Abolition Democracy: Beyond Prisons, Torture, and Empire

by Angela Y. Davis

Revelations about U.S policies and practices of torture and abuse have captured headlines ever since the breaking of the Abu Ghraib prison story in April 2004. Since then, a debate has raged regarding what is and what is not acceptable behavior for the world’s leading democracy. It is within this context that Angela Davis, one of America’s most remarkable political figures, gave a series of interviews to discuss resistance and law, institutional sexual coercion, politics and prison. Davis talks about her own incarceration, as well as her experiences as "enemy of the state," and about having been put on the FBI’s "most wanted" list. She talks about the crucial role that international activism played in her case and the case of many other political prisoners.

Throughout these interviews, Davis returns to her critique of a democracy that has been compromised by its racist origins and institutions. Discussing the most recent disclosures about the disavowed "chain of command," and the formal reports by the Red Cross and Human Rights Watch denouncing U.S. violation of human rights and the laws of war in Guantánamo, Afghanistan and Iraq, Davis focuses on the underpinnings of prison regimes in the United States.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Race, Feminism, Social Justice, History, Theory

136 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2005

About the author

Angela Yvonne Davis is an American political activist, scholar, and author. She emerged as a nationally prominent activist and radical in the 1960s, as a leader of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement despite never being an official member of the party. Prisoner rights have been among her continuing interests; she is the founder of Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison-industrial complex. She is a retired professor with the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is the former director of the university's Feminist Studies department.

Her research interests are in feminism, African American studies, critical theory, Marxism, popular music, social consciousness, and the philosophy and history of punishment and prisons. Her membership in the Communist Party led to Ronald Reagan's request in 1969 to have her barred from teaching at any university in the State of California. She was tried and acquitted of suspected involvement in the Soledad brothers' August 1970 abduction and murder of Judge Harold Haley in Marin County, California. She was twice a candidate for Vice President on the Communist Party USA ticket during the 1980s.

Reviews

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Angela Davis is a goddamn genius and I do not use this word lightly.

[Amanda Prado · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5 stars just bc i don’t get along super well with books in interview format, but the content itself is legendary.

[Bri Little · Rating 5 out of 5]

Angela Davis is such a deep thinker and poses so many important questions about American exceptionalism, imperialism, and white supremacist violence. I learned a lot about military prisons and that the torture and violence that happen there is not so different from the conditions incarcerated people face in the US.

Everyone should be reading Davis’s works as we imagine and build a radical prison abolition framework.

[anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

an excellent starter into studies on prisons as an institution and a capitalist industry, as well as its inherent racism & violence; on the relationship between the us foreign policy (especially its war on terror) and the prison system; on the history of social justice mobilisation and organising (and the difference between the two). not really in depth enough for someone who's already read something on any of those subjects, but still interesting and easily digestible.

[Michael Strode · Rating 5 out of 5]

This small text is densely packed with Davis' insight into the history of social justice organization and mobilization, the injustice of the prison system, and the interweaving of that system with capitalism to create an exportable prison economy with both a profit and social repression incentive. It reads quickly as a conversation develops between Mendieta and Davis that displays his intense engagement with the subject of his interview.

There is a gem of an answer at the end of the interview which speaks to Davis' concern that there is an overreliance on seeking role models for social justice mobilization when what she and others of her era did was essentially experimentation. In this way, modern organizers should be more fearless with experimenting with new ways to think their way through more highly evolved forms of racism and those threats to social justice which we encounter in the present era.

[simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book is great if you've never read anything about prison abolition, the connection between US Foreign policy and the US prison system, or anything by angela davis. if you've read any of those things, it's like a nice pat on the back, reminding you that the things you believe in are real and important. i actually think the interviewer could have done a better job; or the questions could have been asked in a different way to gather better responses from davis, who is genius in a way that isn't reflected in this book.

[Saturn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Questo libro raccoglie il saggio di Angela Davis Il carcere è obsoleto? e una serie di interviste sulle prigioni, il femminismo, la tortura, la guerra. Il saggio sul carcere traccia anche la storia di questa istituzione negli Stati Uniti e assieme alle interviste forma un libro interessantissimo. Il linguaggio di Angela Davis è sempre chiaro, diretto e affronta le varie questioni che solleva con concretezza e lucidità. Non si limita a fornire risposte ma anzi ci pone molte domande e spunti di riflessione. I temi di cui discute trattano le fondamenta su cui si basa la nostra società (non solo quella americana) e invitano a pensare e ad agire affinché il dibattito pubblico si interessi alle popolazioni più emarginate delle nostre comunità; che poi sono quelle che finisco più facilmente in carcere.

