Professional Documents
Culture Documents
surveillance Af
Needs- re highlighting of the shell
1. Overview
a. Purpose of the aff-why talk about the aff and it relationship to
the topic
b. Describe section with what the file sees as offense and why
c. 2ac framing ( overview and things you have to win ) ( be sure to
include the even if clause that allow you to win the aff even if
they cant make the impact of the aff go aways after the aff is
done or discussed
d. Direction of the aff ( how to spin the aff to account for cap K ,
wilderson , give back the land , perms )
e. Break down the AT: the aff
Shell
Potential Plan text/ student advocacy
1. The USFG should strike down No child left behind
2. We ____insert student names ____Affirm end of the
school to prison pipe
3. Affirm the end surveillance of schools
4. The USFG should affirm A-PLUS
5. We ____insert student names___ call for the end of
private prisons
1. Schools now .
School teachers are disproportionately subjected
increased punishment
Jeremy Adam Smith ,Teachers Of All Races Are More Likely To Punish Black
Students, Hufpost Black Voices,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/27/black-studentspunished_n_7449538.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000047, 05/27/2015
In the first experiment, researchers screened teachers for explicit racial bias, among other factors. They then showed a
racially diverse group of 57 female teachers a picture of a middle school and asked them to imagine themselves working
there. The teachers then viewed a school record -- based on an actual one -- of a student who misbehaved twice. Then
From the first infraction to the second, teachers were much more
likely to increase punishment for Darnell than Greg, even though
only the names had been changed. A second experiment cemented this finding. Researchers
recruited 204 more teachers -- predominately white and female, but including men and people of other races -- to go
through the same exercise. But this time, researchers also asked them to rate the extent to which they thought the
students misbehaviors suggested a pattern and whether they could imagine suspending the student in the future. Again,
with this larger sample, racial bias emerged. Students with black-sounding names were
harshly punished. But, as a group, the teachers were also more likely
to see the behavior as part of a pattern in the black student and to
say they could imagine suspending the student . There was one more result that some
might consider surprising: The two samples were racially diverse -- and yet the researchers did not find significant
differences among their responses. Black teachers could punish black students just
Educational Tracking
Ability grouping or educational tracking is nothing but
school house surveillance that is used to
disproportionately unequipt students with the skills and
the mark of education to have oppurntunity afterschool .
In other words, equality in the face of education has been
highjacked for signifiers that are anti-black and
structurally used to underdeveloped Black America .
Grace Kao' and Jennifer S.
Thompson
2003
tudentsp articipatea t higherr atesi n vocationalc urriculaa nd at lower rates in academic curricula than do
affluent and white students (Oakes & Guiton 1995, Ekstrom et al. 1988, Oakes 1985). Recent statistics
from the Digest of Education Statistics (National Center for Education Statistics 1997) report the
following patterns:t he percentageo f high school seniorsw ho reportedb eing in the college preparatoryo r
academic track were 46% of whites, 36% of blacks, 31% of Hispanics, 51% of Asians, and 23% of Native
Americans. Those reporting in the general track were 43% of whites, 49% of blacks, 56% of Hispanics,
40% of Asians, and 61% of Native Americans. Finally, the percentages of each race/ethnic group
reporting to be in the vocational track were 11% of whites, 15% of blacks, 13% of Hispanics, 9% of Asians,
These statistics
show that half of Asians and almost half of whites report being in
the highest track. Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans are more
likely to be in the general track, and they also have the highest
numbers in the lowest track (vocational). Similarly, another study
found that nonblacks were almost three times more likely than
blacks to be in the honors or advanced track in English and math
(Kubitschek & Hallinan 1996). Thus, patterns of racial and ethnic
disadvantage in tracking continue. There is mixed evidence on whether these racial
and 17% of Native Americans (National Center for Education Statistics 1997).
and ethnic effects on track placement remain once controls, such as ability, are added to analytic models
(Oakes et al. 1992). An older study found race effects disappear (blacks versus nonblacks) once test
scores, academic orientation, course selection, and grades were controlled for (Alexander & Cook 1982).
However, a more recent study found that once academic achievement was controlled, racial and ethnic
2011
2011
Gordon Telling Poor, Smart Kids That All It Takes Is Hard Work to Be
as Successful as Their Wealthy Peers Is a Blatant Lie
http://atlantablackstar.com/2015/06/03/telling-poor-smart-kids-takes-hardTaylor
work-successful-wealthy-peers-blatant-lie ,
2015
Many of these
students do step up to the plate and work hard to obtain the type of
academic scores that exceed expectations, but even that isnt
enough for them to overcome such daunting obstacles. A 10-year
study by the Department of Education that started in 2002 revealed
that not only are low-income students often left struggling
academically but even when they do excel in the classroom, their
chances of obtaining a bachelors degree were still bleak when
compared to their wealthy counter parts. Even when wealthy
students had average or below average scores, they still had a
better chance of furthering their academic careers than low-income
students who consistently earned stellar academic scores. A vast
majority of these low-income students did move beyond the high
school halls to college campuses, but what happens after that is a
often a disheartening tale. The problem is that most dont finish,
or settle for less than a bachelors degree, which of course limits
their earning power later in life, Slates Jordan Weissmann
reported. Sometimes they try to save money on tuition by
attending community college, even though most two-year schools
have a spotty track record when it comes to helping students
graduate. Sometimes they get lost or overwhelmed in a colleges bureaucracy, because they dont have educated
explored and unveiled to the very students who are trying to navigate that reality.
parents who can help guide them along. Sometimes they try to work through school and simply cant balance the demands
of a job with their academics. Whatever the reason may be, even when low-
2015
A SCATHING watchdog report by the Detention Watch Network and the Center for Constitutional Rights adds fuel to the
growing criticism against exorbitant taxpayer funding for private prison contractors . Detention of any
rid of this bed quota now and start exploring more alternatives to
incarceration that have proved to reduce costs and keep families
together. Remember: Many of these detainees pose no threat to
society and have committed civil violations, such as overstaying a
visa. With a bed quota and discount pricing in place, theres no real
incentive for ICE agents to explore non-prison options like
community monitoring that cost a fraction of the estimated daily
$164 price tag of locking up each detainee. Federal elected officials also should ban a
tiered pricing system that allows the contractors to give ICE discounted pricing when the number of detainees exceeds
minimum guarantees. The report reveals troubling examples of how this
$164 price tag of locking up each detainee. Last month, The Seattle Times editorial board
pushed for Congress to support a bill to end unnecessary detentions. In Tacoma, reports of humanrights abuses have lingered for months, leading to hunger strikes
and prison conflicts. The GEO Groups contract to run the center expired in April, but it has been extended
through June 30 as negotiations continue. The company insists it meets industry standards, providing high quality
services in safe, secure and humane environments, and strongly refutes allegations to the contrary. Nonetheless, U.S.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Bellevue, recently wrote to ICE Director Sarah Saldaa imploring her to consider alternatives to
detention. Short of this, he appropriately encouraged her to increase transparency in the negotiations with GEO Group
and to set stricter standards that ensure human rights are not being abused Detainees should be more
J Pugliese,
oseph
25, State Violence and the Execution of Law, Biopolitical caesurae of torture, black sites, drones
,2013
According to the ACLUs Report, this prediction has been fully borne out: By 2010, the average daily
population of immigration detainees stood at 31,020, more than a 50% increase over the 2001 level (and an
increase of roughly 450% over the 1994 level). 93 As Roberto Lovato observes, Like
its predecessor, the military- industrial-complex, the migrantmilitary- industrial complex tries to integrate federal, state, and
local economic interests as increasing numbers of companies bid
for, and become dependent on, big contracts like the Boeing
contract or the $385 million DHS contract for the construction of
immigrant prisons. 94 Driven by Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE), these immigration prisons are holding up to
400,000 immigrants every year. I want to focus on these ICE prisons as they are largely
off- limits to public scrutiny and they thereby constitute the domestic aspect of the US transnational
network of secret prisons and black sites. The ICE prisons efectively interlink the
Latino and black, are often dressed in the same orange jumpsuits
of their Guantnamo equivalents. Sexual assault and various forms
of torture have been documented, particularly against gay and
transgender detainees. 96 Moreover, Unlike people held on
criminal charges, immigrant detainees are not aforded the Sixth
Amendment right to legal counsel. 97 The black site dimensions of
the ICE prisons have been documented by Jacqueline Stevens, who
cites James Pendergraph, former executive director of the ICE Offi
ce of State and Local Coordination, addressing a conference of police
and sherifs: If you dont have enough evidence to charge
someone criminally but you think hes illegal, we can make him
disappear. 98 As Stevens explains: Pendergraph knew that ICE could disappear people, because he
knew in addition to the publicly listed fi eld offi ces and detention sites, ICE is also confi ning people in
180 unlisted and unmarked subfi eld sites, many in suburban offi ce parks or commercial spaces revealing
no information about their ICE tenants . . . Designed for confi ning individuals in transit, with no beds or
showers, subfi eld offi ces are not subject to ICE Detention Standards. Stevens explains how people are can
be disappeared within these prisons: Its . . . not surprising that if youre putting
2011
Gary, Indiana, was told she could not wear a dress to her prom, only a nice ladies pantsuit, and in 2010
Constance McMillen was told she could bring a same-sex date or wear a tuxedo to her Mississippi high
school prom (Advocate Editors 2011; Strom 2010). While frequently erased from mainstream media or not
viewed as substantive issues, Logan and Constance offer us high-profile examples of lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgendered and queer (LGBTQ) and non-gender conforming youth resisting the gendered and
sexualized forms of punishment in their schools.
