties to end parole and increase the length of prison sentences, as well as ensuring that offenders for certain offenses served at least 85% of their sentences. Although it was a national movement, here are some details about South Carolina's laws: http://www.ncrp.info/StateFactSheets.aspx?state=SC

[2] According to Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, "state pay" was a system where the state paid every prisoner, for example, $5.45 an hour for up to 18 hours every two weeks. It was enough to buy real hygiene products, a few snacks, and smokes. Prison officials took it away during the national changes that were rolled out in the mid-nineties.

[3] It opened up in 1993 according to SCDC http://www.doc.sc.gov/institutions/lee.html

[4] 27.5% according to the most recent US Census https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/SC/PST045216

[5] Black people represent 62% of the prison population in South Carolina, despite representing roughly 28% of the state population.

[6] This may not be the study D is referencing, but here is a study that talks about disparities in sentencing in South Carolina and other states: http://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/The-Color-of-Justice-Racial-and-Ethnic-Disparity-in-State-Prisons.pdf

An Economic Theory of Law Enforcement

By Edward Lawson

Law enforcement is a necessary endeavor in society. Government makes laws, but someone must enforce those laws, through violent coercion if necessary. The American ideal is that the people elect the government and the government serves the people, so naturally the police serve the people as well. However, the actual activities of the police call this normative account into question. I argue that government--the state--serves the will of anonymous, extraordinarily wealthy oligarchs, and it passes laws that benefit them at the expense of the rest of society. In addition, I argue that the police are the primary tool of enforcing compliance with the wishes of oligarchs among society, and that they alter their behavior based on the socioeconomic conditions of the area in which they operate.

The recent deaths of individuals such as Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO and Walter Scott in North Charleston, SC, are only the most recent, high-profile incidents of police acting according to this purpose. Police violence, as well as mass incarceration, maintain a state of fear among the working class, as well as the ongoing division between races within the working class, in order to prevent organization for common cause. Oligarchs--the anonymous, incredibly wealthy individuals who exert disproportionate pressure on the state to do their bidding--use institutions such as the police to hold and expand their power.

Operating behind the state provides oligarchs with a veneer of legitimacy, particularly in a democracy. That legitimacy extends to the police, who have state-sanctioned authority to enforce compliance with the law and punish noncompliance with violence. However, rather than using that authority to benefit society, they use it to oppress the poor and placate the affluent--those who are comparatively wealthy but not oligarchs themselves.

On the Origin of States

Law enforcement organizations are agents of the state, and therefore the goals of the state are also the goals of law enforcement. This connection means that, in order to determine why members of law enforcement behave in certain ways, it is necessary to discuss the purpose of the state first. Fortunately, political theory devotes a great deal of attention to the origin and purpose of states. In all of the various theories on the origin of the state, the state exists as a product of individuals ceding at least some of their rights to a governing body. This body makes laws according to, generally (and idealistically), the will of the population it governs. However, what happens when some members of that population possess influence over the government in excess of others? What happens when a small minority dominate that government, and use it to benefit themselves rather than society?

In essence, this is how Winters (2011) views society, particularly in the United States. He argues that most societies are ruled by oligarchs, and he defines oligarchs as those who control large concentrations of material resources--wealth--and use those resources to defend and increase their wealth and position. Essentially, oligarchs use wealth to protect and improve their dominant position within society.

One purpose of the state is to protect property rights. In a Hobbesian state of nature, those who possess property are under constant threat of its loss to rivals who desire it. Therefore, individuals form states, in part, to legitimize claims of property rights and protect them from others who would try to take property away. The legitimized defense of property rights by the state is what Winters (2011) refers to as property defense, which is the first mechanism of oligarchs' wealth defense. The second, income defense, comes after property is secured. Income defense is the use of wealth to manipulate government into passing laws that protect the income of oligarchs as well as their property, at the expense of other citizens.

Using the mechanisms of wealth defense essentially subordinates the state to the oligarchs. The state, therefore, becomes an agent of oligarchs. The state's purpose is to preserve and promote the oligarch's power at the expense of the rest of the population and using the state as its defender provides a veneer of legitimacy. The oligarchs need the state to support their interests, otherwise they face the threat of losing their property, wealth, and power to an overwhelmingly large number of people who would certainly try to take that property and wealth if it were not protected by the state.

Special Bodies of Armed Men (With a Nod to V.I. Lenin)

How, then, does the state enforce the will of the oligarchs controlling it? If oligarchs are a small minority, how can they force the majority of the population to follow laws they create for the purpose of legitimizing their own wealth and power? What stops the rest of the population from simply destroying them? The answer lies in what Lenin (1918/1972) refers to as special bodies of armed men. In The State and Revolution, Lenin proposes his own theory on the origin of the state which seems closely aligned with that of Winters (2011). Lenin argues that the state is the product of irreconcilable class differences, specifically the conflict between those who own the means of production (the bourgeoisie) and those who produce (the working class).

The state is, therefore, a means for the oppression of one socioeconomic class by another. Oligarchs hoard wealth and use it to increase their power (and wealth) at the expense of the larger society. The rest of society prefers a societal organization that benefits the majority and leads to a more egalitarian distribution of material resources. The solution to this irreconcilable conflict is for the oligarchs to use their wealth and the associated power to construct a state that legitimizes their control of society.

The special bodies of armed men are the tool oligarchs use to enforce compliance with the state (Lenin 1918/1972). Specifically, these bodies are the military and the police. Both of these institutions have state-sanctioned authority to use violence in order to protect the state and force compliance with its laws. However, their domains are separate. The military address foreign threats to the state (and to the wealth and power of the oligarchs controlling it). The police address domestic threats and enforce compliance among citizens (Kraska 2007).

As Lenin (1918/1972) writes, ``A standing army and police are the chief instruments of state power." They are, then, the chief instruments of oligarchical power. The state exists to grant legitimacy to oligarchy and promote the interests of oligarchs. Special bodies of armed men (and women, of course) --the military and the police--exist to promote the interests of oligarchs as well. As agents of the state, they have legitimacy that an armed band of hired mercenaries would not. They have uniforms, rules of engagement, codified laws and policies, etc., to convey legitimacy to the public. But they are still only tools.

Indeed, an armed band of mercenaries, while more directly controllable by oligarchs, would also be counter-productive. As Winters (2011) argues, part of the power of oligarchs is that no one knows who they are. Hiring an armed mercenary group to enforce their will is a highly visible act and also lacks the legitimacy of a state-sponsored police force. The visibility shows the general public who the oligarch is that hired the group. The lack of legitimacy means that the public have much less incentive to comply with the group's instructions. Therefore, though hiring an armed band would give an oligarch more direct control, operating indirectly through control of the state is preferable.

Protect and Serve or Patrol and Control

As this paper discusses law enforcement, I leave the topic of the military to others. I have explained the origin of the state as a means for oligarchy to protect and expand its power, as well as the existence of police as a tool for enforcing the will of oligarchs. The next logical step, then, is to address why some people receive harsher treatment from police than others. If law enforcement organizations exist to enforce the will of the state, which exists to legitimize the will of oligarchs, why is every state not a tyrannical dictatorship? There are several reasons.

One may assume that, for this theoretical framework to hold, then police should be violently oppressing everyone within a society. This is a flawed conclusion. First, citizens who are not wealthy enough to be oligarchs but are what Winters (2011) calls the "merely affluent" have a considerable stake in maintaining the society's respect for property rights and protection of incomes even if they do not exercise control over the state or have as much wealth as the oligarchs who do. These merely affluent citizens are not wealthy enough to exert control over the state, but they are wealthy enough to have lives of relative comfort which they do not want to jeopardize. A regime that oppresses all citizens risks encouraging the affluence of society to pool their resources in order to fight against the oligarchs even with the protection of the state. Those pooled resources, combined with sheer numbers as the lower class joins the effort, have a real chance of overwhelming the oligarchs despite their wealth advantage. In particular, the police and the military may join the side of the oppressed rather than stay with the oppressors, which eliminates the state's means for enforcing the oligarch's will.

The affluent are also much more visible. They are typically community leaders or, at least, respected residents. They know each other. The media recognizes them. A regime that turns oppressive against the affluent also risks exposing the oligarchs to media scrutiny, which could have the effect of rallying the affluent from all of society to a common cause of self-defense.

In addition, the limited wealth of the affluent provide an incentive to not ``rock the boat." Just as the oligarchs want to protect their wealth, so do the affluent even if their wealth is considerably less. Without the pressure of a tyrannical regime, they have little incentive to resist the state and risk losing their relatively comfortable position.

Instead, oligarchs direct the power of the state--and, by extension, the police--against the poor. The poor are more numerous, which by itself presents an increased threat. If the lower class could unite itself against the oligarchs, no amount of material resources could stop them. However, they are less able to organize than the affluent for a few reasons. First, they are much less visible despite their numerical advantage. The poor do not receive much media coverage (except, perhaps, to demonize them) and are not typically well known in a community. Second, those who join the military and police typically come from the poorer sections of society. This means that, essentially, the state can effectively divide much of the lower class against itself. Third, they spend most of their time focusing on meeting basic survival needs and do not have the time or energy to organize themselves as the affluent might. Fourth, in addition to lacking time and energy for organization, they also lack the material resources necessary for mounting a large scale and sustained organizing effort.

This last point is important for another reason: although the poor lack the means to organize, they also have the least to lose from trying. If they manage to overcome the impediments to mounting an organized opposition to the oligarchs, it is likely to be much more radical precisely because they risk so little. As opposed to the affluent, the poor have much less incentive to avoid ``rocking the boat" in order to protect what they have. They have, essentially, nothing, and have nothing to lose if they oppose the oligarchs and fail.

For these reasons, oligarchs are more likely to use state power to oppress the poor and placate the affluent. Police enforce the laws of the state, and the state passes laws to benefit the oligarchs, so the laws of the state and the behavior of the police in enforcing those laws will mirror this purpose. This leads to the dichotomy of protect and serve versus patrol and control.

Protect and serve is the normative idea of policing as experienced by the affluent. The police are public servants. They are trustworthy, kind, friendly, honest, brave, etc. The affluent tell their children that they can always go to a police officer for help. The affluent trust the police to enforce the laws of the state because the laws of the state are designed to maintain their comfortable position. The police protect law and order in society. If a member of the affluent violates the law and pays a fine or goes to prison, it is that person's fault for violating the law, but they can make bail, continue with their lives, and receive a capable defense in a fair trial. The police only enforce law. They do not have much discretion, nor do they allow their own prejudice to alter their behavior. They are Sheriff Andy Taylor in Mayberry.

On the other hand, the poor experience patrol and control. The police are militarized oppressors. They take on the mindset of an occupying army holding down an enemy population. Rather than serving the public, they serve the state and its oppressive controllers. The poor tell their children not to run to the police for help but to avoid them as much as possible. And, if they cannot avoid them, to peacefully and quietly comply with any and all directions in order to avoid jail, assault, or death. The poor fear the police rather than trust them, and they see the laws as a means to facilitate their oppression rather than maintain law and order. Indeed, ``law and order" is just a code phrase for the violent and discriminatory oppression of the poor and minorities. If a poor person violates the law, which they may be forced to do for survival, that person is put in jail where they sit for months, maybe years, because they cannot afford bail. They get an overworked, underpaid public defender in a trial they have no hope of winning before going to prison. After prison, they cannot find a job and will probably have to return to illegal means for survival, which repeats the same process over again. The police have significant discretion to decide how to deal with the public, and they choose to deal with the poor harshly and violently. To the poor, they are Judge Dredd.

Conclusion

In this paper, I have sketched out a theory of law enforcement that explains how police alter their behavior based on the socioeconomic conditions of the people with whom they interact. I began by describing several theories on the origin of states, highlighting the commonalities between them and linking them with a more modern theory of states which formed the foundation of my later discussion. I next explained how special bands of armed men--the military and the police--are tools used by the state to enforce the will of the oligarchs who control it, granting both legitimacy and anonymity to the oligarchs. Finally, I describe why and how police officers provide different treatment to different socioeconomic groups.

This paper is a theoretical work, but it has a great deal of potential empirical purchase. Indeed, research already suggests its accuracy. Some work demonstrates the discretion of police and how they teach the public about their place in society (Oberfield 2011). Other work suggests that police violence is a means of controlling the poor in society (Chevigny 1990) or of maintaining inequality (Hirschfield 2015).

References

Chevigny, Paul G. "Police Deadly Force as Social Control: Jamaica, Argentina, and Brazil." Criminal Law Forum, vol. 1, no. 3, 1990, pp. 389-425., doi:10.1007/bf01098174.

Hirschfield, Paul J. "Lethal Policing: Making Sense of American Exceptionalism." Sociological Forum, vol. 30, no. 4, 2015, pp. 1109-1117., doi:10.1111/socf.12200.

Kraska, P. B. "Militarization and Policing--Its Relevance to 21st Century Police." Policing, vol. 1, no. 4, 2007, pp. 501-513., doi:10.1093/police/pam065.

Lenin, Vladimir Illyich. "The State and Revolution." Marxists Internet Archive, 1999, www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/.

Oberfield, Zachary W. "Socialization and Self-Selection: How Police oCers Develop Their Views about Using Force." Administration & Society, vol. 44, no. 6, 2011, pp. 702-730., doi:10.1177/0095399711420545.

Winters, Jeffrey A. Oligarchy. Cambridge University Press, 2012.

The Endless American Horror: Lynching and Police

By Devon Bowers

This article was originally published on AHTribune.com.

Please note that this article contains graphic descriptions of lynchings. Discretion is advised.

In 1918 Brook County, Georgia, a local plantation owner was killed by Sidney Johnson, a black man who had been leased out to the plantation via the convict lease system, in a dispute over unpaid wages. Upon hearing this, the white community went on a rampage and lynched not only Johnson, but anyone they thought to even be remotely involved in Johnson's decision. One of these men was Hayes Turner. Not only was he lynched, but also castrated.

Turner's wife, Mary, who was eight months pregnant at the time, began to speak out against her husband's lynching; unfortunately, she too, became a victim. A white mob "hanged her by her feet, set her on fire, sliced her stomach open, and pulled out her baby, which was still alive." They stomped on the child's head, killing it. Then the mob "[took] the time to sew two cats in Mrs. Turner's stomach and making bets as to which one would climb out first."[1]

This can be described as nothing short of demonic. In many ways, even that fails to fully encompass the horror and pure wickedness of this event. Though, the only thing more horrid is that in a way, lynchings continue in the form of police murder.

Before delving into the connections between the aforementioned violence, it is imperative to first understand lynching. The origins of lynching truly lie in slavery where "there were numerous public punishments of slaves, none of which were preceded by trials or any other semblance of civil or judicial processes. Justice depended solely upon the slaveholder." [2] Punishment ranged from lashings to family separation to mutilation and branding. The overall idea behind these actions were that black people were not human beings, in a way, they weren't even property, they were just things, lesser than both humans and animals. This mindset continued in the post chattel slavery era, where slavery took on the form of both the convict leasing and sharecropping systems respectively. Yet, it also took place in the form of mob violence against blacks.

There have been many explorations as to the reasoning behind lynching. E.M. Beck, a professor of sociology at the University of Georgia, posited the argument that lynching was linked to the cotton markets. He argued that lynchings "[increased] during times of sparse cotton revenues, and declining with increasing cotton profits." The lack of profit from cotton led unemployed whites to want to replace black workers and that "Mob violence was a form of intimidation to facilitate this labor substitution." [3] While further studies have shown that fluctuations in cotton pricing don't explain lynching [4], it should be noted that white elites would have an interest in fueling white angst into hatred against blacks, effectively utilizing poor whites as foot soldiers in their mission to maintain the current racial and economic hierarchy.

The cause of lynching was first and foremost the culture of white supremacy that had existed for the past two centuries or so. Blacks became scapegoats for many of the problems that were going on and thus a subculture of violence that had arguably already taken root in the days of slavery, took on new form. "The existence of a subculture presupposes a complex pattern of norms, attitudes and actions" which "reflects 'a potent theme of violence current in the cluster of values that make up the life-style, the socialization process, [and] the interpersonal relationships of individuals living in similar conditions." [5] Effectively, violence becomes normalized and is used as a tool of to socialize and condition people as to how the society operates.

