This is An Illogical Statement: Dangerous Trends in Anti-Prison Activism

By camille e.s.a. acey, prison abolitionist

Introduction:

Institutions are created and maintained by hegemony

Hegemony is created and maintained by violence

Hegemony is violence

Institutions are violence

School is an institution

Institutions are created and maintained by hegemony

Hegemony is created and maintained by violence

Hegemony is violence

School is violence

Time is an institution

Institutions are created and maintained by hegemony

Hegemony is created and maintained by violence

Hegemony is violence

Time is violence

Jail is an institution

Institutions are created and maintained by hegemony

Hegemony is created and maintained by violence

Hegemony is violence

Jail is violence

School uses time

Jail uses time

Institutions use institutions

Institutions are created and maintained by hegemony

Hegemony is created and maintained by violence

Hegemony is violence

Violence uses violence

Schools not jails

Institutions not institutions

This is an illogical statement.

In the mid- 1990’s, "Schools not jails"(SNJ) (and other variations thereof, such as ‘jobs not jails’) was circulating in California as a popular rallying cry for anti-prison movements, but more recently it has grown into its own movement. As a bridge between emerging youth activism and anti-prison advocacy; this ideology in part seeks to draw crucial links between the under-funding of schools and the ever-burgeoning prison industrial complex. It is not at this political location that I seek to critique this movement. As one of the students, who were politicized in the era of Proposition 209, I soon found there was no space for my radical critique of government institutions when "Schools Not Jails" ballooned into a movement. Meetings were closed and business-like, and the focus shifted from progressive political education to effective campaign management. This movement did not explicitly tie itself to a history of social justice movements in the United States; rather it seemed that time began with Proposition 187 and would go on as long as there were propositions to oppose. Most recently this slogan was used in the failed campaign against California’s Proposition 21. With stipulations such as the legalization of wiretapping on those the police deemed "gang members" and increasing penalties for "gang-affiliated" crimes, Proposition 21 set into law the very practices that the legal system ( in conjunction with the FBI and other federal agencies) has used against activists for years. One would think that with seasoned activists at the head of the organizing the level of political education around this issue would have been superb, however this was not the case. Taking the lead from the "youth" organizers; a new naivete’ had permeated the organizing. SNJ grew in popularity because of its simplicity and straightforwardness --it is clear, catchy, and it fits neatly on a bumper sticker or a tee shirt-- and it is for this very same reason that SNJ is so dangerous. This and other such slogans indicate a revolt against what science fiction author and literary critic Samuel Delany has referred to as the "problem of ‘complex rhetoric.’" This revolt is in the name of popularizing a limited leftist agenda at the expense of the margins. Thus I wish to speak from the margins and discuss how attempts at "mainstreaming" a leftist political agenda, problematize and often censure the project of developing a radical counter-hegemonic political language.

The slogan "education not incarceration" grew out of the link between UC student anti-209 activism and grassroots high school student activism. The UC student emphasis was on relevant education and greater representation in higher learning, and the high school students were concerned with the decreasing opportunity in their cities coupled with growing criminalization of their generation. Often, many of the organizations came together to develop more comprehensive radical critiques, and strategies for political education. Though it is often believed that SNJ is a variation on "education not incarceration", I would argue that it is a corruption. Many times during workshops or meetings with high school students, they would express their extremely valid belief that the purpose of high school was to "get you ready to go to prison." Under the SNJ regime, this staunchly anti-school critique, from those incarcerated in some of the country’s most egregious junior highs and high schools was censored. Soon college students and graduates were employed (and developed their own organizations) to, effectively, handpick and manage youth organizers. They gave them crisp clean sound bites to deliver to the media and policed any nihilists who might feel the urge to yell "Fuck school!" during an SNJ rally. However, armed with inaccuracies and a slogan that won’t quit, the "Schools Not Jails" movement embodied the oldest form of anti-intellectual nihilism-- the willingness and determination to be intensely ignorant.

