{"id":111662659,"date":"2023-03-31T12:30:28","date_gmt":"2023-03-31T12:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=111662659"},"modified":"2023-03-31T12:30:28","modified_gmt":"2023-03-31T12:30:28","slug":"friday-links-hope-is-a-discipline-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lazyandentitled.org\/?p=111662659","title":{"rendered":"Friday Links: Hope Is A Discipline Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

“You have a responsibility to live in this world. Your responsibility is not just to yourself. You are connected to everyone.” – Moussa Kaba to Mariame Kaba, ‘We Do This ‘Til We Free Us’<\/h2>

March is easily the worst month (T.S. Eliot is overrated). Chicago is one step forward, two steps back-ing its way to warm weather. The mood is generally weary. Go on and check your calendars from years past. Not a lot of good March<\/em> memories, I\u2019m betting. Maybe you got stabbed over and over again by a bunch of senators you thought you could trust, I don\u2019t know. Important thing is: today\u2014A FRIDAY\u2014March is over. <\/p>

What I\u2019ve Been Reading This Week<\/strong><\/p>

This is a pretty on-the-record anti-police blog. Carnitas not cops, is one way to describe how I like my pork. I should fess up, though, to not fully<\/em> having done the reading on prison abolition. Broad strokes\u2014like creating a society where everyone\u2019s material needs are met or more trained social workers and fewer armed foot soldiers responding to people in crisis\/doing wellness checks\u2014that\u2019s already obvious to my politics. What would a United States without prisons actually look like, though? There was one and only place for me to start:<\/p>

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This book is a collection of essays and interviews from as early as 2013 up through 2020. The cumulative effect of 200 pages of stuff previously meant for websites and magazines is a kind of earned repetition. It has been an era of common, horrific tragedy made public: the movement for Black lives and #metoo forced the US public to recognize evils we knew<\/em> had been happening but had never had to come face-to-face with until smart phones. This repetition of tragedy\u2014a wearying \u201ctime is a flat circle\u201d feeling\u2014coupled with Kaba\u2019s use of activist language, made me wonder how this book would be received by someone who isn\u2019t already primed to receive prison abolition talking points. <\/p>

But I kept thinking maybe people who believe in prisons should have to prove their own points. One notion I kept coming back to: what do we actually hope prisons accomplish? Is it justice<\/em> that someone who cause harm then be subjected to harm? Does it really<\/em> make things better, knowing that Martin Shkreli saw jail time, but the laws that enabled his price-gouging didn\u2019t change? Even things that feel like victories\u2014killer cop Jason Van Dyke got convicted, yes, but does him serving less than half of a seven-year sentence help anything? Jason Van Dyke\u2019s conviction didn\u2019t stop Derek Chauvin. There has been an overwhelming sense in the last decade plus that the US\u2019s miserable, collapsing empire is spinning its wheels towards fascism or civil war at worst and everyone simply having a real bad time at best. We Do This \u2018Til We Free Us<\/em> asks if we really want to keep going with this societal cycle of violence, and if the answer is no, how we might break our violence addiction. No, there are no quick-fix solutions. But as Kaba reminds us, hope is a discipline. Never give in to nihilism, never stop trying to build a better world. <\/p>

Jesus, two straight weeks of an extra paragraph of book talk. Shut up and get to the links, Chris. <\/p>

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LINKS!<\/strong><\/p>