This normalization and conditioning can be seen in the form of the lynching. Lynchings were very much a community affair in which legal authorities seldom if ever got involved as "the judge, prosecutor, jurors and witnesses-all white-were usually in sympathy with the lynchers" and "local police and sheriffs rarely did anything to defend Negro citizens and often supported lynchings." [6] Newspapers as well were extremely biased in covering lynchings. "Southern editors often used sympathetic language in describing lynch mobs while reserving callous damnation for lynch victims. The southern press was extremely creative when it came to providing moral, if not legal, justification for the action of lynch mobs."[7]

We can see the affect that journalists had on the public's view of lynching in the case of the murder of the Hodges family in Statesboro, Georgia.

Henry and Claudia Hodges lived on a remote farm, near a black community, some of whom were the employees of the Hodges. Late on the night of July 28, 1904, two men saw the Hodges home aflame. They went to investigate and found the mutilated, charred remains of the entire family. The suspected motive was robbery as it was known that Hodges was better off than most farmers and it was even rumored that he possibly had several hundred dollars stashed away on his property.

The following morning, Bulloch County sheriff John Kendrick formed a group to hunt down the killers. After discovering strands of hair, a knife, a shoe, and tracks of mud, they were led to a small shack occupied by Paul Reed, a black laborer. While Paul denied involvement, he, along with his wife Harriet, were arrested and taken to jail. When being interrogated, Harriet broke down and revealed that her husband and another black man, Paul Cato, had planned to rob the Hodges. The shoe matched the one found on the Hodges farm and blood stains on his clothing seemed to seal the deal with regards to Paul Reed's guilt, however, no money was found. The sheriff also arrested thirteen other blacks who lived in the general vicinity.

Despite the lack of hard evidence in the form of money, newspapers assumed Reed's guilt. The Macon Telegraph wrote "The wholesale butchery . . . of the Hodges family near Statesboro by dehumanized brutes adds another to the long list of horrors perpetrated in this state since the emancipation of the African slaves in 1865" and noted that "the people of [Statesboro] ... displayed great moral courage and forbearance in permitting the perpetrators to escape summary punishment without the forms of law,"[8] a statement clearly hinting that lynching was on the table as an option. Others went even further in their demonization of the alleged perpetrators, such as the editor of Statesboro News who penned "Good farmers awoke to the fact that they are living in constant danger, and that human vampires live in their midst, only awaiting the opportunity to blot out their lives." [9] Language such as this only served to heighten white anxiety and fears that a black uprising had occurred in response to white mistreatment, something that had been the in the backs of their minds since the institution of slavery began.

The media actively went and pushed erroneous and misleading evidence, such as was with Morning News which stated that Reed had made a 'partial confession' to the murders, despite there being a lack of legal evidence to support the assertion. The Statesboro News continued to utilize inflammatory language, publishing an article which said in part "Their guilt has been established beyond a doubt - every chain has been traced and all lead to their door." [10] Additional stories argued that the rape of both Mrs. Hodges and their daughter Katy, where the real motives for the motive for the murders, again without the slightest shred of evidence.

Newspapers also noted that Reeds and Cato belonged to a distinct subset of blacks who were lazy and shiftless. This contrasts with the blacks who 'know their place' in society and often work on white farms. The only reason this was even discussed was because there were rumors floating around that the Hodges family may have been killed due to Mr. Hodges being too friendly with blacks, something that only aided to reinforce the region's racial caste system and conjure images of murderous black people who would attack whites were they to let their guard down.

An Atlanta News editorial minced few words in its character analysis: "It is true that the negroes in the turpentine campus of south Georgia are in the main a lot of irresponsible and half-savage vagabonds, apparently hopeless to the redeeming efforts of civilization, and that their presence makes a continual menace and threat to the peace and safety of the people."[11]

On August 15, the court case finally got underway. Superior Court Judge Alexander Daley was forbidden by Georgia law to request a change in court venue, despite his wanting to as to possibly give people time to 'cool off.' This was actually dangerous in some ways as such changes were often used by mobs as an excuse to lynch blacks on the grounds that they may have a chance to 'escape justice.'

When the trial began, the press continued to present rumor as fact. The Statesboro News reported that Reed had admitted to being part of a gang of blacks who were roaming the Bulloch County countryside, robbing, raping, and killing whites. Once again this increased the amount of fear in whites and put them more dead-set on lynching. It didn't help that throngs of whites were milling about outside the courthouse.

The actual trial was incredibly brief, lasting less than a day and a half, with Reed's and Cato's respective defenses lasting barely eight minutes, both men plead innocent. Still, the court sentenced them to hanging. As soon as this was done, the white mobs that had been surrounding the courthouse burst in and took both men, making no effort to hide their identities, despite the fact that soldiers (without any ammunition) had been dispatched to protect the men. Both men were beaten and eventually doused in kerosene and set ablaze and dead by 3:30 pm.

Many newspapers actively defended the lynching. The Forest Blade published an editorial which argued "While we will not say we are in favor of lynching principles, there are crimes - and this is one of them - that fully justified the act," similarly another editorial in the Sparta Ishmelite wrote "What society does not do for them [Georgia's whites], efficiently, they do for themselves." [12] The press played a major role in increasing tensions and outright encouraging lynchings, a serious act which helped to normalize the very act itself.

The normalization of lynching was rampant in Southern society. In 1893 in Paris, Texas, a black man by the name of Henry Smith was lynched for allegedly killing and raping the sheriff's daughter. Smith's lynching was in that a spectacle was made of it. It was the first "blatantly public, actively promoted lynching of a southern Black by a large crowd of southern whites with features such as 'the specially chartered excursion train, the publicly sold photographs, and the wide circulated, unabashed retelling of the event by one of the lynchers.'" [13] It should be examined in detail that there were a number of "event-like themes, such as a float, carnival, and parade" all of which indicates "that within the act of justice, the structures of entertainment were organized. […] In addition, the souvenir scrambling for burnt remains as well as promotional materials for acquisition or purchase provides a similar semblance to paraphernalia purchased at modern-day sporting events." [14]

Thus, what we see is within the context of lynching, there was also an aspect of entertainment and even revelry, as if it was something to be celebrated and loved. The squabbling over Smith's remains reinforces the unbroken idea from slavery that black people aren't human beings, but rather just things, in this case a trophy.

The situation went even further in the case of Jesse Washington, a 17 year old mentally disabled boy who was accused of murdering a white woman and subject to a kangaroo court. Children were even bought to view his horrific lynching:

Fifteen thousand men, women and children packed the square. They climbed up poles and onto the tops of cars. . . . Children were lifted up by their parents in the air. Washington was castrated, and his ears were cut off. A tree supported the iron chain that lifted him above the fire of boxes and sticks. Wailing, the boy attempted to climb the skillet hot chain. For this the men cut off his fingers. The executioners repeatedly lowered the boy into the flames and hoisted him out again. With each repetition, a mighty shout [from the crowd] was raised. [15]

It is in acts such as this, with the involvement of children and, as with Smith's lynching, the selling of Washington's remains as if they were memorabilia, that the murder of black people becomes normalized and something beyond a source of maintaining racial hierarchy, something akin to a form of entertainment. Among this murderfest, though, there were those who fought back such as Ida B. Wells.

Wells was a black woman who was mainly focused on battling racial discrimination and penning articles. This changed in 1892, "when a close childhood friend of hers, Thomas Moss, was lynched" in Memphis [16] Wells was of the mindset that lynching was an overreaction by whites against rapists, however, her views quickly changed given the fact that Moss was lynched for defending his grocery store from armed whites and being lynched for the simple act of self-defense. On top of this, Memphis law enforcement didn't even bother to lift a finger to arrest the lynchers, who were publicly known.

Wells took a bit of an academic-esque approach to the situation, thinking that if lynching were exposed as the incarnation of racial hatred it was, it would no longer be socially acceptable. For three months, she traveled around the South investigating lynchings and interviewing witnesses. She found that not only were Black men lynched for having consensual relationships with white women, but also virtually all lynchings became about rape after the lynching went public. She took her information and published a pamphlet entitled Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases. Eventually due to threats on her life, she fled Memphis and moved to Chicago, where she continued to write and speak out against lynching. Still, there were others who took a more hands on, self-defense approach to lynching as took place in Decatur, IL.

On June 3, 1893, in Decatur, IL, a black day labor by the name of Samuel L. Bush who had been accused of rape, was taken from the Macon County jail and lynched by a white mob after they had went on a rampage searching for him from March 31 to June 2. During this time, rather than meet with members of the black community to discuss Bush's situation, "State's Attorney Isaac R. Mills, Decatur Mayor David Moffett, Deputy Sheriff Harry Midkiff, and Decatur Marshal William Mason were meeting with Charles B. Britton and Charles M. Fletcher, the leaders of the vigilantes." They attempted to appease the leaders, with Mills stating that if Bush wasn't sentenced to death, "it would then be time to resort to extreme measures." [17]

Despite days of lynching rumors floating around, the authorities allowed for nearly one thousand people to gather across from the jail where Bush was being held and made no effort to move or in any way ensure Bush's safety. Just before 2 AM, "a mob composed of some of the county's leading citizens broke Sam Bush out of jail and lynched him." [18]

In response to the lynching, Wilson B. Woodford, the only black lawyer in town that Bush had hired, published an open letter to blacks living in Decatur, urging them to attend a mass meeting where a strategy for dealing with the lynching would be formed. At the meeting, Woodford advocated taking the legal route, pushing the state attorney, the same one who had been complicit in Bush's lynching, to take action. Some, such as Edward Jacobs, rejected it and pushed for armed blacks to go themselves and arrest Bush's murderers. The resolutions committee backed Woodford's strategy and messages were sent to both the governor and state attorney.

Woodford and Jacobs were coming from two separate worlds. Woodford, having a legal background, "was predisposed to distinguish between the law and enforcers of the law. Woodford, like other liberal race men and women, believed that racial prejudice and contempt for law and order were the twin causes of lynching" whereas Jacobs questioned this method of thinking. Jacobs acknowledged the cozy relationship between lynchers and the police and knew that "knew the authorities had mobilized the vigilantes to help them in capturing Bush but had rejected African-American support either to protect Bush or to arrest his murderers." [19]

Interestingly enough, the two strategies would merge as both Woodford and Jacobs were members of the National Afro-American League, an organization that push for black development and fight against white responses to said development. NAAL "combined the pre-eminent philosophy of self-help and racial solidarity with the protest tactics of legalism, direct action, and violent self-help."[20]

A year later, James Jackson, a black male porter, was accused of raping a white woman under questionable circumstances. The father of the woman was pushing for Jackson's lynching and stated that help was coming from Mt. Zion. This situation would turn out rather differently than Bush's.

Blacks controlled the streets surrounding the jail. They could be seen in doorways, under stair wells and behind wagons, armed and ready for action. Other African-Americans patrolled the streets scrutinizing whites who happened to be out at that late hour. And unlike at the protest meeting, at least two black women participated. [21]

They continued to patrol the streets around the courthouse, the police didn't attempt to intervene, and there were no attempts to lynch Jackson.

As the case with Bush shows, the police themselves were many times the very ones who were, at best, complicit (not that that truly matters), and at worst, active participants in lynchings. This shouldn't be surprising as not only were the police entrenched in the same racial mindset as the lynchers, but also the purpose of the police was (and is) a tool of social control, especially against black people.

The police themselves came out of slavery as "slave patrols and night watches, which later became modern police departments, were both designed to control the behaviors of minorities." [22] In fact, in 1871 Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act, "which prohibited state actors from violating the Civil Rights of all citizens in part because of law enforcements' involvement with the infamous group. "[23] (emphasis added) The police themselves oftentimes were directly involved in lynchings such as with the case of Austin Callaway, a sixteen year old boy.

Callaway was shot and killed in LaGrange, Georgia on September 8, 1940, having just a day earlier been accused of assaulting a white woman. He was arrested and taken to the local jail. Later that night, six men, one of them armed, went into the jail, forced the jailer to open the door, and murdered Callaway.[24] Though the killers were never found, it is known that the police were personally involved. It was noted in 2017 by LaGrange's police chief, Louis M. Dekmar, in an apology regarding Callaway's murder. Specifically, Dekmar said "I sincerely regret and denounce the role our Police Department played in Austin's lynching, both through our action and our inaction." [25] Callaway's story is just one in many[26] where police were directly or indirectly involved in lynchings. It is this historical backdrop in which police actively murder black people that today's police murders continue.

With lynchings, the body would hang for days as both a reminder to other blacks to 'stay in their place' but also a part of the aforementioned spectacle. This spectacle continues as can be seen with "the fact that Michael Brown's body was left on the street for hours after he was killed by police officer Darren Wilson," something "that points to just how little has changed in American race relations since the days of Jim Crow." [27] Leaving Brown's body out to languish was an illustration of the lack of concern and decency the Ferguson police department had for him and is reminiscent of leaving a lynch victim's body out for all to see, to remind everyone where black people stood on the racial hierarchy: the bottom.

The media, too, plays a role in police killings as they did during lynchings. Once again, the Michael Brown case puts this in stark view. Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed Brown, described him in disproportionate and even inhuman terms.

"When I grabbed him, the only way I can describe it is I felt like a five-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan," Wilson, who is 6′ 4″ and 210 lbs., said of Brown, who was 6′ 4″ and 292 lbs. at the time of his death. […]He said Brown tried to get his fingers inside the trigger. "And then after he did that, he looked up at me and had the most intense aggressive face. The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that's how angry he looked." [28]

Not only are black people described in nonhuman terms, but there is a constant implication that
they deserve to be shot due to past transgressions. In the case of Akai Gurley, "The New York Daily News ran a headline, Akai Gurley had criminal record, innocent when shot by cop, which they later switched out for ' Protesters call for arrest of rookie cop who shot Akai Gurley as victim's sister says he didn't deserve to die . '"[29] There is also guilt by association. When twelve year old Tamir Rice was killed by the police, the media bought up the fact that the family's lawyer had "also defended the boy's mother in a drug trafficking case" [30] and that Rice's father had a history of domestic violence. [31] Regularly, the media brings up information that has nothing to do with the actual incident in question, but actively works to defame and sully the victim's name.

Where there once were slave owners and slave catchers, the KKK, and lynch mobs, they have all now "become largely replaced by state agencies such as the criminal justice system, and local and federal police." [32] In August 2016, the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent went on a mission to the United States. In their conclusion on their findings, they wrote: "Contemporary police killings and the trauma that they create are reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching. Impunity for State violence has resulted in the current human rights crisis and must be addressed as a matter of urgency." [33]

This assessment is quite correct, especially within the ideas of the spectacle and normalization. While there may not be a sports theme to current police murders, there is a spectacle in and of itself in the near constant sharing of videos of black people dying at the hands of police and the footage being played again and again on the nightly news. While one shouldn't discount that videos are being shared to raise awareness and may very well get people involved in activism, at the same time by the videos being shared and viewed over and over, it can very well create a situation where it the death of black people is normalized and an immunity of sorts built up to it. As writer Feliks Garcia notes

To witness the final moments of someone's life is not supposed to be a regular experience, yet it feels like every week, we're presented with a new video of a different unarmed black man-or child-killed by police.

With the reach of social media, each of these videos is viewed ad nauseum, and you have to ask what purpose this serves. Who needs to see these videos at this point?[34]

Due to the constant viewing of black people dying at the hands of the police, coupled with the media's twisted narratives, seeing black people die becomes a normal occurrence.

The ongoing police murders of black people draw strong parallels to lynchings: from the involvement of the police to the utter dearth of justice to the larger social implications. It is both a tragedy and a nightmare, an endless horror.

