Poverty Law Syllabus Fall 2020

Below is the Syllabus, and you may also be interested in this big group project assignment I am trying out for the first time this fall.

Here are Reading Questions I wrote up for the students for Week 2’s exploration of the Introduction and Chapter 5 of Prison by Any Other Name. Here are Reading Questions I wrote up for Week 5’s exploration of Chapters 1-4 of Prison by Any Other Name.

Schedule

Week 1

• Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? Chapters 1, 2, 3.
• Daniel Beekman, “Seattle City Council pressed to defund police, move 911 response dispatchers out of department,” Seattle Times, July 8, 2020.
• Mariame Kaba, “Yes, We Literally Mean Abolish the Police,” New York Times, June 12, 2020. (Links to an external site.)
• Kwame Holmes, “Why Abolish the Police?,” Chronogram, July 1, 2020. (Links to an external site.)
• Joel Nudell, Alex Chohlas-Wood and Sharad Goel, “Cities and States Emptied Jails to Prevent Infection. They Should Stay Empty.” Washington Post, July 7, 2020. (Links to an external site.)

Week 2

• Excerpt of Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (and the Next)(posted in Files).
• Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law, Prison by Any Other Name, Introduction and Chapter 5.
• Critical Resistance, “Reformist Reforms vs. Abolitionist Steps Policing.” 
• Optional: This webinar where you get to hear the authors of Prison by Any Other Name in conversation with Mariame Kaba. Abolish Policing, Not Just the Police (Links to an external site.)

Week 3

• Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes, “The Sentencing of Larry Nassar Was Not Transformative Justice, Here’s Why,” The Appeal, Feb 5, 2018. 
• GenerationFIVE, “Ending Child Sexual Abuse: A Transformative Justice Handbook.”
• Sign on letter by anti-violence organizations and survivors of gender-based violence, advocating defunding of Seattle Police Department.
• Decriminalize Seattle’s blueprint for divesting from policing and investing in community. July 16, 2020 (Links to an external site.).
• Andrea J. Ritchie, “Invisible No More” lecture video: Andrea Ritchie: Invisible No More Lecture (Links to an external site.)

Week 4

• Prison By Any Other Name, Chapter 4.
• Dorothy E. Roberts, “Feminism, Race, and Adoption Policy,” in Color of Violence (ed. Incite!) (2006).
• Annie Chung Letter to DCYF June 19, 2020.
• Sophie Verass, “The Women Fighting against a Rising Tide of Indigenous Child Removals,” NITV, 2018.

Week 5

• Prison By Any Other Name, Chapters 1, 2 and 3.

Week 6

• Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare, Chapters 1, 8, 10.
• Optional:
  • Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254 (1970)
  • Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618 (1969)

Week 7

• Regulating the Poor, Chapter 11, 12.
• Kenneth J. Neubeck and Noel A. Cazenave, Welfare Racism: Playing the Race Card Against America’s Poor, Chapter 2, “Conceptualizing Welfare Racism”
• Optional:
  • Wyman v. James, 400 U.S. 309 (1971) (use pdf on TWEN)
  • Dandridge v. Williams, 397 U. S. 471 (1970) (use pdf on TWEN)

Week 8

• Gabriella Coleman, “The Politics of Rationality: Psychiatric Survivors’ Challenge to Psychiatry.”
• Norma Erevelles, Disability in the New World Order, Chapter 2 of Color of Violence.
• Harriet Tubman Collective, “Disability Solidarity: Completing the Vision for Black Lives,” (2016). 
• Look at the website of the Fireweed Collective, fireweedcollective.org.
• Watch: “My Body Doesn’t Oppress Me, Society Does.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=276&v=7r0MiGWQY2g&feature=emb_logo
• Optional:
  • Elliott Fukui, “Disability Justice and Abolition,”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICwatGVj5b4

Week 9

• The Revolution Will Not Be Funded (ed. INCITE!):
  • Chapter 1: The Political Logic of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, by Dylan Rodríguez
  • Chapter 2: In The Shadow of the Shadow State, by Ruth Wilson Gilmore
  • Chapter 4: Democratizing American Philanthropy, by Christine E. Ahn

Week 10

• The Revolution Will Not Be Funded (ed. INCITE!):
  • Chapter 11: Pursuing a Radical Anti-Violence Agenda Inside/Outside a Non-Profit Structure / Alisa Bierria, Communities Against Rape and Abuse (CARA)
  • Chapter 15: Non-Profits and the Autonomous Grassroots, by Eric Tang
• Dean Spade and Rickke Mananzala, “Trans Resistance and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex.” 
• Sylvia Rivera Law Project, “From the Bottom Up: Strategies and Practices from Membership-Based Organizations.” 

Week 11

• Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything, Introduction and Chapters 1, 2, 3.
• Movement Generation Justice and Ecology Project, “From Banks and Tanks to Cooperation and Caring: A Strategic Framework for a Just Transition.” 

Week 12

• Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything, Chapters 9, 10, 11.
• “How Black & Indigenous Groups Won the Fight to Stop the Atlantic Coast Pipeline,” Democracy Now, July 7, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta6NevskX0Q

Week 13

• Harsha Walia, Undoing Border Imperialism, “What is Border Imperialism?” p. 36-78.
• David Bacon, “Displacement and Migration” in Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants, (Beacon Press) (2008).
• Mijente, “Free Our Future: An Immigration Police Platform for Beyond the Trump Era.” 
• Jawziya F. Zaman, “Why I Left Immigration Law,” Dissent, July 12, 2017, 
• Optional:
  • Review the websites of Mijente (mijente.net) and La Resistencia (http://laresistencianw.org/ (Links to an external site.)).

Week 14

No new readings for this week.