communistbookreader's review against another edition
5.0
I think Angela Y. Davis is my new intellectual crush. She is so amazing! I loved everything about this book. The sad part for me is it is about 15 years old and nearly all of what she speaks about is still apparent today. I have included my notes because books like this are fun and make me want to write things down and commit them to memory. Learning is awesome.
Abolition Democracy
- radical feminist, Communist Party candidate, founder of Critical Resistance (dismantle P.I. Complex)
- links White Supremacy (cause) with racial violence (effect)
- connections of post-Civil War black laws with growth of prison industrial complex
- disenfranchisement, capital extraction, social branding, racial contract (society based on white norms), ritual violence, sexual coercion, surplus repression, interconnected systems (relations between prisons and other political structures)
- linking of prison, nation-state, torture
- connecting her wok to Black Biography, Philosophy/Prison Writings
- philosophy and imagining a better world
- multidisciplinary approach to problem solving
- need to disconnect democracy from capitalism
- nationalism as unity of struggle for Black Peoples
- challenge is not a seat at the table of oppression, but how to break those systems
- need to attack structural racisms, not bemoan failure of Civil Rights Movement
- the assumption systems of oppression are OK if they mete out the same punishment to White and Black
- death penalty and racism
- industry of punishment
- use of prison to replace unsupported/unfunded social mechanisms
- link of prisons to torture not new
- Abu Ghraib and photos of torture used as “tool of democracy”
- links of slavery, lynching, and death penalty- wipe out victim
- fluidity of culture as a construct, the power of ideologies of racial inferiority
- connections between torture and practices of imprisonment
- emphasis on institution of violence, not who perpetrates
- asking questions instead of making pronouncements
- instead of “what can White/Western Feminism Do For You?”, what do feminists suffering under White/Western Global War have to say to White/Western Feminists?
- prison abolition more about breaking institutions of capitalist democracy that promote racism AND building new/better institutions of support
- false narrative that democracy is best and anything used to support it is OK (torture “debate”, erasure of humanity of victim)
- reconceptualize “security”; less about violent response, more about social programs
- limitations of law (cannot create justice, equality)
- Civil Rights success (ending racial categories) led to abstracted beings and removed legal protection/action
- connections of slavery abolition (reintegrate slaves into economy/society) and abolition democracy
- ending racism and lie of black community as way to do so (too various and multifaceted)
- democracy is NOT more open roles in repressive institutions of racism; more black people doing racist things (Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice...) is not gain
- US exporting its “prison model”
- use of simplified political discourse results in extremes (for us/against us) and resists critical thinking
- the difference between protests of 60’s/70’s and now; lack of patience, persistence, strategic thinking (organizing vs. mobilizing - focus group vs. crowd)
- need for experimentation to see what works in different situations, systems
As noted, this book is from 2005, but it still has plenty of relevance today. Racism, hegemony, capitalism, prisons, torture, terrorism and global war are ever-present realities. We need ever more involved people and constantly evolving mechanisms to fight them. Angela Y. Davis can help show you the door, but you have to walk though on your own...
Abolition Democracy
- radical feminist, Communist Party candidate, founder of Critical Resistance (dismantle P.I. Complex)
- links White Supremacy (cause) with racial violence (effect)
- connections of post-Civil War black laws with growth of prison industrial complex
- disenfranchisement, capital extraction, social branding, racial contract (society based on white norms), ritual violence, sexual coercion, surplus repression, interconnected systems (relations between prisons and other political structures)
- linking of prison, nation-state, torture
- connecting her wok to Black Biography, Philosophy/Prison Writings
- philosophy and imagining a better world
- multidisciplinary approach to problem solving
- need to disconnect democracy from capitalism
- nationalism as unity of struggle for Black Peoples
- challenge is not a seat at the table of oppression, but how to break those systems
- need to attack structural racisms, not bemoan failure of Civil Rights Movement
- the assumption systems of oppression are OK if they mete out the same punishment to White and Black
- death penalty and racism
- industry of punishment
- use of prison to replace unsupported/unfunded social mechanisms
- link of prisons to torture not new
- Abu Ghraib and photos of torture used as “tool of democracy”
- links of slavery, lynching, and death penalty- wipe out victim
- fluidity of culture as a construct, the power of ideologies of racial inferiority
- connections between torture and practices of imprisonment
- emphasis on institution of violence, not who perpetrates
- asking questions instead of making pronouncements
- instead of “what can White/Western Feminism Do For You?”, what do feminists suffering under White/Western Global War have to say to White/Western Feminists?
