Hay market books has more, wednesday discussion of remaking schools in the time of coronavirus and on thursday a week from today roy and conversation with the if your streaming gets choppy at any point you might want to reduce the quality. We are observing time for q a and please post questions on life video feed wherever youre watching it. Now lets go. Im mattie roy, the pandemic is some responses for covid19, policing of national and sub National Borders and more surveillance now sold to us with the message that total surveillance is good medicine, but as we try to imagine a different world and fight for abolition future theres no one i would rather hear from than ruth gilmore, the Central CaliforniaEnvironmental Justice network. Shes professor of earth and Environmental Sciences at kennedy graduate. Author of prison, surplus, crisis and opposition and globalize in california. Brilliant study that locates prisons as the foundation of a new kind of state, the antistate state and dismiss the idea that government should guaranty social wellbeing. Her work featured in dozens of books including policing the planet by jordan kemp and kristina and her new book change everything, thanks so much for being here with me. Thanks having me. Can you start by giving us the Bigger Picture on the relationship between prison and inequality . Sure, id be happy to. My dear friend katherine who i think is listening from somewhere in greater toronto recently cited those fantastic poet and lawyer, norbenson philip. If we were truly in all of this together we would not all be in this together and this is a message i think that we can use as our study points tonight in talking about covid19, mass incarceration and struggle for abolition. Mass incarceration and related forms of detention that connect to it is a feature of places that have the deepest inequality, the deepest inequality. We have one slide to show you tonight. A slide that shows a list of the founding nations, now this slide which was created by the Prison Policy Initiative perhaps the greatest Data Collection and spreading organization in the United States and one of the great ones of the world shows us that even in the context of the organizations, the United States is off the chart, quite literally off the chart and what holds this together. What holds together the possibility of mass incarceration in the richest country in the history of the world is a combination of organized abandonment which is to say austerity or united, criminalization, missing, detention, deportation. Now we can take the slide down if people are are satisfied with this image, we could, but we are not going to tonight. Also look at images from the brazil, russia, india, china and south africa and we would see a similar pattern emerging where no one, no country is remotely close to the United States but as russia and other countries of the brits have followed increasingly with liberal policies which is to say the policies of organized abandonment and austerity, we see the number of people locked up rise and rise and rise. But as i said, the United States remains off the charts. That said, abolition actually is not a recitation of catastrophe or culture of complaint. Indeed, catastrophe and complaint, thats all we do are the kinds of practices that induce in many people who are listening what my friend the historian Darrell Scott calls contempt and pity and abolition is not looking for contempt or pity. What we are doing is rather this, we are trying in every possible way to find a way to politics thats rather than being distinguished by as the sociologist and novelist edward says, politics distinguish by style, we are looking for politics that really are grounded in the struggle of life and death. So edward lee is a french, young french writer and he wrote a fantastic book i recommend to everybody called who killed my father and its in this book that he makes this distinction. Politics and style against politics and life and death. What does politics and life and death mean for abolition. Well, abolition is presence, its already happening in so many ways in so many places around the world and many of the people who are listening in tonight and watching tonight are already doing the work and are stumped as many of us are because so many of us are under some version of shelter in place, house arrest and yet the word continues. Now james teaches us that people are conservative, conservative. They wait and wait and try every little thing until one day people come out in the streets and clear up in a matter of years the disorder of centuries and says this is the portal, this might be the portal for which people who are doing all kinds of Little Things of various kinds around the world come out and clear up the disorder of century. My friend and comrade ana maria of abolition radio listed up the black panda and we could think of what we do of survival pending abolition, so that means that the work behind and the work ahead is very, very long. I will give you an example. In Los Angeles County, decades ago, the aclu brought conditions of confinement case against the county for the horrendous condition in the jails. Over the years, the aclu was in charge of of taking care, keeping an eye on what the county did to remedy the horrific conditions. About 18 years ago, the aclu invited a few abolitionists to come and talk to them about something they had never imagined which was perhaps the way the remedy, the problem with the la county jails was not to have a jail at all rather than to build a better jail. Slowly but surely the way of understanding became central to the struggle in Los Angeles County over those jails. 