I had the pleasure of collaborating with Fireweed Collective again to put on a fourth installment of my Dismantling the Romance Myth webinar series. The fourth webinar focuses on how we get caught in fears of abandonment and engulfment and what we can do to act in alignment with our values when those fears show up. Below you’ll also find the prior years’ videos and links to the slide decks from each year’s webinar.
Aaron Belkin and I just published this debate/conversation about our opposing views on trans military inclusion advocacy. I hope it will be a useful tool for classrooms and reading groups, and people wanting to understand this debate.
Check out this new review Kaegan Sparks wrote about my book on mutual aid and Disasters and Social Reproduction: Crisis Response Between the State and Community, by Peer Illner.
Amid the catastrophe of the pandemic, climate emergency and racist state violence, mutual aid has exploded. Ordinary people around the globe, from Seattle to Nigeria, are finding ways to support each other when the government won’t.Mutual aid isn’t just that we help each other. We help each other based on a shared recognition that the systems aren’t delivering and are actually making things worse. We’re simultaneously building a movement to address the root causes of the crisis we’re in.
I am thrilled to be teaching Prison by Any Other Name this semester in Poverty Law. It’s exactly the right text for this moment, helping students get a wide and deep understanding of how police and prison reforms have failed to resolve problems and ended up expanding the very systems that cause them. I am writing reading questions for my students to help them ensure they are finding the themes in the text and to help them go back to the text throughout the semester. I offer this first set here in case they are useful to other people’s classes or reading groups using this book.
Reading Questions Prison By Any Other Name Intro and Ch 5
Introduction
Schenwar and Law return to the story of Collette Payne again and again throughout the Introduction, talking about her experience with being imprisoned in her home, her struggle with addiction, her neighborhood, her obstacles to parenting and social life. What did you learn from Collette’s story? What points did it illustrate from the Introduction?
On p. 3 the authors cite research showing that more incarceration doesn’t reduce crime and may increase it. Why do you think is the case?
Why are Schenwar and Law concerned that conservatives are working on criminal punishment reform platforms? What’s wrong with people like the Koch brothers collaborating with the NAACP in this way? What questions does it raise?
Why do the authors say that the First Step Act and other Right on Crime modifications might “entrench the underlying principles of the system” (p. 5-6)? What do you think the underlying principles they are refer to are?
On p. 8-9 the authors introduce the term “prison nation” from Beth Richie’s work, and the term “prison industrial complex” defined by Rachel Herzing. Why are these terms important to the authors? What do they help us see or understand?
On p. 10, the authors talk about how dangerousness is framed in criminal justice reforms, particularly when conservatives insist we need to make sure the system keeps imprisoning “people we are afraid of.” They then juxtapose this imagined set of dangerous people to landlords, politicians, and corporations who advocate and create policies that maintain socioeconomic inequality. How might we expand on this critical move of redefining who are the “most dangerous people”? Is there anyone you would add to the list of who is dangerous but isn’t treated like they should be locked up? What might this tell us about where we see and refuse to see violence, or how we define violence to make some kinds of harm invisible?
On p. 11 the authors raise concerns about reforms that focus on more “sympathetic” people. What are they worried about?
On the same page, the authors point out that many reforms change the look of confinement, shifting it from criminal punishment facilities to medical or psychiatric facilities. How would a disability justice perspective on criminal punishment reform help us see this problem? Are there things you know about the history of disability justice movement work that could help with this expanded thinking about confinement and injustice? Are there questions you have or things you’d like to know about this?
What is the problem with trying to make capitivity “kinder and gentler” (p. 12)?
Schenwar and Law argue, like Davis, that contemporary criminal punishment in the US emerged from slavery and colonialism. Did you notice any new aspects to their argument or did it land any differently with you, reading this idea again?
If white people are equally likely to use drugs, and more likely to sell them than Black people, why are Black people criminalized for drugs more? How does it work? (p. 14)
At the top of p. 15, the authors provide a very short summary of how neoliberal economic reforms–reduced taxes, reduced social programs, and increased war expenditure–relate to expanded criminal punishment. What specific polices or laws would you suggest illustrate their points? What else do you know about the items they mention, and other features of neoliberalism, that you would add to that point if you were going to expand it?
Were you surprised to learn that the immigration detention system we have now that imprisons tens of thousands of people didn’t exist before 2005? Does learning this impact anything about how you see that system?
How do the authors use the example of the 1984 Sentencing Reform Act to illustrate their arguments on p. 17?
What are the author’s saying about Mariame Kaba’s idea of “Somewhere Else”?
Why is prison-like drug treatment unlikely to help people with addictions?
On p. 22, Schenwar and Law introduce the following question to evaluate reforms: “Are these reforms building up structures we will need to dismantle in the future?” Why is this an important question? What are examples of criminal punishment system reforms that don’t pass this test? Can you think of an example that would pass it?
