engagingjustice-blog

[engagingjustice-blog]

Environmental Justice Expansion

In class today, we listened to 5 presentations about justice and injustice in and around the Twin Cities. The presentations were very well done and my classmates conducted their research very well. I had not even thought of many of the ideas that were presented before. I found that each of these projects were very interesting and worth fighting for justice. However, the project that stuck with me the most was the environmental justice project that Kelsi, Emily, Denise, and Izzy researched and presented.

They researched environmental justice factors. Negative effects that they discussed included the GAF Asphalt Plant and the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center. The Asphalt Plant produces shingles while expelling harsh chemicals, and the Energy Recovery Center converts trash to energy. The surrounding communities around the GAF Asphalt Plant have a 300% higher cancer rate and an 800% higher rate for asthma. Near the Energy Recovery Center, life threatening asthma attacks are 6 times more likely than any other area.

However, there are also positive resources including a health clinic that cares for asthma and a center that supports the environmental justice movement and works to keep the area healthy for future generations.

If I were to expand this project into a policy proposal for MN legislature, I would suggest these two plants be shut down completely. This is the best option for every community, because if they were to just move the plants to a less populated area, there would still be people being negatively affected. That isn’t fair to them just because they are living in a less populated area. With global warming and climate change at an all-time high, we cannot afford to have these extra plants destroying our air quality and expelling dangerous chemicals. To make sure that this policy was passed, I would suggest collecting how many people developed either cancer or asthma after moving into the area, when prior to moving they had neither problem. 

[engagingjustice-blog]

Barbarism in Everyday America TW// drug mentions and police violence

Anne McClintock writes in Paranoid Empire: Specters from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib about the ideology behind the “barbarian” complex and what that does for a person of power. “On the other hand, the hallucination of the barbarians disturbs the empire with perpetual nightmares of impending attack. The enemy is the abject of empire: the rejected from which we cannot part. And without the barbarians the legitimacy of empire vanishes like a disappearing phantom. Those people were a kind of solution” (McClintock, 55). In many ways this mindset is very relatable to the happenings to black people in America. Going back many decades, black people have been abject to the role of the barbarian. Black people have been framed as the bad guys, the nuisances to American society, they threaten whites being all-powerful just within their sheer existence.

An example of this would be The War on Drugs. During the hard crack down on drug use, there were rather subtle or unsubtle racist undertones to the regime. Previous to the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, possession of 100 grams of powder cocaine was equal to the possession of one gram of crack cocaine. Now, the law says that 18 grams of powder cocaine is equal to one gram of crack cocaine (Kulze, 2015). It is important to note that crack cocaine was much more accessible to the poor user community, which often encompassed black people. One could assume that many more people were in possession of a gram of crack cocaine than 100 grams of powder cocaine, this lead to mass incarceration of black people during the Nixon Administration. It’s not that they were doing anything white people weren’t doing, they just got framed as the “barbarian”. They were the enemy to the man.

To this day we see black people being framed as the barbarians in America. Tamir Rice, a 12-year old boy from Cleveland, OH was shot and killed by police at a park for playing with an Airsoft gun. Trayvon Martin got shot holding Skittles and a watermelon Arizona by George Zimmerman in Sanford, FL. Mike Brown was killed by police after being racially profiled by police in Ferguson, MO. Eric Garner was killed by chokehold in Staten Island, NY during his arrest for selling untaxed cigarettes. These boys and men were not bad people, they were victims of a society that did not care if you say “I can’t breathe”. They are the barbarians to American society that Middle Eastern men were to the Bush Administration/The War on Terror/the soldiers that ran Abu Ghraib.

Kulze, Elizabeth. "How Crack Vs. Coke Sentencing Unfairly Targets Poor People." Vocativ. Vocativ, 23 June 2016. Web. 27 Mar. 2017. <http://www.vocativ.com/underworld/drugs/crack-vs-coke-sentencing/>.

-queerjewprincess

[engagingjustice-blog]

Unpacking Torture

 Dear professor and peers,

             While reading Anne McClintock’s article, “Paranoid Empire: Specters from Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib,” I began to recall a podcast I listened to this summer. The podcast by Serial and This American Life season two discusses an American solider, Bowe Bergdahl, who left his base and was capture by the Taliban in Afghanistan in June 2009. What was interesting about Bowe’s experience with his captures’ was the way he was treated. The Taliban wanted certain prisoners in Quantánamo to be release in exchange for Bowe’s release. The Taliban did isolate Bowe for months; however, they specifically told Bowe that they would not treat him the way prisoners were being treated in Quantánamo. After listening to the podcast, it stuck with me that the Taliban specifically wanted to treat Bower better than the prisoner’s at Quantánamo. However, I remember not really wanting to know the extent to how the prisoners were being treated, because I knew it was bad. So, I went on with listening to the podcast, but never researched the treatment at Quantánamo.