down the line. For example, as anti-bullying legislation and policies gain recent measures of
success, specifically those that recognize the decades-long failures to provide even a measure of safety
for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and queer (LGBTQ) and gender non-conforming youth in schools,
Intervention in the movement of youth of color from schools to prisons is intersectional work.
2015
It is well-established in the research literature and by educational advocates that there is a link between
the use of punitive disciplinary measures and subsequent patterns of criminal supervision and
research literature excludes girls from the analysis, leading many stakeholders to infer that girls of color
are not also at risk.
2015
Thescopeofourfocusgroupsandinterviewswasmodest.Asaresult,thepreliminaryconclusionsarenot
representativeoftheexperiencesofgirlsacrossthenation.Theydo,however,helpustoidentifymore
robustavenuesofinquiryforfutureresearch.Overall, the observations of
Disability tracking
With the tactics Soft disability, Hyper policing and the
crimalization of students causes the overrepresentation
of people of color in juvenile justice system.
Erica R. Meiners ,Education and Gender and Womens Studies, Northeastern Illinois
University, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11256-011-0187-9/fulltext.html Ending
the School-to-Prison Pipeline/Building Abolition Futures,
2011
Over the last decade, there has been a growth in analysis and
scholarship surrounding the school-to-prison pipeline (Duncan 2000;
Browne 2003; Meiners 2007; Simmons 2009; Winn 2010). Yet, as
previously notedand this merits re-emphasizingthe targeted
under or un-education of particular populations is nothing new, and
the U.S. has always tracked poor, non-white, non-able bodied, noncitizens and/or queers1 toward under or un-education, non-living
wage work, participation in a permanent war economy and/or
permanent detention. The School to Prison Pipeline: Structuring
Legal Reform (Hewitt et al. 2010) identifies some of the key
components: special education, school discipline, criminalization of
students, monstrous resource disparities and unequal access to
educational opportunities in alternative schools. And these are
interlocking: students with select soft disability categories are
targeted for suspension and expulsions, and these same students
are often pushed into alternative schools (because they have been
suspended or expelled), or have been caught up in schools that are
hyper policed.Research has consistently documented how school
suspension and expulsion and classification as special education
are moderate to strong predictors of under education and future
incarceration (Advancement Project 2010; Duncan 2000; Losen and
Orfield 2002; Skiba et al. 2002). School suspension rates for African
American male students are consistently significantly higher than
their white and female counterparts, and scholarship documents the
overrepresentation of youth of color in our nations juvenile justice
systems and in school-based disciplinary actions, as early as preschool (Ayers et al. 2001; Gilliam 2005; Gregory et al. 2010; Polakow
2000; Skiba and Knesting 2002); U.S. Department of Education). These
gendered and racialized practices of removing students from an educational setting, the most dramatic
educational sanction available, starts in pre-schools, as a 2005 survey of 40 states pre-kindergarten
Erevelles 2004), warranting two formal investigations (1982 & 2002) by the National Academy of Sciences.
Educational Researcher (2006) examined racial (and gendered) disproportionality in special education and
aimed to invite readers to think about how these flexible practices of classification educationally disqualify
Scholarship also analyzes the linkages between capitalism, and more currently, neoliberal policies and
education, creating punishing educational futures (Anyon 2005; Apple 2010; Kumashiro 2008; Lipman
2013
men because scripted into their blackness is the potential for sexual and criminal danger. Or, to quote former mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, assault should be understood as the perceived
J Pugliese,
oseph
22, State Violence and the Execution of Law, Biopolitical caesurae of torture, black sites, drones
,2013
In his lectures on biopolitics and the critical role of liberalism in shaping the liberal democratic state, Foucault offers a valuable insight into the discursive
infrastructure that effectively enables the emergence of this diffuse and heterogeneous concept of the state. Liberalism,
he
notes, turns into a mechanism continually having to arbitrate
between the freedom and security of individuals by reference to this
notion of danger. The liberal democratic state is predicated on the
interplay of security/freedom. 81 It is precisely this interplay of
security/freedom and its charged reference to danger that has been
foundational in the establishment of the militaryindustrial complex .
In his analysis of the Farewell Address in which President Dwight D.
Eisenhower popularized the term military- industrial complex,
Andrew Bacevich observes how, by the time of Eisenhowers speech ,
the arms industry and politicians had fully capitalized on the
strategic interplay of security/danger in order Post-9/11, the illegal
alien, the immigrant and the undocumented have all been scripted
as posing potential threats to the security of the state . 91 In the words of a
spokesperson for the private prison industry in his address to stock analysts, It is clear that since September 11 theres a heightened focus on detention.