Sarebbe interessante leggere un saggio che tratti con la stessa efficacia la storia delle carceri in Italia.

[thay · Rating 5 out of 5]

caralho que LIVRO.
depois de "mulheres, raça e classe" é meu favorito!!
mesmo sendo um livro de entrevista, a forma como ela apresenta os proprios conceitos e explica os pensamentos e as questões é tão DIDÁTICA que é quase (e quase é a palavra chave aqui) como se você tivesse lendo os livros e artigos onde ela teorizou.

mal posso esperar pra entrar em contato com a teoria (que aliás é minha próxima leitura).
não me canso dessa mulher!!!

[Jung · Rating 5 out of 5]

[5 stars] A series of interviews between Angela Davis and Eduardo Mendieta about abolition, race, gender, the prison and military industrial complexes, capitalism, imperialism, and state violence. I decided to reread Abolition Democracy after it came up in a conversation for my job (educating and organizing foundations to give to abolitionist and anti-criminalization organizing and movement building). It had been 15ish years since I first read it, but given the political and media conversation about the "state of U.S. democracy" it also felt especially timely. In the conversations that comprise the book, Angela Davis builds on W.E.B. DuBois' writing that the mere absence of enslavement is insufficient if new institutions are not created in its place, extrapolating his original concept of abolition democracy to guide organizing that both eliminates the prison industrial complex and envisions a world were prisons and punishment are rendered obsolete. Written in the mid-2000's, the content of Davis and Mendieta's conversations are very *of the time* with a heavy focus on the then-recently released photos of Iraqi men at Abu Ghraib prison tortured by U.S. military personnel. However, because of the exponential increase of imprisonment and policing as part of U.S. domestic and foreign policy over the past 17 years, there are unfortunately still relevant theory and organizing implications for much of what Davis shares. Recommended to everyone, especially those looking for something just beyond intro level that includes a gender lens / analysis and stresses the importance of transnational connection in thought and action.

Goodreads Challenge 2022: 9/52
Popsugar Reading Challenge: by an author you read in 2021
The Free Black Women's Library Reading Challenge: by an abolitionist, activist, or organizer author
Feminist Reading Challenge: from an independent press / publisher

[natàlia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tanto el libro como la edición son una auténtica maravilla. Lo he disfrutado desde la primera página.

En el libro no sólo se habla del complejo industrial-penitenciario y del abolicionismo penitenciario (y penal) desde una perspectiva antirracista, marxista y feminista que resulta una gozada, sino que se va mucho más allá y se analizan el propio sistema represivo y cuestiones como la guerra global contra el terrorismo o las formas y estrategias de lucha por la justicia social.

Angela Davis es tan brutal en contenido y en forma que me encantaría poder estamparle este libro en la cara a aquellas criaturas que todavía hoy se agarran a la idea racista, capitalista y patriarcal de que las prisiones son necesarias.

En serio, leedlo.

[Carolina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Angela Davis sendo Angela Davis. O formato de entrevista torna a leitura mais rápida e clara. Há alguns erros de tradução que podem comprometer o entendimento de quem não conhece bem a política criminal norte-americana, mas, em geral, o livro é excelente.

[Karin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a short book of 4 interviews and makes for a companion to Are Prisons Obsolete. I recommend reading that first.

[Leah]

as always, angela davis is accessible and illuminating! this filled in some gaps in my understand of current state (or at least 2005 state) of american empire. I feel like I need to read 800 more books

[Paulla Ferreira Pinto · Rating 3 out of 5]

Estas pequenas compilações de entrevistas ou alocuções são muito pouco satisfatórias pois quase nada fazem pela divulgação do pensamento de Angela Davis.
Ao fim de 2 ou 3 destes, não me parece que repita a dose.
Vou procurar algo escrito de forma mais consistente e substantiva.

[Kelbey · Rating 5 out of 5]

i absolutely need to read more of her work.

[el · Rating 4 out of 5]

Angela Y. Davis is that model of a public intellectual. Such a sharp, incisive thinker. The ways in which she reframes the interviewer's questions and expands his scope and, thereby, ours. I was particularly struck by her refusal to be an autobiographical subject and her comments on organizing vs. mobilization at the end. She describes how understanding people as encountering their own histories when they viewed her made her more comfortable with her celebrity. This book would make for great teaching material.