            I remember watching the film Zero Dark Thirty, which shows a prisoner being tortured for information. The film displays the need for the prisoner, “to confess to one thing alone—the godlike domination of the torturer and by extension the vindication of the United States as global superpower” (McClintock 72). While watching the film, I could barely watch the torture scenes and they were not showing even close to half of the types of torture used that McClintock’s and Brown’s article described. I think a huge problem is a lot of people, including myself, have an extremely difficult time wanting to know exactly what is going on in Quantánamo.

            In order to dehumanize a person you obviously cannot view them as human. Moreover, this act happens with animals very frequently. For example, “Through butchering, animals become absent referents. Animals in name and body are made absent as animals for meat to exist” (Adams 51). This happens with women who experience sexual violence who state they were treated like a piece of meat by their abuser. Similarity prisoners in Quantánamo are treated as pieces of meat. For example, they are caged in order to display them as absent referents for the rest of the world. Thus, justifying the torture as acceptable because the prisoners are displayed as not human. The U.S. has a long history of dehumanizing groups of people and displaying their power to the rest of the world. It seems, “becoming human is the struggle of life practices, the struggle for the living” (Tadiar 96). Our world justifies the long history of bloodshed by characterizing certain humans as not human.

How do we stop giving people the power to characterize who is human and who is not? I do not know where to start. And I feel that is one of the reasons many people do not want to see torture and don’t want to think to hard about it, because we feel helpless. We feel we don’t have the power to stop it. But maybe we can, if we face the horror of torture we can challenge it. 

            --PeaceAndCoffeeBeans

  References:

  Adams, Carol. The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-vegetarian critical theory. New York:

Continuum, 2000.

INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, editors. Color of Violence: The INCITE!

Anthology. Duke University Press, 2016.

McClintock, Anne. “Paranoid Empire: Specters from Quantánamo and Abu Ghraib.” Duke

University Press, March 2009.

[engagingjustice-blog]

Larger Scale Abolition?

The term “globalization” comes up a lot in politics, the news, and in classrooms, and we could probably argue endlessly about the pros and cons. The readings from the past couple of weeks really highlight the importance about bringing in a conversation about power in the global landscape, particularly the position the United States holds and a global superpower. And while there are clearly both good and bad parts of globalization, I don’t think any good can come from such a dramatic power imbalance that exists today. Connecting back to the idea of abolition (of the PIC, MIC, etc.), it seems to me that in order for true justice to come about, both domestically and internationally, we must dismantle structures of power within the United States, which may mean reconceptualizing or abolishing the U.S. as a nation.

Several of the authors we read in class express similar ideas. In “Color of Violence” Haunani-Kay Trask calls for a dismantling of the U.S. as the only real way to end racism and the violence of the state. Trask writes, “Is it possible to rid the United States of racism? In light of the history of native people in this country, I would say no. In light of the history of Black people, I would say no. In light of the current fight in the United States regarding affirmative action, I would say no. Racism has never ended in the United States. And it never will end” (Trask 86). I think it’s easy to forget, at least for someone of my background, that our country was born of genocide and slavery and will continue to operate on violence unless something is dramatically shifted. I think transformative justice, as we’ve been talking about earlier in class, means dismantling the root cause, and the root cause of violence perpetuated by our country is the country itself. McClintock’s idea of a “paranoid empire” also relates. She argues, “For it is only in paranoia that one finds simultaneously and in such condensed form both deliriums of absolute power and forebodings of perpetual threat” (McClintock 51). Violence as a means of control gave us more power as a state and more power means we need more violence as a means to protect ourselves. This also points to the idea that we have to take down the “empire” to take down this self-sustaining system of violence.

Dismantling this global power imbalance will definitely not be easy because, well, the U.S. is very powerful. But I also feel like it is the end goal of many social justice and abolition movements already in the works, whether explicit or not. I can’t help but think of a certain politician’s slogan to “Make America Great Again”, which makes little sense if you consider that America pretty much always sucked. This also reminds me of the Langston Hughes poem, “Let America Be America Again”, in which he reflects on how American ideals of freedom and liberty have always been limited to a certain portion of the population: “There’s never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this ‘homeland of the free’”. While his words apply specifically to injustice within our country, I think it can also be expanded to the violence we perpetrate internationally as well, because that two reflects our values as a nation.

  Sources:

  Hughes, Langston. Let America Be America Again and Other Poems. 1st Vintage Books ed. New York: Vintage Books, 2004.

Mcclintock, A. "Paranoid Empire: Specters from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib." Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 13.1 (2009): 50-74. Web. 18 Mar. 2017.

Trask, Haunani-Kay. "The Color of Violence." Color of Violence: The INCITE! Anthology. Durham: Duke UP, 2016. N. pag. Print.

[engagingjustice-blog]

A Power Struggle

The readings we read and covered in class about Abu Ghraib left me very uneasy and questioning the choices our government has made regarding them. Hail has mentioned to us that Obama tried to get rid of Guantanamo Bay, but there were a lot of forces that stopped him before he could shut it down. The articles we read really cleared up as to why America feels the need to keep up this inhumane way of “fighting” terrorism.