On p. 23 the authors talk about freedom and liberation. What do you think these words mean to them? What do you think they mean to the right wing criminal system reformers that they disagree with? What do these words mean to you? What do these words have to do with economic systems, punishment systems, health systems, education systems, energy systems, and transportation systems? What would a “free” world look like, with regard to these systems and the basic needs they meet, to you? Where do you think you got your ideas about what constitutes freedom?
Chapter 5
What evidence do Schenwar and Law provide that community policing and predictive policing tactics make some communitiies into “open-air prisons”?
The Black Panther Party and other Black liberation movement organizers in the 1970’s famously asserted that the police were a colonizing force in Black neighborhoods. How does this idea relate to what the authors describe in this chapter? How might the police operate similarly to how a foreign military occupies a city? Various historical and contemporary movements for Black liberation have described the relationship between Black people and the US government as genocidal, or as a war. How might those ideas relate to the information in this chapter?
On p. 143, the authors note that special police officers are assigned to police public housing in New York City. This is also true elsewhere. What impacts might this have that Poverty Law students would be concerned about? How might people living in housing that has special police assigned to it live differently than people who do not?
On p. 144, the authors talk about how young people in neighborhoods saturated with police have a hard time hanging out anywhere without being harassed by cops. What do young people do in places that are not targeted with this kind of policing? When you think about these different experiences?
How does the call for community policing expand policing?
What impacts do you think it might have on young people to be falsely arrested again and again or to see their friends or siblings experience searches, pat downs, being handcuffed, being thrown on the ground or into police cars, again and again throughout their youth?
How can you imagined that the kinds of policing described in this Chapter might increase sexual harassment and sexual violence by police?
What is “broken windows policing” and what are the authors’ concerns about it? (p. 148)
What are the authors’ concerns about police encouraging community members to come to meetings about safety and identify their safety concerns? What do the authors think is wrong with neighborhood watch programs?
Is there a way to imagine communities keeping each other safe and having an eye out for each other that is different from the way neighborhood watch programs work now? What would be different?
On p. 153, the authors describe Project ROSE in Phoenix, where social workers patrolled with police focused on arresting sex workers. From the perspective of a poverty lawyer, what is concerning about this project? Here is an article with more details about Project ROSE for more information.
Our university, like many, sends campus-wide emails about suspicious people and crimes on or near campus. What impact do you think this has? Does it have any relationship to the kinds of policing we read about in this chapter?
Law and Schenwar suggest that the way “community” is defined in community policing practices is classed and raced in particular ways that have particular outcomes. How does this defining happen and who is doing it? Who is included and excluded?
This chapter critiques popular ideas about gangs. How do the authors see gangs differently than how gangs are portrayed in popular media and by public officials? What impacts do they argue gang databases have? Check out these two campaigns that show communities resisting these gang-focused criminalization practices: 1) this campaign to get rid of the gang database in Chicago, 2) this campaign to stop gang injunctions in Oakland.
Are there any activities primarily taken up by white people that are “gang-like” but authorized by law, which might help as a comparison to how the gang problem is framed in the US? Fraternities? Elite sex and drug conspiracies like those exposed by the Me Too movement and the Jeffrey Epstien case? What about the behaviors of police? Can such comparisons help us critically examine what we are being told is dangerous and where we are being told violence happens?
Why do the authors say that community policing and predictive policing are public relations strategies for police?
Community policing frames the problem as “mistrust” between the police and the people they police. What do the authors think is wrong with that framing? A similar framing has been used in recent years about immigrants and police, with various reforms proceeding based on the idea that immigrants need to be able to trust the police. What would the authors say about that?
What evidence do the authors provide that “racism is baked in” the data gathered by police surveillance methods now being touted as the smart and innovative new way to do policing?
How would you use the analysis and research in this Chapter to argue against the Trump Administration’s new plans to collect increased personal information from immigrants, including DNA samples?
For decades, a battle has been raging in queer and trans communities about the relationship between our communities and the police. Pride celebrations mark the anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, in which queer and trans people fought back against the ongoing violence they faced at the hands of the police. That rebellion happened in the context of widespread anti-police politics of the 1960s and ‘70s, when uprisings against policing were raging across the country across movements against colonialism and racism. In the years after Stonewall, police forces reformed themselves in an attempt to restore their legitimacy, including by hiring cops of color and some gay cops, having cops march in Pride parades, and creating policies and propaganda aimed at portraying the police as protectors and saviors of women, children, LGBT people and other marginalized groups.
In many cities, especially in recent years, police departments marching in Pride parades have encountered protesters demanding that police be excluded from Pride. As the movement for Black Lives and against police violence grows, more police departments are simultaneously investing in messaging that they are “pro-gay,” and more and more queer and trans organizers are rejecting this messaging.
Hundreds of cities have adopted the police-initiated “Safe Place” campaign since it was invented in 2014 by Officer Jim Ritter at the East Precinct of the Seattle Police Department (SPD), the very precinct now abandoned by police in the face of recent anti-police protests. Ritter created the pro-SPD propaganda campaign four years after Seattle erupted in protests over the police killing of Native woodcarver John T. Williams, and three years after the Department of Justice launched an investigation of the SPD that found “the use of excessive force” and bias.