“At the time I wrote the book I did not see myself as a conventional autobiographical subject and thus did not locate my writing within any of the traditions you evoke. As a matter of fact, I was initially reluctant to write an autobiography. First of all, I was too young. Second, I did not think that my own individual accomplishments merited autobiographical treatment. Third, I was certainly aware that the celebrity—or notoriety—I had achieved had very little to do with me as an individual. It was based on the mobilization of the State and its efforts to capture me, including the fact that I was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. But also, and perhaps most importantly, I knew that my potential as an autobiographical subject was created by the massive global movement that successfully achieved my freedom. So the question was how to write an autobiography that would be attentive to this community of collective struggle." (18)

"What we manage to do each time we win a victory is not so much to secure change once and for all, but rather to create new terrains for struggle." (19)

"What I also like about Du Bois’s pan-Africanism is that it insists on Afro-Asian solidarities. This is an important feature that has been concealed in conventional narratives of pan-Africanism. Such an approach is not racially defined, but rather discovers its political identity in its struggles against racism.” (27)

“According to this logic the prison becomes a way of disappearing people in the false hope of disappearing the underlying social problems they represent.” (40)

“So I think it is important not to assume that the image has a self-evident relationship to its object. And it is important to consider the particular economy within which images are produced and consumed.” (50)

“So you might say that prison abolition is a way of talking about the pitfalls of the particular version of democracy represented by U.S. capitalism. Capitalism—especially in its contemporary global form—continues to produce problems that neither it nor its prisons are prepared to solve. So prison abolition requires us to recognize the extent that our present social order—in which are embedded a complex array of social problems—will have to be radically transformed.” (72)

“In the aftermath of 9/11, the 'nation' was offered as the primary mode of solidarity. That is to say, people were urged to seek refuge in their “Americanism,” rather than to imagine themselves in solidarity with people throughout the world, including in those countries later marked as constituting an “axis of evil.” Why were we so quick to imagine the nation as the limit of human solidarity, precisely at a moment when people all over the world identified with our pain and suffering? Why was it not possible to receive that solidarity in a way that allowed us to return it and to imagine ourselves more broadly as citizens of the world?" (86)

"Communities are always political projects, political projects that can never solely rely on identity. Even during the period when black unity was assumed to be the sine qua non of struggle, it was more a fiction than anything else. The class, gender, and sexual fissures that lurked just beneath the construction of unity eventually exposed these and other heterogeneities that made 'unity' an impossible dream.” (100)

"This was a thorny issue: how to participate in the anti-war movement, while opposing the strategy of treating peace as an issue unrelated to racial equality.” (107)

State and federal prisons, county jails, jails in Indian country, detention centers run by the Department of Homeland Security, territorial prisons in areas the U.S. refuses to acknowledge as its colonies, and military prisons are all counted together in the Federal Bureau of Statistic’s annual census as a further reason for why we must think them together. (111)

“Guantánamo is just one U.S.-controlled hole into which people disappear. There are many.” (121)

“It is difficult to encourage people to think about protracted struggles, protracted movements that require very careful strategic organizing interventions that don’t always depend on our capacity to mobilize demonstrations. It seems to me that mobilization has displaced organization, so that in the contemporary moment, when we think about organizing movements, we think about bringing masses of people into the streets...These days we tend to think of that process of rendering the movement visible as the very substance of the movement itself. If this is the case, then the millions who go home after the demonstration have concluded that they do not necessarily feel responsible to further build support for the cause. They are able to return to their private spaces and express their relationship to this movement in private, individual ways. If the demonstration is the monumental public moment and people return afterwards to lives they construe as private, then, in a sense, we have unwittingly acquiesced to the corporate drive for privatization...When organizing is subordinated to mobilizing, what do you do after the successful mobilization? How can we produce a sense of belonging to communities in struggle that is not evaporated by the onslaught of our everyday routines? How do we build movements capable of generating the power to compel governments and corporations to curtail their violence? Ultimately, how can we successfully resist global capitalism and its drive for dominance?” (128)

“Everything has changed. The funding base for movements has changed. The relationship between professionalization and social moments has changed. The mode of politicization has changed. The role of culture and the globalization of cultural production have changed. I don’t know how else to talk about this other than to encourage people to experiment. That is actually the lesson I would draw from the period of the 1960s and 1970s, when I was involved in what were essentially experimental modes of conventional civil rights organizing. Nobody knew whether they would work or not. Nobody knew where we were going. I often remark that young people today have too much deference toward the older organizers, the veterans, and are much too careful in their desire to rely on role models. Everyone wants some guarantee that what they do will have palpable results. I think the best way to figure out what might work is simply to do it, regardless of the potential mistakes one might make. One must be willing to make mistakes. In fact, I think that the mistakes help to produce the new modes of organizing—the kinds that bring people together and advance the struggle for peace and justice." (129)

[Lindsay King-Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This probably wouldn't be the best place to start if you've never read any Angela Davis. For readers who are already familiar with her stance on prison abolition, this is a great addition to the conversation, expanding her analysis of the prison industrial complex in the context of the "war on terror."

