Erica R. Meiners > Quotes

“Some days, it feels unreasonable to expect that an academic text can work as a form of movement assessment or to support social and political change, including the redistribution of power. Perhaps nonfiction & the arts--literature, poetry & film--are potentially much better suited to the work of politically engaging audiences than the staid tools of the academy.”
― Erica R. Meiners, For the Children?: Protecting Innocence in a Carceral State

“Liberation under oppression is unthinkable by design”
― Erica R. Meiners

“PIC constitutes a geographic and economic solution to socioeconomic problems while maintaining the state’s commitment to white supremacy.”
― Erica R. Meiners, Right to Be Hostile: Schools, Prisons, and the Making of Public Enemies

“States do not grapple with decarceration strategies & explore alternatives bc of an ethical recognition of the continuing harms of prisons or an understanding of the intertwined histories of capitalism, white supremacy, & punishment in the US, but rather bc coffers are empty, and prisons & punishment consume ever-growing portions of shrinking revenues.”
― Erica R. Meiners, For the Children?: Protecting Innocence in a Carceral State

“In a nation without an adequate or affordable childcare system, no universal healthcare, expensive to prohibitive costs for higher education and a minimum wage that is not a living wage, there are no registries for the officials and employers who routinely implement policies that actively damage all people, including or even particularly children.”
― Erica R. Meiners, Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex