Are Prisons Obsolete? By Angela Davis
In this extraordinary book Angela Davis challenges us to confront the human rights catastrophe In our jails and prisons. As she so convincingly argues, the contemporary U.S. practice of super-incarceration is closer to new age slavery than to any recognizable system of ‘criminal justice. Download Link below and available for a minimal time.
http://www.4shared.com/office/uMxqwjNc/file.html?refurl=d1url
Please Re-Blog!
Because it’s important to document police violence, to debunk the myth that police are here to protect people more than capital;
Because Mayor Rahm Emmanuel and President Barack Obama are calling policing at the NATO Summit a “success”, when we know that it was a massive hijacking of our tax dollars to pay for the brutal repression of our collective power;
Because they will try to say the protestors were violent, when in fact we were marching against war and systemic violence, and we were provoked, infiltrated, and attacked without cause. And still, most people did nothing more than stand their ground and chant;
Because, as Angus Johnston (@studentactivism) tweeted (pt. 2) over the weekend:
Illegitimate state violence is most effective when arbitrary. #NoNATO … If you promise to beat everyone, you have to beat everyone. If nobody knows when they’ll be beaten, everyone’s always cowed.Because the police clearly does not want these stories to get out;
Here are some images of the massive police presence in Chicago this past weekend, and the violence they wrought on protestors.
We should remember that during this same weekend, 29 people were shot in Chicago, of which 7 died including a 12- and a 14-year old. For those of you not from Chicago, this is routine. In the words of one of the chants this weekend:
Black cop, white cop, all the same,
Racist murder is the name of the game!Whether they’re ignoring the murder of young people of colour in Chicago’s neighbourhoods in order to protect NATO’s VIPs — those who treat our countries’ young POC as cannon fodder while waging war on young POC in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, etc. — or whether they’re committing murder themselves, the police are not your friend.
We should remember that cops lined up en masse to protect the meeting place of the 1%. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder and baton-to-baton surrounding JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. They gave thousands of protestors no choice but to disperse or be arrested (or be subject to “other police tactics”) simply because it was 5pm and their permit had run out. They beat and pepper sprayed marchers heading north to show solidarity with jailed comrades, rather than let them march through the high-end shopping and entertainment districts.
We should remember that cops may be working people, but they are not on our side.* They are part of a racist system that upholds the interests of capitalism and the 1%/2%/5%/10% over any sort of true freedom or justice. They are an arm of the state that exists to uphold existing power structures, keep the people who are in power protected and the people who aren’t in power far away from it, scare people from posing a threat to the established order and, should people be so brave or desperate as to try it, beat them down and lock them up.
The police are not there to enforce our rights. The only rights we have are the ones we claim. And we owe it to ourselves, and to our comrades, and to the generations that follow us to keep claiming them and pushing back when they’re infringed.
Shout-out to all of the media-folk and tweeters who took the pictures above.
More coverage of the protests and police violence here:Coverage of the brutality on The Peoples Record Tumblr
Photosets by @RevolteToujours, NATO Indymedia, The Fond du Lac underclass, flickr user margoelena, rightnow.io, and the Chicago Tribune
Video of CPD van running over protestor, and CPD beating protestors with batons (more here, and here)
* Yes, yes, I know that there may very well be cops who, while off-duty, are great people and even do good work. Whatever. While they’re in uniform and not defying orders, they are a part of the system and a part of the problem.
“Radical feminism” is a specific branch of feminism which is anti- a lot of things. Anti-femininity, anti-heterosexuality, in a great many ways anti-sex itself, anti-mother and anti-transgender. But it’s not for a lot, if anything. Radical feminism exists more or less for the same reason that fundamentalist Christianity does: To cut away whatever they deem insufficiently pure. By their own words, radical feminists deem themselves the only true feminists. They claim to be the only feminists who “tell it like it is” (the difference, apparently, between radical feminists and conspiracy nuts is institutional power).
Radical feminism has not won one single significant victory for women’s rights - not only that, but it can definitely be argued that in part because of radical feminists dividing the efforts of feminism by starting an oppressive fight against the rights of trans women, the Equal Rights Amendment was not ratified (the ERA was two states away from ratification when it lost steam); therefore women are demonstrably worse off because radical feminism exists as a movement.
So yeah. Every woman has been hit by the blowback from radical feminists’ hate for trans women.
By now, most Quentin Tarantino fans are aware of the connections interlaced throughout all of his films. John Travolta’s Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction is the brother of Michael Madsen’s Vic Vega in Reservoir Dogs, Harvey Keitel’s Mr. White worked with Alabama from True Romance, the plot basis for Kill Bill is described as the synopsis for a TV series in Pulp Fiction, etc.
