Angela Davis 4.16.07
April 20, 2007
This Monday, April 16th, Professor Angela Davis addressed Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA on the topic of the Prison Industrial Complex (P.I.C.). Like always, Davis was most adept at drawing connections: she began the night by recognizing the Virginia Tech tragedy, whilst noting the fear-based demands for increased insecurity that are already being made. Following from the definition outlined in her excellent primer Are Prisons Obsolete?, she defined the P.I.C. as the proposition that the proliferation of prisons in the United States is not linked to crime, but rather social and economic factors. In turn, she touched on everything from the numbers of blacks and latinos in prison, to the workings of the global economy, to how the treatment of transgender prisoners reveals prisons as gendering processes.
I really do hope to touch on this topic in a future post, particularly since the Washington State legislature will likely pass a prison reform bill soon. In the meantime, I’ll post the syllabus for the class I taught last year that is based around the above-mentioned book by Professor Davis. Let me know what you think!
The Prison Industrial Complex & Beyond
(Fairhaven College, Fall 2006)
April 27, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Could you do a quick and dirty summary of Davis’s talk? Anything new or was it a lot like her last few books? Any examples or vignettes that stuck with you?
April 28, 2007 at 7:31 pm
I took notes for most of the talk, but they aren’t nearby right now… A friend of mine wrote an article summarizing the talk for a WWU newspaper available here: http://asreview.as.wwu.edu/Review/449/angela-davies-gets-free
I do think the talk was very similar to her last few books, not really adding anything new. Though I’m not sure I learned anything new from her talk, it was soooo good to have her saying it to such a large audience.
April 30, 2007 at 2:52 pm
That’s awesome that she met with local groups and they acknowledged the connections between immigrations and prisons and they seemed receptive to prison aboliton and working with abolitionists. …very different from my experiences. If only there were 10 more of her touring and speaking in liberal college towns then she might make it to Bloomington.
I’d really be interested in what she has to say about the work that some of the groups that I’ve been working with do. I’ll write more about this in a comment in the other entry.