More people are gonna get caught. So I would say thats positive. The federal business is the best business for us, and September 11 is increasing that
business. to entrench their positions of power. Bacevich concludes that, In effect, by 1961, semiwarriors those who derived their power and influence
by perpetuating an atmosphere of national security crisis had gained de facto control of the US government and effectively established war . . . as the
new normalcy. 82 The unending war on terror attests to the entrenchment of war as normalcy. If,
as I discussed above,
one of the distinguishing features of the state is its monopoly on
legitimate violence that is, on violence that is largely sanctioned
through the legitimating imprimatur of law then the contemporary
mutation of the state with its market sectors in the formation of the
military- industrial complex has entailed a system of extending this
right to violence, and the attendant immunity to prosecution that
this entails, to its military contractors. The most infamous example of this is the issuing of a decree
known as Order 17, immunizing contractors in Iraq from prosecution by Paul Bremer, Director of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance and head
of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. 83 This decree, signed by Bremer on 27 June 2004, effectively enabled the Blackwater contractors who
summarily murdered civilians in Iraq to escape prosecution as it declared that: Contractors shall be immune from Iraqi legal process with respect to acts
performed by them pursuant to the terms and conditions of a Contract or any sub- contract thereto. The
liberal democratic
states system of governance pivots on the security/ freedom/danger
interplay: on the one hand, the state foments fear amongst its
citizens of the prospective dangers that pose a risk to their
existence; on the other, it ofers the promise of security by
deploying, via the liberal art of government, a range of procedures
of control, constraint and coercion that include schools, factories
and prisons. 85 The biopolitical governance of the liberal states
population is predicated on the manner in which its much- vaunted
freedoms are, in fact, the correlation of apparatuses of security. 86
The liberal democratic states emblematic apparatus of security is
the prison. The US has the largest prison system in the world and
the highest incarceration rates. 87 These facts are not
disconnected from the war on terror and its regimes of carceral
normalization of state
violence within the prison system and the conduct of its war on
crime underscore how the violent practices that inscribe the war on
terror cannot be seen as exceptional but, rather, as constitutive of
the biopolitical preoccupation with security that is attended across
diferent sites (police stations and prisons) by practices of
institutionalized violence. Post-9/11 defence contractors have
further capitalized on the security/danger, freedom/coercion
interplay by securing a decisive hold on one of the states key
apparatuses of security: the prison system. In examining the mutation of the military- industrial
complex into the military- industrial-prison- security complex, I want to focus on the privatization of immigration detention prisons. The growth in the
privatization of prisons has been documented in detail by Angela Davis, who has underscored the racialized dimensions of punishment in the context of
the US criminal- justice system. 89 As
growth of the private prison industry, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) underscores how Leading private prison companies essentially
admit that their business model depends on high rates of incarceration. They cite the 2010 Annual Report fi led with the Securities and Exchange
Commission, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison company, which states that: The demand for our facilities and
services could be adversely affected by . . . leniency conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices. 90 Post-9/11, the illegal alien, the
immigrant and the undocumented have all been scripted as posing potential threats to the security of the state. 91 In the words of a spokesperson for the
private prison industry in his address to stock analysts, It is clear that since September 11 theres a heightened focus on detention. More people are
gonna get caught. So I would say thats positive. The federal business is the best business for us, and September 11 is increasing that business.
Solvency / Framework
We need an intersectional approach to uncover the
complexity of White Supremacy and anti-blackness
Erica R. Meiners ,Education and Gender and Womens Studies, Northeastern Illinois
University, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11256-011-0187-9/fulltext.html Ending
the School-to-Prison Pipeline/Building Abolition Futures,
2011
Focusing on anything else but the school to prison pipeline , makes prisons inevitable for some always and feeds
the larger system The neg has the burden to prove
Erica R.
Education and Gender and Womens Studies, Northeastern Illinois
University, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11256-011-0187-9/fulltext.html Ending
the School-to-Prison Pipeline/Building Abolition Futures,
2011
a hiccup in time when other people work their lives for justice that they do not see, after a decade I need a
and education. I have yet to meet the person who is for the school-to-prison pipeline, or is advocating for
an increase in school suspensions, or is conducting research to document why education should not be
offered in prisons, or is collecting data to demonstrate that black female youth really are inherently more
violent or dangerous than white female youth, or is writing about why we should provide school security
the same man, what can I say I am doing or my field has achieved? Following this partially confessional
preamble, this article has several aims: First, I make a case for analysis, advocacy and engagement that
places prison abolition on the horizon for those invested in educational justice who are committed to
interrupting the flow of young people toward prisons and jails. Second, I offer a somewhat unorthodox and
very brief state of the field of research and advocacy surrounding school-to-prison work. Finally, I identify
four ongoing tensions within this field of work that is, by definition, theoretically focused on social justice. I
close with a push for us to continually evaluate our professional investments, and invite us to consider how
they constrain our ability, as Angela Davis often says, to ask questions that see beyond the given (2005,
2AC
Overview Basic:
We are controlling uniqueness on the surveillance of public schools
and the Impact that they have on public schools
Two students. One is black and the other is white. On Tuesday, they
both refuse to complete the math worksheet. On Wednesday, neither
will stop talking during lessons. Same behavior. Will they receive the
same punishment? A new Stanford University study predicts that
the black student will be punished more harshly. Why? Not because
of overt racism. Rather, harsher discipline might be the result of
unconscious partiality to the white student, a phenomenon called
implicit bias by psychologists. The study also finds that the bias
might be just as likely to come from a black teacher as a white one .
The significance of the finding isnt confined to classroom walls .
When students are suspended or expelled, it becomes much less
likely that they will graduate or go to college, and much more likely
theyll get arrested, go to jail, or even die in the hands of police .
Many studies suggest that implicit bias, not white supremacist
intentions on the part of individuals, plays a role at nearly every
stage. While the lifelong impact of school disciplinary policies can
afect all students, black ones are three and a half times more likely
to be suspended or expelled than their white counterparts ,
according to a 2012 report from the Department of Education. A
study published in the January American Sociological Review found
that the damage of high suspension rates goes beyond those pushed
out of school, generating collateral damage, negatively afecting
the academic achievement of non-suspended students. While these
big-picture disparities are well documented, the Stanford study is
the first to experimentally suggest that unconscious bias might play
a role in classroom discipline, an accumulation of individual
decisions that sweep thousands of students out of school and into
jail over the course of their lives. What we have shown here is that racial disparities in
discipline can occur even when black and white students behave in the same manner, write Jason A. Okonofua and
Jennifer L. Eberhardt in their paper, published in April by the journal Psychological Science. (Eberhardt won a 2014
MacArthur Genius fellowship for her work on implicit bias.) Its a pattern that might provide insight to interpersonal
bias in criminal justice. Just as escalating responses to multiple infractions
2013
math, English, social studies, reading, science, foreign language, art, economics, and geographyto
hold a bachelors degree, demonstrate subject-matter competence, and to be state-certified
(generally completing a teacher preparation program or graduating from a college of education).6
To put it simply, teachers vary considerably in the extent to which they promote
student learning, but whether a teacher is certified or not is
largely irrelevant to predicting his or her efectiveness.
effectiveness (measured by impacts on student achievement).
Lindsey M. Burke , How the A-PLUS Act Can Rein In the Governments
Education Power Grab http://report.heritage.org/bg2858 Produced by the
Domestic Policy Studies Department The Heritage Foundation November
14,
2013
Lindsey M. Burke , How the A-PLUS Act Can Rein In the Governments
Education Power Grab http://report.heritage.org/bg2858 Produced by the
Domestic Policy Studies Department The Heritage Foundation November
14,
2013
the country, 540 people on average are employed in each state education
agency.
