Angela Davis was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list in 1970. She was acquitted of all charges. She became a professor. She wrote books that changed how America thinks about prisons. She is still alive, still fighting, and still right (the establishment must be getting tired of being wrong about her).
prison abolition. Not prison reform (better food, better conditions, better guards). Abolition. Tear the whole fucking system down. Davis argues that prisons do not exist to stop crime. They exist to manage social problems the ruling class does not want to solve. Poverty, addiction, mental illness, homelessness. Instead of building housing and healthcare, America builds cages.
Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003) is the shortest and clearest argument for abolition you will ever read. Davis walks through the history of prisons from their roots in slavery (the 13th Amendment explicitly allows slavery as punishment for a crime, and guess who gets punished most) to the modern prison-industrial complex.
She was in the Black Panther Party and the Communist Party USA. She was fired from UCLA for her politics. She ran for Vice President on the Communist ticket in 1980 and got 50,000 votes (which is 50,000 more than you got). She is a professor at UC Santa Cruz. She has spent her whole life proving you can be both an intellectual and an activist. You do not have to choose.
Starter book: Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003). Read it in a weekend.