A lot of people are starting to realize the power struggle that there is within the world. America can be seen as vulnerable when we are attacked, but an easy way to take some of the power back is with violence. In an article called “Abu Ghraib” a lot of the facts are stated about this area. Amann states that, “Following the terrorist assaults of September 11, 2001, the United States struck back against the Taliban regime that had provided Al Qaeda safe haven in Afghanistan” (Amann 2088). This was not a coincidence, but a defense mechanism. Our country is paranoid and irrational when it comes to terrorism. As Anne McClintock says in her article about the terrorists being “Barbarians”, the attacks just gave America a reason and excuse to capture and force information out of citizens. In reality this is not a valid excuse to capturing so many people.

Another concerning aspect is how private these places are to the citizens of the United States. Nothing is ever really released or talked about regarding Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib only got shut down after pictures were leaked. Something that Amann pointed out in her article was “Digital scrapbooks of Americans’ abuse, … became public just hours after a government lawyer had assured the Supreme Court that no detainee endured torture at U.S. hands” (Amann 2085). If we were being lied to about what happened at Abu Ghraib then any secrets the government the government decides to keep from us can be very scary. In the article we read by Michelle Brown, she names some of the torture that the prisoners have to encounter while in the still alive Guantanamo Bay. Some things that were exposed were that they would become sleep deprived, they would be shoved, and the guards would threaten to hurt their families. This is also just what was released. There is a good chance that we are not being told the truth about how people are treated here just like at Abu Ghraib.

Reading these articles about how America is fighting in this War on Terrorism makes me reflect on the humanity of our country. McClintock lists some things that she reflects on when processing these events such as; mortality, corrupt sexualities, loss of international credibility, and gender misrule. I recently looked at some of the picture that were released from Abu Ghraib and I am extremely embarrassed that our country takes any part in treating other humans like this.

 -impopcornie

Resources:

Amann, Dianne Marie. 6th ed. Vol. 153. N.p.: U of Pennsylvania Law Review, 2005. N. pag. Print.

McClintock, Anne. Small Axe. N.p.: Duke UP, n.d. Web.

[engagingjustice-blog]

The Abuse of Power

Once again, the things we have read the past few weeks in this class have amazed me. I will admit that I have heard of Guantanamo Bay and I will also admit I had no clue what it is. The same thing goes for Abu Ghraib. I had no idea the terrifying things that went on in these two places or how they were related to the United States. I didn’t know that they were U.S. military bases for “terrorists” and I couldn’t even imagine the things that I was about to learn within the few articles we read on the topics. After having discussed the PIC and its effects on certain people and communities, I could already tell that these articles were going to be very interesting and thought-provoking.

            Until reading the article “Paranoid Empire: Specters from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib” by Anne McClintock I was basically in the dark about these places and what had occurred there. While reading about the horrific pictures that were taken of the inmates at Abu Ghraib, I thought to myself how could something like this happen? Then, I remembered the Stanford Prison Experiment that I had learned about last year in my psychology class. We discussed this a bit in class but in case some of you weren’t there or aren’t familiar with the experiment I’ll give a quick summary. A group of 24 young college guys were picked to participate in an experiment of guards and prisoners. Half were randomly assigned guard and the other half were randomly assigned prisoner. All the men chosen were screened for mental stability and were deemed normal/healthy. The guards took their role very seriously and not only abused the prisoners physically they also abused them emotionally and mentally. After just six days the experiment had to be shut down, for fear of the mental state of minds of the prisoners (it was supposed to last two weeks). From doing this experiment we learned how power can affect a person (McLeod). I definitely think this experiment is an example of how guards, police, and military soldiers can take the power they are given and abuse it like no other. Like the “guards” in the prison experiment, the guards at Abu Ghraib ABUSED their power. They knew exactly what they were doing when they took those pictures and it’s disgusting! In McClintock’s article, she has quote from someone who was close to Graner (the main offender at Abu Ghraib) who said this about Graner “always talked about Desert Storm and the things he saw and did and he had no way to prove these things happened, so this time around, he said, he was going to take pictures to take home as proof”. He said it himself he took the pictures as PROOF. He was proud of what he did and he wanted to show people. This is probably the most disgusting thing in my opinion (it’s tied with another thing). That he thought what he was doing was right/enjoyable/even humorous. The other thing that tops my list as most disgusting is the fact that they knew all the people there were innocent and yet they still allowed this to happen. McClintock says “Indeed, all of the victims in the notorious photos were innocent” and she states that they knew they were innocent and yet it happened. They weren’t punishing terrible terrorists people, they were doing this for the heck of it.

            I don’t know how we can stop this abuse of power, but it needs to end now. Guards, police, border patrol officers, soldiers, literally anyone that has some sort of power over another individual need to take a step back and think “Is this necessary?” “Am I being a decent human?” or even “How would my mother feel if she knew I was doing this?”.  Because I’m sure if these questions were answered before pictures were taken, rape happened or abuse took place many of the incidents we here about abuse of power wouldn’t have happened.

-coldtimetravelpeach

McClintock, A. "Paranoid Empire: Specters from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib." Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism 13.1 (2009): 50-74. Web.