Notes

[1] This American Life, Suitable For Children, https://www.thisamericanlife.org/627/transcript

[2] Robert L. Zangrando, About Lynching, http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/lynching/lynching.htm

[3] E. M. Beck, "The Killing Fields of the Deep South: The Market For Cotton and the Lynching of Blacks, 1882-1930," American Sociological Review 55:4 (August 1990), pg 526

[4] James W. Clarke, "Without Fear or Shame: Lynching, Capital Punishment and the Subculture of Violence in the American South," British Journal of Political Science 28:2 (April 1998), pg 272

[5] Clarke, pg 275

[6] Robert A. Gibson, The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States, 1880-1950 , Yale-New Haven Teacher's Institute, http://teachersinstitute.yale.edu/curriculum/units/1979/2/79.02.04.x.html

[7] Richard M. Perloff, "The Press and Lynchings of African Americans," Journal of Black Studies 30:3 (January 2000), pg 320

[8] Reed W. Smith, "Southern Journalists and Lynching: The Statesboro Case Study," Journalism and Communication Monographs 7:2 (2005), pg 63

[9] Ibid

[10] Ibid, pg 64

[11] Ibid, pg 65

[12] Ibid, pg 70

[13] Rasul A. Mowatt, "Lynching as Leisure: Broadening Notions of a Field," American Behavioral Scientist 56:10 (August 2012), pg 1371

[14] Ibid

[15] Ibid, pg 1376

[16] Amii Larkin Barnard, "The Application of Critical Race Feminism to the Anti-Lynching Movement: Black Women's Fight against Race and Gender Ideology, 1892-1920," UCLA Women's Law Journal 3:1 (January 1993), pg 15

[17] Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, "A Warlike Demonstration,' Legalism, Armed Resistance, and Black Political Mobilization in Decatur, Illinois, 1894-1898," The Journal of Negro History 83:1 (Winter 1998), pg 54

[18] Ibid

[19] Cha-Jua, pg 57

[20] Ibid

[21] Cha-Jua, pg 59

[22] Victor E. Kappeler, A Brief History of Slavery and the Origins of American Policing , http://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-and-origins-american-policing

[23] Ibid

[24] Northeastern University Law School, Austin Callaway, http://nuweb9.neu.edu/civilrights/georgia/austincallaway/

[25] Alan Binder, Richard Fausset, "Nearly 8 Decades Later, an Apology for a Lynching in Georgia," New York Times, January 26, 2017 ( https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/us/lagrange-georgia-lynching-apology.html )

[26] State Sanctioned, Police and State Involvement with Lynching, https://statesanctioned.com/police-and-state-involvement-with-lynching/

[27] David G. Embrick, "Two Nations, Revisited: The Lynching of Black and Brown Bodies, Police Brutality, and Racial Control in 'Post-Racial' Amerikkka," Critical Sociology 41:6 (June 2015), pg 837

[28] Josh Sanburn, "All The Ways Darren Wilson Described Being Afraid of Michael Brown," Time, November 25, 2014 ( http://time.com/3605346/darren-wilson-michael-brown-demon/ )

[29] Simple Justice, The Outrage of the Victim's Rap Sheet Must End, http://blog.simplejustice.us/2014/11/23/the-outrage-of-the-victims-rap-sheet-must-end/ (November 23, 2014)

[30] Brandon Blackwell, "Lawyer representing Tamir Rice's family defended boy's mom in drug trafficking case," Cleveland, November 24, 2014 ( http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/11/lawyer_representing_tamir_rice.html )

[31] Brandon Blackwell, "Tamir Rice's father has history of domestic violence," Cleveland, November 26, 2014 ( http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/11/tamir_rices_father_has_history.html )

[32] Embrick, pg 838

[33] United Nations General Assembly, Report on the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent on its mission to the United States of America , https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G16/183/30/PDF/G1618330.pdf?OpenElement (August 18, 2016)

[34] Feliks Garcia, "Police brutality is modern lynching- and you may be a part of it," Daily Dot, April 20, 2015 ( https://www.dailydot.com/via/black-men-police-violence-lynching-internet/ )

How Liberals Depoliticize White Supremacy

By Amir Khafagy

It could be argued that this past year was the year that the term "white supremacy" has gone mainstream. Everybody and their mother is talking about fighting or resisting white supremacy. White leftists are usually the ones who are seemingly throwing themselves on the front lines. They also come across as the most eager to smash white supremacy, ultimately overshadowing the ones who are directly oppressed by it. Since the arrival of Trump, liberals have joined the fray, focusing much of their anger on the man himself.

So, let me be real about this and come out and say that it bothers me. For the longest time I couldn't really articulate it but in my gut something just didn't feel right. The term "white supremacy" has never been a popular colloquial term, nor has it ever been even truly acknowledged by white America as a very real reality for most black Americans. If white supremacy was ever discussed, it was generally talked about in its isolated fringe form and relegated to annals of day-time talk shows.

Throughout the 90s I would remember the times I stayed home from school and watched sensationalist shows such as Jerry Springer or Geraldo Rivera when they would bring on neo-Nazis and Klan members to generate easy ratings. Geraldo even got his nose broken during one episode, when a Klan member threw a chair at his face. For the majority of white liberal Americans of the post-civil rights era, white supremacy has been viewed in the context as a mere relic of history only maintained by isolated, fringe, far-right groups. White supremacy was viewed as a part of history, not as existing in the present or lingering into the future.

Only with the rise of Trump have we begun to have mainstream discussions about the role white supremacy plays in our society. And that's great! We need to be having that discussion. Yet what has been lacking from that conversation is the systematic nature of white supremacy and how it's directly tied to capitalism. Liberals who claim to be part of the "resistance" are acting as if Trump has opened a long, dormant Pandora's Box of hatred, xenophobia, and white supremacy. The "resistance" accuses the current head of the American empire of being a white supremacist fascist, without ever questioning whether or not the American empire is inherently white supremacist in nature.

Much of the focus coming from liberal camps has been on the symbolism of what Trump the individual represents, and not on the material reality of what America represents. With this approach, the horror of white supremacy is ultimately stripped of its historical and current roll in supporting capitalism and empire. It becomes diluted when liberals only see white supremacy through the prism of individualistic, interpersonal relations.

Privilege politics is a manifestation of individualizing white supremacy. If "radical" means "grasping things at the root," like Angela Davis once said, then this myopic approach taken under the banner of privilege politics is the opposite of radical. It is superficial. Rather than recognizing and struggling against the structural forces that create white privilege in the first place, we are instead expected to politely ask that white people somehow give up their privileges; or, at very least, recognize that they have privilege.

It should be obvious to anyone that this approach makes little sense because it forces us to depend on white people to enact symbolic change while we surrender what little power we have in the first place to make fundamental change. Privilege politics also assumes that white supremacy in our society is result of individualistic patterns and behaviors - that is an outlier, not a norm. In reality, people's patterns and behaviors reflect the political and economic conditions of society. Systems don't change because people change, people change because systems change. All of this amounts to the depoliticizing of white supremacy, and it's preventing us from fully understanding that America's foreign, domestic, and economic policy is essentially white supremacy in action, and always has been.

For an example of what the depoliticization of white supremacy looks like, we can assess the reaction to the recent debate between Dr. Cornel West and writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. In an article he penned for the Guardian, Dr. West put it bluntly and accused Coates of being "the neoliberal face of the black freedom struggle." West went on to say that "any analysis or vision of our world that omits the centrality of Wall Street power, US military policies, and the complex dynamics of class, gender, and sexuality in black America is too narrow and dangerously misleading." He then adds his most powerful indictment by saying "In short, Coates fetishizes white supremacy. He makes it almighty, magical, and unremovable."

In looking past the controversy and fanfare sparked from his article, we can see that West's words and message are crucial. He accurately theorizes that any discussion which removes structural white supremacy from its central role in upholding America's capitalist empire will inadvertently end up reinforcing white supremacy. However, instead of seeing West's critique of Coates as a valid insight on the state of the black liberation struggle, most folks chose to frame the debate as some sort of personal beef between the two most prominent black intellectuals in the country, resembling some sort of Hip-Hop celebrity feud.

Detractors of West, such as Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, have even gone on accusing West of "throwing shade" because he's somehow jealous of Coates' success, echoing the same responses given to West's vital critiques of Obama. As if West's criticisms were based on piety narcissism rather than grounded in a legitimate concern for the fate of black America. It's just plain dismissive to reject what West has to say without fully analyzing the points he was trying to make. Borrowing West's own logic, the reactions are indicative of a neoliberal culture that is insistent on removing all traces of critical thinking which challenge the orthodoxy of privilege politics.

Critics of West have completely ignored his points, choosing instead to denounce him as a "washed-up, bitter, old man." An important message has been lost in the winds of this drama. West was trying to make us understand that white supremacy is embedded into every fabric of American life and society. It is not relegated to fringe groups or individuals like Trump, and it is not some mystic force that is indestructible. He wants us to understand that the responsibility to make change is not held by those who have privilege. It's not for them to kindly give up their privilege or come to terms with it; rather, it is our responsibility to struggle against this unjust system that creates such unearned privileges.

Only when we are able to see that the fights against white supremacy and capitalism are interconnected struggles (two sides of the same oppressive coin) is when we will finally be able to make real progress towards liberation. The gatekeepers of neoliberalism come in many forms. West was handing us a key.

Amir Khafagy is a self-described "Arab-Rican" New Yorker. He is well known as a political activist, journalist, writer, performer, and spoken word artist. Amir is currently pursuing a Master's degree in Urban Affairs at Queens College. He can be reached at amirkhafagy@gmail.com

Workers Behind Bars: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration

By Chris Costello

In the era of neoliberalism, the institution of private prison is the subject of much debate. Proponents argue that the system is a cost-effective option. It allows the government to conserve tax dollars and allows cash-starved states to reallocate the funds. However, these assertions run counter to the vast majority of data. In this essay, I will argue that private prisons are not in fact cost effective. Instead, they serve only to incentivize criminalization and exploit the labor of inmates. Further, their function is one that capitalism-and especially neoliberal capitalism-cannot do without. As such, the abolition of private prisons is impossible under capitalism.

The most important argument offered up by the pro-privatization camp is that for-profit prisons are cheaper than publicly owned correctional facilities. This argument rests on the assumption that cost-cutting is important enough to overlook the violence and exploitation that occurs in private prisons, which strikes me as spurious. A great many activities that harm humanity, such as the cutting of environmental safety regulations, result in greater profits. Despite this, no one (except of course the capitalist) would say that profit stands above the wellbeing of the environment. Why, then, should this logic apply to prison privatization? Regardless, this is a myth that has been employed time and again in defense of private prisons, so it is worth taking the time to deconstruct it.

It is true that there is no database of public and private prisons through which it would be possible to control for things like size, jurisdiction, and so on. This makes a comparative cost analysis admittedly difficult. However, the data that does exist does not support the idea that private prisons are more cost effective than public ones. Data from the Arizona Department of Corrections show that private prisons can cost as much as $1,600 more per year, while many cost about the same as they do in state-run prisons [1].

Further, researchers at the University of Utah concluded in 2007 "cost savings from privatizing prisons are not guaranteed and appear minimal" [2]. Finally, a review of the 24 studies on the cost effectiveness of private prisons revealed inconclusive results regarding cost savings. They also found no considerable difference in cost effectiveness [3]. These studies all show that the myth of the cost-effective private prison is just that: a myth. At best, the data are inconclusive. There is simply no credible way to assert that private prisons are more cost effective than their public counterparts.

There have been several studies that claim to prove this point, however. One was conducted at Temple University by two researchers who claim to be independent. However, the study received funding from Correctional Corporation of America, the United State's largest private prison company [4]. Clearly, studies that are paid for by the very industry they seek to expose cannot be considered credible. There have been very few truly independent studies that have found that private prisons provide a monetary gain to taxpayers. As such, there is no economic justification for the proliferation of private prisons.

If private prisons do not justify themselves from a monetary standpoint, as I have just argued, what exactly do they do? Their purpose cannot be saving taxpayers money, but neither could they exist without a purpose. It must be the case that private prisons perform some function. The question now is, which function? They are certainly not concerned with rehabilitation, and may even incentivize criminalization. Data from one Minnesota report confirm, "that privatization significantly lowers the level of correctional effectiveness, facility security, and public safety compared to what is now provided by the public system" [5]. Private prisons, therefore, cannot be considered more effective or safer than public facilities. Their purpose must be something other than the rehabilitation of criminals.

As Angela Davis has argued, the true purpose of private prisons is the exploitation of labor. According to Davis, the use of prison as a source of labor began earnestly in the 1980's. She writes, "Companies such as Correctional Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group reaped the profits attracting investments from household names, including the Bank of America, Fidelity Investments and Wells Fargo and also from many universities around the nation" [6]. They gained these profits by forcing their inmates to engage in labor. The inmates are well aware of this. According to one report, as many as 60,000 detained immigrants have engaged in "forced labor" for profit-driven correctional facilities [7]. Private prisons, to put it bluntly, are sites of a new American slavery.

This slavery is completely legal. The 13th amendment prohibited slavery-with one exception. The so-called "punishment clause" mandates that forced labor shall be prohibited "except as a punishment for crime" [8]. This clause was taken directly from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The clause reflected a common belief that hard work was essential to the rehabilitation of criminals. From its inception, however, the clause was used to police black citizens and restrict their rights. Frederick Douglass described it this way at the time: "[States] claim to be too poor to maintain state convicts within prison walls. Hence the convicts are leased out to work for railway contractors, mining companies and those who farm large plantations. These companies assume charge of the convicts, work them as cheap labor and pay the states handsome revenue for their labor. Nine-tenths of these convicts are negroes" [9]. Douglass also notes that so many blacks were behind bars because law enforcement tended to target them. This insight remains relevant to discussions of private prisons today. Law enforcement targets vulnerable populations-immigrants and people of color-and force them to labor for the profit of the owners. This is not fundamentally different from the institution of slavery of centuries past. Correctional corporations have used the specter of economic efficiency to perpetuate a barbaric and inhuman institution. For this, there is no excuse.

It is true that criminals should be expected to forfeit some portion of their freedom when they commit crimes. However, many of the aforementioned detained immigrants have committed no offenses beyond entering the country illegally. Many immigrants must contend with immense poverty in their home countries, oftentimes imposed by the United States. The North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, was intended to promote economic development for the United States and Mexico. According to a report from the CPER, however, "Mexican poverty has risen since the deal's implementation in 1994 as economic growth and real wages stagnated while nearly 5 million family farmers were displaced, propelling Mexico's poor toward migration to the United States" [10]. Immigration is directly attributable to the poverty imposed upon Mexico by NAFTA. Private prisons do not generally house dangerous elements that must be cut off from wider society. They are used to pen in desperate workers who believe they have no other choice.

This is remarkably similar to the processes that beget the development of capitalism in Europe. European capitalism arose out of feudalism, but this was not a natural occurrence. Rather, it came about through the enforced transformation of the peasant masses and feudal retinues into an industrial working class. Peasants were driven off their land and into the cities to work in factories. Drunkenness, pauperism, and vagrancy-the cardinal sin of existing while homeless-these became criminal offences. Prisons began as a means by which to discipline an emergent working class [11]. Even the classical political economists of the time understood the integral role of prison in the exploitation of labor. Bentham, a celebrated economist, detailed plans for a structure he called the Panopticon. In the words of author Michael Perelman, this was, "a prison engineered for the maximum control of inmates in order to profit from their labor" [12]. Although the Panopticon never materialized, the prison system continued to be a weapon for the repression of the workers during this period. This system was widely considered a success at the time, so it is no wonder that the American ruling class has seen fit to replicate it today.

A predictable rebuttal would be that this is an unfair comparison, since there is not a developing working class in the United States as was the case in England. Granted, Mexican farmers and English peasants in the feudal era have very different experiences of day-to-day life. In a broad sense, however, parallels can be drawn between them. Both worked land, often communally, until capitalist states forced them off this land and into poverty. Faced with starvation, both migrated to other areas to work for bosses in exploitative conditions. Many Mexican farmers still perform agricultural labor, while feudal peasants often worked in then-new factories.

Further, feudal peasants migrated within England, whereas Mexican immigrants have been forced to leave their home country entirely. Despite these differences, however, both instances have meant mass migration and an increase in the amount of exploitable labor in a particular area. As such, the characterization of Mexicans displaced by NAFTA as a "developing working class" or an "emergent proletariat" is accurate, at least in the American context.

