Doing Time: The Politics of Imprisonment

by Ward Churchill

"We don't have to worry about whether we will have a political police either in the United States or Canada. We've had them for a long time...It's not a question of how to prevent it, it's a question of how to deal with it since it's an existent reality."—Ward Churchill, from the CD. The U.S. government has used all means to subvert and neutralize movements for social change. This lecture exposes the criminal justice system as an agent of social control.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

Audio CD

First published May 1, 2002

About the author

Ward Churchill (Keetowah Cherokee) has achieved an unparalleled reputation as a scholar-activist and analyst of indigenous issues. He was a Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, from 1990 till 2007; a leading member of the American Indian Movement (AIM); and has been a delegate to the U.N. Working Group on Indigenous Populations. He is the author of numerous books, including A Little Matter of Genocide, Fantasies of the Master Race, and Struggle for the Land.

Reviews

[Eve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this in 2022 circa August.

Ward Churchill explains various methods of genocide/colonization via pushout, infiltration, murder. -- If you're guided by pushout/prison pipelines, and fascist, assimilation pipelines, but still have privilege, this lecture will help to remove ignorances about cops/(para)military/slave patrols related to that privilege, though you won't necessarily have the experience/knowledge of say community/workplace organizing. The book is abolitionist in an anarchist fashion of having praxis that is basically about divesting oneself from "the state" in every possible way. (In other words, this isn't endorsing sovereign citizen conspiracy theory bullshit. It's endorsing defecting from the racial capitalist patriarchal (settler) colonizers.)

basically i remember hearing this lecture in passing years ago, but i don't remember where or how