Saul McLeod - https://www.simplypsychology.org/zimbardo.html

[engagingjustice-blog]

Powerful Language and Propaganda: The War on Terror

Like the majority of you (I assume), I don’t recall a time where America was not in a “war on terror.” The attacks on September 11, 2001 happened just before I turned five years old, meaning I have very few memories of a time before the United States entered this crazy anti-Islam, anti-Middle East, anti-brown people in general (although this country is founded on racism, so this idea isn’t new, just revitalized during this time period) mentality. As Anne McClintock says in “Paranoid Empire,” “The 9/11 attacks came as a dazzling solution, both to the enemy deficit and the problem of legitimacy, offering the Bush administration what they would claim as a political casus belli and the military unimaginable license to expand its reach” (55). The US has always made an attempt to establish itself as a world powerhouse, but the greatest attempt to establish has always come in the form of making the citizen’s believe this. If Americans wholeheartedly believe that America is the best country, the most powerful country, the leader, than who is to say that it isn’t? But it takes steps to get there. It takes powerful language, propaganda, and horrific actions in order for the US to situate itself (even just in the eyes of its citizens) as a world leader and political powerhouse. After 9/11, the US had a clear enemy: terrorists; and we (we being the US) had an easy way to prove our power: eliminate terrorists. So how did we do that? Bush launched us into a full blown “war on terror.” News reports focused on how we needed to eliminate terror threats and Sadam Hussein. Soldiers were lifted up to the status of national hero for bombing villages or raiding “terror operations.” But this wasn’t enough. Prisons like Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib started popping up. We could throw “terrorists” in these prisons and torture them, treat them incredibly inhumanely, and really do anything we wanted to them, and it was all exalted by the public. We were establishing our dominance over the enemy. No one messes with the US, world leader and political powerhouse, and if they do, we’ve got another thing coming for them. These prisons (aka torture camps) were set up on the grounds of getting information and infiltrating terrorist circles, but that’s not what they are. Innocent people get tortured and treated like complete trash every single day in these places just so the United States can boost their ego and “feel like a man,” so to speak, by having control and proving their strength. By creating this “other,” which in this case is terrorists, but has turned into Muslims, brown people, and anyone from the middle east (or even just people that look vaguely Arab), the US has someone to exert their power over and prove to themselves that they are a world leader, not one to be messed with. And this gross, dehumanizing, detrimental language and propaganda has not stopped, even though we are nearly 16 years post 9/11. Trump got elected on this idea. “Make America Great Again” is blatant propaganda used to place the US on a pedestal, and his obsession with “terrorists” is exactly the language that formed prisons like Guantanamo Bay. Trump’s Muslim Ban is allowing for this space of hate, for this space of othering millions of people for no reason, for this space in which prisons like Guantanamo Bay are accepted. And, while a lot of media outlets, citizens, and other people and justly criticizing Trump, we still have this weird overly-patriotic mentality that allows atrocities to continually be committed. Movies like Camp X-Ray with Kristen Stewart, which is a movie about Guantanamo Bay that focuses on one female US soldier’s experiences working there, and not at all on the atrocities committed there, normalize things that we cannot normalize. We can’t marvel at this unlikely friendship between prisoner and guard, because it causes us to forget about just how despicable and disgusting the realty of Guantanamo Bay actually is, but that’s exactly what the movie is made to do. Powerful language and propaganda fill our society, and that makes it very easy for us to normalize, forget about, or even justify the blatant attack on human lives that the US is committing every day. It is important that we take everything with a critical lens, and focus on the real issues at hand. Especially in the current political climate, we need to fight against mass media’s attempts at brainwashing. We need to look at the root of these issues, and we need to fight back.

*my use of the word “we” in this is ever-changing, and is used very frequently in reference to the American public as a whole, not necessarily any smaller group of people. I include myself because I know that, as part of the American public, I am part of the problem, even if I am in utter opposition of these atrocities.

[engagingjustice-blog]

Gitmo and Torture...The Truth?

Dear class, teachers, and the wonderful Tumblr community,

Of all of the readings and articles that we had the option of writing about for this response, Anne McClintock’s “Paranoid Empire” stuck out to me the most by far. I believe this was because not only of the disturbing subject matter it entails, but also the questions McClintock so bluntly asks. She says, "The question is still open: what is the purpose of Guantánamo Bay? Is it a prison for “terrorists”? Is it an interrogation camp for suspects? Or is it perhaps something altogether more harrowing?”

Reading that was a bit of a shock to me, similar to when I first read about the PIC. Similar to what I had previously assumed about institutionalized prisons, I had just assumed that Guantanamo Bay was simply what it was made out to be- a place for dangerous people to be kept away from the rest of us. A place where terrorists “belong”. But after reading McClintock’s article and a piece titled, “Guantanamo Bay turns 15: A Look Back At the Notorious ‘Torture Camp’”, I’m not so sure. For example, I had no idea that most of the people held in Gitmo are in fact innocent people who’ve not been convicted of a crime. Furthermore, according to RT News, “A November 2016 study from Afghan Analysts Network found the US authorities committed “gross miscarriages of justice and torture” against the victims, many of whom were detained on scant evidence”. So not only are innocent people detained in Gitmo, but they are tortured as well. I’m honestly floored and repulsed by this fact. Why is this so? I cannot fathom what there could be to gain from such actions.