Private prisons are not about rehabilitation. They are not even about crime. Like the prisons of the industrial revolution, they are about disciplining the working class. They serve a purpose that is necessary for the perpetuation of capitalism at this particular moment. The experience of capitalism's beginnings shows that prisons themselves have always been a tool of the ruling class. The privatization of prisons was inevitable, brought about by changes in the relations of production (the movement from feudalism to capitalism). It therefore follows that private prisons cannot be done away with without the abolition of capitalism.

The prison industrial complex, as Davis has termed it, can only be understood in a dialectical sense [13]. Prison profiteering is both the cause and effect of mass incarceration. Capitalism's contradictions spawned the prison system. One of the many causes of crime under capitalism is poverty. The results of one study "imply that if there is a culture of violence, its roots are pronounced economic inequalities" [14]. Capitalism, as a system that pits workers in competition with one another, requires poverty in order to function. Poverty allows capitalists to drive down wages and worsen conditions. If one worker will not accept a particular job, poverty ensures that some other worker will. In this sense, capitalism uses poverty as a tool to perpetuate itself.

German political economist Karl Marx elucidated a similar point in his book The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, in which he wrote, "When society is in a state of progress, the ruin and impoverishment of the worker is the product of his labor and of the wealth produced by him" [15]. Because workers under capitalism produce wealth that does not belong to them, the very process of production ensures that workers will be poor. The principle of exploitation states that workers are only ever paid enough money to enable them to continue working, nothing more. This means that the vast majority of workers will be poor.

Even if poverty did not serve the function mentioned above, it would still be an unavoidable aspect of capitalism. This being the case, capitalism is structurally incapable of addressing the root of crime. The system must, therefore, find a way to profit from it. The prison system, as a result, is now a lucrative investment opportunity for innumerable corporations.

Microsoft, Wal-Mart, and Dell, among others, have adopted a system that bares a striking resemblance to the convict-leasing system described by Douglass. In prisons across the country, inmates work sunup to sundown for major corporations. They produce or package every kind of commodity, from weapons intended for military use to Starbucks coffee. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, "Sentenced inmates are required to work if they are medically able. Institution work assignments include employment in areas like food service or the warehouse, or work as an inmate orderly, plumber, painter, or groundskeeper. Inmates earn 12¢ to 40¢ per hour for these work assignments. Approximately sixteen percent (16%) of work-eligible inmates work in Federal Prison Industries (FPI) factories. They gain marketable job skills while working in factory operations, such as metals, furniture, electronics, textiles, and graphic arts. FPI work assignments pay from 23¢ to $1.15 per hour" [16].

In addition to private prisons getting away with paying lower wages than private corporations, they also subject their inmates to atrocious conditions. A prisoner forced into agricultural labor describes her experience this way: "They wake us up between 2:30 and three AM and kick us out of our housing unit by 3:30AM. We get fed at four AM. Our work supervisors show up between 5AM and 8AM. Then it's an hour to a one and a half hour drive to the job site. Then we work eight hours regardless of conditions . . .. We work in the fields hoeing weeds and thinning plants . . . Currently we are forced to work in the blazing sun for eight hours. We run out of water several times a day. We ran out of sunscreen several times a week. They don't check medical backgrounds or ages before they pull women for these jobs. Many of us cannot do it! If we stop working and sit on the bus or even just take an unauthorized break we get a major ticket which takes away our 'good time'" [17].

Here, we see the true purpose of private prisons. They are intended to create an easily manipulated workforce who can legally be paid wages that are below the value of their labor power. The exploitation and disciplining of the working class represented the impetus for prisons to exist in the first place, and the same logic is being used to promote their privatization today.

It should be noted that the function of prisons as a method of social control-a tool to discipline the working class-is the primary function of prisons, both public and private, in the United States. While private prisons are in many cases a money-making venture for capitalists, their major function is to control the working class of oppressed nations. When we look at prison populations (whether private or public), we can see where mass incarceration gets its impetus. The vast majority of prisoners are from oppressed nations, even though euro-Americans are the majority of the U.S. population. The prison is not primarily a revenue racket, but an instrument of social control. Although profit-making (and thus exploitation) is a motivating factor in their proliferation, they should be seen as tools to beat the working class into submission [18].

Scholars Wagner and Rabuy support this idea in their paper "Following the Money of Mass Incarceration". The paper presents the division of costs within the prison industry as the judicial and legal costs, policing expenditures, civil asset forfeiture, bail fees, commissary expenditures, telephone call charges, "public correction agencies" (like public employees and health care), construction costs, interest payments, and food/utility costs [19]. The authors outline their methodology for arriving at their statistics and admit that "[t]here are many items for which there are no national statistics available and no straightforward way to develop a national figure from the limited state and local data" [20]. Despite these obvious weaknesses in obtaining concrete and reliable data, the overwhelming correctness of this analysis stands.

Wagner and Rabuy discuss the private prison industry at the end of the article. Here, they write, "To illustrate both the scale of the private prison industry and the critical fact that this industry works under contract for government agencies - rather than arresting, prosecuting, convicting and incarcerating people on its own - we displayed these companies as a subset of the public corrections system [21]." Private prisons have been justified on the basis that they are more cost-effective than the alternative. Data show that this is incorrect. Even if this were the case, however, that would not justify the rank exploitation of the inmates. Chattel slavery is no longer justified by this logic, so there is no reason that slavery behind bars should be subject to this argument either.

Private prisons, contrary to what proponents argue, have nothing to do with rehabilitation. They are about amassing profits for wealthy corporate owners and, chiefly, controlling undesirable populations. There is no argument, economic or otherwise, that can be used to justify their continued use. Prisons serve only as another tool in the capitalist's arsenal, a weapon with which to wage the war against labor. Private prisons and the capitalist system that necessitates them must be abolished. What this shows is that neoliberalism is simply a new era of capitalist development. In our struggle against it, we should continue to look to Marx and those who came after him.

Notes

Oppel, Richard A. "Private Prisons Found to Offer Little in Savings." The New York Times, The New York Times, 18 May 2011,

Lundahl, Brad, et. al. MSW "Prison Privatization: A Meta-Analysis of Cost Effectiveness and Quality of Confinement Indicators" Utah Criminal Justice Center, College of social work, University of Utah. April 26, 2007.

Oppel, Richard A. "Private Prisons Found to Offer Little in Savings." The New York Times, The New York Times, 18 May 2011,

Petrella, Christopher. "CCA Continues to Cite Misleading Study It Funded." American Civil Liberties Union. American Civil Liberties Union, 26 Apr. 2015

Austin and G. Coventry, "Emerging Issues on Privatized Prisons," Bureau of Justice Assistance, February 2001.

"Dr. Angela Davis - The Voice of the Oppressed." Center for the Study of Democracy, 9 Nov. 2015.

Short, April M. "As many as 60,000 detained immigrants may have engaged in forced labor for private prison companies." Salon.

Kamal, Ghali. "No Slavery Except as a Punishment for Crime: The Punishment Clause and Sexual Slavery." UCLA Law Review, 22 Oct. 2009,

"The Convict Lease System by Frederick Douglass." The Reason why the colored American is not in the World's Columbian Exposition, 1893.

TeleSUR et al. "NAFTA Plunges 20M Mexicans into Poverty: Report." News | teleSUR English, www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Thanks-to-NAFTA-Mexico-Poverty-Grew-Economy-Stagnated-Report-20170329-0033.html.

"Poverty and the workhouse." The British Library - The British Library, www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item106501.html.

Michael Perelman, The Invention of Capitalism. Duke University Press, 2000, p. 21

"Dr. Angela Davis - The Voice of the Oppressed." Center for the Study of Democracy, 9 Nov. 2015. Op. Cit.

Judith R. Blau and Peter M. Blau, American Sociological Review Vol. 47, No. 1 (Feb., 1982), p.114-129

Karl Marx, "Marx 1844: Wages of Labor." Marxists Internet Archive

"Federal Bureau of Prisons." BOP: Work Programs,

Victoria Law, Truthout. "Martori Farms: Abusive Conditions at a Key Wal-Mart Supplier." Truthout, 2011.

Peter Wagner and Bernadette Rabuy, Following the Money of Mass Incarceration (Prison Policy Initiative), 25 January 2017.

Ibid

Ibid.

Peter Wagner, Are Private Prisons Driving Mass Incarceration? (Prison Policy Initiative), October 7, 2017.

Ibid.

Burning Down the American Plantation: An Interview with the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement

By Colin Jenkins

The following is an interview with members of the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement (RAM), conducted over the course of a month between July and August of 2017. We discuss their formation, vision and goals for the future, and what they are doing to spark a reawakening of revolutionary politics grounded in black liberation, anarchism, and direct action.

First, can you tell us how and why the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement (RAM) came to fruition?

The political situation in the United States, and the world at large, is really dire and after many years of organizing, discussion, and reflection we came to the conclusion that we should lay out the foundational text for organizing that could lend some direction to the revolutionary movement in the country. If we look at the political and social problems in the US today, we can immediately see there is a gap between the activities of revolutionary organizations and the fortitude, seriousness, and capacity that must be developed to contend with the current situation.

There are huge sweeping political problems in the US, which could be resolved through reformist measures. The centralization of political power in two rather similar parties, the remarkable concentration of wealth into a few dozen people's hands (making this one of the most unequal countries in the world), and military industrial complex, which ties it all together, are some of the more acute political problems. One could imagine how there could be a structural change to deal with these - permitting other political parties, redistributing wealth, or ending the bloated military industry.

However, the most consistent and unresolvable feature of American life has been the dehumanization and destruction of black life. The trans-atlantic slave trade was the process that shaped the modern world, and particularly the US. The slave system pushed the country to civil war, though not to abolish it, simply because it was financially untenable. Immediately after the civil war the US did everything it could to reinstitute slavery, which today has been transformed into the prison industrial complex. So, in essence, the conflict in the 19th century is the same conflict we are fighting for today. Black Lives Matter was just a recent iteration of a war that never ended. It is in this context that we find ourselves.

As organizers, we come from The Base in Brooklyn. Many of us have been organizing for several years, and have been a part of various revolutionary projects and milieus. However, there is a trajectory of protest movements in the US that has become all too familiar and not too effective. If we look at the anti-globalization period, or the Iraq War, Occupy Wall Street, Standing Rock, or Black Lives Matter, there are clear trends and outliers. In each of these there were horrendous indignities that had to be addressed. People took the streets, had beautiful moments, and demonstrated extremely courageous acts of resistance. But these periods did not create the requisite revolutionary movements necessary to overthrow the state and capital, or to gain the strength to destroy their primary manifestations.

Unfortunately, the cycle of protest has become routine and familiar; lessons aren't passed down well to new militants, and older militants burn out without organizational coherence to keep the political ground firm. We felt we had to lay out a vision for the future and to begin the process of making a revolutionary organization that puts black liberation at the forefront. We intend to learn from the lessons of the past few decades and create a genuinely militant resistance that can eventually begin to garner the capacity to overthrow the state and capital.

Resistance movements throughout history include both underground and above-ground organizations. What do you view as the pros and cons of each? Despite the inherent risks, why are above-ground operations so important?

We believe that revolutionary political organizations must have both, and they must correspond. Black Liberation Army fighter, Russell Maroon Shoatz, argued that the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army had ceased to function accordingly, which he says was one of the main reasons the liberation movement was overwhelmed. The Party, according to Shoatz, didn't have a strategy for war before they started organizing, so when the underground army came into existence, the above-ground organization was already engulfed in a conflict they were unprepared for. Due to the above-ground organization being routed, the underground could no longer get new recruits and then it was only a matter of time until it was eradicated.

So for a revolutionary political organization to maintain its relations with the public, to push a coherent political line about important matters, and to develop new militants, an above-ground strategy is paramount. However, people associated with above-ground apparatuses are unable to engage in militant action. They are the ones who make their faces and names public, and therefore must be careful about doing activities where they could be implicated and targeted with long jail sentences or assassination. This work is essential to bring new people into new ways of organizing, from setting up neighborhood councils, to political education, to defense.

In short, we need both to be effective. The militant work gives teeth to the political organizing, and allows the movement to make good on its intentions. The public spaces and infrastructure allow the militants to continue their offenses, paving the way for liberated organizations to take root.

Your political program is laid out in the pamphlet, " Burn Down the American Plantation: Call for a Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement ." In talking about learning from militant struggles of the past, you mention" debilitating switch-backs between the two formations that Shoatz refers to as the 'hydra' and the 'dragon'." Can you talk about these two formations? Is there one formation that is more desirable than the other? If so, why?

Russell Maroon Shoatz illustrates the difference between the 'dragon' and 'the hydra' using examples from the Haitian Revolution. He describes the hydra as multi-headed, decentralized uprisings, and the dragon as an oppositional force with a hierarchical structure and leadership. The problems that arose from the dragon-style militias was that 1) a single leader could be corrupted or killed by the colonial power, thwarting its revolutionary potential, 2) once a leader took control of the country, the logical results of maintaining power: suppression of the governed populace, unequal distribution of resources, etc, led to the leader being deposed by the population. Shoatz concludes that the hydra-style organization is superior both militarily and in terms of revolutionary results; that is by organizing in a decentralized manner from the beginning, dispersal of power throughout the previously oppressed population ensures that self-governance will be built into the foundations of the revolution, and the result of the uprisings will be a society that has the integrity to defeat the colonial system.

In recent years we have seen a few mainstream instances of exposing how the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution kept chattel slavery alive by simply transferring it to the criminal punishment system, i.e. slavery is still legal under a code of criminality. While you point to this in your political program, you also seem to present a deeper analysis on the effects of whiteness and blackness, stating that "the first obstacle to addressing slavery in the US is the misconception that relates slavery with a specific labor code, rather than a system, a lineage, and a stratified code of bondage, dehumanization and captivity." Can you talk about what you mean here?

Slavery, in the US, is typically thought of as a coercive labor arrangement where black people were forced to work for free. While this, clearly, is true, it hardly addresses the dynamic and all-encompassing role of slavery as a social system and the role of anti-blackness in shaping human relations and creating what, as theorist Frank Wilderson calls, the non-human/human relationship. The modern world, in many ways, was established through the colonial process, and particularly through the slave trade. Most of the terms we use to understand and discuss the world were established through this process like Europe, Africa, capitalism, state, white/black, etc. With the advent of capitalism and state formation, the left typically argues that the exploitation of labor is born here, but in reality, the relation of terror from the slave process is closer to the core of this world system. Furthermore, the establishment of who is permitted into the family of human and who is forced into the non-human category is solidified through these formulations. So blackness becomes tied into the reality of non-human, which is called social death.

The black position in America becomes entangled in an all-encompassing web of violence that is perpetuated by state violence, self-hatred, and more importantly the deputization of the entire society, and civil society at large, against black life. While the state has blatant forms of repression: the prison/slave system, police violence, etc, civil society is also a killing field, or a battleground where every interaction with white supremacist society and its junior partners becomes a potential avenue where black life can be exterminated or put onto the plantation.

With the 13th amendment and other legal codes we see the growth of the slave system; so when chattel slavery was abolished for economic reasons, the state wanted to ensure that white supremacist society not only remained intact, but that the human/non-human relation continued, culminating in the eventual growth of the prison industrial complex.

This explains why social movements, even revolutionary ones, are often so empty in regards to black liberation. These movements typically have a goal of reinforcing civil society, or strengthening society to make it more democratic, or promoting goals like workplace democracy, community control over resources or policing, etc. In the black experience, civil society itself is the battleground. So, in effect, these coalition politics with reformist groups inadvertently strengthens white supremacy in unexpected ways. We believe that a politics of abolition and revolution in the US must start with the acknowledgement that civil society itself is where this war must be fought. Our political project, while attempting to strengthen embattled communities and build revolutionary militants, also underwrites everything that we are doing explicitly with the intention of building up the requisite capacity to destroy the physical and mental apparatuses that create the human/non-human relationships.

On activist milieus, Wilderson states, "They remain coalitions operating within the logic of civil society and function less as revolutionary promises than as crowding out scenarios of Black antagonisms, simply feeding our frustration... From the coherence of civil society, the Black subject beckons with the incoherence of civil war." We believe we need to position ourselves within this incoherence and create the capacity to destroy plantation society permanently.