J Pugliese,
oseph
25, State Violence and the Execution of Law, Biopolitical caesurae of torture, black sites, drones
,2013
What is brought into sharp focus here is the manner in which state
violence is constitutive of civic spaces and civilian life, and the fact
that the state rarely operates as an autonomous entity. The
capillary reach of state violence into the quotidian sites of civilian
life only gets obscured by mobilizing that untenable binary that
pits offi cial immigration prisons against civil sites . The deployment
of this binary structurally efaces the inextricable link between the
one and the other. Unlike the immigration offi cials, prison guards,
and police who are in direct government employ, the civilian
subjects implicated in ICEs network of secret prisons operate
under the guise that they are free agents whose civilian hands are
clean of violence. In other words, they are marked by a disavowal of
their own investment in economies of violence that cut across
seemingly discrete categories, sites and subjects. Civil penality
the commercial offi ce as prison cell demonstrates the manner in
which state violence operates by difuse strategies and modalities
that include non- state actors. The difusion of these strategies and
modalities of violence across diverse civil sites functions to
attenuate the point of origin of this same violence. In a sober refl ection on
the seeming binary state/civil society, Foucault writes that the reference to this antagonistic pair is never
exempt from a sort of Manicheism, affl icting the notion of state with pejorative connotation at the same
time as it idealizes society as something good, lively, and warm. 100 As the ICE secret prisons and their
human (live) stock demonstrate, this Manicheism is untenable. The metapower of the
state, Foucault adds, can only take hold and secure its footing
where it is rooted in a whole series of multiple and indefinite power
relations that supply the necessary basis for the great negative
forms of power. 101 The ensemble of non- state actors that
includes arms manufacturers, mining companies, private prison
corporations, commercial offi ce companies and so on discloses
the manner in which the production of state violence is rooted in a
whole series of multiple power relations that are difuse and that,
as such, problematize clear dividing lines between two seemingly
distinct categories: state/non- state. The collusion between state
and non- state entities in the production of invisibilized modalities
J Pugliese,
oseph
46-50, State Violence and the Execution of Law, Biopolitical caesurae of torture, black sites, drones
,2013
The articulation of a series of carceral and genocidal caesurae predicated on biopolitically separating out
the human/culture from the animal/vestibule must be tracked back to those foundational moments of
colonial violence that continue to shape and inform the US nation. Spillers concept of the vestibule works
to articulate a defi ning feature of colonial violence; specifi cally, a seriality of power that survives by
being fl exible and adaptive to different geopolitical sites and bodies. Moreover, this colonial violence must
be seen, in the context of the USs ongoing war on terror, as operating at once intra- and inter nationally;
the two categories conjoined through the concept of relational geographies. Relational geographies is a
term coined by Trevor Paglen in his detailed identifi cation and mapping of black sites, that is, secret
government and military sites that are beyond public scrutiny and accountability. 56 One of the black sites
that Paglen discusses is Nellis Range, Nevada, occupying Western Shoshone land. Created in 1940, Nellis
Range has been described as the single largest gunnery range in the world and the single largest
peacetime militarized zone on earth. 57 The Western Shoshone peoples, the traditional owners of this
land, call the Western Shoshone nation the most bombed nation on earth. 58 In his analysis of Nellis
Range, which houses one of the ground control centres for the international operation of drones, Paglen
insistently draws attention to the past history of white colonial invasion and violent displacement of the
Native Americans of the region and the contemporary relations of violence exercised by the US state in
their ongoing persecution of Indigenous Americans attempting to claim back lands sequestered by the US
government in their establishment of black sites and areas for nuclear weapons testing. 59 He describes
being welcomed into a trailer in Crescent Valley, Nevada, that was home to the Western Shoshone Defense
Project, and from this remote location, an elderly Native American woman named Carrie Dann and her
staff of two full- timers and two part- timers take on the military, the Bureau of Land Management, mining
and defense contractors, and the US government itself. Dann says that the United States has been illegally
occupying Western Shoshone land for 150 years and that she has the paperwork to prove it. 60 Paglen
documents the repeated violent raids that Dann and her people are compelled to endure. The US state has
repeatedly attempted to charge Dann and her people with trespassing on government land. This a charge
that Dann derisively rejects, arguing that she cannot be accused of trespassing land she saw as rightly
belonging to her people precisely because the Shoshone NEVER gave, ceded, or sold their land to the
United States government, by treaty or otherwise. 61 In the face of this defi ance, the US government has
attempted to crush Western Shoshone resistance by deploying the full arsenal of state terror, including
federal agents, helicopters, a plane and a fl eet of All-Terrain Vehicles: I could not help but think of how
this is how our ancestors felt when they saw the cavalry coming. So many of my people were killed on this
land and now its happening again. The Feds rounded up Danns cattle and loaded them into trucks to be
sold at auction. The ranch was devastated. 62 Paglen connects this national exercise of contemporary
colonialism and state- violence to the larger, transnational picture he has been delineating in order to
underscore the system of continuities that hold between the two: For the collection of [Native American]
activists sitting in an unmarked trailer in the recesses of Nevadas vast valleys, the black world is much
more than an array of sites connected through black aircraft, encrypted communications, and classifi ed
careers. It is the power to create geographies, to create places where anything can happen, and to do it with
impunity. 63 The enormity of this power to create geographies while simultaneously obliterating others is
perhaps best exemplifi ed by the Pentagons ambitious proposal to create a virtual drone state that will
further expropriate large tracts of Native American land, creating the largest Joint Forces Future Combat
Systems training site in the world: 64 Under this plan, 7 million acres (or 11,000 square miles) of land in
the southwest corner of Colorado, and 60 million acres of air space (or 94,000 square miles) over Colorado
and New Mexico would be given over to special forces testing and training in the use of remote- controlled
fl ying machines. 65 Paglens concept of relational geographies can be productively amplifi ed by
conjoining it with the concept of relational temporalities, that is, diachronic relations that establish critical
connections across historical time and diverse geographies. Relational temporalities draw lines of
connection between seemingly disparate temporal events: for example, the US states genocidal history
against Native Americans and the killing of civilians in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan. In her
tracking of the violent history of attempted genocide against Native Americans, Andrea Smith writes: the
US is built on a foundation of genocide, slavery, and racism. 66 Situated in this context, what becomes
apparent in the scripting of the 9/11 attacks as the worst acts of terrorism perpetrated on US soil is the
effective erasure of this foundational history of state- sponsored terrorism against Native Americans. This
historicidal act of whitewashing effectively clears the ground for contemporary acts of violence against the
United States to be chronologically positioned as the fi rst or hierarchically ranked as the worst in the
nations history. The colonial nation- state deploys, in the process, a type of Nietzschean active forgetting
that ensures the obliteration of prior histories of massacre and terror such as the catastrophic Trail of Tears
that resulted from the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This Act enabled the forced removal of a number of
Native American nations and their relocation to Oklahoma; in the process, at least four thousand Native
Americans died. The Trail of Tears has been described as the largest instance of ethnic cleansing in
American history. 67 This example of state terror is what must be occluded in order to preserve the
innocence of the nation so that it can subsequently claim, post 9/11, to have lost the very thing it had
betrayed long ago. Jimmie Durham remarks on the repetition of this national ruse: The US, because of its
actual guilt . . . has had a nostalgia for itself since its beginnings. Even now one may read editorials almost
daily about Americas loss of innocence at some point or other, and about some time in the past when
America was truly good. That self- righteousness and insistence upon innocence began, as the US began,
with invasion and murder. 68 Such acts of white historicide are constituted by a double logic of takenforgrantedness and obsessive repetition. Steve Martinot and Jared Sexton, in their forensic analysis of the
operations of white supremacy, articulate the seemingly contradictory dimensions of this double logic: It is
the same passive apparatus of whiteness that in its mainstream guise actively forgets that it owes its
existence to the killing and terrorising of those it racialises for that purpose, expelling them from the
human fold in the same gesture of forgetting. It is the passivity of bad faith that tacitly accepts as what
goes without saying the postulates of white supremacy. And it must do so passionately since what goes
without saying is empty and can be held as a truth only through an obsessiveness. The truth is that the
truth is on the surface, fl at and repetitive, just as the law is made by the uniform. 69 The it goes without
saying is the moment in which the very ideology of white supremacy is so naturalized as to become
invisible: it is the given order of the world. Yet, in order to maintain this position of supremacy, a logic of
tireless iteration must be deployed in order to secure the very everyday banality, and thus transparency, of
white supremacys daily acts of violence. For those in a position to exercise these daily rounds of state
violence, their performative acts are banal because of their very quotidian repetition; yet, because their
racialized targets continue to exercise, in turn, acts of resistance and outright contestation, these daily acts
of state violence must be obsessively reiterated. Underpinning such acts of white supremacist violence and
historicidal erasures is the offi cial government, media and academic positioning of Native Americans
as a permanent present absence that, in Smiths words, reinforces at every turn the conviction that
Native peoples are indeed vanishing and that the conquest of Native lands is justifi ed. 70 Precisely what
gets erased in the process are the contemporary Indian wars that are being fought across the body of the US
nation. These are wars that fail to register as wars because the triumphant non- indigenous polity controls
the ensemble of institutions legal, military, media and so on that fundamentally determines what will
count as a war in the context of the nation.