The topic of torture is unfortunately extremely pertinent today. Our President is an open advocate for it- and wants to ensure Guantanamo Bay stays open. In the wake of such fearful things coming from a person of power, I believe that it’s more important than ever to speak out against the atrocities committed at Gitmo and spread the truth as much as possible. Whether it’s via social media, literature, or word of mouth, spread the truth. Let others know. Torturing innocent people is unfathomable- let’s hold our country accountable for it.

  Sources:

https://www.rt.com/usa/373284-guantanamo-bay-15-anniversary/

https://ay16.moodle.umn.edu/pluginfile.php/2003534/mod_resource/content/1/McClintock%2CAnne%20ParanoidEmpire.pdf

[engagingjustice-blog]

While reading Color of Violence, many things struck me as incredibly horrific. But one part of the reading was particularly hard for me to read. I didn’t know that militarized border rape against both legal and illegal citizens happened in America. I shouldn’t be surprised though. Rape in America is seen as taboo, where victims often are victimized further than they already have been. At the border, agents think that this behavior is okay because they know most of the women they abuse, and assault will most likely not report them for fear of the repercussions of the U.S. justice system. Victims of assault don’t report for the same reasons that these women don’t, victims are often blamed for the attacks. They often undergo degrading and painful questioning, and are more than likely to have blame placed on them for their attacks. After the gruelling police questioning, victims often go through emotional trauma of a trial, that more often than not, ends in an extremely light sentence for their rapists. Juanita’s story really had an impact on me,and is a perfect example of attackers serving light sentences. “Selders received a one-year prison sentence on October 7, 1994, and served only six months of the sentence” (123). Sadly, this is a reality for a lot of women not just around the U.S. Mexico border, but all over the country. Many people crossing the border don’t speak fluent english, which makes it harder for these women to report their rape. The language barrier shouldn’t exist, let alone let it prevent people from reporting an assault. But with that comes stopping the problem at the source, harsher punishment, and an increased accountability for border patrol agents. No one should ever think that it’s okay to use someone just because they won’t be as likely to tell.

This graphic shows just how common the knowledge is that many people are raped at the border. In an article written by the Huffington Post, “According to a stunning Fusion investigation, 80 percent of women and girls crossing into the U.S. by way of Mexico are raped during their journey. That’s up from a previous estimate of 60 percent, according to an Amnesty International report”. This is a truly disturbing report. To think that women crossing the border will often take pills beforehand, knowing that they will more than likely be raped while crossing the border is such a sad thought.

  Color of Violence

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/12/central-america-migrants-rape_n_5806972.html

https://i0.wp.com/fusion.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/lo3wdey1.jpg?resize=670%2C377&quality=80&strip=all

[engagingjustice-blog]

Who gets to be in charge???

Professor and Peers,

            The central theme of the articles we’ve been reading have focused on inhumane treatment of prisoners. Mama’s Baby by Hortense Spillers more specifically focused on imprisoned African American women.  Spillers thoughtfully questioned if the scars of injustice are passed on between generations. Paranoid Empire looked into the inhumane treatment of prisoners in Iqaq. Setting Conditions for Abu Ghraib by Michelle Brown, looking into a specific prison and the horrific things that happened to people there in greater detail. The information in the last one was very shocking and disturbing.

            I was so bothered by the inhumane treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib that I looked more into it. According to Seymour Hersh, author or Torture of National Security, the people held captive included women and teenagers, and many of the prisoners were picked up in random military sweeps. Hersh described the three types of prisoners; common criminals, those suspected of “crimes against the coalition”, and few suspected “high-value” leaders of the insurgency against the coalition forces. The author went on to describe how court cases against the officers of the prison went down and the effect that their publicity had on views of the army.

            These different instances of injustice should awaken us to the fact that not only do people in power often hurt people in our country, they also hurt people overseas. This should definitely lead us to question the morality of those in charge, and not just of the ones we see as in charge of us.

@Burningdeeppersona

Scholarly article: http://www.veronaschools.org/cms/lib02/NJ01001379/Centricity/Domain/588/Torture%20at%20Abu%20Ghraib.pdf

[engagingjustice-blog]

Slavery Round 3

I remember watching the movie Slavery by Another Name my junior year and just sitting in a state of shock when it was over. I couldn’t believe the prison and convict leasing system and how it was even allowed. I mean it makes sense because of the deep racism. But it’s still appalling. After it was done, all I could think was “thank god it’s not like that now”. That thought didn’t last very long however after my teacher pulled up today’s incarceration statistics. I was reminded of the sickening numbers while watching the movie Thirteenth. The amount of people locked up in American prisons in astounding. So far in 2017, there are 2.3 million Americans in jail. In 1980, less than 40 years ago, only 329,122 people were locked up. Just like...reflect on that. Now this might be obvious to some people, but others may not have figured out or heard the claim I’m making. The reason why mass incarceration has spiked since 1980, is because it was discovered as the best way to replace slavery and further oppress people of color in America. After slavery was abolished, under the 13th amendment, convict leasing effectively replaced slavery, but worse. If you can even fathom that. Now its mass incarceration that's taken over as the new slavery with drugs as the excuse. Its causing POC to literally disappear from society and completely disenfranchise them in the process. During the Civil Rights Movement, going to jail was a thing of honor. If it was in protest of course. But now, going to jail for any crime can absolutely ruin your life. There's an episode of Orange is the New Black where Taystee finished out her sentence and was released, only to end up committing a robbery with the purpose of going back to jail. Because life outside of prison as an ex-convict was so difficult, that her life was better when she was incarcerated. 

