I'm Suggesting That We Abolish The Social

Jails And Prisons Are Designed To Break Human Beings, To Convert The Population Into Specimens In A Zoo - Obedient To Our Keepers, But Dangerous To Each Other.

I Don't Know Whether The Movement Crashed As A Result Of The Overwhelming Character Of The Institutions We Set Out To Change. I Think Repression Had A Lot To Do With The Dismantling Of The Movement And Also The Winning Of Certain Victories Had Something To Do With The Inability Of The Movement To Take Those Victories As The Launching Point For New Goals And Developing New Strategies.

First Of All, I Didn't Suggest That We Should Simply Get Rid Of All Prisons.

I Think That Has To Do With My Awareness That In A Sense We All Have A Certain Measure Of Responsibility To Those Who Have Made It Possible For Us To Take Advantage Of The Opportunities.

We Have Inherited A Fear Of Memories Of Slavery. It Is As If To Remember And Acknowledge Slavery Would Amount To Our Being Consumed By It. As A Matter Of Fact, In The Popular Black Imagination, It Is Easier For Us To Construct Ourselves As Children Of Africa, As The Sons And Daughters Of Kings And Queens, And Thereby Ignore The Middle Passage And Centuries Of Enforced Servitude In The Americas. Although Some Of Us Might Indeed Be The Descendants Of African Royalty, Most Of Us Are Probably Descendants Of Their Subjects, The Daughters And Sons Of African Peasants Or Workers.