[SusyG · Rating 5 out of 5]

Angela Davis non mi delude mai ❤️ alcune cose le conoscevo già grazie al documentario di Ava DuVernay, "13° Emendamento" (dove c'era proprio Davis a parlare). Questo saggio affronta il tema delle prigioni (principalmente quelle USA), del razzismo del sistema ma anche del business che si è creato dietro. Davis (che ha vissuto il carcere in prima persona) parte dalla schiavitù per raccontare lo sviluppo delle carceri, dell'ampliamento del sistema carcerario e della sua privatizzazione. C'è anche un capitolo interessante sulle carceri femminili e l'aspetto misogino. Alla fine porta a una riflessione non facile: possiamo immaginare un mondo senza prigione? Nella seconda parte ci sono delle interviste che approfondiscono il pensiero di Angela Davis. Molto bello e consigliato!

[Courtney Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars but this was good! the format was really cool to listen as an audiobook because it essentially was like an interview with Angela Davis specifically on the prison industrial complex/torture when it comes to the american empire as well as how that intersects with race and gender.

it was definitely written with a more academic tone so it was harder to understand at parts while i was multitasking while working. would recommend a listen if u have time as it only took me like 3.5 hours to listen to.

[Lisette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Forever and ever in awe of Davis. What a joy to be able to learn from her. Radical and intimate and inspiring.

[Stella Hansen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will always recommend anything written by Angela Davis. No matter who you are, you’ll learn something

[Nena · Rating 5 out of 5]

We don’t deserve Angela Y Davis. She’s so brilliant and knowledgeable. This book was originally from 2003 and every single topic she covered is still relevant today.

[Kat V · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very similar to all her other writings but it does contain a few new takes. Chapter 2 is excellent! Alright it does branch out a little bit. I love her. I hope she lives forever. 4.3 stars

[Vanessa Leite · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5/5

o livro começa muito bem e acho que é muito fácil se cativar quando a angela davis fala
só que ao longo da leitura, a minha experiência não foi tão boa pelo jeito que o livro é apresentado (em formato de entrevista e com perguntas muito recortadas), ficando difícil acompanhar o raciocínio e, às vezes, até se imergir no assunto discutido

os questionamentos e críticas que a angela trazem, porém, são 10/10

[sohini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Something to return to over and over. Helpful tidbits:

Identity Politics

"The assumption that the placement of black people like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice in the heart of government would mean progress for the entire community was clearly fallacious...The civil rights movement demanded access, and access has been granted to some. The challenge of the twenty-first century is not to demand equal opportunity to participate in the machinery of oppression. Rather, it is to identify and dismantle those structures in which racism continues to be embedded. This is the only way the promise of freedom can be extended to masses of people."

"Today we might say that we have all been offered an equal opportunity to perpetuate male dominance and racism."

[Slavery and] The Prison

"What is interesting is that slavery as an institution, during the end of the
eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century, for example, managed to become a receptacle for all of those forms of punishment that were considered to be barbaric by the developing democracy. So rather than abolish the death penalty outright, it was offered refuge within slave law…One might say that the institution of slavery served as a receptacle for those forms of punishment considered to be too uncivilized to be inflicted on white citizens within a democratic society. With the abolition of slavery this clearly racialized form of punishment became de-racialized and persists today under the guise of color-blind justice."

"Increased punishment is most often a result of increased surveillance. Those communities that are subject to police surveillance are much more likely to produce more bodies for the punishment industry. But even more important, imprisonment is the punitive solution to a whole range of social problems that are not being addressed by those social institutions that might help people lead better, more satisfying lives."

"DuBois pointed out that in order to fully abolish the oppressive conditions produced by slavery, new democratic institutions would have to be created. Because this did not occur; black people encountered new forms of slavery—from debt peonage and the convict lease system to segregated and second-class education. The prison system continues to carry out this terrible legacy. It has become a receptacle for all of those human beings who bear the inheritance of the failure to create abolition democracy in the aftermath of slavery. And this inheritance is not only born by black prisoners, but by poor Latino, Native American, Asians, and white prisoners. Moreover, its use as such a receptacle for people who are deemed the detritus of society is on the rise throughout the world."

Limits of the Law

"Capital punishment continues to be inflicted disproportionately on black people, but when the black person is sentenced to death, he/she comes under the authority of law as the abstract juridical subject, as a rights-bearing individual, not as a member of a racialized community that has been subjected to conditions that make him/her a prime candidate for legal repression. Thus the racism becomes invisible and unrecognizable. In this respect, he/she is “equal” to his/her white counterpart, who therefore is not entirely immune to the hidden racism of the law."

