Advocating for a More Equitable World
What?
In the article “Is Prison Necessary” the author, Rachel Kushner, talks about Ruth Wilson Gilmore, an activist and scholar, who is working as a prison abolitionist.
The article begins by telling the story of how Gilmore went to an event with young middle schoolers with the goal to convince them of how important working as a prison abolitionist is. The middle school children held strong concerns about closing the prisons and “the people who do something seriously wrong…, [like] people who hurt other people’’ (Kushner). The children “understood… the harshness of the world and were not going to be easily persuaded” into getting rid of the prison system (Kushner).
Gilmore explained to them how “instead of asking whether anyone should be locked up or go free, why don’t we think about why we solve problems by repeating the kind of behavior that brought us the problem in the first place?”” (Kushner). She further emphasizes the importance of addressing structural injustices that condition people’s lives and opportunities. She presents them with an approach which recognizes the ways in which individuals who go to prison may end up in a revolving door system.
This is very similar to the film “College Behind Bars.” They also illustrate how “college opportunity is a central part of criminal justice” (College Behind Bars). Education is the easiest and cheapest way to reduce violence and increase public safety. If we do not provide these prisoners with higher education opportunities, we are not giving them a chance to learn or get out of this loop. The film explains how “nearly half the minorities that go to prison come out and go back through the revolving door again” (College Behind Bars). Both the BPI and Gilmore, a prison abolitionist, are advocating for the importance of rehabilitating individuals within the prison system rather than turning to a society that “chooses to model cruelty and vengeance” (Kushner).
Gilmore emphasizes that “instead of asking how, in a future without prisons, we will deal with so-called violent people, abolitionists ask how we resolve inequalities and get people the resources they need long before the hypothetical moment when, as Gilmore puts it, they “mess up.”” (Kushner). We need to address the structural inequities that create barriers for so many people and communities. By addressing these inequalities, we will be able to provide these incarcerated people with access to educational tools that will help them to build on a critical consciousness. This will, hopefully, help them to start planning for the future and life outside of the prison system.
Furthermore, Kushner explains how the prison system is unjust in relation to mass incarceration of certain ethnicities. She highlights how “in the United States, we now have more than two million incarcerated people, a majority of them black or brown, virtually all of them from poor communities. Prisons not only have violated human rights and failed at rehabilitation; it’s not even clear that prisons deter crime or increase public safety” (Kushner).
Gilmore is dedicated to a new policy that will “reduce [the] scope and footprint [of the carceral system] by stopping new prison construction and closing prisons and jails one facility at a time, with painstaking grass-roots organizing and demands that state funding benefit, rather than punish, vulnerable communities” (Kushner). By building new prisons we are only allowing for mass incarceration which is already prevalent enough. We need to not continue building new prisons with funds, but we need to fix the ones that currently exist to combat mass incarceration.
Similarly, in the past reading Just Mercy the author, Bryan Stevenson, discusses how in this country “there [is] something missing in the way we treat people in our judicial system, that maybe we judge some people unfairly” (Stevenson, 13). We have the tendency to stereotype individuals based on their characteristics which can lead to the issue of mass incarceration. There is a bias towards different ethnicities and people are structured to believe that a certain race is more guilty than another. In general, both authors, Stevenson and Kushner, explain how mass incarceration serves as its own form of structural racism where Blacks are born into specific communities that are more heavily observed by officers. After being incarcerated once, they get sucked into this never ending cycle where they are unable to thrive. There is a profound amount of racial inequality and we have the tendency to ignore these patterns of racism.
So What?
Justice Now’s goal is “to [work] with people in women’s prisons and [collaborate] with local communities to build a safe, compassionate world without prisons. [Their] mission is to end violence against women, trans, and gender non-binary people, and to work to dismantle the prison industrial complex as a whole” (Justice Now). They are able to support women’s prisons by “bringing healthcare providers and community activists inside to work with prisoner peer educators. [They] collaborate with people on the inside to produce human rights reports on prison abuses…, provide direct legal services to people… [in] California, and are one of the only organizations with expertise on compassionate release — a legal remedy allowing for the early release of terminally ill or permanently incapacitated individuals” (Justice Now). Justice now strives towards “foster systems of individual accountability rather than punishment. [They] also train the next generation of activist lawyers and community organizers committed to working toward social justice” (Justice Now).
The goal is to “build a world without prisons” and they believe that “prisons and policing are not making our communities safe…, but that the current system harms both the people it imprisons and their communities” (Justice Now).