Now the epiphany that Eli Roth’s character of Donny Donowitz aka “The Bear Jew” in Inglourious Basterds is the father of the movie producer Lee Donowitz in True Romance has inspired a truly mind-blowing theory that the rest of the films (chronologically speaking) in Tarantino’s filmography take place in a world where [Inglorious Basterds spoiler] World War II came to an end when Adolf Hitler was brutally murdered in a movie theater by the Basterds.
This initial connection was brought up in an article on Cracked, but a poster on Reddit (via David Chen’s Twitter) has more eloquently summed up what this means for Tarantino’s movieverse:
As it turns out, Donny Donowitz, ‘The Bear Jew’, is the father of movie producer Lee Donowitz from True Romance – which means that, in Tarantino’s universe, everybody grew up learning about how a bunch of commando Jews machine gunned Hitler to death in a burning movie theater, as opposed to quietly killing himself in a bunker. Because World War 2 ended in a movie theater, everybody lends greater significance to pop culture, hence why seemingly everybody has Abed-level knowledge of movies and TV. Likewise, because America won World War 2 in one concentrated act of hyperviolent slaughter, Americans as a whole are more desensitized to that sort of thing. Hence why Butch is unfazed by killing two people, Mr. White and Mr. Pink take a pragmatic approach to killing in their line of work, Esmerelda the cab driver is obsessed with death, etc. You can extrapolate this further when you realize that Tarantino’s movies are technically two universes – he’s gone on record as saying that Kill Bill and From Dusk ‘Til Dawn take place in a ‘movie movie universe’; that is, they’re movies that characters from the Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, and Death Proof universe would go to see in theaters. (Kill Bill, after all, is basically Fox Force Five, right on down to Mia Wallace playing the title role.) What immediately springs to mind about Kill Bill and From Dusk ‘Til Dawn? That they’re crazy violent, even by Tarantino standards. These are the movies produced in a world where America’s crowning victory was locking a bunch of people in a movie theater and blowing it to bits – and keep in mind, Lee Donowitz, son of one of the people on the suicide mission to kill Hitler, is a very successful movie producer. Basically, it turns every Tarantino movie into alternate reality sci fi. I love it so hard.
well fuck me gently with a chainsaw
I am not what one would call a Tarantino fan, but this IS pretty cool.
… Ok. That is COOL.
(Source: suicideblonde)
Update: 11 year old trans girl lost appeal
The above article is an update. Her mother went to appeal to keep her out of the psychiatric ward and lost. She will be institutionalized because of her expression of her gender. She will be held until she conforms to male gender and then released to foster care, not her mother who was supporting her.
Please, if you haven’t signed the petition, sign it, reblog it, ask your friends to sign it. We’ve managed to get 40K signatures for a pageant model, we’ve only gotten 11K for a little girl about to have her life ruined. Lets get on the ball and spread the word.
I literally just repeated the f-word until I ran out of breath.
Let me catch my breath. I may go on a cursing spree again as soon as I get it back.
Seriously people…
WHY THE FUCK AREN’T PEOPLE REBLOGGING THIS??
But my relationship with that reclamation does not come without a price.
Black women do not have the privilege of reclaiming the word slut without validating the historically entrenched idealology and recurring messages about what and who the Black Woman is.
Black women have worked tirelessly since the 19th century colored women’s clubs to rid society of the sexist/racist vernacular of slut,jezebel,hottentot,mammy,mule,sapphire so that may be able to build our sense of selves and redefine what women who look like us represent.
When white women reclaim the world slut, it is considered a revolutionary act. When women of color reclaims the word, the world shoots us a look as if we’ve finally admitted to the truth.
So I beg white feminists to understand that although we support your right to reclaim ‘Slut’ and wear whatever you choose,wherever you choose,and whenever you choose, we as women of color do not have the privilege and if we DO choose to reclaim the word it is not to be romanticized by white feminists or SlutWalk.
Our relationship with the word ‘Slut’ is a bumpy road, a road that is filled with hate,validation by a racist misogynistic society,and a struggle to maintain bodily integrity in a world that has done everything against us. That is a road that we as Black Women must choose to take, and ours alone, and if we choose not to, PLEASE respect that choice, and do not demand that reclamation onto us.
I do not owe anyone my time or affection
I don’t care if you’re my blood.
I don’t care if you mistakenly think I owe you something.
I have the right to emotional autonomy.
I have the right to interact with people who will respect me and to ignore those who don’t.
I have the right to love the people who deserve my affection and ignore those who don’t.
Fuck guilt and shame. I’m over it. I will not allow myself to be emotionally manipulated ever again by anyone.
^^^^^
words of wisdom and empowerment from a forever fierce warrior queen.
<3“forever fierce warrior queen”
FOREVER FIERCE WARRIOR QUEEN!
YES! I love you and I love this. You’re the best. <3 <3 <3 <3
Need to keep remembering this
(Source: noisefucker)