The Safe Place campaign encourages businesses to put a rainbow police shield sticker in their windows to let anyone fleeing anti-LGBT attacks know that if they come inside the business will call the cops for them. The Safe Place campaign takes a symbol from the queer and trans liberation movement, the rainbow flag, and puts it on a police badge to declare that the police are our protectors. Critics of the campaign rightly argue that police are leading perpetrators of violence against queer and trans people, not our protectors, and that the “Safe Place” campaign is about police PR, not about the well-being of queer and trans people. We would rather see businesses agree to not call the police as a way to make our communities safer.
A “Space Place” sticker is seen on the window of a business in Seattle, WA, on June 27, 2020.
This summer’s rebellion against police violence has brought the debate about whether police can be reformed, or whether they need to be dismantled, into the spotlight. It raises questions about whether we could reform the anti-Black racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and sexual violence out of the police. Decades of failed reform efforts make clear that the answer is no. The last 60 years have seen waves of uprisings against police racism and violence, and waves of reforms aimed at fixing the problems. These reforms have diversified police forces, required police “diversity” training, declared that police would not discriminate, placed limits on use of force, and more.Police are leading perpetrators of violence against queer and trans people, not our protectors.
Over the same decades, police budgets were expanding, police were getting more militarized equipment and training, and policing was infiltrating more parts of society with police presence pervading in spaces like schools, parks and housing projects. The lesson is clear: Reforms that declare that police will stop harming hated groups fail. So many of the police forces that have committed recent high-profile killings (not to mention all the violence short of killing they have been perpetrating) already have the 8 Can’t Wait reform policies on their books, but their violence continues uninterrupted. All the police departments marching in Pride and handing out rainbow police shield stickers still have cops profiling, harassing, assaulting and arresting queer and trans people every day.
In the national debate about defunding police, people around the country are learning to differentiate between empty reforms that name a system as “fair” and real change that makes our communities safer and our lives more survivable. Pride is a good time to think critically about the legal systems that govern our increasingly less survivable lives (in the face of economic crisis, global pandemic and ongoing law enforcement violence), while they tell us we are increasingly equal.
This month, the Supreme Court ruled that discrimination against gay and trans people by employers is illegal under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This ruling has been widely celebrated. Unfortunately, the excitement about what “legal equality” might mean in the lives of queer and trans people does not square with reality.
Being ostensibly protected by civil rights laws does not necessarily translate into increased well-being or decreased violence against hated groups. One needs only to look to the fact that discrimination based on race and sex has been illegal for over a half century. In the decades since people of color and women supposedly became equal under the law, material inequality — meaning actual harm to the survival and well-being of these supposedly protected people — actually worsened in many substantive ways. This period saw the drastic expansion of imprisonment and immigration enforcement in the U.S., targeted at people of color and marked by gender violence, brutal cuts to programs and benefits for low-income women and children, and an expanding racial and gender wealth gap. Discrimination in housing and jobs may have become illegal, but it is very difficult to prove in court, especially since most people do not have access to legal help, so almost no one gets redress.Queer and trans safety and liberation will not be delivered by courts or police departments. It will come from widespread collective action.
The United States’ shift from a legal system of explicit sexism and racist apartheid to one in which the state is cast as the supposed protector of women and people of color constituted what some scholars and activists call “preservation through transformation.” In the face of the global and domestic uprisings against colonialism and racism in the middle of the 20th century, the law changed just enough to make this system appear fair, while preserving the status quo of material inequality as much as possible.
The role of civil rights laws is not to actually change the harms faced by hated groups, it is to frame the very government whose policies and practices most endanger those groups as their protector. As we face a severe global financial crisis and as wealth inequality climbs to dizzying heights, we will continue to see poverty worsen for queer and trans people, especially those with disabilities, those of color and women, regardless of the Supreme Court’s declaration about protecting us from discrimination.
The Court’s other recent rulings, like the ruling green-lighting the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the ruling saying that asylum seekers have no right to object in court before being deported, tell us more about what is to come for queer and trans people, and for all people. The fact that the same court can say we’re equal and then make decisions that endanger our lives should be no surprise at this point, since the NYPD paints rainbow flags on its police cars while continuing to terrorize queer and trans communities.
Design: Chris Vargas
This Pride season, we should see growing calls to get the police out of Pride celebrations and to get businesses to stop participating in Safe Place campaigns. This increasing rejection of surface reforms and demand for transformative change — including divestment from policing and militarism and investment in meeting human needs — should help us question celebratory declarations of equality coming from the Supreme Court decision. Queer and trans safety and liberation will not be delivered by courts or police departments. It will come from widespread collective action for what we actually need to live: housing, health care, child care, food, clean air and water, and transportation. We are past the point where putting a rainbow sticker or wrapping a rainbow flag around a cop car, a tank, a courthouse, or a brutally exploitative anti-worker economy can be mistaken for victory or liberation.
