Education Not Incarceration
On July 5, 2004 the NEA Peace and Justice Caucus
hosted an important pre-conference session titled "Education, Not
Incarceration". Professor
Angela Davis spoke on the topic at the Paul Robeson Center at the All
Souls Church near Columbus Heights. She flew to the conference from Santa
Cruz where she teaches in the History of Consciousness Deparment at the
University of California. Click here to read the
transcript of her talk, an analysis of tragic loss of social resources
squandered on jails, resources that could be used to serve real needs of
people. Instead, the prison system grows by feeding on this country's
youth.
- "The cost of imprisoning the 161,000 men and women who are in
California correctional facilities is $5.3 billion. With this amount of
money it would have been possible to restore $2 billion in cuts to K-12
Education, restore $1.2 billion in deferred spending for K-12 education,
restore $372 million in cuts to the University of California system,
rescind fee increases at community colleges ($91 million), CSU'S ($101
million) and UC's ($196 million), restore $3.5 million cut to food stamps
benefits, and restore $164.8 million in cuts to childcare."
She examines in detail the relationship between military and domestic incarceration; prisons overseas, prisons here.
She raises the question, should prison be abolished and be replaced by the democracy of serious education, abolition-democracy?
- "Education plays a central role here - that is if we think
about education not as the imposition of multitudinous facts about the
world on supple minds, but rather education as the ability to raise
questions about those facts, to develop analyses, to ask why injustice
still prevails, and to develop creative strategies to transform the
universe."
