Angela Davis at Auckland U

Tonight I heard Angela Davis, activist/black panther/intellectual, speak at the Maidmont Theatre at the Univ. of Auckland. I got there late cuz i was so hungry i had to stop at Wendy's for a kid's meal. The seats were full, and the lobby was overflowing, probably 80-100 people in the lobby, looking at a small screen. Luckily they had rigged up speakers, so we could hear her.

She discoursed about the US prison apparatus, racial structures...she said "racism is more powerful today than in the civil rights era", because the institutionalization is hidden...being a matter of imperceptibility/visibility...and that the post 1960s changes in the US---de-industrialization---gave cause to the rise in the "prison industrial complex". The "socialist world has disintegrated".

She pointed to the need for NZ and US to share their prison histories, as next to the US, NZ has the 2nd highest incarceration rate.

She discussed "felony disenfranchisement" (ie. in Florida, 1/3 of black males couldn't vote because they had been divested of the right to vote, therefore the election that George W. "won" would have had different results if this tradition of felony disenfranchisement wasn't the case).

She talked about the state as a violent perpetrator.

She was very clear about her demand for the abolishment of imprisonment as the dominant form of discipline in our world. She asked us to think about what this might mean. She emphasized forgiveness, compassion, restoration, justice, and pointed to indigenous models like the Maori's have, for restorative justice.

She recommended a drug use report from the Justice Policy Institute in Oct. 2005, which gave statistics of white and black youth drug use.

decarceration
incarceration
need for: education, hosuing, health care, community compassion for decarceration agendas.