The liberal ideology behind SNJ is a remnant from previous generations of activism, developed out of the belief that once people could get educated and employed the system would work for them. Now, in this period of late capitalism, we must finally know this to be untrue. With continual corporate downsizing and massive global economic restructuring, groups of people whose bodies capitalism has discarded and who are outside the scope of traditional Marxist analysis have grown into a sizable and ballooning population. In collaboration with massive policing efforts, corporations and supranational organizations have succeeded in closing down our streets and public spaces (as becomes more and more evident with every passing day). The hope of liberal democracy is lying dead. These non-persons help to comprise the incoherent margins of society. As anti-prison activists we must struggle to understand this time as a crisis because only in the time of crisis do we begin to deconstruct our relationship with language and time.

Like I said earlier: "School is an institution and institutions use violence." Time is an institution and is violent as well, but what makes time particularly interesting is the movement or trajectory of its violence. There is a saying in prison "Do your time, don’t let your time do you." But the violence of time is that all that can be done is time; you can’t be done. YOU have to ‘do’ in order for time to ‘be’. Time forces you to will it into existence. There is another quote I heard in this great song: "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist" and I would say similarly: the greatest trick time ever pulled was convincing us that it has always existed and that we can’t live without it.

When I am talking about being anti-prison, I am talking about being anti-institution and in as much as institutions are reliant upon time, being radically anti- institution means being radically anti-time, and that is easier said than done. In general, when you are saying: "Let’s be anti-prison!" you are often saying let’s "critically resist these high incarceration rates" or let’s "critically resist the death penalty", but when you say "Let’s be anti-time !" there is nothing to resist for the simple fact that YOU bring time into existence, IT is not attacking YOU. So in order to be radically anti-prison and subsequently radically anti- time YOU need to strike, because nothing is striking at you. You need to get into conflict with time.

In his appropriately named essay, "TIME", San Quentin inmate Eddy Zheng said: "After I was sent to prison to do a life sentence, it forced me to think about time…," and I would go even further and say institutions require that you not only think about but do time. That’s why if you go into almost any prison in the world, and talk to any inmate, you will find that they were probably not where time dictated they should be at the event of their so-called crime. They were probably "supposed" to be at work or in school or in bed, catching some sleep before it was time to get up and go back to school or work or the unemployment office. Somehow their "crime" indicated that they were resisting some clock or were being wholly ignorant of it. In TIME Eddy says also: " Time took on a whole new meaning when I was locked up at the age of sixteen. When I was on the street I didn’t really care about time. I was free to do what I chose to do and go where I wanted to go. There wasn’t any set guidelines or routines. I didn’t feel a sense of time." We need to think critically about what is meant by the time of the street and what this difference between institutional and street time means to our organizing.

A metaphor for the liberal democratic ideal is the idea of a working body; a healthy body with all the organs functioning properly. Some popular anti-prison discourse is similar to the complaint of a sick patient particular institutions are saying is "this institution (or this organ) is in the way of society (or my body) being fully functional. I need another one." In particular, education gets proposed as this organ that can be transplanted into the "sick" society and will somehow make it well again. As far as I know this has never been proven, more often we find new institutions installed alongside the old ones to do damage more quickly and efficiently. However this method of activism continues to be employed because of the myth of time---the time that "heals all wounds" and the time that "will tell." Time is the skin that holds all these faulty organs in. Hope relies on time, however the trick of time is that while you are waiting for your hope, current social order is reproducing itself. In developing our critique, what needs to be revealed is not only the faults of the body, but that the body is the fault; modern society cannot be saved. As radical anti-prison activists, our aim therefore should be to make people realize this— by (in sticking with the metaphor) inducing a sustained attack in the body, where the only time is emergency time, where the only time is now.

"Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose the time

and the arena and the manner of our revolution, but more usually we

must do battle wherever we are standing."

--Audre Lourde

BIOGRAPHY

A version of this paper was delivered at ICOPA IX: New Questions ! New Answers ! May, 2000 Toronto, Canada. Camille E. S. Acey is a nineteen-year-old radical black feminist-student-activist-educator. She is currently a fourth year student at UC Berkeley; and her life plan is to keep on struggling, learning, and thinking. Her current academic interest embodies a crazy jumble of thoughts about time, genocide, afrofuturism and cyberculture. She wishes to extend her deepest gratitude to Dylan Rodriguez and Jared Sexton for all their help.