And those that are this week the lunch of Kristen Franklin and on wednesday of the discussion and the time of coronavirus and on thursday a week from today with the money perry. And those to have technical issues that you may want to try this video will be recorded on the Youtube Channel so please post questions on the live video feed. The pandemic is a portal some responses from covid19 and with those borders and now with the message total surveillance but as we try to imagine in a different world there was no one i would rather hear from as the cofounder of Many Organizations including the california prison moratorium project and essential Environmental Justice network for those Environmental Sciences and doctor gilmore is the author it is a brilliant study and with the antistate state that government can or should with the social wellbeing and those with Christina Heather ten and her new book change everything, everything, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. With covid19 so start off by giving us the Bigger Picture between prison and inequality. I would be happy to. My dear friend catherine who i think is listening from somewhere in toronto recently cited to say if we were truly all in this together we would not all be in this together. And that we can use with those study points to talk about covid19 and the struggle for abolition. Mass incarceration and those forms of detention that connect is a feature of places that have the deepest inequality. We have one slide to show you tonight, that shows a list of the founding nation, now this slide by the Prison Policy Initiative with the Data Collection visualization in the United States, shows us even in the context the United States is off the chart quite literally. And the hope is of mass incarceration in the history of the world is a combination of organized abandonment, austerity and violence and criminalizatio criminalization. We can take the slide down of people are satisfied with the image. We could but we wont look at images from russia, india, china and south africa. We would see a similar pattern emerging where no country is close to the United States but those that have followed those neoliberal policies which is to say the policies of austerity to see the number of people walk up live. But as i said United States is off the charts. But its not a culture of complaint so to have that catastrophe to complain are the kinds of practices that will induce many people who are listening what my friend and historian calls contempt and pity and not looking for contempt or pity. What they are feeling is this, this, in every possible way to find a way to politics , that rather than be distinguished by edward meese says politics is distinguished by style, looking for politics that really are grounded in the struggle over life and death. A young french writer with a fantastic book i recommend to everybody and in this book to make this distinction politics of style so what does this mean for abolition . It is present and already happening in so many ways and in so many places around the world and many people who are listening tonight are already doing the work because so many of us are under some version of shelter in place. So revolutions happen because people are so conservative. He says they wait and wait and try every little thing until one day people come out in the street and clear up in a metal of years the disorder of century but to say covid19 is a portal that could be the portal to which all kinds of Little Things around the world come out and clear out. My friend and conrad a mention of the other night the pending revolution and left out abolition radio the other day that we could think of what we do as a survival after pending abolition. So that means the work behind and ahead is very wrong. So in l. A. County, decades ag ago, the aclu brought a condition of confinement case against the county for the horrendous condition so over the years the aclu was in charge of taking care and keeping an eye on what they did to remedy those horrific conditions. Eighteen years ago the aclu invited to something they never imagined which is perhaps the way they remedy the l. A. County jail was not to have a jail at all rather than to build a better jail. Slowly but surely the way of understanding is central to the struggle in l. A. County. Sixteen years late later, abolitionist to join forces managed to persuade the l. A. County board of supervisors one of the biggest governments and the United States not to build a new jail but to put billions of dollars into housing and healthcare and other projects. Abolition is how we connect with form and growth from to multiply to have the capacity to risk little movement. I learned that we were talking heads for some time on skype to risk it to show how anti Domestic Violence people are sensible to formation that mutual aid which now flourishes everywhere because of the emergence of covid19 Building Trades and all of these organizations have become and connected with the movement of abolition because it is about abolishing the condition under which that solution to problems rather than abolishing the building that we call prison. There are faith organizations and artist organizations and prisoner organizations inside and out and Environmental Justice, legal aid, transit workers and rights advocates, Public Health advocates, large and small, you name it all of these people are coming to gather in various configurations around the world to relieve the stress of organized abandonment and that violence to change the world in which we live. So that is the big picture that masks inequality with mass incarceration. So here we are decades deep in organized violence