I'm just not sure what is to be done. What is the best way to deal with mass incarceration? I gather that the labor of this class is to make us answer that question with prison abolition. But I'm just not so sure yet. Because the thing is that there are terrible people that commit appalling crimes that I believe should live a life of misery in prison. But the majority of convicts don't deserve the lives they're subject to now that they've been convicted once for a minor offense that wasn't hurting anyone. Like all crimes related to marijauna. There is nothing you can say to convince me that possession and usage of weed is cause enough for any time in prison. That just boils down to straight racism and there's no way you can argue your way out of that one. 

- Ms. President

@girlclubpresident

https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=3365

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2017.html

[engagingjustice-blog]

Mark of the Beast

Why do we mark people? Some people, when they are passed on the street, get looks and whispers or worse. History is well furnished with examples of sideways glances and angry mobs being aimed at individuals who are marked, unwelcome, and said to be evil. I would resent the implication that we need a villain, however illusory our villains are.

In most cases, we aren’t marking them, but taking something of theirs and calling it evil. Birthmarks, skin pigmentation, mutations, and other features have all been demonized. Some call it a fear of the unknown or the alien. This is also too close to agreeing that the demons may be real, or at least accepting the visions people get of these demons.

When things get so big that it’s the majority demonizing just a few, it’s easy enough to say “that’s fine” or “that sucks,” then go about your business. When it is individuals who are being simultaneously feared and tormented, the real villainy is made plain. I like stories for this reason. (I like stories who don’t have villains, just people in conflict with each other, even more.)

Just to name a few, The Bluest Eye, Anna Karenina, and The Yellow Wallpaper are all about women who, in different ways, have been marked by society. I don’t know if I could recommend it to anyone, but Anna Karenina has become one of my favorite novels. It is long and boring and masterfully captures an inescapable and all-consuming dread. The ending is very famous, but, in case anyone wants to be bored and sad for 800-some pages, I won’t spoil it here. The devastation that comes with living a marked life is something that we have known about for at least 140 years. I look back to Anna’s story often when thinking about those unspoken aversions(and hatreds) towards those people who have been marked unfit for society.

I don’t have any articles to cite about literature and feminism because the JSTOR links were broken. Maybe I shoulda looked over spring break... whoops.

[engagingjustice-blog]

Nationalism and Ingroup Bias: The Paranoid Empire

            In the article “Paranoid Empire”, McClintock analyzes the paranoia in the United States. This included a juxtaposition of fear of constant threat and the illusions of grandeur. As McClintock shows, there are the opposing ideas in the United States that we are the best, strongest nation and yet we are constantly vulnerable to attack by outside threats. The points illustrated by McClintock reminded me of something that I have been considering lately. In the United States, there is a strong sense of nationalism that is instilled in many aspects of life. I am interested in analyzing this group dynamics contributing to that nationalism and how they relate to the “war on terror” and other subjects in “Paranoid Empire”.

            In the article, it is outlined how there was an enemy deficit after the Cold War and the  9/11 attacks and the actions from the U.S. government following provided a solution to that deficit. It was ensured that there would be a way to embody the invisible enemy through the prisons, the tortures, and the photography. As it says in the article, “It cannot be stressed enough that according to Red Cross reports, statements by military intelligence, and testimony at the Abu Ghraib trials, up to 90 percent of all the prisoners at Abu Ghraib were arrested by mistake or had no intelligence-gathering value” (68). Despite the fact that many of the prisoners were innocent, there were detained and tortured at Abu Ghraib. This was done in order to create a visible common enemy and as an exhibit of power by the United States.

 With a common enemy, the nation became more united. This was then used to justify the actions of the government. This “solution” increased nationalism because it cemented the idea that it is “us” vs. “them”. There is a phenomenon in social psychology called in-group favoritism. This suggests that one favors members from their group over members of a different group. According to a psychological study, an American person was more likely to perceive a situation as torture if the guard was a member of the outgroup (Iraqi) and the guard was a member of the ingroup (American) than if the situation was reversed (Shannon). This supports the fact that there is ingroup bias, specifically in torture situations.  In the process of grouping, the members become closer within a group and more alienated from the other group. In solving the enemy deficit, nationalism increased and the United States became a united group, paranoid of the actions that the outgroup might take. This allowed the dehumanization of the prisoners. It became that they were seen as less than human and that they deserved the atrocities committed against them, guilty or not.