- prison abolition more about breaking institutions of capitalist democracy that promote racism AND building new/better institutions of support
- false narrative that democracy is best and anything used to support it is OK (torture “debate”, erasure of humanity of victim)
- reconceptualize “security”; less about violent response, more about social programs
- limitations of law (cannot create justice, equality)
- Civil Rights success (ending racial categories) led to abstracted beings and removed legal protection/action
- connections of slavery abolition (reintegrate slaves into economy/society) and abolition democracy
- ending racism and lie of black community as way to do so (too various and multifaceted)
- democracy is NOT more open roles in repressive institutions of racism; more black people doing racist things (Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice...) is not gain
- US exporting its “prison model”
- use of simplified political discourse results in extremes (for us/against us) and resists critical thinking
- the difference between protests of 60’s/70’s and now; lack of patience, persistence, strategic thinking (organizing vs. mobilizing - focus group vs. crowd)
- need for experimentation to see what works in different situations, systems
As noted, this book is from 2005, but it still has plenty of relevance today. Racism, hegemony, capitalism, prisons, torture, terrorism and global war are ever-present realities. We need ever more involved people and constantly evolving mechanisms to fight them. Angela Y. Davis can help show you the door, but you have to walk though on your own...
thexwalrus's review against another edition
5.0
there's not much i can add here, but i do want to note that there are perspectives on organizing, the prison-industrial complex, and fascism that i am taking away from this book. angela davis is brilliant.
dianacarmel's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
Angela Davis is as brilliant a writer as she is an interviewee.
zosiablue's review against another edition
4.0
This is a series of very academic interviews with Angela Davis during the second Bush administration & a nice reminder for me that Trump didn’t invent being evil. I forgot how livid and terrified I was when Bush was elected. And I was right to be.
Anyway, this book won’t be new info for anyone familiar with Davis’s work, but it was nice to remember that:
-the systems are sick & we can’t work within them
-prisons = military = prisons and back again
-we need to think globally when we fight injustice
-mobilization is not the same as organization
-torture and police/military/prison brutality are an extension of what’s already legally acceptable in those systems
Small, irrelevant note - there were tons of typos in this, which is always weird to see! Didn’t detract, so it’s just the same out-of-time feeling you get in elementary school when a teacher accidentally curses.
Anyway, this book won’t be new info for anyone familiar with Davis’s work, but it was nice to remember that:
-the systems are sick & we can’t work within them
-prisons = military = prisons and back again
-we need to think globally when we fight injustice
-mobilization is not the same as organization
-torture and police/military/prison brutality are an extension of what’s already legally acceptable in those systems
Small, irrelevant note - there were tons of typos in this, which is always weird to see! Didn’t detract, so it’s just the same out-of-time feeling you get in elementary school when a teacher accidentally curses.
sheabutterfemme's review against another edition
5.0
Angela Davis is a goddamn genius and I do not use this word lightly.
moonyslibrarie's review against another edition
informative
reflective
medium-paced
tabitabitabi's review against another edition
5.0
Quick read, as concise as a interview type book can be.
joymeetsworld's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
5.0
A series of interviews between Angela Davis and Eduardo Mendieta about abolition, race, gender, the prison and military industrial complexes, capitalism, imperialism, and state violence. I decided to reread Abolition Democracy after it came up in a conversation for my job (educating and organizing foundations to give to abolitionist and anti-criminalization organizing and movement building). It had been 15ish years since I first read it, but given the political and media conversation about the "state of U.S. democracy" it also felt especially timely. In the conversations that comprise the book, Angela Davis builds on W.E.B. DuBois' writing that the mere absence of enslavement is insufficient if new institutions are not created in its place, extrapolating his original concept of abolition democracy to guide organizing that both eliminates the prison industrial complex and envisions a world were prisons and punishment are rendered obsolete. Written in the mid-2000's, the content of Davis and Mendieta's conversations are very *of the time* with a heavy focus on the then-recently released photos of Iraqi men at Abu Ghraib prison tortured by U.S. military personnel. However, because of the exponential increase of imprisonment and policing as part of U.S. domestic and foreign policy over the past 17 years, there are unfortunately still relevant theory and organizing implications for much of what Davis shares. Recommended to everyone, especially those looking for something just beyond intro level that includes a gender lens / analysis and stresses the importance of transnational connection in thought and action.