Speaking of this relationship between revolution and reform, socialist movements in the US often seem to focus on one of two approaches: (1) reforming our current systems through outside pressure (voting, protesting), or (2) gaining inroads to our current systems (usually electorally) and revolutionizing them from within. By embracing direct action, anarchists do neither; but rather attempt to make these dominant systems irrelevant. Much of RAM's vision seems to be rooted in this approach, drawing inspiration from the Maroon communities of the 18th and 19th centuries, the Zapatistas in Chiapas, and the current project in Rojava (northern Syria). Can you tell readers about the vision here? What would this type of community look like in the modern US?

What we're hoping is that through this method of organizing from the ground-up, putting in place the communal structures of self-governance and defense, and building infrastructure outside of white supremacist, capitalist, and statist regimes, the colonial and imperial power that is the United States will, one day, no longer exist. To be able to create a different society, it is necessary to do so completely outside the legal and political parameters of this current one. For example, the judicial system cannot be reformed because its entire purpose -- racial sublimation and modern slavery, punitive measures, and warehousing of the poor -- is entirely contrary to the type of society we are working towards, and frankly it is an affront to humanity.

Even measures of soft power that masquerade as vehicles for social betterment, such as non-profits (which are usually funded by the democratic party) in fact operate as counter-insurgent tools. These organizations are meant to tie people into a charity relationship, and intentionally never give people the tools they need to be able to meet their own needs. The more people take control of their neighborhoods, the more people who join the movement and bring the skills they already have, the more concertedly we can build up the defenses necessary to defend these gains, the stronger the movement will grow.

Any time an organizer leaves to run for office, makes a career off writing about the movement, or feeds momentum back into capitalist, statist, or counter-revolutionary organizations, they are taking away from the skills, and communal resources, that people have committed to building towards free life. The first, and perhaps most important point, is to build up a visible political organization where people can develop the skills they need to build a different kind of society.

I have always believed that the original Black Panther Party for Self-Defense had it all figured out . They effectively placed the struggle for black liberation within the broader class struggle against capitalism, set forth a specific political program rooted in theory and education, and carried out real self-defense measures against police and white supremacists, all while providing crucial social services to the community. Despite the obvious ideological differences (Anarchist vs. Marxist-Leninist-Maoist), has RAM's political program drawn anything from the original BPP? If so, in which ways? And what improvements do you think can be made to their approach?

RAM owes a huge amount of its political vision to the Black Panthers, their fighters, and their coupling of education, defense, and community organization. The Black Liberation Army, and the Panthers, are undoubtedly the most important political force in recent US revolutionary history. Their focus on political education is something we find really important. In recent years, militants have accepted a more formal understanding of politics; but without a heightened political struggle, as exists in Greece for example, the lack of education has really disastrous effects for establishing any kind of continuity. We also appreciate how the Panthers had established a mentality of absolute struggle. In our current climate people focus on their political activities part time, and spend most of their time at work, or socializing which lends itself to careless thought and action.

The problems with the Panthers are well known, and a lot of their former members have written in great detail about them. The Panthers were an extremely hierarchical organization, which invariably leads to poisonous social relations amongst the members. The leadership was targeted by the government and a wedge was driven between them which made the organization weaker. Furthermore, huge amounts of party funds went to the leadership while lower level cadre struggled in prison. The Panthers had a lot of women in their organization but never fully grappled with feminism, like many revolutionary groups, until the Zapatista uprising in Mexico. Also, a split between the left and right in the organization developed, and some members wanted to further promote social programs, and go down an electoral route, while other members were immersed in the armed struggle and knew there could be no halt.

We believe collective decision making is paramount to revolutionary social relationships. We also believe that revolutionaries must have a complete and total rejection of electoral politics. As anarchists we argue that the state apparatus must be destroyed. But also pragmatically one must ask, what is the revolutionary's position in slave society? If we intend to end the slave system and capitalism then seizing, or being elected into, the very machinery that permits and enforces this oppression seems deceptive and duplicitous.

Where does self-defense fit into RAM's program? How is it carried out in real terms? Are there specific steps that need to be taken in this process of creating a viable self-defense apparatus?

Defense is an essential pillar and the first one we discuss in "Burn Down the American Plantation," because any political initiative, from neighborhood councils to anarchist infrastructure to the simple proposition of anti-state politics, will not be able to succeed if the requisite level of defense isn't able to protect its gains. On the one hand, defense is a social and communal process, tied deeply to revolutionary goals and organizations of self-governance. It is a fundamental paradigm shift for building a revolutionary society. One way to think about it is that the state pretends to take on the responsibility of defending its 'citizens' but in actuality fails in these duties, and is in actuality an apparatus for repression. The ability to defend oneself marks a departure from the role of victim in statist society. In fact, the ability to defend oneself and one's community is the only way to escape the state's carceral intentions. From Harriet Tubman to Assata Shakur, we see the continuation of movements as individuals become actualized and powerful when they are able to release themselves and others from bondage. Defense is essential for the development of individuals, and also for the revolutionary intentions as a whole. That being said, for defense to be successful, it's not just about being able to fight or break people out of confinement, but essential for it to be organized around revolutionary principles and relationships. The stronger the bonds of trust are between participants, the stronger the defense will be.

There are already very successful Antifa groups, guns clubs, and fight trainings going on around the country. We're hoping that by connecting these groups and projects together by underpinning them with specific revolutionary goals and strong political principles, we will be able to not only be legible to the broader public, but begin tying these groups to civic initiatives, and building towards a more impenetrable movement.

For our part, we've been doing a month-long education program called The Kuwasi Balagoon Liberation School that offers the foundational premise for RAM, study groups, pragmatic workshops, fight trainings, and skills like first aid, tech security, etc. As we expand the political body of RAM through this process, we are also working on building a defense team that strives for similar relationships and goals. The purpose of this defense team at this point is to literally be on call to defend our center from fascists, and to defend other political infrastructure we are building, such as safe houses or the Rapid Response Network. We are hoping that if we can establish good modes of operation, this team can eventually train neighborhood teams in self-defense and political organization.

The left in the US is fragmented by ideological differences, some of which are often very nuanced. The labels are endless: socialists, Marxists, anarchists, communists, democratic-socialists, Leninists, Maoists, Stalinists, MLMs, etc. RAM has chosen to orient itself in Abolitionism. Can you explain why this choice was made and how it can be beneficial to the broader movement?

We wanted to tie abolitionism to revolutionary goals, because to achieve the abolition of modern slavery, we have to completely restructure our society institutionally and psychologically. It is impossible to end prisons, structural oppression, institutionalized white supremacy without also abolishing the judicial system, police, and the state itself. Our proposal is not just a negation, but a proposal for how to construct relationships, and therefore social organization in a way that these things can no longer exist.

We also felt that there are so many dedicated individuals and groups, already doing important work, who may already agree with the revolutionary horizon we outlined in the text. If that is the case, then we hope that the long term intentions behind RAM will appeal to people from a broad range of backgrounds and projects and provide the foundation necessary for us to complement each other's work.

In the US we are fighting an uphill battle against the degradation of life under capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy that the need for a concerted revolutionary strategy was clearly apparent. There are so many different battle fronts to fight on, and rightly so. Rather than tying tactics to specific political tendencies, and arguing that one is superior to another, we feel that to achieve a revolutionary outcome, all tactics must be deployed strategically in conjunction with one another. We hope that this initiative will provide the foundation to do so, so that people in groups from various political tendencies can support each other's work. One way to look at it is that to begin to develop revolutionary relationships, that is ones built on trust, longevity, and commitment, there must be a way to overcome rivalries that develop through the struggle, and which, it could be argued, stem from the mentality of capitalism. The foundations of the society we are constructing must be built through the quality of our relationships.

What do you view as the benefits of an anarchist approach, as opposed to other leftist orientations?

Revolutionary anarchism is the foundational core of RAM, however, we also view the project as being largely non-sectarian and open to those who have similar political and social objectives. Anarchism is the only political theory that accurately addresses a wide array of oppressions. Furthermore, anarchism as a revolutionary practice offers a way out of the conundrum many 20th century revolutionary movements faced. The Leninist notion of attaining state power and wielding it ruthlessly has proven to be bankrupt, and today, the anarchist question is again at the forefront. The anarchist approach is the only ideological stance that demands the abolition of the nation-state, which we find tantamount to truly being a revolutionary movement. When we use the term abolition we are not only speaking of prisons, or courts, or singular institutions; we intend to abolish the prisons, patriarchy, the state, capitalism, and white supremacist society entirely.

As anarchists, we view revolution our central reference point, and all of our activity is centered on this vantage point. The revolution in Rojava also offers a current, ongoing example for anti-state struggle. With a history of armed struggle against the Turkish state, Kurdish guerrillas had created a culture of struggle unlike anywhere else in the world; coupling this with anarchist, feminist, and libertarian ideas they have made a living example for anarchists worldwide. The guerrillas also, wisely, waited for the best time to launch the struggle, and have made the only sustained revolution through the entire Arab Spring, expanding past the insurrectionary model of revolution.

The recent emergence of Bernie Sanders brought the term "socialism" back into mainstream discussions. Groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have gained momentum as a result, and are currently strategizing on ways to affect change through our political system. You have mentioned that RAM does not view our current political system as a viable avenue for resistance or change. Can you elaborate on why this attempt to change the system from within is bound to fail?

The current political system must be destroyed in order for any of RAM's pillars, from the neighborhood councils, to self-defense, to conflict resolution, to the co-operative economy to grow. Furthermore, the current political system, and civil society at large is already a state of emergency for black people in the US. We are living in a permanent state of conflict for huge swathes of people, and integration into that system is synonymous with defeat.

In regards to the dominant political system, it is primarily designed to give people the illusion of participation, to keep the poor away from the apparatuses of political determination, and to reinforce the state. The greater the level of participation in the political system the stronger the governing apparatuses become, which in effect bargain away people's potential for liberation.

Socialist and grassroots candidates, unfortunately, end up redirecting popular energy back into the very system that is maintaining our oppression. Often revolutionary momentum, which could have been put towards an actual paradigm shift or the beginning of a prolonged revolutionary conflict, instead reinforce the status quo by giving the illusion of opposition to the police, the judicial system, capitalist barbarism, etc. The political system (with complicity from the left) then perfects methods of repression, and revolutionaries begin having a difficult time recognizing genuine action from counterinsurgent action. So for us to build for revolution we must be opposed to the system and not pretend we can use it for our benefit.

Anarchists often refer to a diversity of tactics that must be deployed in our collective struggle for liberation. Do you believe in this approach? If so, can you explain to the readers what these tactics look like and how they interrelate with one another?

A diversity of tactics certainly is necessary for, on the one hand building new modes for society, and on the other tearing down oppressive relations and institutions. It's essential to get outside of the narrow framework that unfortunately liberal discourse has relegated this conversation to: it's not a question of violence or non-violence as a tactic, which is funny because this question seems to often arise from a liberal fear of reprisals, or more horrifically, a liberal fear of the success of a truly liberating revolution. Instead, we urge people to look at this struggle from the perspective of an insurgency. By studying insurgencies from around the world, especially the more successful ones, it becomes clear that multiple tactics are employed. The key is having an agreement about what we're working towards, and the principles that underline it. If that is the case, tactics are freed up from being associated with one political tendency or another and can be employed across multiple planes of struggle. You can see how useful it will be to have revolutionaries in place in workplace struggles, in the battlefield, in protests, in legal support, in blockades, in neighborhood organizing. If all these people are working in tandem, they can be mutually supportive by strategically coordinating to apply pressure at certain key moments to our enemy, while also building up the powerful relationships of trust necessary for this movement. The key is that all are committed to the revolution and uncompromising in this. The other positive side is that with a revolutionary horizon in sight, everybody, no matter what their level of engagement, can contribute to it.

There is a beautiful story about the Peace Mothers in Turkey, who found themselves on a hillside blockading Turkish tanks. It became a bit of a standoff, so to kill the time, they began dismantling landmines they found in the area. I love this story because in the US context 'peace' might infer that those mothers should not touch the landmines, like how liberals argue anarchists should not confront police or break windows. Similarly, mothers trapped in Cizre and Nusaybin during the Turkish siege brought tea to the youth brigades who were defending the neighborhoods with barricades and Kalashnikovs.

As long as there is the framework to build strong relationships, and everyone agrees on a revolutionary solution, every action becomes a militant action, and the impacts of individual initiatives is multiplied.

This brings me to one of your primary calls to action, where you state," The resistance in the United States now has a choice. It must rise beyond the limits of the protest movements that we have become accustomed to and organize revolutionary bodies with the intention of combatting the State, assisting the populace, and expanding our forces both quantitatively and qualitatively." Can you talk more about the limits of protest movements and the need to rise beyond them.

We have all participated in a variety of protest movements from the anti-globalization period to Black Lives Matter. It became clear, quite some time ago, that with the peaks and troughs of explosive momentum in the streets with its following repression, the movements didn't seem to be making any material headway. The stark reality of this conclusion came in the context of the Ferguson and Baltimore riots. They were by far the most aggressive street uprisings, with the strongest levels of solidarity and mutual aid, the US has seen for years. Yet they were quelled by a combination of brute force and, as mentioned before, counterinsurgent tactics in the form of self-policing 'community' groups, non-profits, and liberal protest actors. Regular life under the white supremacist state came back to those communities and many young participants ended up with long jail sentences, or died under mysterious circumstances.

There is an illustrative example from the Middle East. While many countries erupted in mass protests as part of the Arab Spring, these protests did not have a unifying revolutionary vision, and in most cases resulted in more reactionary political groups coming to power. Meanwhile, the forces of the YPG and YPJ in Northern Syria were slowly and methodically preparing, like the Zapatistas in Mexico, with strong educational programs, clear revolutionary goals, and building up their numbers very concertedly to establish a capable and determined militant organization.

When Assad's forces were weakened in Northern Syria due to the civil war, the YPG and YPJ were able to effectively take over the region and expel most of the remaining reactionary forces. They were prepared organizationally and politically, and chose only to act when they had the most advantageous circumstances. Immediately they were able to start implementing neighborhood communes, and co-operatives, because they already had a clear political intention to help restore people's capacity to meet their own needs.

This is a good lesson for us and shows a liberatory counter-proposal to the problem of exclusively participating in street demonstrations.

Speaking of reactionary forces, you talk about the "rise to prominence of the far right around the world and in the United States." In the US specifically, some ( myself included ) have characterized this rise as an inevitable conclusion to a national project with fascist tendencies deeply rooted in settler-colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacy. How do you see this trajectory playing out in the US? What are the immediate dangers of this rise and how can they be combatted by those of us on the left?

From Duterte in the Philippines to Golden Dawn in Greece, and Donald Trump at home, we see worldwide that fascist and far right parties and candidates have been coming to power. In many of these places previously, far right movements existed but were underground. But today, these organizations, inspired by international chaos and a changing world system, believe they can grow and offer an alternative world based on xenophobia, patriarchy, capitalism, and an extraordinarily powerful nation-state.

It is true that the state form is prefaced on its ability to oppress its population in order to govern. The US, like many states, was founded, and maintained, by denying the humanity of entire swathes of the population. The rise of fascism then is not an anomaly but a logical conclusion of the state form, the disorder of capitalist society, and the underlying foundation which is white supremacy.

When these far right leaders gain power, and exalt their xenophobic and fascist rhetoric, from Trump to Erdogan, their support base gets emboldened and takes action which necessitates a response. We have seen Kurdish people beaten to death in Turkey, a homeless black man stabbed to death in NYC by a white nationalist, the KKK marching and organizing nationwide, refugees being attacked in Europe, while government agencies now act with less fear of repercussions, like ICE and border patrol agents, and the police being encouraged to take extra legal measures by the executive branch.

Despite this barbaric climate, antifa groups have risen to the occasion and are fighting these groups back, preventing them from marching and organizing, shutting down their speaking engagements, and getting them fired from their jobs. Antifa groups have organized themselves and put their lives on the line, and even been severely injured and killed, while saving the lives of so many. This is very encouraging that so many are willing to risk so much to make their neighborhoods safe for the most vulnerable.