Ext Disabilities
Politics is nothing without praxis Since they are not going
to change over night we need a both and strategy of
2011
As we have reduced or
eliminated social assistance programs, and criminalized the options
that poor people possess to cope with untenable situations, the
majority of those in prisons and jails are poor people. In Illinois in 2002, 90%
solution to the problems that shape violence in our communities.
of women caught up in the system were locked up for non-violent crimes, largely related to poverty and
addiction (Clark and Kane-Willis 2006, p. 4). As California (CA) State Senator Gloria Romero stated (CA is
the state with the worlds two largest prisons for women) California cant build [more prisons as] its way
anti-prison activist and scholar Karlene Faith writes, this requires those invested in change to negotiate
reform and structural change work: Every reform raises the question of whether, in Gramscis terms, it is
a revolutionary reform, one that has liberatory potential to challenge the status quo, or a reform reform,
which may ease the problem temporarily or superficially, but reinforces the status quo by validating the
2015
Thus, we are pleased that the Schott Foundation has recognized the
need to address the impact of zero-tolerance policies on girls of
color along with other factors that seriously undermine their
achievement and well-being. The foundations vision allowed us to
hear directly from young women of color about the disciplinary and
push-out policies they experience in Boston and New York City public
schools. This modest but long-overdue efort to cast light onto the
lives of marginalized girls should be replicated and expanded across
the nation. Ideally, the conversation Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out,
Overpoliced, and Underprotected engenders within communities and
among philanthropists, policy makers, stakeholders, and advocates
will lead to the inclusion of girls in eforts to address school
discipline, push-out, and the pathways to incarceration, poverty, and
low-wage work. We are especially hopeful that ongoing eforts to
resolve the crisis facing boys of color will open up opportunities to
examine the challenges facing their female counterparts. We
encourage those who are concerned about the current crisis to
broaden their understanding of the ways that gender contributes to
the particular risks that students of color face, and to commit to
enhancing resources to ensure that all our youth have the
opportunity to achieve.
2015
For girls, as with boys, the failure to receive a high school diploma
often places individuals on a pathway to low-wage work,
unemployment, and incarceration. The imposition of harsh
disciplinary policies in public schools is a well-known risk factor for
stunted educational opportunities for Black and Latino boys. Such
punishments also negatively afect their female counterparts, as do
other conditions in zero-tolerance schools.Yet, the existing
research, data, and public policy debates often fail to address the
degree to which girls face risks that are both similar to and
diferent from those faced by boys. This silence about at-risk girls
is multidimensional and cross-institutional. The risks that Black and
other girls of color confront rarely receive the full attention of
researchers, advocates, policy makers, and funders. As a result,
many educators, activists, and community members remain
underinformed about the consequences of punitive school policies
on girls as well as the distinctly gendered dynamics of zerotolerance environments that limit their educational achievements.
BlackGirlsMatter:PushedOut,Overpoliced,andUnderprotectedendeavorstoshineaspotlightonthe
variousfactorsthatdirectgirlsofcolordowndeadendstreetswhileobscuringtheirvulnerabilities.
2015
Blackgirlsfaceavarietyoffactorshistorical,institutional,andsocialthatheightentheirriskof
underachievementanddetachmentfromschool,renderingthemvulnerabletothelifelongconsequencesof
droppingout.Aswiththeirmalecounterparts,theattitudesandinstitutionalpracticesthatlimit
opportunitiesforgirlsofcolorhavedeephistoricalroots.Researchandpublicpolicydebates,however,
oftenfailtopaintanuancedpicturethataddressesthedegreetowhichgirlsarevulnerabletomanyofthe
samefactorsfacedbytheirmalecounterparts.Forexample,reportsaboutzerotoleranceandpushout
policiesfrequentlyfailtodisaggregateorhighlighttheconsequencesofsuchpoliciesforgirlsofcolor.
Availableinformationaboutthechallengesthattheyfaceinregardstosuspension,expulsion,andother
disciplinarypracticesoftengounderreported,leadingtotheincorrectinferencethattheirfuturesarenot
alsoatrisk.Thisassumptionobscuresthefactthatalltoooftengirlsarestrugglingintheshadowsof
publicconcern.Forinstance,thesuspensionandexpulsionratesforBlackgirlsfaroutpacetheratesfor
othergirlsandinsomeplaces,theyoutpacetheratesofmostboys.Yet,effortstounderstandand
respondtothesedisparatedisciplinarypatternsarefewandfarbetween.Infact,manyofthegender
specificfactorsthatcontributetolowachievementandtheseparationofgirlsofcolorfromschoolare
oftenplacedoutsidethedialogueaboutachievementandschooldisciplinealtogether.
2015
Wecannolongeraffordtoleaveyoungwomenandgirlsofcoloratthemarginsofourconcernswith
respecttotheachievementgap,thedropoutcrisis,andtheschooltoprisonpipeline.Instead,wemust
developgenderandraceconsciousprismsthatcapturethevulnerabilitiestheyexperiencetoday.Our
limitedfindingssuggestthatBlackgirlsinNewYorkandBostonsometimesencounterinhospitable
conditionsininstitutionsthatarepurportedlytheretoservethem.Liketheirmalecounterparts,manyfind
themselvesonpathwaystodiminishedlifeopportunitieswithoutthepromiseofpublicandprivate
interventionsdesignedtofocusontheirneeds.Wehopethatthismodestreportbeginstocastlightonthe
livesofthesegirls.Ultimately,wehopethatourefforttolistentoBlackgirlsisbroadenedtoincludeother
girlsofcolorandisreplicatednationwide.IdeallytheconversationthatBlackGirlsMatterengenders
bothwithincommunitiesofcolorandamongphilanthropists,stakeholders,policymakers,andadvocates
willleadtomoreconcertedeffortstoincludegirlsinstudiesaboutschooldiscipline,pushout,andthe
pathwaystounderachievement,lowwagework,poverty,andincarceration.Wehopethatongoingefforts
toaddressthecrisisthatfacesboysofcolorwillcreateopportunitiestoaddresstheseriousbarriersfacing
theirfemalepeers.Weencourageallstakeholders,researchers,funders,andconcernedmembersofthe
publictobroadentheirunderstandingofthecurrentcrisisfacingyouthofcolor,andtocommitto
expandingboththeconversationandtheresourcesnecessarytoaddresstheseconcerns.
Object / Subjecthood
What is political prison prt1- these students are all
political prisons thanks to the school to prison pipeline
JOY JAMES, American prison notebooks, 38-40.
Access to communication is, of course, an essential requirement for imprisoned intellectuals who seek
to function as public intellectuals. Those caged or hunted often surreptitiously channel their
communiques to the outside world. Increased restrictions on communication in the United States
both for the incarcerated and the opponents of state violence, following September 11 and the
passage of the Patriot Act, are resulting in greater censorship of the analyses and insights of
imprisoned intellectuals. Yet voices from both the present and the past come through; they have done
so historically in times of foreign or domestic warfare and they do so today. For example, the excerpt
from Berrigans 1972 Letter to the Weathermen ,3 written while he was being sought by the FBI for having
burned draft cards and damaged weapons of mass destruction, still provides inspiration and instruction.