and abandonment. Now enter the covid19 pandemic. So what does it look like now or what might that mean for the future . Certainly the pandemic focuses everybodys mind nothing like fear to focus the mind. It has many aspects to it and therefore the responses people put together are quite astonishing for example just to take one pointed piece mostly students at the University Law school put together a guide for all of the federal bureau of prisons to show who has the authority for those who are organizing on the ground can focus from that amount of time to make the decision to release people. And what we know with mass incarceration and it is class war to the vulnerabilities those types of organizations i listed a few minutes ago and the organizing they do that labor unions try to relieve the vulnerabilities as advocates and people who are incarcerated advocating on their own behalf. So we can spend some time perhaps over the. That mass incarceration comes with a solution of a wide of way on array of other problem problems, the number of prison beds has gone up in hospital beds have gone down. So the movement in the opposite direction is quite startling. As many people who have figured out those are against or four or the configuration today we still see the fact that many areas of the us are underserved, says it all. People that have the capacity are overwhelmed because of the health care and the workers who were working in hospitals or transportation or all of the venues of the system to try to keep people whose lives are in danger from becoming sick and dying are struggling with inadequate resources when they could be there. So what do we think of in terms of organizing now . Certainly a lot of the work that many people have done with those vulnerabilities should be lifted up now whether brazil and those that have been organizing for years to have access to produce food and wellbeing but also to build the enormous Educational Program for themselves and others that have very Strong International connections throughout this hemisphere and throughout the world and in tennessee since the 19 twenties is a special place pro workingclass organization and they have a program right after we log off similarly talk about housing with a fantastic story of an abolitionist based in new orleans so to destroy the good deal of everyday life and then the antistate state came through for what already hadnt been destroyed by the floods they and their comrades got together to say we are going to create a Housing Trust so if you households could have a safe and Pleasant Place to live raise the money to buy the place that then what they have to say is we helped ourselves and this tells me the state that we needed we actually need the state that belongs to us rather than think we can do this ourselves for each other. Other responsibilities the kinds of things people are doing immediately to get people in jail to look after those with other kinds of sustenance. With a new with covid19 but more urgently raising money and that cook county in chicago and the conrads she has been working with over the years getting people out of cook county jail. But yet we also know in the last four weeks, 22 Million People in the United States lost their jobs. That means the need could not be greater for people to have the wherewithal to buy food and so forth with less discretionary cash available to help out and therefore like the work from new orleans to make demands on the social wage which is our rate and requirement around the world there are artists radical educators and the Detroit Justice Center and those working on behalf of undocumented people and disability organizers whose work has been so beautifully pulled together. People work on the law center to extend protection and opportunity. On this emergency is exactly that those people are not and 22 Million People in the United States that means many of us with jobs precariously unemployed, steadily unemployed will join forces to gather to imagine that we can even break ourselves up into smaller and smaller groups. So in light of covid19 and with those conventional dividing lines or low risk or high risk for the unsympathetic some of those may be hardening why is it problematic to demand incarceration with these categories . First and foremost, we should always plan to win and then we should ask ourselves , what happens next in the event of a victory . If what happens next is that the people who have been rightly released, are the only ones who could ever be released, then we will not have one. But i do say this, most people who go to prison, leave prison. Some are not doing light sentences and in those most parts of the world there are not life sentences. So that is imagining there is a magical wine between less guilty and more guilty or less or more inner sent more or less deserving or, violent and nonviolent, why not take seriously the fact that most people leave prison, do a little bit of analysis to see we could be closing prisons and jails already if we just by cut by two and three and four weeks, much less by years the type they are serving. And then have organized abandonment. And people from l. A. County this is not and impossible challeng challenge, did take a long time in los angeles that shouldnt take as long because of what we learned or the model behavior. One of the most speakers and revolutionaries cautioned us against these victories and is absolutely right. We should gather all of our victories and then stop and think about them to say what will this make possible . Why do these victories matter . If we use our own capacity for organized violence to include them in victory. So one example is new york city they plan to build 11 