If we look at how to expand on this self-organized, militant activity, we can see an intersection between the underground railroad and self-defense units, while connecting all these activities and organizational structures through a political framework. If we are working towards revolutionary goals, anti-fascists, participants in the underground railroad, and neighborhood defense groups won't simply be a stop-gap measure, but ones that are learning how, and gaining the resources, to go on the offensive when it is possible.

Keeping the focus on neighborhoods, one of the five points of RAM's political vision is self-governance in the form of neighborhood councils. Can you describe what these councils look like in modern terms? How do we go about creating them?

There are so many different kinds of neighborhoods, from city to suburban to rural that how the councils work and what they deal with on a day-to-day basis must vary widely. It's helpful that we have a lot of examples to draw from, from the rural ones in Chiapas to the more urban examples in Bakur (Southeastern Turkey). Its useful to examine these, and how they are implemented, to have some vision. However, how they pan out in different towns, cities, regions, and blocks is going to be very different.

The one thing that should be universal is the political principles. For example, if there is a neighborhood association committed to working with the police then they are not engaged in the same political project. Due to this reason, we suggest that one way we build towards neighborhood councils is through establishing an underground railroad network. These connections must be built on clear political principles, and outside of state institutions. We also suggest that we can build towards neighborhood councils through pragmatic projects, oriented towards those facing oppression. For example, a tenant's solidarity network that is actively working against rent increases and built on horizontal solidarity can help renters in the short term and provide the experiences for working together as a commune. This is just one idea, and may or may not be relevant to every situation, however multiple projects can be attempted until groups find the right one. It's also important to note that any solidarity or autonomy achieved through these preliminary organizations must be defended; so whatever that necessitates, should be built simultaneously.

Another point of RAM's political vision is based in "conflict resolution and revolutionary justice." Can you tell readers what these mean and give example(s) on how they would look in practice?

Conflict resolution is intended for comrades, and for oppressed peoples who come into contact with our organizations, while revolutionary justice is the actions used by the oppressed in order to extricate themselves from their chains.

The premise of conflict resolution is built into the roots of revolutionary organizations, and prefaced on the idea of resolving problems before they start. The perspective differs from our judicial system in that it is not punitive; instead it's founded on the desire to restore the social fabric, and also to help each other develop as better people. This means that all the participants in conflict resolution are profoundly invested in each other.

There are multiple wonderful examples of how this can work: looking at the Zapatistas and their use of a mediator and agreement on restitution by every participant, or at civil society in Rojava with a group of neighbors based at the Mala Gel (people's house), or the tekmil of the YPG/YPJ, where participants offer reflections after every training. However, developing this for our particular circumstances will probably not be a matter of copying methods from other groups, but engaging the foundational premises of conflict resolution, and then doing a lot of trial and error.

We also believe establishing healthier means of conflict resolution is paramount for revolutionary organizations in the US. Personal conflict and infighting have destroyed most groups, so finding a method of resolving problems is incredibly important.

Revolutionary justice is already happening, in the form of riots in Baltimore and Ferguson, in prison uprisings, revolts in detention centers. It is important to recognize when it is happening and figure out ways to support it, both in the long and short terms.

How does RAM feel about working with other organizations? Socialist parties? Resistance movements? Are there specific criteria you have in considering potential allies and/or partners? Is there a line that must be drawn when considering these alliances?

At the moment there is very little infrastructure outside the state and capitalist enterprises, and even less knowledge about anarchism, abolition, and liberatory history and proposals. The most important first step is to build a solid political foundation to organize from. This means finding other revolutionaries through education and invitation to join organizing projects. This necessarily has to be a slow process, but it's important to do it right. The stronger, and more trusting, our relationships and organizations are, the more risks and assertive actions we can take. People should come to the movement and feel like they are removing the shackles of their previous life, are treated respectfully, and can develop new skills necessary for revolutionary change.

At the same time, it's important to spread knowledge among the general public, by education and programs, so that we spread throughout society and build new infrastructure. When it comes time for actions, they should be legible to broad swathes of the population; people should know who is doing these actions and why they are doing them.

The most important thing to do right from the start is to build up a strong foundation for our political proposals. The question of working with other organizations is only relevant once we have established ourselves and built up material gains. As we expand, and make our political intentions more widespread, we hope people who are committed to liberatory solutions will join the call for a Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement. The main intention behind the project is for individuals and organizations to join the movement and expand if they agree with the political principles. So hopefully it will be a matter of working alongside new participants.

Finally, as we move forward in our collective fight, what do you see as the most immediate concerns that must be addressed? Where do you see RAM in another year? Where do you see RAM in five years?

The political situation in the US, and in effect, the larger world, is so unstable and dangerous that our activities and their success is essential. Ordinary life in the US, for the black population especially, has always been a state of crisis and war. The conflict from the Middle Passage to the Civil War to Black Lives Matter has been continuous, and the struggle against social death, against being treated and perceived as less than human, continues unbroken. The difference today is that the US state is collapsing internally, and its power has been thoroughly eroded internationally, making the country one of the most dangerous entities in world history.

Revolutionaries in the US, then, must be prepared to fight and throw our entire lives into the struggle no matter where we are. For huge swathes of the population, slavery, constant conflict, and death are the norms, and as the country spirals into the unknown, this misery will become more pronounced. It is our place to fight side by side with those facing oppression, and to create alternatives so people can live with dignity.

With this in mind, the most important first step is to build RAM organization all around the country. The intention behind this process is to create a strong political foundation for our resistance. This allows all of our activities to become legible to the broader public and it connects disparate projects through a greater political trajectory. In one sense the political foundation should also be a development of the social: it is an invitation for comrades with similar levels of seriousness, commitment, and humility to begin working together. By joining this movement, people should be able to develop new skills, better ways of relating to one another, and chart out a path towards revolutionary relationships.

While acknowledging white supremacy as the foundation of the US and the larger world-system, we believe destroying its appendages and helping people flee bondage are some immediate guidelines RAM groups should follow. As we build stronger revolutionary relationships, we should also assist people in staying free, culminating in the establishment of a new underground railroad and a vastly stronger revolutionary movement.

We also would encourage RAM groups to create educational projects and public projects to articulate what we are fighting for, what we are offering, and what it means to become a revolutionary. As we expand we can help communities liberate themselves, and we will begin creating the political infrastructure to challenge and eventually overthrow the capitalist state. So the immediate objectives are for chapters to form, create educational infrastructure, and begin engaging with those affected by the worst aspects of the state and white supremacist society (prisoners, ICE detainees, shelters, etc.), eventually developing a modern underground railroad. People should also begin developing militant means of defense to protect these projects.

To conclude, RAM is also revolutionary strategy that is intending for long term objectives. We don't see this as daunting though; instead we view it as a relief. We don't need to rush against an impenetrable enemy every time the cops do something obscene; we don't need a pressure valve every time there is an indignity. Instead, we plan to build slowly and methodically so that we can gain the capacity to act decisively at a time and place of our choosing. We want to be as ready as possible to aid and assist those in revolt, provide infrastructure and resources, and also have new modes of operating in place, such as the councils or conflict resolution bodies, so that as the riot wanes, no one has to go back to a life of oppression, and we can push past revolt and into revolution.

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Black Lives Under Surveillance: A Review of Simone Brown's "Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness"

By Brandi Thompson Summers

Modern capitalism has always placed an undue burden on black bodies. Slavery, forced labor, and dispossession have moved hand in hand with forces of surveillance and the power of the state. In cities like Ferguson, Baltimore, Milwaukee, and Oakland-and countless others that have never reached national awareness-abysmal economic conditions have found an intimate partner in police patrols, drones, security cameras, and citizen-on-citizen reporting.

Today, poor communities of color are under constant surveillance and on the receiving end of brutal market forces. Where high unemployment, inadequate public transportation, and segregation are the rule, surveillance performs the work of control. Rebellions against state-sanctioned violence are inspired by feelings of both oppression and neglect, a contradiction at the core of capitalism's relationship to black people and black bodies. The supposed freedom and equality of the marketplace depend upon the contempt of the overseer.

Our American capitalism, founded in slavery, bore the antagonist twins of blackness and surveillance. Examining this birth and its afterlife, Simone Browne argues in her recent book Dark Matters, will help us come to grips with contemporary practices of surveillance that are often coded as technical and race-neutral advances in safety and security-and are usually anything but. Through her analyses of maps, newspaper articles, fugitive slave advertisements, slave narratives, personal correspondence, government documents, memoirs, and treaties, Brown exposes how blackness was shaped and produced through surveillance practices during slavery.

Slaves were a particularly unpredictable form of capital-they could congregate, organize, plot, and even escape-making their traceability essential. Browne examines the finely honed architecture of slave ships to show how important surveillance was to making black bodies into property, extracting wealth from their humanity. The capitalist discipline of black bodies starts with the design of this "maritime prison," the site of horrifying violence that thousands of men, women, and children did not survive. The strict compartmentalization of slave bodies, stacked one on top of the other, functioned to limit slave insurrection and other kinds of resistance. Furthermore, the documentation and examination practices that took place from slave trafficking ports on the African coast, through the Middle Passage voyage across the Atlantic, to slave auction blocks and plantations, prefigured modern carceral institutions meant to regulate and discipline black bodies.

Even in freedom, black bodies required surveillance. Government records such as the Book of Negroes instituted the tracking of black bodies through written text. This 18th-century document listed three thousand Black British Loyalists (self-emancipated former slaves) who boarded British ships to Canada during the American Revolution. The Book of Negroes, Browne argues, was the "first large-scale public record of black presence in North America," used by slave owners to distinguish fugitive slaves from freed black subjects.

Both before and after formal emancipation, capitalism marked blackness as a visible commodity. Defining the spaces where black bodies could or could not reside or move, what activities in which they could or could not engage, "racializing surveillance," as Browne names it, lay in what John Fiske calls the "power to define what is in or out of place." [1] Such social control, Browne notes, bound surveillance to the violent practices of making and deploying racial hierarchies that plantation owners and others could exploit for profit.

Accurately measuring, counting, and sorting black bodies also required constant visibility. So, slavers employed violent technologies like branding and "lantern laws" to account for slaves and deter escape. Lantern laws were instituted in cities like New York and Boston in the 18th century and required black, indigenous, and mixed-race slaves to carry candle lanterns after dark. Legislation like New York's "A Law for Regulating Negro and Indian Slaves in the Night Time," approved in March 1713, demonstrates how state-enacted technologies were used to surveil and control black populations. "Black luminosity" via lantern laws, as Browne suggests, operated as a "form of boundary maintenance occurring at the site of the black body, whether by candlelight, flaming torch, or the camera flashbulb that documents the ritualized terror of a lynch mob."

The surveillance of unfree black bodies remained central to capitalism's dominance post-emancipation. After the Civil War, oppressive systems like "Black Codes," convict leasing, and sharecropping tied black bodies to the land, despite the fact that they were no longer legal property. These repressive measures generated significant revenue for several Southern states and were fundamental to the economy after slavery. States like Alabama relied heavily on convict leasing in coal mines, with nearly 73 percent of the state's total revenue coming from the system in the late 19th century.

The state-enacted Black Codes, in particular, both established the architecture of modern policing and ensured black people's limited access to capital. As Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor explains in 'From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, Black Codes' were "imposed only on African Americans, criminalized poverty, movement, and even leisure." In some cases, laws prohibited the congregation of black people after dark and required black workers to be monitored by and in the service of their former owners. This legal subjugation of blacks in the postbellum South was justified under the logic of the tragically familiar language of "law and order." As Taylor argues, police were used to enforce various measures that limited black movement, black work, and even the right to accrue property.

Because capitalism has relied on the subjugation of black people as workers and largely excluded them from its material benefits, the specter of black uprising and criminality provokes police departments and other authorities to develop and adopt novel technologies of surveillance, like biometric measurements that verify, identify, and automate the production of bodily evidence. Deployed under a rhetoric of racial disinterest, these innovations draw on the long history of tracking blackness. They are far from identity-neutral. Recently, Georgetown University's Center for Privacy and Technology has found that police departments around the country use facial recognition software that track and racially profile African Americans disproportionately. [2] Biometric surveillance technologies form the background of urban life and continue to manage black freedom and mobility.

The protection of property underlies such quotidian acts of surveillance. In an effort to "curb shoplifting," Georgetown-area businesses worked with police through a mobile app, "Operation GroupMe," to secretly message each other about "potential suspects," who were almost always black. [3] Empowered by the ubiquity of surveillance and the ease of digital media, the race vigilante takes on the guise of the citizen shopkeeper.

In the post-civil-rights era, a black elite has emerged who have benefitted from the spoils of capitalism. They do not share the interests of the black poor or working class. As these elites have risen to political leadership they have intensified surveillance of those excluded from capitalism's prosperity. They have blamed "bad people" for making "bad choices," rhetorically cleaving black communities into deceitful criminals who must be monitored and virtuous citizens who deserve protection. The political elite then roll out more surveillance to protect precarious black wealth.

Taylor argues that surveillance also allows some political leaders to profit from the same population of poor black citizens they profess to protect. For example, Randy Primas, the first black mayor of Camden, NJ, supported the New Jersey Department of Corrections' construction of a $55 million prison in the largely black neighborhood of North Camden. Taylor quotes the mayor's bald declaration: "I view the prison as an economic development project. In addition, I think the surveillance from the two prison towers might stop some of the overt drug dealing in North Camden." Primas linked the building of prisons to increased employment, increased city revenue, and reduced crime. Yet this project also turned the landscape of North Camden into a prison itself. Watchtowers now surveil both those inside and outside the prison's gates. This kind of surveillance does more than impose the eye of the state on formally free neighborhoods; it marks North Camden as black, rendering the city subject to ever more monitoring.

It is because of this tacit connection between race, surveillance, and capitalism that, Taylor shows, we have seen the proliferation of the police state, expansion of the prison industrial complex, and laws putting more poor and working-class black people in debt and prison. No wonder, then, Black Lives Matter has emerged, even under the nation's first black president. Taylor argues that the movement constitutes a point along the decades-long arc of black community resistance to widespread police brutality and racial violence under capitalism. Over the past 40 years, we have encountered a War on Poverty, War on Drugs, and War on Terror, all of which increased surveillance and consolidated power in the hands of law enforcement. The proliferation of the police state, expansion of the prison-industrial complex, and laws putting more poor and working-class black people in debt and prison tie together race, surveillance, and capitalism in ways that both demand resistance and help to explain the rise of BLM.

State surveillance of BLM and similar organizations should be expected. Everyday practices of surveillance join the exceptional targeting of artists, writers, and musicians (especially hip-hop artists) under the guise of national security. [4] Extralegal programs like J. Edgar Hoover's infamous Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), which ran between 1956 and 1971, explicitly targeted and attempted to disrupt black civil rights organizations, activists, and leaders. Most recently, as detailed in a 2016 ACLU report, law enforcement agencies employed a powerful surveillance program using data from social media sites to track protest activity in Oakland and Baltimore. [5] Black Lives Matter has deftly employed social media to expose the killing of black men, women, and children at the hands of law enforcement, yet the medium is an especially ambivalent space, as government agencies track social media and employ surveillance tactics to monitor organizers and activists. [6]

How then can we transcend capitalism and challenge the strictures of surveillance? Browne employs the term "dark sousveillance" to introduce the "tactics employed to render one's self out of sight." Dark sousveillance, she argues, is a productive space "from which to mobilize a critique of racializing surveillance." At the same time, exposure and visibility can be tactics of freedom, as for example in the use of camera phones to film police. Dark sousveillance can be a means of achieving parity with the state, Browne contends. "What does it mean," though, "when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy?," as Audre Lorde famously asked. Lorde also provided an answer: "It means that only the most narrow perimeters of change are possible and allowable." [7] Dark sousveillance offers critique, but not resistance. Acts of witnessing racializing surveillance have severe penalties. The civilians who filmed the state-inflicted deaths of Eric Garner, Alton Sterling, Freddie Gray, and Philando Castile were all subsequently arrested. None of the police officers has been convicted. We must use different tools.

