“Racism is the statesanctioned and/or extralegal
production and exploitation
of group-differentiated
vulnerability to premature
death. Prison expansion is a
new iteration of this theme”
-Ruth Gilmore Wilson
Golden Gulag
“As prisons proliferate in U.S. society, private capital has become enmeshed in the
punishment industry. And precisely because of their profit potential, prisons are
becoming increasingly important to the U.S. economy. If the notion of
punishment as a source of potentially stupendous profits is disturbing by itself,
then the strategic dependence on racist structures and ideologies to render mass
punishment palatable and profitable is even more troubling.
Prison privatization is the most obvious instance of capital's current
movement toward the prison industry. While government-run prisons are often in
gross violation of international human rights standards, private prisons are even
less accountable. In March of this year, the Corrections Corporation of America
(CCA), the largest U.S. private prison company, claimed 54,944 beds in 68
facilities under contract or development in the U.S., Puerto Rico, the United
Kingdom, and Australia. Following the global trend of subjecting more women
to public punishment, CCA recently opened a women's prison outside
Melbourne. The company recently identified California as its ‘new frontier.’”
-Angela Davis “Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex”
“ ‘I don’t work for nothing. I ain’t gonna be no slave for nobody. Don’t you know
that slavery was outlawed?’
‘No,’ the guard said, ‘you’re wrong. Slavery was outlawed with the exception of
prisons. Slavery is legal in prisons.’
I looked it up and sure enough, she was right. The 13th Amendment to the
Constitution says:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, expcept as punishment for crime whereof the party shall
have been duly convicted, shall existed within the United States, or any place subject to their
juridiction.
Well, that explained a lot of things. That explained why jails and prisons all over
the country are filled to the brim with Black and Third World people, why so
many Black people can’t find a job on the streets and are forced to survive the
best way they know how. Once you’re in prison, there are plenty of jobs, and, if
you don’t want to work, they beat you up and throw you in the hole. If every
state had to pay workers to do the jobs prisoners are forced to do, the salaries
would amount to billions.”
-Assata
1. We Want Freedom. We Want Power To Determine The Destiny Of
Our Black Community.
2. We Want Full Employment For Our People.
3. We Want An End To The Robbery By The Capitalists Of Our Black
Community.
4. We Want Decent Housing Fit For The Shelter Of Human Beings.
5. We Want Education For Our People That Exposes The True Nature
Of This Decadent American Society.
6. We Want All Black Men To Be Exempt From Military Service.
7. We Want An Immediate End To Police Brutality And Murder Of
Black People.
8. We Want Freedom For All Black Men
9. We Want All Black People When Brought To Trial To Be Tried In
Court By A Jury Of Their Peer Group Or People From Their Black
Communities, As Defined By The Constitution Of The United States.
10. We Want Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice And
Peace.
•  “To a lot of Panthers, the struggle consisted of only two aspects: picking up the
gun and serving the people […]many Party members underestimated the need to
unite with other Black organizations and to struggle around various community
issues” (221)
•  “I also respected –Zayd] because he refused to become part of the macho cult
that was an official body in the BPP” (223)
•  “A systematic program for political education, ranging from the simplest to the
highest level, is imperative for any successful organization or movement for Black
liberation in this country. The Party had some of the most politically conscious
sisters and brothers as members, but in some ways it failed to spread that
consciousness to the cadre in general” (222)
•  “Instead of criticizing what was happening, most of the Party members defended
it. […] When Huey changed his title from defense minister to the ridiculoussounding ‘Supreme Commanded’’ and then to the even more ridiculous ‘Supreme
Servant,’ damn near nobody said a word. That was one of the big problems in the
party. Criticism and self-criticism were not encouraged” (226)
In making appeals to conservative notions of appropriate
gender behavior, African-American nationalists reveal their
ideological ties to other nationalist movements, including
European and Euro-American bourgeois nationalists over the
past 200 years . . . European and EuroAmerican nationalists
turned to the ideology of respectability to help them impose the
bourgeoisie manners and morals that attempted to control
sexual behavior and gender relations.
Malcolm X’s promise of protection falls under the rubric of
the “ideology of respectability.” The protected woman is the
“respectable” woman. The man who protects her is the
respected man.
-E Francis White and Farah Jasmine Griffen
“As far as i was concerned, it didn't take too much to figure that black
people are oppressed because of class as well as race, because we are poor
and because we are Black. It would burn me every time some body talked
about Black people climbing the ladder of success. Anytime you're talking
about a ladder, you're talking about a top and a bottom, an upper class
and a lower class, a rich class and a poor class. As long as you got a system
with a top and bottom, Black people are always going to end up at the
bottom because we're easiest to discriminate against. That's why i couldn't
see fighting within the system. Both the Democratic and Republican party
are controlled by millionaires.”
-Assata
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