Some thirty years after Berrigan was captured and imprisoned, the US deployed a war strategy in Iraq of
dropping thousands of (cluster) bombs, mostly on civilians, to bring about a quick victory. US
radicals, in mounting resistance rather than genuflecting before shock and awe, evoked memories
of activists such as Berrigan who beat swords into ploughshares by fighting against the imperial wars of
an earlier era. Examining intellectuals whose analyses are rarely referenced in conventional political speech
or academic discourse leads one to fragments from American prison notebooks: political writings
undertaken in opposition to state or corporate policies promoting racism, war, imperialism and
corporate globalisation. In recent US history, the writings of imprisoned intellectuals were probably
better known to society in general because social upheaval and mass movements created an urgency
for greater literacy in critical thinking and transformative politics. Prison writings that detailed and
explored resistance and repression were reinforced by rebellion and liberation praxes from the civil
rights/black power, womens, gay/lesbian, American Indian, Puerto Rican independence, Chicano
and anti-war movements. The imprisoned intellectual seemed to be more firmly secure in embracing
a revolutionary struggle that encompassed significant segments of the general society. Today, the
general or mainstream American public constitutes a mostly hostile or indifferent readership and
respondent, yet there are multiple publics and varied civil societies. The intent of imprisoned
intellectuals to influence the public in its multiple formations is a complicated endeavour. No
monolithic imprisoned intellectual exists. Despite shared anti-racist and anti-imperialist politics, US
political prisoners differ in identity, ideology and strategy. However, a general disavowal of their
political and theoretical work exists. This is partly due to its radical content, which destabilises
conventional political discourse including conventional radical discourse, and partly due to the
insistence that true intellectual production occurs within socially recognized sites of respectability
academia, publishing houses, conference settings. Much of what is troubling in the writings of
imprisoned activists centres on the issue of violence: violence by the state to squash dissent and
destroy dissenters; violence deployed to disappear the incarcerated or detained; violence carried
out by dissidents and prisoners in self-defence or to wield power. Whether the work of pacifists or
militarists responding to violence and militarism, prison writings remain suspect and heatedly
debated by many in the public realm. Most Americans are more familiar with (inured to?) state
violence, particularly when it is directed against disenfranchised or racially or politically suspect
minorities. Often, for the general public, police or military violence against the racially suspect,
against the poor and immigrants or against prisoners is not as unsettling as counter-violence against
the police or military by the subaltern and incarcerated. Paradoxically, those most passionately
seeking collective liberation from racial or economic or military dominance are those most likely
to lose their individual freedoms. Imprisoned intellectuals, ironically the most intensely monitored
and repressed by the states police apparatus, may in fact be those most free of state conditioning.
Existing not merely as victims of state responses to radical opposition, they produce analyses that
deconstruct dominant ideologies and reconstruct new strategies for humanity in reactive and
proactive readings of struggles for freedom. But who reads the works of imprisoned intellectuals, and
why? What are the shared desires and aspirations for democratic culture and civil society? Relationships
between those incarcerated and those in the free world suggest multiple civil societies; sometimes
overlapping, sometimes segregated from each other; sometimes reinforcing, sometimes contradicting
each other. One aspect of these overlapping contradictions entails the conflicting relationships
between free intellectuals and imprisoned intellectuals, for it is the former who usually act as
mules or couriers, relaying the messages or texts of the latter. Yet the courier as editor, translator,
publisher, critic wields considerable power to influence or alter the text emanating from the
incarcerated. It is likely that the incarcerated are routinely censored by their supporters on the
outside seeking to mainstream their messages. Whether the imprisoned, as political dependants
relying upon those outside to garner support, might engage in self-censorship is less clear (and rarely
mentioned in the movements around the prison industrial complex). Potential limitations among allies
abound. Self-censorship and self conditioning work both ways: the privileged academic might hesitate
to criticise a progressive folk hero sentenced to life or death in prison, although the repercussions of
academic criticisms seem to be fairly limited. The lack of parity between political prisoners and
their political allies is based on the reality that, in theory and practice, the imprisoned intellectual can
be ideologically frozen in or physically freed by the work of non-incarcerated academics and
activists. The free intellectual has no such dependence upon the imprisoned intellectual. It seems, then, that captivity mutates into many strange
forms.
or lockdown in control units so that they cannot infect really infuse other prisoners with their
radical politics and aspirations for freedom. In respect of US political prisoners, these political
activists for human rights will encompass both those engaged in civil disobedience who identify as
loyal opposition and by their very dissent affirm the institutions of American democracy and
those so alienated by state violence and government betrayals of democratic ideals that their
disaffection leads to insurrection.11 Law-abiding dissent, engaged in by the former group,
represents a political risk-taking that has broader social acceptance. This is largely due to its
adherence to principles of non-violence, civil disobedience, widely shared moral values and,
sometimes, proximity to the very corridors of (institutional) power closed to the disenfranchised.
Such adherence spares dissenters the harshest of sentences. Hence, it is not political incarceration per
se which is stigmatized and which leads to an individuals disappearance from conventional society
and politics, but incarceration based on a refusal to suffer violence without resorting to armed selfdefence. Even religious pacifists, once they prove themselves disloyal to the nation state, are widely disavowed. Despite his adherence to the Christian faith and Gandhian
principles of non-violent civil disobedience, Martin Luther King, Jr whose 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail exists as a classic text among contemporary letters by political
Mondo we Langa (David Rice), incarcerated in Nebraska prisons for decades, is one who maintains a counter-narrative to that of the state. At the time of his imprisonment, he was
Deputy Minister of Information for the Omaha Nebraska chapter of the National Committees to Combat Fascism, an organisation affiliated to the Black Panther Party. He is now
serving a life sentence for the first-degree murder of a policeman, a crime he maintains that he did not commit and for which his lawyers claim that there is no evidence implicating
him. But Mondo we Langa had been active in protesting police brutality against African American residents in Omaha and, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights, was
excess-of-black-life-mike-brown-eric-garner-and-tamir-rice/
,2015
Black life, Blackness, Black holding on, Black making a way out of
no way is always in excess of the antiblack settler colonial state.
And, in its excess, it is always threatening to the order and sense
making of the state. This excess is carried in and on the bodies of
Black peoples, it is embodied and illegible to the state, unable to be
incorporated into Whiteness, and is thus always present before,
beyond and against the state. Blackness as excess is, as Alex
Weheliye explains, a fleshy excess. It spills over and protrudes; it
cannot be contained. It is always escaping. It is always already too
much. In each of three most recent cases of Black death to garner mass mainstream media attention the deaths of
Mike Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice the bodily excess of the victims was used as a reason for their murder, as
justification for their death. This excess was not articulated as the excess of their
,2015
These three bodies were each deemed in excess and, in their excess,
justifiably murderable. As Black males, occupying public spaces (the
street, the sidewalk, the park) not meant for their presence, they
were always already out of place and in excess, occupying spaces
not meant for their lives, occupying spaces built on Black death.
