I finished this book while at work tonight, and part of the purpose of this blog for me is to process my thoughts while learning, specifically my political thoughts, to put them to words, to work through them and figure out where I stand and what I think.
So, what do I thnk of the book... I think my understanding of how there are structures in place that profit off of imprisoned bodies, and how those structures are self replicating, by defunding social services and putting more money into slave labo-I mean prisons, and understanding that the need to imprison more and more bodies to produce labour in a growing markert with growing demand, leads me to believe that systemic issues within the governement structure that allow for this to happen are at fault. Drugs shouldn't even be criminalized, its just an excuse to imprison more people of colour, as it is a sentence most proportionately served agianst people of colour. The whole war on drugs was just an excuse to fill prisons.
The government even paid groups that were doing a coup in their home country due entirely to U.S. involvement, with money they got from selling drugs to U.S. citizens that they then imprisoned. Its all fucked, from the bottom to the top.
But back to the topic of prisons, the removal of one's liberties and rights as punishment for things that should honestly not even be crimes, its fucked man. I don't know what the alternative would be to carceration for more serios crimes, like crimes against children or murder in cold blood, but I'm not done learning yet, so maybe I'll figure it out along the way, but I do know that I don't think what we're doing works or helps anyone in any way other than the people who profit off of the cheap or unpaid labour of imprisoned bodies. I have a lot more to read and to learn, and I'm excited to expand my knowledge both about these political issues, but also about making this website work the way I want it to!
I'm not sure I'f I'm gonna do an ongoing reading list, or by season, or month, or year, or what, but I do want to track my progress somehow...