"[Powell] said that the military was the most democratic institution in our society and created a framework in which people could escape the constraints of race and, we can add today, gender as well. This notion of the military as a levelling institution, one that constitutes each member as equal, is frightening and dangerous, because you must eventually arrive at the conclusion that this equality is about equal opportunity to kill, to torture, to engage in sexual coercion. At the time I found it very bizarre that Powell would point to the most hierarchal institution, with its rigid chain of command, as the epitome of democracy. Today, I would say that such a conception of democracy reveals the problems and limitations of civil rights strategies and discourses."

"The grand achievement of civil rights was to purge the law of its references to specific kinds of bodies, thus enabling racial equality before the law. But at the same time this process enabled racial inequality in the sense that the law was deprived of its capacity to acknowledge people as being racialized, as coming from racialized communities. Because the person that stands before the law is an abstract, rights-bearing subject, the law is unable to apprehend the unjust social realities in which many people live."

"The law does not care whether this individual had access to good education or not, or whether he/she lives under impoverished conditions because companies in his/her communities have shut down and moved to a third world country, or whether previously available welfare payments have vanished. The law does not care about the conditions that lead some communities along a trajectory that makes prison inevitable. Even though each individual has the right to due process, what is called the blindness of justice enables underlying racism and class bias to resolve the question of who gets to go to prison and who does not."

"The prison system naturalizes the violence that is enacted against racial minorities by institutionalizing a viciously circular logic: blacks are in prisons because they are criminals; they are criminals because they are black, and if they are in prison, they deserved what they got."

"What we manage to do each time we win a victory is not so much to secure change once and for all, but rather to create new terrains for struggle."

"What I also like about Du Bois’s pan-Africanism is that it insists on Afro-Asian solidarities. This is an important feature that has been concealed in conventional narratives of pan-Africanism. Such an approach is not racially defined, but rather discovers its political identity in its struggles against racism."

American Exceptionalism

"Of course, it is important to vigorously object to torture as a technique of control that militates against the ideals and promise of U.S. democracy. But when U.S. democracy becomes the barometer by which any and all political conduct is judged, it is not difficult to transform specific acts of torture into conduct that is tolerable, conduct that does not necessarily violate the community’s moral integrity."

"Consider how elections in Iraq are staged for the consumption of those in the United States. The right to vote, of course, is represented as the quintessential moment of democracy. Therefore we were asked to momentarily suspend our memory of what paved the way for these elections—the bombing, invasion and occupation that continues to cause deaths, maiming, destruction, the dismantling of institutions, and the desecration of one of the world’s oldest cultures…As the imposition of democracy is offered as primary aim of this military aggression, “democracy” loses whatever substantive meaning it might have and is confined to the formality of exercising the right to vote. This limited notion of democracy—both for the Iraq and the U.S.—forecloses notions of democracy that insist on economic, racial, gender, and sexual justice and equality."

Organizing

"It seems to me that mobilization has displaced organization, so that in the contemporary moment, when we think about organizing movements, we think about bringing masses of people into the streets...I have always thought that demonstrations were supposed to demonstrate the potential power of movements. Ongoing movements at certain strategic moments need to mobilize and render visible everyone who is touched by the call for justice, equality, and peace. These days we tend to think of that process of rendering the movement visible as the very substance of the movement itself. If this is the case, then the millions who go home after the demonstration have concluded that they do not necessarily feel responsible to further build support for the cause. They are able to return to their private spaces and express their relationship to this movement in private, individual ways. If the demonstration is the monumental public moment and people return afterwards to lives they construe as private, then, in a sense, we have unwittingly acquiesced to the corporate drive for privatization."

[Brennen Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Angela Davis the goat.

[Ana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I definitely agree that in order to truly understand what Davis means by "Abolition Democracy," this book is not enough and I recommend reading Are Prisons Obsolete? first. The interviewer's questions could have been better and the book itself could of been structured more efficiently. It almost seems like she just put this together and did not think about it much. Still, I enjoyed Davis as I always do.

[Stina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a little disappointed in this book. Lots of good ideas, but it was too superficial. It is a collection of interviews, and Davis' insights into the prison industrial complex aren't developed much. I recommend "Are Prisons Obsolete?" instead.

[Milo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of her theories were pretty cool, but it has a difficult time standing on its own. I think "Are Prisons Obsolete?" needs to be read before this. And you probably should know some of the author's background if you're a generation behind (such as myself). It helps.

[bianca · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. wish this delved a little deeper into the subject