Posted on 04/28/2006 2:03:21 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
The United States is emerging as the prison guard of the world, Angela Davis told a UW-Madison audience Thursday.
Between the prisoners the U.S. is holding in Iraq and Afghanistan and in secret CIA prisons, the county is promoting strategies of incarceration based on torture, said Davis, the former Black Panther Party member who now is chair of feminist studies at the University of California-Santa Cruz.
The evidence of torture in military prisons only highlights what is already going on in domestic prisons, she said.
"We have not even begun to talk about the people who are the victims of that torture. Just as we cannot possibly imagine ourselves in the position of that man who was standing on that box with that hood over his head, we can't imagine ourselves there," she told a group of about 300 who packed a room in Bascom Hall for her speech.
What's more, Americans have only had a small glimpse into the torture at one Iraqi prison, Davis said.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the photographs that came out of Abu Ghraib were not the worst. He repeated that several times, she said.
"There were 1,800 photographs taken at this one prison. Now, who can believe that this is the work of a few bad apples?" Davis said.
The same way Americans cannot relate to the victims of torture, they cannot empathize with people in prison, she said.
"We cannot imagine ourselves in that place, in that horrible place. And it's very comfortable just not to think about it. Not to even go through the exercise of what it might be like to be the person who is being tortured, what it is like to be the person who is being executed, to be the person who receives a life sentence in prison. We assume that somehow or another we belong to another species."
Davis knows something about being incarcerated. In 1969, as a 26-year-old instructor at UCLA, Davis was fired for her political activity and Communist Party membership. In 1970, she went into hiding after she found herself on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted" list for allegedly furnishing weapons used in a jail break and shootout in the Marin County, Calif., courthouse. Four people died during the shootout.
Although she was not present at the shootout, Davis was imprisoned for 16 months in the early 1970s on kidnapping, murder and conspiracy charges.
She said the U.S. "imprisonment binge" emerged in the 1980s, the same period that saw the rise of globalization and global capitalism, she said.
Now more than 2 million people are locked up in U.S. jails, prisons, detention centers and juvenile facilities. The number includes those in military and American Indian facilities, Davis said.
She calls herself a prison abolitionist, not a reformer. She prefers to see prisons abolished so society could confront issues of race and class that she thinks have led to incarceration of large numbers of minorities.
The more resources the United States spends on the "prison-industrial complex," the fewer dollars go into education and addressing social problems, Davis said.
"The more money we put into prisons, the more our schools start to look like prisons."
Immigrant felons: The United States will create a new prison population if the immigration bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., becomes law, Davis said.
The mention of House Bill 4437 drew hisses, and Sensenbrenner's name elicited one woman in the audience to shout "Senseless-brenner!"
If the bill becomes law, it could criminalize people who are undocumented and create some 11 million felons.
In December, the House of Representatives voted to approve construction of a 700-mile-long fence along the U.S.-Mexican border. That wall would "turn this whole country into a gated community," Davis said.
Angela Davis is still alive? I thought she died in prison.
A shining example to leftists everywhere.
Okay - he was standing on the box with a hood over his head. At least, he still HAD his head, which is more than many of the prisoners of the terrorist were given. Why no outrage over that??? Oh, yeah, this dipsh*t doesn't care about American citizens, particularly since none of those beheaded were "black panthers."
Angela Davis is an evil person and belongs in Madison or Santa Cruz where her damage is more limited.
...anxiously waiting for the day when shooting traitors becomes nessessary/legal.
Angela, you're so yesterday.
We keep hoping she'll leave...with the rest of UCSC
Angela Davis: washed-up `60s ding-bat.
Hey Angie, did you hear? You commies lost!
Worse: she died in the public spectrum. This is one of those pitiless "Look at me! Look at me!" speeches, much like given by Walter Cronkite....
What!?!?! You mean, some university has made HER in their own Golden Calf [bowing down & worshiping to] ???
IMO, the only woman of that era that's more a traitor and criminal than Angela Davis is Hanoi Jane Fonda and some would probably debate that.
I just attended a speech by Lech Walesa at San Diego State Univ. -- now THAT was a great speech! Funny, insightful and thought provoking. A bit nostalgic, too.
Isn't she dead yet?
What does this all mean?
Immediately fire the lacrosse coach at Duke based on allegations by an intoxicated stripper that has made false allegations before and lacks DNA evidence and has 46 people stating she's wrong.
What this also means?
Keep Taliban Islamist fascists with an 8th grade education who preached the oppression of woman and death to America in our ivy league schools on a scholarship. That's called "diversity".
Wow- Now these statements by a faculty member in a US University. I'm sure the school will "stand by its decision" to have her talk and what she said.
Angela Davis=traitor
The US is backing torture?
It's about time!!!
"Does she have the slightest idea what would happen if we closed every prison and turned all the bad boys loose?"
When Carter accepted all the Cuban Boat People after Castro opened his prisons and insane assylums, many of them ended up here in Wisconsin because they used Ft. McCoy as a staging area to "help" these people find places to live.
My co-worker, Lorae Love, was butchered to death in front of her young daughter by one of them.
So, sure, Angie. Swing wide the gates of hell and set 'em all free. (Stupid commie b*tch.)
Another mummy arises from her crypt, stumbles blindly over the bongs and love beads, and hops into the Wayback Machine for a brief trip back to the Summer of Love.
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