History of Feminism

The first I ever heard of a non-police state, indeed, a non-incarceration policy was at a Native American pow-wow, many years ago. This is another group that suffers from extreme economic disparity, high rate of violence since, disease and early death, including one of the highest rates of maternal death. Certain, but not all bands (a pet peeve of mine is when NA bands are grouped together in a category labeled "alike", but I'm no doubt preaching to the choir) had alternatives for antisocial or just poor behavior, and as those no longer became feasible, fell into what is, for our purposes a white euro-centric model of the police state.

There was in the news some years back a young man who committed a serious crime. What his band wanted to do, more for rehabilition than punishment, was to isolate him, and force him to live without most modern trappings, to become self-suffient on the land in a traditional manner (which wasn't easy) I thought this a capital idea.

You are saying In your example (in a nutshell) that profit drives racism, so what do we eliminate, the profit or the racism? Or in other words, would the end of the prison-industrial pattern of police/incarceration end racism?

Or would it find an expression in another way?

I agree that that economic issues and social justice issues can difficult to separate when talking about larger policy, but what about day to day reality of walking around as a person of Color?

Truth to tell, it all comes down to action, how do we start? I believe we start by 'ending' racism, with the recognition racism expresses itself in the "death by a thousand cuts" manner so often it's different to quantify. Now laws are in place for this, it's illegal to discriminate--what are we seeing as a result? A slow growth of the AA middle class combined with mass incarceration rates for black males. This is a result of the police state yes, but also deliberately designed drug laws aimed at poor Black youth. Poor White youth are not deliberately tossed away in this manner (except in war)

If we say, these are racist laws, they are unconstitutional, we will end them, if we reinstate affirmative action, we seriously address reparations--these are social justice measures.

In fact, addressing social injustice might well be the only way to rid ourselves of the police state--and I must say I'm in full agreement with you there. Unlike many here, I'm not antagonistic to police just because they're police. I've known too many pathologically anti-social people that are simply human predators.

I would, however, like to see police morph into social justice workers/warriors, mediators and community workers. I think there is a place for them, just not as it is right now--shooting black youth on the street with impunity.