Their excess size came to be a stand in for what was unspeakable
within the antiblack colonial nation-state that, in fact, it was their
Blackness that was in excess. They were each discursively,
materially, and literally taking up too much space. Their bodies,
already in excess through their Blackness, were also more visible,
were more obviously taking up space, were more obviously Black . As
Wilderson and Hartman note, White supremacy is caught up with the
visuality of Black life: visually, the threat of Blackness is somehow
heightened. They were each too heavy, too big, too visible. They were larger than life
and, in fact, too large for life. They were too fleshy. Fleshiness, as
Alex Weheliye writes working from Hortense Spillers writings is
both the dehumanizing precedent ascribed to the less than human
racialized other within the antiblack colonial state, but also, in its
fleshy excess, a stepping stone towards new genres of human
beyond colonial recognition. Flesh, for Weheliye, is both embedded
in the ontology of colonial Man, but is also always already the
physical. Blackness, then, in its excess, always already extends
beyond the limits of the state and the limits of the discursive. It
incarnates alternate modes of being beyond inclusion, modes that
inherently threaten colonial regimes of knowing and being; hence,
the criminalization and fear of Black fleshiness. J. Kameron Carter, in a talk given in
the wake of the Grand Jury verdicts regarding Mike Brown and Eric Garners murders, similarly illustrates how Black life,
the Black social life that exists beyond state articulated humanity the fleshiness exists always in excess of the state. It is
this radical relationality and different genre of being, symbolized within the excess fleshiness of Blackness, which precedes
the criminalization and ultimate death of these three bodies by the antiblack colonial state. There is more to
his death, post-ten-bullets-in-his-body, he was still deemed threat enough for police to handcuff him. Similarly, as Tamir
Rice lay on the ground in the park, shot down but still alive, his 14-year-old sister rushed to his side and, in her mere
movement and in her inability to articulate calmness in the wake of seeing her brother gunned down, she too was deemed
an excessive threat and handcuffed, placed into the confinement of a police cruiser . The demand to
At: Framework
Clash debates are anti- black
This process began in 2000 when Dr. Ede Warner, then Director of Debate at the
University of Louisville, had a vision to bring Debate to Black students. Successfully
recruiting a new cohort of Black students in Debate, Warner found that these students
were frustrated with being forced to assimilate into the traditional norms of the activity
in order to be successful. The culture of Debate was not inclusive of the
values and perspectives of his students. Thus, in order to retain Black
students, challenges to the norms and procedures of debate were
necessary. Warner and his students were not only successful in
challenging traditional norms and procedures but they were also
innovative in the successful creation of alternative methods that
are most representative of the lives that they experience. The
success of this new model of Debate has led to increased tensions
and hostilities throughout Debate in what is now called the clash of
civilizations. An examination of the clash of civilizations debates is
not only necessary for the recruitment and retention of the Black
student population but Debate at large. This new model of debate,
alternative debate, has been instrumental in the recruitment of
other diverse groups, such as: Latinos, Native Americans, disabled
populations, and LGBT students. Additionally, the inclusion of
diferent values and perspectives adds another level of training for
the future movers and shakers of society. If debaters are trained to
make policy for diverse populations, then understanding the
diference in cultures, values and perspectives of these groups is
an invaluable experience. Ultimately, these standpoints are
necessary for the growth and development of every member of the
Debate community. Unfortunately, the backlash to alternative
debate has overshadowed the 73 benefits of including alternative
debate for much of the community. Therefore, research on the
clash of civilization debates is an essential and timely endeavor. The
speech community model of analysis has been a productive model
for examining the ways in which the prioritizing of traditional
debate norms and procedures has served to exclude Black
discourse, values, and perspectives. While it is not always an
intentional act of exclusion, the efects can often be just as
injurious. The debate about Debate, that has been ongoing within
Intercollegiate Policy Debate, has provided an excellent
opportunity to examine how the exclusion of diferent discourse
student population in Debate, the community has been introduced to new methods of
debate. As a result of the increased use of alternative methods, the
topics: (1) the under class as a category, (2) race and class, (3) moral obligation and motivation, and (4) the political spectrum of diagnoses
and solutions.
Ext: solvency
Incarceration and education most direct link come at
black males directly . The numbers prove that this is not a
question of capital or profit but instead a project of pure
capture. And even thought this is big issue that policy or
one plan can solve by its self but by exspoliating the
complexity of education and incretion we are able to arm
the next wave of youth-lead community activist and
future politicians.
Meiners ,
Erica R.
Education and Gender and Womens Studies, Northeastern Illinois
University, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11256-011-0187-9/fulltext.html Ending
the School-to-Prison Pipeline/Building Abolition Futures,
2011
Performance
Link for the Black teams we can change the debate space.
academia s neoliberal grounding allows for any political
project that is bounded by institution of debate to fail and
be hijacked by capitalism
Joy James, The Dead Zone: Stumbling at the Crossroads of Party Politics, Genocide, and Postracial Racism 475-76,
2009
The academys neoliberal mandate underscores black and Africana studies as well as other critical
studies (ethnic, women and gender, queer, community engagement). Africana thought that circulates
as intellectual property is largely produced and disseminated in university or college programs and
departments, part of the government or corporate sectors, or all of the above. Given the endowments of
elite colleges and universities, Congress has increasingly questioned whether such schools deserve
taxexempt status. Of course, state universities are extensions of the government and are regulated as
such. Africana studies and thought may function as political parties in an academic environment with our
own versions of the Republican National Committee, the Democratic National Committee, and the centrist
Democratic Leadership Council, which attempts to emulate the past victories of archconservatives and
reactionaries in the Grand Old Party. Academics embedded in political parties (that is, political
agents operating only within the confines of systems dominated by elites) often do not reject
achievement or Mbitis concept of history moving forward towards a future climax. In the absence
of an intellectual promise or progress culminating in tangible liberation, there is no apparent
(political) purpose or mission statement for Africana thought, outside of gathering more data for
those dedicated to alleviating suffering, intellectual investigations, or opportunities and career
advancement. Grappling with the issue of black genocide outside of a liberal framework is seen as the
kiss of death for career-minded academics. The real and symbolic battles waged during the 2008
primaries have spun out symbolic gestures and performances that captivate a global audience and inspire
loyal followers. Yet how do the loyaliststhe new political classperceive and respond to antiblack
genocide in all of its nuanced and blatant manifestations? Sacrifices and struggles to create,
institutionalize, and preserve Africana studies would promise, one hopes, a future, stable ground for
further movement toward liberation. Yet we might be living in a sci-fi novel, one in whichas in the
works of Butler, whose stumble on a Bay Area curb yielded yet another ancestorwe find the
convergence of the scientific and the imaginative, of the empirical and the theoretical. All have the
possibility of fashioning freedom. Resisting party politics and postracial racism, Africana thought
may (re)invent itself acknowledging a past that cannot be fully celebrated, a present that cannot be
adequately explained in conventional terms, and a future that cannot be fully trusted to promise
anything like a utopia. Dystopia? As Butlers work suggests, dystopia is entirely possible. Yet in terms of
liberation in the pursuit of (re)invention, we shall find that it is impossible to adequately
contextualize any of this if, as Some of Us Are Brave asserts, the invisible woman sitting squarely in
the crossroads remains unseen. Admittedly, this essay stumbles. The intersection is unlit. The center,
corners, curbs, and crossing lines are shadowed. In those shadows reside presidential party politics
and genocidal policies. In full circle, historical antecedents offer both departure and arrival points
as we repeatedly cross our own past while projecting a real and imagined future as critical thought
radically invents meaningful engagement.