Justice Now is an organization that works with individuals inside California Women’s prisons. Their goal is to “dismantle the Prison Industrial Complex in all of its forms. From working toward the compassionate release of people inside, to providing legal assistance in safeguarding human rights — our team at Justice Now believes in community based solutions to address societal issues rather than locking people up, offering no rehabilitative outcomes” (Justice Now).
They are working to address these structural causes through prison abolition campaigns and by providing incarcerated people with direct legal services. Through their campaigns they are working to “promote alternatives to the prison industrial complex” (Justice Now). This group is striving to provide incarcerated people with direct legal services and advocacy to address immediate trauma that has been inflicted by the prison system. They provide resources, like self-help materials, in order to help the people inside the prison system to protect and ensure their human rights.
In my opinion, this organization is sustainable. They receive lots of support and offer many internship/volunteering opportunities. There are many ways that individuals are able to get involved with this organization and they list some of their past events and their success on their website. They have many partners and allies in order to continue to fight the impacts of incarceration. They list some of their “exciting successes” under the “inside stories” tab on their page.
Additionally, this group is a non-profit organization and works to develop strong connections between workers and incarcerated individuals. They are able to build these strong connections because a “majority of [the] staff is formerly incarcerated as well. They bring powerful lived experiences to the work and ensure that those directly impacted by the criminal justice system play a central role in working to end it” (Justice Now). They are able to address these structural causes and provide support to the incarcerated people that they work with through their own experiences within the prison system. This organization has been informed and is run by community members who have been impacted by incarceration which allows them to create the most compatible and successful partnerships.
Based on what I have learned about structural and intersectional issues related to social identity and education, economics, housing, immigration, etc., I believe that this organization and this strategy are beneficial in the ways that they are fighting the effects of this intersectionality.
Those who have multiple subordinate qualities are faced with higher rates of incarceration due to the negative stereotypes and racial injustices. This organization is working to challenge what is happening in the prison system by striving towards a world where there is access to “affordable housing, food, healthcare, economic opportunity, and freedom” (Justice Now). Justice now is looking for a more appropriate way to respond to individuals that commit crimes. They are focused on avoiding a method of punishment that relies on violence and control and they are turning to a model that advocates for rehabilitation.
Now What?
In the article “The Ideas That Won’t Survive the Virus” the author, Viet Thanh Nguyen, suggests that “the sensation of imprisonment during quarantine might make us imagine what real imprisonment feels like. There are, of course, actual prisons where we have warehoused human beings who have no relief from the threat of the coronavirus. There are refugee camps and detention centers that are de facto prisons” (Nguyen). With the quarantine, we are able to experience what incarcerated people experience on a day to day basis: being confined to a small space, lack of social interaction, and occupational deprivation.
Nguyen emphasizes “our lack of sufficient systems of health care, welfare, universal basic income and education to take care of the neediest among us” (Nguyen). The author is saying that there is no system in American that works to support ourselves and no systems, like healthcare, to help people. This shows our unreadiness for the current pandemic.
Additionally, Nguyen states “that history manifests today in our impulse to hoard, knowing that we live in an economy of self-reliance and scarcity” (Nguyen). America is made up of mostly colonizers who took land from previous people who lived there in the past, like natives. These colonizers did whatever they wanted to the native Americans and we have continued this ideology overtime to “hoard” and take. Nguyen explains how “Americans will eventually emerge from isolation and take stock of the fallen, both the people and the ideas that did not make it through the crisis. And then we will have to decide which story will let the survivors truly live” (Nguyen). There is this unfortunate concept of “survival of the fittest” where the weak will fall. Certain races are considered more superior than others. For example, with dominants and subordinates, being White and wealthy is considered to be the more dominant in comparison to being African American and impoverished. This idea of White superiority has been maintained throughout America where those who are victims of subordination are beat down while the rich will carry out like nothing happened after tragic events, like COVID-19.
Nguyen highlights that individuals being impacted most by COVID-19 are businesses and low income neighborhoods. This made me think of my community partner, WHAP, and the ways that this pandemic may be negatively affecting them. With this current crisis, the poor are likely to go under first economically. The wealthy are hoarding the necessities that people who are impoverished had difficulty obtaining before the virus. I am concerned for communities like Golden Gate Village and the ways that they are getting access to resources that are being collected by wealthy individuals. However, I was glad to read about how organizations were offering free hot meals for the community in Marin City and the ways that they are coming together to support one another.
Overall, I have begun to contemplate future choices based on what I have learned about unjust and inequitable structures. For me, I am now looking into the Community Action and Social Change minor at Dominican. I really enjoyed volunteering at WHAP this semester and I am hoping for the chance to go back and continue to work with that community in the future and through CASC courses. I am eager to continue to learn about social issues and the importance of advocating for a more equitable world.