The nationalism of the United States has created a culture where the country must be perceived as the most powerful, strongest nation. This is also done while maintaining a culture of paranoia over outside threats. Both the nationalism and the paranoia are amplified by the ingroup bias present.

Sources:

McClintock A (2009) Paranoid empire: Specters from Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. Small Axe 13(1): 50–74

Shannon C. Houck, Lucian Gideon Conway III. (2015) Ethically Investigating Torture Efficacy: A New Methodology to Test the Influence of Physical Pain on Decision-Making Processes in Experimental Interrogation Scenarios. Journal of Applied Security Research 10:4, pages 510-524. 

[engagingjustice-blog]

World Peace & Escaping Racism

This past few readings really got me thinking about war. It’s not something I often think about day to day because it’s not something that directly impacts my life. However, it should be something I think about more because it impacts so many people’s lives, including mine.

Yes, the Color of Violence was more about past wars, which I found to be very interesting, especially when they stated that the war against Native Americans was the “worst human holocaust the world has ever witnessed”, but this reading made me think about current wars. People that are really effected by war are the countries that are less developed and can’t fight back as much. Color of Violence explained how wars are about gaining power, which I think is a truly awful thing. I know world peace is said to be impossible and war is an asset to the economy but what if it weren’t? I realize that war was a huge factor in our countries comeback from the great repression but were not in the great depression anymore and so many lives are ended or ruined due to war. A tragic fact comes from the Sage journals, which states, “According to the UN Refugee Agency, 59.5 million people around the world were forcibly displaced in 2014”. I can’t even imagine being kicked out of my home and having life as I know it be gone and not being able to get it back, as well as losing my friends and family. Another article called, Threads. The Calais Cartoon discussed how people from places like Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries affected by external and internal wars were displaced and living in camps where the living conditions were awful, such as not having beds to sleep on or clean water to drink. It’s such a tragedy that some must live like this due to our country, or other countries fighting for power. People often either die or end up living extremely hard lives. Things need to change because it’s extremely unfair for those who were born into these countries and wish for peace but instead their lives are ruined.  

These readings, both Color of Violence and Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book, also made me think about how racism doesn’t just end; we cannot escape our past. Another class of mine, Our Globalizing World, overlaps with some of the things we are learning about in this class because it deals with race a lot. Color of Violence brought up how white people prevail over other races and how this hasn’t gone away which reminded me of a reading from my other class; The Case for Reparations. It discussed the housing market in Chicago and how in the past and still today, black individuals are pressured into neighborhoods together that have worse conditions. This article explained how the condition of these poorer neighborhoods of those of color today originated with slavery, as well as the racist treatment after slavery ended. What these readings all represent is the fact that the society we live in today is still racist, which is obvious, but the only way it’s going to change is if we take action and change it. Racism isn’t going to go away if we just ignore it because our past is extremely hard to escape and our past was completely racist and horrific.

-majesticbluepeach 

  Evans, Kate. "Threads. The Calais cartoon." Cartoon Kate. N.p., 06 July 2016. Web. 19 Mar. 2017.

 Khaibany, Gholam. "Refugee crisis, imperialism and pitiless wars on the poor." Sage Journals. N.p., 10 June 2016. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

 Trask, Haunani. The Color of Violence. In Incite! Anthology. The Color of Violence. 2016.

 https://ay16.moodle.umn.edu/pluginfile.php/2003531/mod_resource/content/1/Spillers%2C%20Hortense%20-%20Mamas%20Baby.pdf

[engagingjustice-blog]

All the readings from week three have really altered my conception of social justice. The preface to Normal Life was definitely an eye opener in briefly defining some of the legal issues that trans people go through. Building an Abolitionist Trans and Queer Movement was also an important read in addressing problems in trans and queer movements. Julia Sudbury introduces the dilemma of women of color as radical bridge builders in Toward a Holistic Anti-Violence Agenda. “Working with white women to challenge violence against women, and with men of color to defend their communities against police brutality and institutional racism, women of color frequently found themselves acting as the bridge between a multiplicity of social movements” (Sudbury 134).

Sudbury discusses the struggle women of color face when they are advocates for both prison abolition and anti-domestic violence. Going over my lecture notes on abolition and the prison industrial complex notes, I was reminded that the PIC is maintained to target against brown and black bodies. In an article written by everydayfeminism.com, it introduces the relationship between the PIC and the school-to-prison pipeline. With the school-to-prison pipeline brought to concern by education officials, there are better opportunities for black and brown boys exclusively, neglecting black and brown girls of color. Leading up to that, “women prisoners and victims of police brutality have been made invisible by a focus on the war on [their] brothers and sons” (Incite 224). Women of color can easily be ignored when dealing criminal injustice. Cases of criminal injustice against black and brown women are rarely heard of.

It is important to focus on the relationship between color of violence and the prison industrial complex. Women who are victims of domestic abuse should be protected against and therefore the perpetrator should be punished, I think that the true dilemma Sudbury argues. Women of color deserve to be safe and protected but prisons aren’t the answer to the perpetrator. DVSA questions how “women's safety would be guaranteed in the ‘world without prison’” (Sudbury 135). Sudbury and Incite list alternatives to prisons which are sought out critically. Critical Resistance argues to fund social welfare and community development instead of extended investment in prison systems. (Sudbury 137). Incite plans to “develop an analysis and strategies to end violence that do not isolate individual acts of violence from their larger contexts” (Incite 225), ultimately challenging the criminal justice system.