16 years later abolitionists who joined forces with the forces of reform managed to persuade the Los Angeles County board of supervisors one of the biggest governments by number of people in the United States not to build new jails but rather to put the billions of dollars that would have gone into that into Housing Health care and other life affirming projects. So abolition is presence, abolition is how we connect with form, grow from and multiply organizations that have the capacity to lift the movement. I learned many years ago, work, talking, our main work is to lift the movement and not to leave it but lift it. Lift it to show how antidomestic violence people are central to formation of abolition as a movement. That Mutual Aid Organization which are now flourishing everywhere because of the emergency of covid19. Unions, food, health care, nurses, building traiting, all of the organizations have become in one way or another connected with the movement in the direction of the abolition because abolition is about abolishing the conditions under which prison became the solution to problems rather than abolishing the buildings we call prisons. There are faith organizations, neighborhood organizations, artist organizations, tenant organizations, prisoner organizations, inside and out, Environmental Justice, legal aid, transit workers, rights advocates, Public Health advocates, you name it, large and small, all of these people are coming together in various configurations around the world to try to releave relieve stress of abandonment and organized violence by changing the world in which we live. So that is the big picture that connects inequality with abolition and mass incarceration. Okay. So here we are. Now enter the covid19 pandemic. What are the possibilities now and what does the pandemic mean for the future criminalization and policing and prison . Theres nothing like fear to focus the mind and the fear has many, many aspects to it and therefore the responses that people are putting together are in many ways quite astonishing. For example, just to take one very pointed case, some people i think mostly students at New York University law school put together a sheet, a guide for all of the federal bureau of prisons in the country to show who actually has the authority to release people so that people who are organizing on the grounds could focus using this power map on those who could, brief amount of time make the decision to release people. What we know about mass incarceration is that it is class war and it is as class war very tightly knotted to the vulnerabilities that the types of organizations that i listed a few minutes ago and the kinds of organizing they do are trying to relieve. Unions are trying to relieve vulnerability as our housing advocates, as our prisoner right advocates or people who are incarcerate who had are advocating on their own behalf, families, communities and so forth. We could spend some time perhaps thinking about the fact that in the United States over the period that mass incarceration has become the catchall solution for wide array of social economic behavioral and other problems the number of prison deaths has gone up as number of hospital beds have gone down. The movement in the opposite direction is quite startling to me and as many people have seen, those who are against and those who are for the configuration of hospital and health care in the United States today, we still see the facts that many, many areas of the u. S. Are underserved if served at all places that have the capacity to take care of people are overwhelmed because of cuts to hospital and health care and the workers who are working in hospitals, working in transportation, working in all of the system to try to keep people whose lives are in danger from becoming sick and dying are struggling with inadequate resources when resources could be there, so what can we think about in terms of organizing now . Certainly a lot of the work that many people have done concerning workers, vulnerabilities should and can be lifted up now, whether we are talking about the mst in brazil and the workers led an organizing for years both to have access to land to produce food and wellbeing and to live and have shelter but also built an enormous Educational Program for themselves and others that have very Strong International connections throughout this hemisphere and, indeed, around the world or in the u. S. Highlander center which in tennessee since 1920s has been an essential place for organization, antiracist, proworking Class Organization and they will have a program on i think right after we log off tonight starting at 7 lock on 7 00 oclock on freedom movement. 7 00 oclock eastern time. When we think about housing, i can give story about a young abolitionist artist who is based in new orleans. After katrina destroyed a good deal of everyday life in new orleans the antistate came through and destroyed what hadnt been destroyed by the floods and the raw, shana and some of her comrades got together and said we are going to create a Housing Trust so that a few households at least could have a safe, secure and Pleasant Place to live so they knocked themselves out learning how to make a trust, how to take land out of the markets, found the place they wanted to buy, raised the money to buy the place, still all of the paperwork finished. What Shana Griffith had to say, we did do this, we helped ourselves and this helped me that the state that we needed will do this. Rather than think we can do this ourself or each other. We need prostate and antistate state. All are connected with the very kinds of things that people are doing immediately to try to get people out of prison and jail versus people who got out who are vulnerable because they need shelter or food or other type o there are funds in the United States, new with covid19 but they are more