Abolition Democracy: Beyond Prisons, Torture, and Empire Interviews with Angela Y. Davis by Angela Y. Davis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This small text is densely packed with Davis’ insight into the history of social justice organization and mobilization, the injustice of the prison system, and the interweaving of that system with capitalism to create an exportable prison economy with both a profit and social repression incentive. It reads quickly as a conversation develops between Mendieta and Davis that displays his intense engagement with the subject of his interview.
There is a gem of an answer at the end of the interview which speaks to Davis’ concern that there is an overreliance on seeking role models for social justice mobilization when what she and others of her era did was essentially experimentation. In this way, modern organizers should be more fearless with experimenting with new ways to think their way through more highly evolved forms of racism and those threats to social justice which we encounter in the present era.