With these readings, I am understanding that I need to be critical in supporting marginalized groups. There is a lot of research and internal struggle in understanding what I can do to support these marginalized groups. I think that’ll really help me be a feminist who believes in intersectionality and in understanding true social justice. http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/03/woc-prison-industrial-complex/

[engagingjustice-blog]

Torture, For Why?

Reading “Paranoid Empire” brought back a lot of memories from all of the unjust and unnecessary torture we discussed in my America Post 9/11 class I took last semester. In the class we talked about how torture is shown as a “necessity” to “get the bad guys” and how our culture and media represents torture as a good tactic for gaining information, even though in real life there are many other tactics that have proven to be just as useful if not more. In the class we discussed the show “24” and how it promoted and glamorized torture, in the book “Screening Torture: media representations of state terror and political domination”

In McClintock’s article she talks about how many prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib are innocent or have familial connections to alleged terrorists. To think that our government is okay with torturing innocent people is disgusting to me. The fact that these people don’t get the same rights when being dealt with by the U.S. as U.S. citizens seems extremely unfair.

We talk a lot about the prison system in this class, and I think torture has a lot to do with that and correlates a lot with it. The things we have done to people in other countries is horrific, but somehow it seems like a lot of people care less about it because they aren’t U.S. citizens. I don’t understand how citizenship anywhere makes a human life more valuable than another human life. We tend to throw these torturous things under the rug because they don’t directly affect us, we turn a blind eye.

Because we have ignored it so much in the past it makes it all the more important to recognize it now and own up to it so that we can work to fix it. Unfortunately, with our new president, it seems that the time for fixing it has run out, and we will only go backwards from here, possibly even adding more torture prisons in the world. I think now more than ever we need to stand united against a corrupt president that doesn’t see the value of all human life, regardless of race, class or citizenship. I believe that torture is always unnecessary, and human liberty and life should be of foremost importance. We cannot hide behind the guise of “the war on terror” to be hateful towards those who are different than us or were born on a different piece of land than us.

Sources:

Flynn, Michael, and Fabiola F. Salek. Screening Torture: Media Representations of State Terror and Political Domination. New York: Columbia UP, 2012. Print.

  McClintock, Anne. Paranoid Empire: Specters from Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. N.p.: Duke UP, 2009. Print.

[engagingjustice-blog]

All You Need is War

What is interesting to me is the way that a common enemy is the most used tactic to create a united front in the United States. After WWI, WWII, and the Cold War brought the country together, it only made sense that an enemy may be seen as the best way to unite the people. (Not to mention that the US came to be its own country because of the Revolutionary War). The Cold War showed us that wars do not need to be fought with guns and tanks. Once we had an enemy, people could unite behind the mere idea that that enemy posed a threat to society.

While Paranoid Empire described the how the war on terror was actually a “kind of solution” to the void left after the end of the Cold War, this whole idea of creating an enemy to bring together the country reminded me very much of something that we have discussed earlier in class. The civil rights movement was a monumental because people were fighting for things that others in this country did not want them to have. So what did the US government do to bring the country together when the civil rights movement (something that divided the country) was coming to a close? LBJ called for a war on crime. Which Nixon turned into a war on drugs by making drug busts one of the number one ways to fight crime.

Just like the war on terror, the war on drugs was created to unite the country against an enemy that everyone could agree on. (Plus, it had the added bonus of being very racialized and allowed for the imprisonment of people of color who had newfound freedom in this time in American history.) Both the war on terror and the war on drugs used fear mongering to unite the people. Both were dependent on an enemy, somebody that everybody was against. Both came from a time when America needed something to hold them together. And like Michelle Brown pointed out in "Setting the Conditions" for Abu Ghraib, both are “wars with no end” since terror and drugs are arguably impossible to eradicate (page 990). Both forms of war have awful byproducts: Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib are products of the war on terror that the readings from week 8 have shown us. Racial profiling leading to more traffic stops for certain groups of people is a byproduct of the war on drugs that you can read more about here. Let’s not forget some of these byproducts of war that the two have in common:

Image from Andy Singer

While I understand the historical use of fear and war and have seen their effectiveness in creating a united front, I still look at this tactic and feel baffled. War, “a state of hostility, conflict, or antagonism”, is the thing that makes the states “United”. This begs me to wonder if something other than fear really could bring this country together. Because we have seen so far in this class that fear is one of the main components holding us back. Think about prison abolition: we like the idea of other forms of rehabilitation, treatment, and justice that do not rely on locking people in cages. However, the biggest place we get stuck is the fear of criminals walking around town.

I wonder if moving forward means moving away from the idea that people must unite against a common enemy, OR, if progress (towards justice and equality) in this country require the alignment against a different enemy, the one that creates the fear.

-usuallytoopost