urgently of course reaching out and raising money. We know that in cook county in chicago shala grant and the comrades that she has been working with over the years have done an enormously wonderful job getting people out of cook county jail. This is a good thing to do and yet we also know that in the last four weeks 22 Million People in the United States lost their jobs. That means the need couldnt be greater for people to have the wherewithal to pay rent to buy food and so forth. Theresless as we save discretionary cash available and therefore discovered in the work that she did in new orleans, we have to make demands on the social wage which is our right and our requirement of ourselves. From around the world moves around the world, radical educators here in portugal, the Detroit Justice Center, the people who have been worked with mi gente, working on behalf undocumented people, Long Distance migrants all over the United States, disability organizers whose work has has been beautifully put together, people doing work on food, center in chicago. Many, many people have been working to try to extend protection and opportunities and see that in this emergency is exactly the time not to say these people are deserving, those people are not but rather to say if, indeed, in four weeks 22 Million People in the United States have lost their jobs, that means many of us with jobs, precariously employed, steadily employed or unemployed must join forces together rather than imagine that we can prevail by breaking ourselves up into smaller and smaller groups. I wanted to turn more specifically to the current calls for deincarceration and lines that mark nonviolent versus violent, low risk versus can you explain what problematic demand using these categories . Well, first and foremost, we should always plan to win and if we plan to win we should ask ourselves what happens next in the event of victory and if it happens next in the event of victory, the people who have been rightly released are the only ones who could ever be released, then we will not have one. Do i say we, people, everybody inside, of course not. I do say this, most people who go to prison leave prison. Most people are not doing life sentences, there should not be any life sentences and in most parts to have world there arent life sentences but most people do leave prison and rather than imagining that theres a magical line between less guilty and more guilty or more innocent or less innocent or more deserving or less deserving or i will say violent and nonviolent we should say why not take seriously the fact that most people leave prison do a little bit of analysis to see that we could be closing prisons already and jails already if we get caught by 2 weeks, 3 weeks and 4 weeks much less years the price of sentences people are serving. As i the example that i gave to you from Los Angeles County, this is not an impossible challenge. It did take a long time in los angeles. The next time shouldnt take as long. It shouldnt take as long because of what we learned. It shouldnt take as long because the model behavior that other qualities can follow. One of most important thinkers,s orers, leaders, revolutionaries taught us or cautioned us i should say against cleaning easy victories, hes absolutely right. That said, we should gather all of our victories and then stop and think about them and say what is this victory going to make possible next. Why do these victories matter, who have we abandoned, who have we used own capacity organize violence in order not to include them against to include victory. New york city to spend to build new jail. This is the socalled rickers jail, the mayor announced that it will shrink 2 billiondollars, 2 billion less for everything the city needs. This is really straightforward. The play mayor can learn from Los Angeles County, do not build the new jail, close rikers, use the resources and Human Resources that would have gone into that entire array of of institution that is people would be organizing to close just as people organized to close rickers which was open because people organized to close the institution that proceeded rickers and the mayor and the city council can use the money for the wellbeing of a city that has, indeed, been ravaged by unemployment, ravaged by the highest number of deaths from covid19. How can that be . Turning the corner has to happen there because where life is precious, life is precious. A young organizer and thinking who has an entire story of his own to tell called mika, just published a piece in which he argues really beautifully about what is the highrisk, lowrisk, they are humans, period. They are humans, period. The late martin wrote a wonderful book about some risks years ago in which he said the world is under neoliberalism and people who can bear more risks and we could see now with the economic collapse by the kind of Political Leadership and normalized thinking which to say that domination of neo liberalism tells us that where life is not precious, life is not precious and that is the corner we have to turn. As the death counts have been rising people have called on your definition racism and the way to name and to understand whats happening right now. Racism is, quote, the state sanction and or extra legal production and exploitation of group differentiated from our ability to premature death. Thats already amountable let me see what i can [laughter] i will be happy to elaborate. Just what i wanted to say about the definition is to caution people about falling into the trap of the performance. What do i mean . People look at me and see, oh, in the United States shes black, that means she talks about racism, shes talking about what happens to black people or they think, oh, that definition means black p