Taylor raises a question parallel to Lorde's: whether the current economic and political conditions, structured by institutional racism, can be altered under capitalism. In other words, can we radically improve and humanize capitalism? The short answer is no. Capitalism continues to be exploited by elites to justify inequality. Rather than searching for new forms of capitalism, we ought to focus on alternatives.

Black enslavement was fundamental to the establishment and growth of capitalism and black oppression continues to feed it. Even black capitalists, Taylor argues, cannot hope to exist outside the constraints of white supremacy. Fighting capitalism requires coming together across the divisions and hierarchies that fuel it. With the recent election of Donald Trump as President, the imperative has only grown more urgent. Capitalism cannot be used to achieve black liberation. Only solidarity will free us all.

This review appeared at Public Books.

Notes

[1] John Fiske, "Surveilling the City: Whiteness, the Black Man and Democratic Totalitarianism," in Theory, Culture and Society, vol. 15, no. 2 (1998), p. 81.

[2] See Craig Timberg, "Racial Profiling, by a Computer? Police Facial-ID Tech Raises Civil Rights Concerns," Washington Post, October 18, 2016.

[3] See "Hip Hop and the FBI: A Little-Known History," Esquire, June 4, 2014.

[4] Matt Cagle, "Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter Provided Data Access for a Surveillance Product Marketed to Target Activists of Color," American Civil Liberties Union, October 11, 2016.

[5] See Terrence McCoy, "The Secret Surveillance of 'Suspicious' Blacks in One of the Nation's Poshest Neighborhoods," Washington Post, October 13, 2015.

[6] The Baltimore Police Department, for instance, has implemented various surveillance tools to listen in on calls and track mobile phones and developed secret aerial surveillance programs to trace vehicles and the movement of criminal suspects in the city. See George Joseph, "Exclusive: Feds Regularly Monitored Black Lives Matter since Ferguson," The Intercept, July 24, 2015 ; Monte Reel, "Secret Cameras Record Baltimore's Every Move from Above," Bloomberg Businessweek, August 23, 2016.

[7] Audre Lorde, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House" (1979), in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, 4th ed., edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa (Kitchen Table Press, 2015), p. 94.

For Abolition: Prisons and Police Are More Than Brutality, They're State Terror

By Frank Castro

In his speech "Terrorism: Theirs and Ours," now deceased Professor Eqbal Ahmad elucidated five types of terrorism: state, religious, mafia, pathological, and political terror of the private group. Of these types, the focus in mainstream political discourse and media has almost always centered itself on discussion of just one: "political terror of the private group"-organizations like al-Qaida, the Taliban, and ISIS. But as Ahmad ( and Ben Norton ) pointed out, this is "the least important in terms of cost to human lives and human property." Rarely discussed is state terror, which has the highest cost in terms of human lives and property. According to Norton, Professor Ahmad estimated that the disparity of "people killed by state terror versus those killed by individual acts of terror is, conservatively, 100,000 to one."

Undoubtedly, the professor's observations were meant to provide insight into the material costs of global militarism, where millions, if not billions, have found themselves caught in-between or on the receiving end of state domination. While this may invoke imagery of American drones scalping the Middle East and North Africa for resources, its aircraft carriers patrolling international waters, or even thousands of refugees huddled into camps outside cities under siege, these are only instances of the United States' most visible crimes. They are the sites of its most demonstrative, and yet least diffuse, violence. In the turmoil and spectacle of U.S. foreign policy, often other forms of state terror remain relatively unknown, their intersections with overarching structures of oppression obscured beneath overt cruelty.

But Professor Ahmad's analysis of state violence can be applied directly to operations within state borders as much as it can be applied internationally. Militarism outside America, paired with its domestic institutions of terror, ought to be viewed inseparably as two sides of the same coin. Here, imperial power compliments prisons and policing as institutions for producing obedient, governable subjects, both locally and globally. It does so in a variety of ways: By supplying local police departments with an ever-escalating arsenal of repression, by constantly reconstructing the context for social control, and by extending white supremacy and colonial rule into the 21st century. Combined, governments like the United States' have been responsible for far more terror than any private group, possibly, in history.

Our task is to understand and to decide what we are going to do about it.

Bigger Than Police

Though widely used, "police brutality" is an isolated term. In some ways, and for many people, it obscures the more encompassing descriptor of state terror. Criticizing police is not necessarily an indictment of America's entire patriarchal, white, and capitalist power structure, but rather it pinpoints only that structure's enforcers. It compartmentalizes state violence and creates a focal point that, perhaps, is more comfortable since it feels manageable, more capable of bringing in line with a vision of the world that is not so painful that we can move through it without feeling its weight. On the other hand, "state terror" drafts far more questions into our hearts, the answers to which would indict everything about the world in which we live. And like Pandora's Box, once you see you can never again claim ignorance.

Police are meant to enforce the law. But law in any society reflects the values and prejudices of the empowered class, and therefore provides a measure of control to its benefactors. Crimes in Western society have ranged from atheism to murder, homosexuality to bribery, miscegenation to sedition. The intent of bourgeois law has been to uphold a specific moral code inline with a patriarchal, white, and capitalist status quo. And though criminal acts are committed by all sorts of people, the overwhelming number arrested, convicted, and imprisoned are poor, Black, Brown, Native, and/or LGBTQIA. They are disproportionately imprisoned not because they are "criminal" and white, upper class people are not, but because they have been made "targets of "law enforcement" and are discriminated against by police, by courts, and within prisons."

We have long known that police have been, first and foremost, an institution of terror erected to control the political and economic potential of the labor class in the North and slaves in the South. In the Carolinas in particular, slave patrols modeled the evolution of its police force by providing a form of organized deterrence to potential runaways and slave revolts. Yet a critique of police alone is insufficient if it does not dislodge the entire edifice which mandates its existence. Our analysis must include a broader view of state violence which challenges its moral and ideological underpinnings, and which excavates its techniques of power from the imperial to the interpersonal. After the death of TT Saffore, a Black, trans woman from Chicago, organizers published a statement that captures the scope necessary to reimagine a world without police:

"State violence is more than just police shootings. It is the police and prison systems themselves. It is the criminalizing of sex work, of the survivors of abuse. It is a legal order which treats Black, trans, and cis women who defend their lives as insolent, in need of punishment. It is homelessness. It is the calculated impoverishing of Black communities. It is the closing of public schools and mental health clinics, the slashing of HIV prevention and other healthcare services, while militarization devours the lion's share of public funds. It is gentrification. It is the poisoning of natural resources. It is all the structures-including the police and prison systems-which uphold and depend on violent masculinity, reinforcing the disposability of women and femmes, of trans and [gender nonconforming] communities, of the earth itself."

From Battlefield to Battlefield

War profiteering has a formulaic pattern. No conflict? No problem. The Pentagon will just create one and enrich a tiny minority (remember the Bush administration's claim that Saddam Hussein had " weapons of mass destruction "). The pattern continues by pointing out the devastation of war, then, like a revolving door, it uses the conflict it stirs as justification for more. This is how the United States has been embroiled in the Middle East for the better part of 50 years, how it armed and supported Osama bin Laden as a " freedom fighter " against the Soviets only to later have cultivated the forefathers of al-Qaida and ISIS. Meanwhile, weapons manufacturers have steadily supplied arsenals to the battlefield, and like any capitalist enterprise, it requires new markets-and new battlefields-to survive.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon introduced the ultimate market to arms manufacturers. The "War on Drugs" provided increased federal funding to local police departments. But more importantly, in 1990 Congress enacted the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which enabled the Secretary of Defense to "transfer to Federal and State agencies personal property of the Department of Defense, including small arms and ammunition, that the Secretary determines is-(A) suitable for use by such agencies in counter-drug activities; and (B) excess to the needs of the Department of Defense." Section 1208 states further, under the "Conditions for Transfer," that any property transferred must be "drawn from existing stocks," meaning any purchased surplus can be offloaded to local police agencies with little to no obstruction.

The consequences of which have been far reaching. Today, municipal police departments serve as a release valve for the overflow of military grade weapons produced by arms manufacturers. Amended versions of the NDAA have provided local law enforcement agencies with armored personnel vehicles, grenade launchers, high-caliber assault rifles, and an ever-escalating stockpile of combat-ready equipment. It is not just weapons either. Imperial war has imported the ideology of military combat, blurring the distinction between the "Rule of Law" and the "Rules of Engagement," and brought it to bear upon the intimate details of everyday life. We have seen an escalation of military-styled "special ops" teams within police agencies, the dismantling of the 4th amendment, and heightened advocacy for complete submission to the state in the name of national security, no matter how intrusive.

But no matter what manifestation state violence takes, as physician Gabor Maté accurately observed, it is never waged against inanimate objects, it is waged against people. In the case of the "War on Drugs," "we are warring on the most abused and vulnerable segments of the population," an observation that remains true internationally as well. If there were no wars waged against the most vulnerable of the planet, none to constantly supply with arms to subjugate the poor, it stands likely that there would be drastically less weapons to be wielded against the addicted and destitute in our streets.

Expanding State Terror

As New York State prisoner David Gilbert noted, there is simply no way the "War on Drugs" was a "well-intentioned mistake" with Prohibition having proven such an abysmal failure. Rather, he writes, it "was conceived to mobilize the U.S. public behind greatly increased police powers, used to cripple and contain the Black and Latinx communities, and exploited to expand the state's repressive power." Gilbert's poignant observations notwithstanding, the "War on Drugs" did not mark the first time U.S. government used drugs as an instrument to develop state dominance. It has been done many times before. In " Drug Wars," Professor Curtis Marez demonstrates how the United States has historically wielded the drug trade not to end it, but to channel its flow in order to enhance imperial power:

"The use of drug traffic to support the state is evident in a number of ways. First, the United States has supported drug traffic to finance imperial wars. U.S. participation in the cocaine trade as a means for funding rightwing military proxies such as the Contras could be viewed as the refinement and expansion of the strategies first deployed during the Vietnam War, in which the United States promoted heroin trade in order to support anti-communist Hmong forces in Laos. Second, at the same time as it fostered drug traffic internationally, the state used the "drug problem" as an excuse for the criminalization and suppression of domestic dissent… And finally, the United States has indirectly promoted drug consumption as a method for controlling people of color… Drugs have been deployed, in other words, as weapons of counterinsurgency that aimed to dissipate or sedate oppositional energies."

The techniques of wielding the drug trade have roots closer than Vietnam or Central America. They rest in U.S. attempts to disrupt and destroy indigeneity, first with alcohol through the 1800s, but more recently through substances such as peyote. By prohibiting or restricting access to drugs, government creates the pretext for selective enforcement and criminalization, and ultimately generates substantial leverage for social control. Marez reveals the circularity of this process, noting that "criminalization generates the very forms of criminality it is supposedly mean to prevent, which in turn provides new opportunities for further criminalization." In other words, "the law does not work simply through the prohibition of crime" but also through a "production of criminality" placed principally upon minorities.

Political prisoner Leonard Peltier once wrote, "When you grow up Indian, you don't have to become a criminal, you already are a criminal." Through the drug trade, U.S. government has effectively marketed the policing and imprisonment of minorities as the key to public safety, and therefore marked them as targets of state terror. This unearths how Native men can be incarcerated at four times the rate of white men, how Native women can be incarcerated at six times the rate of white women. It demonstrates how the flooding of crack cocaine into Black communities during the '70s correlated with a sharp increase in minimum sentencing laws that helped put 1.7 million Black people under some form of correctional control. It reveals how native Hawaiians, who represent just 20 percent of the state's population, can comprise 40 percent of the its incarcerated.

It also explains, in part, how America's imprisoned population exploded to 2.4 million since the start of Nixon's "War on Drugs"- an increase of 700% . But mass incarceration, like most drug policy, has little to do with safety and everything to do with the maintenance and expansion of state power. With the exception of capital punishment, the ability to revoke a person's freedom, to condemn one to a lifetime in a cage, is the ultimate exercise of state violence. To visit Michel Foucault's seminal text " Discipline and Punish," "There can be no doubt that the exercise of the [state] in the punishment of crime is one of the essential parts of the administration of justice. […] The right to punish… is an aspect of the [state's] right to make war on [its] enemies: to punish belongs to 'that absolute power of life and death.'"

As we have seen, however, when "crime" is engineered around selective enforcement it is constructed to control the political and economic aspirations, and the very bodies, of the oppressed. Indeed, of minorities and the poor it fashions enemies of the state with the intent to exercise terror. From the origins of police, to the school-to-prison-pipeline, to the vast network of U.S. incarceration, this has been the enduring legacy of the American judicial system-not safety, and certainly not justice. For the legal system which reigns over the poor, the marginalized, and the disenfranchised has not been of their own design, but was created entirely by a white, patriarchal upper class that is incapable of expressing anything but malcontent for those whom struggle against it.

Follow the Money

Answering a nation-wide call to stop prison slavery, September 9, 2016 marked the beginning of the largest prison strike in U.S. history. According to Popular Resistance, an estimated "72,000 incarcerated workers in 22 states refused to provide their labor to profit the prison industrial complex." One of the first of its kind, the nationally coordinated effort has targeted combating what many workers identify as slave-like labor conditions. The U.S. Constitution's Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, at least partially, but it left a loophole for people convicted of crimes. This means that prison workers can legally be paid little to nothing for their labor. Prison administrators, in response, have attempted to break the strike by shutting-off access and communication to the outside world.

Private prisons have morphed into a multi-billion dollar industry since the "War on Drug" started. The companies reaping the largest profits from America's prison industry are Geo Group and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), operating upwards of a 170 incarceration facilities with juvenile and undocumented detention centers included. Earlier this year the Guardian reported that "CCA made revenues of $1.79bn in 2015, up from $1.65bn in 2014," while "Geo Group made revenues of $1.84bn, a 9% increase on the previous year." How the private prison industry continues to increase profits can be explained in one of two ways: Increasing the incarcerated workforce (meaning jail more people) or squeezing existing laborers for more production. For many years it has pursued both.

Of course, it is not just private prisons that incentivize incarceration. There is an entire supporting cast dedicated to its proliferation as well: The aerospace industry and arms manufacturers (which supply drug enforcement planes, helicopters, drones, armored vehicles, weapons, ammunition, and surveillance technology), chemical companies (which produce the poisons often used to sedate and execute prisoners, as well as the tear gas used in prison strikes and protests), the bail bonds industry (which finance the ability or inability for a person to await trial in or out of jail), U.S. banks (which launder billions of dollars for drug cartels and finance the prison industry), and of course numerous politicians (which accept money from these industries in exchange for pushing favorable legislation).

The end result is a sprawling cornucopia of state violence supported at every level of America's social structure-and which relies principally on police for enforcement. After all, we should never forget that every single person convicted for a violent or a non-violent crime, every single person wrongly convicted, every single person corralled for simply being different or standing up for justice, every single person unable to navigate poverty, homelessness, or addiction, who is placed in a cage to work in servitude or slavery, was put there by a cop. It follows that if ever we are to mobilize to dismantle mass incarceration, it must also be a movement to extract the final breath from policing itself, and to abolish for all time every manifestation of state terror.

Towards Abolition

In the struggle for freedom, an abolitionist framework is indispensable. It enables us to identify the correlations between the imperial, the police, and the prison, and to say the name of its intersections aloud. Doing so illuminates how separate deployments of state terror scaffold each other: how, like a relay race that never stops, each cannot begin or end with itself but must always recruit and pass on power. It also teaches us how to better build and sustain the communities necessary to fight back, and how to generate movements that do not create silos of resistance but identify fulcrums to dismantle oppression for the benefit of all. As Dan Berger wrote, abolition "pushes us to think and act better than the systems that confine, cage, and kill," and it "names a past as well as a future: it reminds us… that structures of violence have a beginning and can therefore have an ending."