billion this is the closed rikers project. The mayor yesterday or today announced the city budget as ravaged as it is by covid19 will shrink by 2 billion. And then really a straightforward. And do not build a new jail but close rikers, use the money from Human Resources with that entire array of institutions that people would be organizing just to close rikers what was open because they organize the close and the mayor and the city council could use the money for the wellbeing that indeed has been ravaged by unemployment and the highest number of deaths from covid19. Turning the corner has to happen now because were life is precious, life is precious, the young organizer just published a piece in which he argues beautifully what is the high risk or low risk or no risk . There are humans. And with that liberalism and those that can bear this and we can see now with the economic collapse with that leadership and thinking to say that domination if not that hegemony were life is not precious it is not precious. People call on the definition to understand what it is happening that the state sanctioned production and exploitation with premature death. Dad is a mouthful. [laughter] im happy to elaborate but the first thing i want to say is to caution people when they say the United States is black we should talk about racism talk about what happens to black people or they think that definition means black people have it worse. No. What it tries to do and those places in argentina and mexico and south africa and many places that you think about what is happening. So what this has to do is the design of the relationship to transportation and to the Justice System to security and gender and identity and age and vulnerability. But this definition of what people start to think systematically so that its possible to see how they come into being and therefore naturally with the struggle. That is what that definition is for. So here are some examples to design the Public Health system in the United States through a good deal of the world that although dominated by resource extractions going through several rounds of Governmental Organization in the 20th century to put into place large scale governmental institutions designed to extract like Public Health so the design of Public Health are from others to put out a framework of care and disregard to be amplified over time so today we say certain kinds of people are more likely to have underlying conditions to make them vulnerable to those covid19 gaps. Is not something pathological but how has the design of a Public Health system with the wherewithal to bring some people and then push some people out . So tomorrow afternoon at 230 eastern time, a long time organizer, aids activist Economic Justice activist and a resistance organizer once upon a time will be incumbent one conversation with the sociologist who was thinking about data and visualization for the purpose of strengthening people. So that conversation will happen tomorrow. I want to Say Something else. So with those statistics and the analyst to say over and over again we have to be aware and at the same time be aware of the presumption if we cite for their ability to be persuasive 3 percent and then somehow to persuade people to action that in my experience especially years ago with young people trying to bring into the early days of abolition with the group of mostly brown and black young people and one of the teacher said one out of three young black men are going to prison so that statistic so what young person sitting in the auditorium in 1998 would be encouraged to listen if they scolded the older people to say you are doomed . So to go back to the purpose of the definition of racism it is to enable people to think of whose vulnerability might lead to joining forces to overcome that vulnerability but with water. Everywhere around the planet people are struggling over water. And the Navajo Nation and because of the scarcity of water. The Navajo Nation obviously brings to mind from Standing Rock and the pipeline people who were trying to get people to understand that impact pipeline organizing has everything to do to protest water. So that struggle and the struggle full that one for the vulnerability around inadequate water with the likelihood of premature death and the work the detroit the Justice Center is doing especially after the fires of last year the problem of adequate water and nutrition and the fact that cape town africa is observed for running out of water for some time and with these concerns about water through the lens of my definition of racism i hope provides people with a sense of the opportunity to join forces to fight racism by fighting for housing. I dont really care what anybody thinks of me as long as they stay out of my way. I will bring it audience questions. And we will remind you of upcoming events. And in the remake of the coronavirus and then on thursday one week from today to be in conversation with amani perry and you can check them out on the webpage and to do crucial work and the radical imagination if youre in a position to make a donation in the matter how small please consider. Small please consider. I thought possibly you could elaborate also the militaryIndustrial Complex and how you are thinking about the complex. There are also some feelgood questions that are asking for some breaking down of what is meant by the conservation and if theres a contract, between incarceration and abolition. Okay. Let me go way back. I will take that question. Ten years maybe. Yeah, ten years. More, absolutely. Let me talk a little bit about the militaryIndustrial Complex and Prison Industrial Complex. Its interesting that weve gotten this far