Because the edifice of state violence rests atop a myriad of oppressions, accepting that any effort to uproot the entanglements of its power centers on confronting dangerously racist, gendered, and classist hierarchies is the first step towards abolition. It recognizes that battles will be waged both within ourselves, as we attempt to deconstruct everything we once believed about policing and incarceration, and in the world around us as we confront state institutions with our minds, our energy, and our bodies. And though our task is enormous, we cannot let the daunting reality of our ambition swallow us. If ever we feel lonely, it is not a testament to our inability to impact the world, it is a testament to the need for connection. The place where we realize our fullest capacity to generate change is in communion with each other.

In 1974, Ursula K. Le Guin reminded us that collective strength is the only path towards freedom: "The individual cannot bargain with the State," she said. "The State recognizes no coinage but power: and it issues the coins itself." When we understand the magnitude of state terror, we must remember that we are not meant to suddenly feel inspired to challenge it alone. There is an unavoidable degree of loneliness and helplessness embedded within its realization. And refusing to confront these feelings is part of how the system functions to subvert resistance, by substituting isolation and alienation for opportunities to collectively learn, live, and fight for freedom in ways we may have never dreamed possible. But we must always reserve room in our hearts to build bridges-too many depend on us for it.

In the words of prisoners themselves:

"We need support from people on the outside. A prison is an easy-lockdown environment, a place of control and confinement where repression is built into every stone wall and chain link, every gesture and routine. When we stand up to these authorities, they come down on us, and the only protection we have is solidarity from the outside. Mass incarceration, whether in private or state-run facilities is a scheme where slave catchers patrol our neighborhoods and monitor our lives. It requires mass criminalization. Our tribulations on the inside are a tool used to control our families and communities on the outside. Certain Americans live every day under not only the threat of extra-judicial execution… but also under the threat of capture, of being thrown into these plantations, shackled and forced to work."

Abolition, then, is the only answer to a system whose currency is terror.

Fueling the Mob: Differences Between the London Riots and Ferguson

By Kelly Beestone

For many in the United Kingdom, watching the news of the riots unfolding in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014, brought to mind images of the aftermath of Mark Duggan's death in London in 2011. In both cases, police officers responsible for the death of an unarmed black man were investigated and found guilty of no wrongdoing. In both cases too, the aftermath entailed widespread destruction of property, violence and a deepened distrust of police.

Beneath the surface, however, there are significant differences between the rioting in England and the Ferguson unrest. Most significantly, the English working-class has maintained a greater ability to collectively confront police injustice due, at least in part, to the history of class-based political organization in England. This is in stark contrast to the American context where elites have attempted (with a great deal of success) to divide its working-class through racism.

On August 4th 2011, police gunned down Mark Duggan, a twenty-nine year-old resident of Tottenham, London. Newspapers reported that police had killed Duggan in self-defence after they discovered he was carrying a gun. The Independent Police Complaints Commission [IPCC] revealed that Duggan was under investigation by Operation Trident and that two shots were fired by a policeman, known only as V53, which resulted in his death. Ultimately, a lack of forensic evidence proving that Duggan had ever been holding a gun at all caused several newspapers, including The Guardian, to issue an apology for misinforming the public but not before widespread community outrage boiled over into violence.[1]

On August 6th more than one hundred people protested in Tottenham. Two police cars were attacked. Rioting quickly spread from London to Birmingham, to Leicester, to Nottingham, Liverpool, and Manchester and to Bristol. The inquest into Duggan's death was adjourned on the 9th; the unrest lasted until the 11th (with some minor "aftershock" incidents even later in the week).

According to the BBC, at least 3,000 people were arrested for crimes relating to the riots during this period. [2] Many of these were in London where the riots initially broke out and manifested, as Ann and Aisha Phoenix note in their paper Radicalisation, Relationality and Riots: Intersections and Interpellations, as a "multi-ethnic" uprising. [3] That claim is, in fact, bolstered by Ministry of Justice statistics that listed 33% percent of those facing charges for riot-related incidents as "white," 43% as "black" and 7% as "Asian."[4]

Even more interesting is that while the above statistics reflect the riots overall, the arrest figures fluctuate wildly depending on the ethnic make-up of individual neighborhoods. For instance, white defendants in London made up 32% of those appearing in court, while in Merseyside, which also experienced significant rioting, the percentage of whites arrested in connection to the riots is closer to 79% of total arrests. [5] Of those convicted for riot-related crimes, 35% were claiming working benefits (the national average in the UK is 12%) and of those juveniles convicted, 42% were claiming free school meals (compared to an average of 16% nationally). [6] This uprising drew support across racial lines in the UK, but the overwhelming number of participants were still working-class people.

While the public reacted against the police, media coverage was quick to condemn the rioters. Several news outlets (including the BBC) attempted to place the blame for the unrest on the "black influence" on the (white) British working class. Historian David Starkey used his appearance on Newsnight to theorise that "the chavs have become black. The whites have become black" and to condemn the "nihilistic" attitudes of the rioters. [7] For all the problematic (and racist) implications of Starkey's commentary, however, he is one of the few commentators who attempted to link the white working-class response to Duggan's death to the black community's response.

Many media outlets highlighted incidents of individuals attempting to incite others to riot in areas such as Newcastle via social media, fixating on a narrative of opportunistic rioters interested primarily with mindless "battle" with the police,[8] because they were, somehow, inherently "violent"[9] and prone to behaving like "thugs" because of poor parenting.[10] The Telegraph went so far at one point as to call the children involved "feral." [11] At another point, conversely, the Telegraph's editors suggest that this disorder "was an assault […] on the established order of benign democracy" itself, no small feat for a mob of feral chavs, it would seem. [12]

Perhaps most telling of all however, was the media's exoneration of the police dealing with the Duggan case. An in-depth study by the BBC asserted that police were so stretched in London that volunteer police entered the fray without riot gear or training in order to defend against the rioters. This is intended to create a binary opposition between the 'brave' police who attempted to supress the violence and the 'hooded teenagers' [13] who perpetuated it. Meanwhile, the policeman who killed Duggan was found to be acting in self-defence by the investigation and cleared of the murder. Despite being pressured into resigning, no further action was taken against him and the final decision of a lawful killing due to an 'honestly held' fear for police safety was delivered on January 8th 2014. [14]

The situation in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 echoes that of Duggan in-so-much that Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, was shot on August 9th 2014 by white police officer Darren Wilson in dubious circumstances. Witnesses claimed Brown had his hands up in surrender when he was shot yet police claimed Brown was reaching for a gun, while simultaneously charging through a hail of gunfire, and that Darren Wilson acted in self-defence.

This state of affairs led to widespread public outrage that culminated in rioting in Ferguson. However, in this case, it is not the "multi-ethnic" reaction witnessed in the UK but an overwhelmingly African American protest that emerges. Scenes of unrest from the protests show US police in riot gear firing canisters of tear gas and pepper spraying protestors. Several photos also demonstrators in defensive positions, kneeling before advancing police who were using these particularly aggressive tactics in order to pacify the protestors.

In the UK, police were called in to monitor demonstrations and to arrest those involved in riot-related crimes. In areas where there were rumours of riots brewing, such as in Newcastle, police stood outside train stations in order to deter potential rioters. In Ferguson however, the streets were patrolled by armoured cars and officers who were armed with assault rifles and stun grenades who fired rubber bullets into crowds of unarmed demonstrators.

Media reactions to the violence in the US varied. The right-wing media organization, Fox, included headlines calling for rioters to pay for the damage caused[15] and several headlines focused on the moral failure of the "rioters." Indeed, Fox's coverage seemed to imply that the police were acting with justifiable force to prevent what it characterized as criminal, not political, violence. CNN took a more nuanced view of the "protestors" (rather than "rioters"), even as the focus of their coverage was the violence and destruction of property resulting from the protests.[16] CNN also made an attempt to focus on the larger issue of public outrage at the police response in Ferguson, focusing on peaceful 'die-in' protests made by students in high schools and universities across various states. The August 26 th edition of the New York Times, often described as a liberal journal, featured a prominent photo of Michael Brown's family sitting behind Brown's coffin with the headline "Amidst mourning, call for change."[17] Largely absent from this coverage, however, were corresponding images of white rioters or of police reacting to white rioters with the sort of force that was marshalled against the people of Ferguson.

As far back as Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, we see racial legislation emerge to counteract the emerging solidarity between indentured white servants with indentured black servants which culminated in Jamestown burning to the ground with its colonial governor fleeing for his life before the crowd. In particular, the passing of the Virginia Slave Codes in 1705 severely limited interactions between white and black people and it was this type of legislation that would determine the parameters of interracial engagement amongst the working classes for decades to come in the English colonies in America. Historian Paul Finkleman notes in his book Slavery and the Law that this sort of legislation would ensure that white people, regardless of class, would occupy a privileged caste position in relation to black people. These legal limitations imposed on black people--including constraints on intermarriage, owning weapons and baptism--created a hard and fast caste order in which black people would always be considered inferior to white people, a state of affairs that inhibited class solidarity across (racialized) caste lines.[18]

Historian Eric Foner argues that the New York City Draft Riots of 1863 remains "the largest civil and racial insurrection in American history" outside of the Civil War.[19] The riots were caused, initially, by resentment that wealthy citizens could pay $300 to escape the draft. Yet, in the wake of white bosses' decision to import African American scab labour to break (Irish) union organization on the docks in the weeks prior, the violence that consumed New York City between the 13th of July and 16th of July in 1863 took on a disturbingly racial quality. Black citizens, exempt from draft laws, were scapegoated and as (predominately Irish) white rage erupted over competition for jobs, more than a dozen were killed in race-related incidents.

Working class whites in New York did not perceive working class blacks as comrades.

Unions such as the Longshoreman's Association believed the danger that James Gordon Bennett, editor of the (WHAT CITY?) Herald, evoked of a black population that would permanently undermine the interests of the white working class if Abraham Lincoln pursued universal emancipation. "Are you ready to divide your patrimony with the negro? Are you ready to work with him in competition to work more than you do now for less pay?" Bennett asked. [20] Rather than engaging them in solidarity, white working class rioters in 1863 New York chose instead to hang innocent, working class, African Americans from city lamp posts and burn an orphanage for coloured children to the ground.

Bennett's anxieties were not unreasonable. Lorenzo J. Greene and Carter G. Woodson observed in 1930 that after the Civil War, the American working class was economically weakened across the board, regardless of the individual skill of the worker. This was in part due to the increased competition generated by immigrant workers, but also because of the wide availability of a large, perpetually under-employed African American population which was a result of the "unwillingness of employers to hire Negro mechanics, and the keen competition for jobs, in which the white workmen were usually given the preference." [21] This arrangement often forced black workers to seek the most dangerous and distasteful of jobs, when they could find work at all. And when they could not find work, they remained as an ever-present (and perpetually resented) reminder to white workers to remain servile, replaceable as they were.

Economist Warren Whatley noted that throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, African-Americans were called upon for "almost every major confrontation between capital and labor." For many American entrepreneurs and businessmen, the boogieman of black scab labour was wielded as the perfect deterrent against strikes. As a result of racially discriminatory union policies that rejected class solidarity between white and black workers, African Americans had no incentive to respect white picket lines. Even when unions did not exclude African-Americans by constitutional provision, often the racism of the rank-and-file members made it impossible for black workers to earn union membership.[22] In modern-day America, there are still lingering traces of this divide.

While the working class as a whole has lost stability and security since de-industrialization, African-Americans continue to disproportionately suffer the effects of economic disenfranchisement when compared to whites. Bureau of Labor Statistics show that unemployment rates amongst African Americans in the last decade is consistently higher than it is amongst whites.[23]

The increase in financial instability and insecurity among working class people in the wake of de-industrialization is not unique to the US; in fact, this pattern has is not so dissimilar to the socio-economic and political realities of post-industrial Britain. In both places, this increased financial instability and insecurity among working class people has grown in tandem with an increase in police repression of working class people. In one way, the slaying of Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri represents a manifestation of this dynamic that is mirrored by the slaying of Mark Duggan of Tottenham. However, and significantly, the UK has manifested a capacity for meaningful transracial solidarity based on class identity, which does not exist in the USA. Through organizations such as Class War, ANTIFA and NUS, the UK allows for a more multi-racial foundation for protesting grievances amongst the working class, while in the US, the systematic destruction of multi-ethnic relations across the class system makes this impossible. As a result, when the UK protestors felt they had nowhere to turn to, the nation became aware that this was a riot founded in these economic problems. While in Ferguson, where such political organization did not occur, the riots were portrayed exclusively as a product of black rage and despair, shored up by the fact that no other outlets existed to channel the anger in a less destructive way.

Both Ferguson and the London unrest should give us pause for thought. In both cases, people have felt driven to destruction by the ineptitude of the judicial system. Yet for all their surface similarities, the significant differences between the two riots proves that the insidious racism preserved amongst the working-class in America continues to drive a wedge between the very people who ought to be united in their grievances. Until the disproportionate suffering of black citizens is addressed, it is clear that incidents like Ferguson will continue to be the only way many Americans believe they can let their voices be heard.

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Footnotes

[1] Vikram Dodd "New Questions Raised Over Duggan Shooting" The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/nov/18/mark-duggan-ipcc-investigation-riots [date accessed 14/05/2016]

[2] BBC News "England Rioters 'Poorer, Younger, Less Educated'" http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-15426720 [date accessed 15/05/2016]

[3] Ann and Aisha Phoenix "Radicalisation, Relationality and Riots: Intersections and Interpellations" in Feminist Review, no.100 [2012] p.61

[4] BBC News "England Rioters 'Poorer, Younger, Less Educated'" http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-15426720 [date accessed 15/05/2016]

[5] Ibid

[6] Ibid

[7] TruthCauldron, "David Starkey-BBC Newsnight 'The Whites Have Become Black'" Filmed 14/08/2011, Youtube Video, 10:36 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVq2bs8M9HM

[8] Vikram Dodd and Caroline Davis "London Riots Escalate as Police Battle for Control" The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/aug/08/london-riots-escalate-police-battle [date accessed 14/05/2016]

[9] Lee Moran and Allan Hall "British Youths are 'the Most Unpleasant and Violent in the World'. Damning Verdict of Writer as Globe Reacts to Riots" Daily Mail Online http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2024486/UK-RIOTS-2011-British-youths-unpleasant-violent-world.html [date accessed 14/05/2016]

[10] Ryan Parry "Young Thugs Got a Lift Home With Mum When They Finished Looting" The Mirror http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/london-riots-young-thugs-got-a-lift-146673 [date accessed 14/05/2016]

[11] Mary Riddell "London Riots: The Underclass Lash Out" The Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8630533/Riots-the-underclass-lashes-out.html [date accessed 14/05/2016]

[12] Mary Riddell "London Riots: The Underclass Lash Out"

[13] Ibid

[14] Gov.uk "Transcript of the Hearing 15 October 2013" http://dugganinquest.independent.gov.uk/transcripts/1207.htm [date accessed 14/05/2016]

[15] Cal Thomas "Ferguson Unrest: Make Protestors Pay for Riot Damage" Fox News.com http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/12/02/ferguson-unrest-make-protesters-pay-for-riot-damage.html [date accessed 16/05/2016]

[16] Moni Basu and Faith Karami "Protestors Torch Police Car in Another Tense Night in Ferguson" CNN.com http://edition.cnn.com/2014/11/25/justice/ferguson-grand-jury-decision/ [date accessed 16/05/2016]

[17] Monica Davey "Amid Mourning, Time For Change," New York Times, August 26, 2014 p.1

[18] Jonathan A. Bush "The British Constitution and the Creation of American Slavery" in Slavery and the Law ed. Paul Finkleman [Maryland; Rowman and Littlefield, 2002] p.392

[19] Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 [New York; Harper and Row, 1988] pp.32-33

[20] Albon P. Man Jr. "Labor Competition and the New York Draft Riots of 1863" in Journal of Negro History 36.4 [1951] p.379

[21] Lorenzo J. Green and Carter G. Woodson, The Negro Wage Earner, [Chicago; The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1930] p.4

[22] Warren C. Whatley "African-American Strikebreaking from the Civil War to the New Deal" in Social Science History 17.4 [Winter, 1993] p.529

[23] Bureau of Labor Statistics "Table A-2. Employment Status of the Civilian Population by Race, Sex, and Age" United States Department of Labor http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t02.htm [date accessed 16/05/2016]