2015
A SCATHING watchdog report by the Detention Watch Network and the Center for Constitutional Rights adds fuel to the
growing criticism against exorbitant taxpayer funding for private prison contractors . Detention of any
rid of this bed quota now and start exploring more alternatives to
incarceration that have proved to reduce costs and keep families
together. Remember: Many of these detainees pose no threat to
society and have committed civil violations, such as overstaying a
visa. With a bed quota and discount pricing in place, theres no real
incentive for ICE agents to explore non-prison options like
community monitoring that cost a fraction of the estimated daily
$164 price tag of locking up each detainee. Federal elected officials also should ban a
tiered pricing system that allows the contractors to give ICE discounted pricing when the number of detainees exceeds
minimum guarantees. The report reveals troubling examples of how this
$164 price tag of locking up each detainee. Last month, The Seattle Times editorial board
pushed for Congress to support a bill to end unnecessary detentions. In Tacoma, reports of humanrights abuses have lingered for months, leading to hunger strikes
and prison conflicts. The GEO Groups contract to run the center expired in April, but it has been extended
through June 30 as negotiations continue. The company insists it meets industry standards, providing high quality
services in safe, secure and humane environments, and strongly refutes allegations to the contrary. Nonetheless, U.S.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Bellevue, recently wrote to ICE Director Sarah Saldaa imploring her to consider alternatives to
detention. Short of this, he appropriately encouraged her to increase transparency in the negotiations with GEO Group
and to set stricter standards that ensure human rights are not being abused Detainees should be more
J Pugliese,
oseph
53, State Violence and the Execution of Law, Biopolitical caesurae of torture, black sites, drones
,2013
As the trophy of a triumphant colonialism, Geronimo revenant embodies the incomplete death of Native
Americans surviving ongoing regimes of economic, cultural and political expropriation and ecological
devastation, as a form of ecocide, that contemporizes the traditional genocidal practices of the colonial
state. 84 The ecocide that has been visited upon Native Americans assumes the form of weapons testing,
mining and the dumping of the toxic waste of the colonizers on their lands and in their rivers. Within the
ecologically devastated spaces that now constitute the lands of the Western Shoshone nation called Newe
Sogobia, the biopolitical caesura of human/animal positions its captive subjects along a violent hierarchy
of life and death. In the words of an Owens Valley Paiute elder, Native Americans are viewed by white
authorities as nonpeople and thus, through the deployment of a form of environmental racism, they are
scripted as expendable by both the US government and the various corporations that conduct their ecocidal
operations on their land. The extensive picture of the nuclear testing program that has unfolded in the lands
of Newe Sogobia includes the exposure of the Western Shoshone to the toxic fallout of the tests: the
experimental use of live pigs, dressed in army uniforms to see how they would withstand the blast, fi lmed
by the remote- controlled camera [that] captured the pigs writhing and squealing as they died, and a
herd of horses that wandered east onto the Sheahan lands with their eyes burnt out, left empty sockets by
a blast. 86 These haunting images of useless suffering evidence the disposable lives of those subjects
violently cut off from the culture and positioned in the lethal vestibule of the colonizer. In this exercise of
state violence, the targets of the states speciesism (immolated pigs and blinded horses) and
raciospeciesism (Native Americans as nonpeople) live and die under the decree of the biopolitical
caesura. For Carrie Dann and her sister Mary, the lived violence of this biopolitical categorization and
partitioning is encapsulated by the fact that, as Native Americans, they are under the jurisdiction of a
department that otherwise manages natural resources trees, animals, parks, and so forth. The Dann
sisters spell out the ramifi cations of this biopolitical assignation and its attendant caesura: I dont know if
were the human species or some other kind of species, says Dann, to which her sister Mary sardonically
replies: Endangered species. 87 The US policies of colonial appropriation of Indian lands and the
sequestration of Native Americans into camps were conducted under the imprimatur of territorial laws
guaranteed by what Charles Venator Santiago terms the anti- democratic nature of the US Constitution.
These territorial laws have enabled the US state to appropriate Indigenous lands and to legitimate the
governance of the resulting distinct spaces in an anomalous manner so that freedoms, rights and so on
can be effectively suspended. 88 The US colonial states biopolitical regime of governance was
underpinned by at least three key features: imperial westward expansion, as formally proclaimed by the
doctrine of Manifest Destiny, a doctrine crucially underpinned by the violence of that biopolitical caesura
which effectively determined that natives of the world are as animals and therefore have no human
rights; 89 the consequent coercive relocation of Native Americans onto lands rejected by white America
because they were arid, remote and barren; and the spectacular growth of the US military during the course
of the twentieth century. As Gregory Hooks and Chad Smith note, This contingent intersection of Indian
conquest and the rise of the Pentagon placed Native Americans at great risk of exposure to noxious military
activity 90 precisely because they were located on those very lands that were contiguous to military
installations that practised the full range of toxic and environmentally destructive activities. This genocidal
form of governance of Native Americans has been critically enabled by the states deployment of a
biopolitical caesura that, in its lethal human/animal division, has ensured that Indigenous peoples can be
left to die within the ecocidal landscapes generated by the military- industrial complex and its economies
of war.
Baltimore, Detroit
2015
of the unpaid water bills, according to an investigation by theBaltimore Sun. Since the shutoffs began, the
city has collected about $5 million in overdue water bill payments, reports the Baltimore Brew. Only about
$1 million has been collected from commercial customers.
customers have had their water shut of. Only residential customers
have had their water service suspended, according to a review of
public records by the Baltimore Sun. A private firm is conducting a financial audit of
the DPW and four other Baltimore city agencies. The audit was in response to mounting evidence that
suggested the DPW has been over-billing customers. It is the first time city agencies have been audited in
25 years.
you lose your water service, you lose water to wash your
accounts could face action by the city in the form of a tax sale.
Property could face foreclosure if an owner owes at least $500.
Baltimore city officials have said they are planning to hire an ombudsman to help residents avoid such
measures.The city put 8,278 properties up for tax sale in 2014.
Baltimore, Detroit
2015
Matt Hill, an attorney with the Public Justice Center, told the Baltimore Sun that the policy is not being
residents with unpaid bills in an effort to collect more than $119 million in delinquent payments from more
73,000 residential accounts with bills that are at least two months late, reports the Detroit Free Press.
Tawana Petty, a spokesperson for Detroiters Resisting Emergency Management, told RH Reality Check that
the mayor and the DWSD have conducted a public relations campaign to distract residents and those who
While
Baltimore is not going through bankruptcy nor under the rule of an
emergency manageras Detroit isthere are similarities between
the water shutofs in the two cities. There were reportedly eforts to
privatize water services in both cities. Activists in Detroit and Baltimore were alarmed
want to report the truth about what is happening to low-income people in Detroit.
by former Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orrs exploration ofprivatizing the DWSD and the Baltimore
Department of Public Works requests for proposals from consulting firms for a study of the water system.
What they do is, they come in and do an efficiency study, and then
two years from now what they will do is say that we want to
downsize the workers, contract them out of their jobs, Glenard Middleton,
a local labor leader, told the Baltimore Sun. Both cities have large communities of
color that have disproportionately high rates of unemployment and
poverty, significant infrastructure problems that include crumbling
water systems, and long histories of discriminatory housing policies
and incidents of police brutality. Activists believe that these
similarities are not accidental. If you look at the cities where they
are doing these mass overhauls, where they are shutting water of
and criminalizing people, they are in predominately Black
communities, Petty said. Maureen Taylor, chairwoman for the
Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, told RH Reality Check that
while eforts to privatize water services are taking hold in lowincome communities of color, they will afect all low-income
communities, regardless of race. They start by coming to the door
of the African-American community, Taylor said. The larger white
community wont fight or get involved because theyll think, Its not
on our doorstep.' The population of Detroit is 82.7 percent Black. Baltimore is 63.7 percent
Black. In Detroit, 38.1 percent of residents live below the poverty line, while in Baltimore, 23.8 percent live
in poverty. The average annual income of a Black Baltimore household is about half a white household in
Baltimore. Corporate interests have lobbied for water privatization in communities across the countryand
across the world, despite privatization often being more costly and less efficient. Police brutality, often
against people of color, is also common in Baltimore and Detroit. Baltimore has paid out more than $5.7
The problems reflect a longstanding dysfunctional relationship between law enforcement and
citizens, structural poverty, and the legacy of discrimination in
housing and finance policy, wrote Leana Wen and Joshua Sharfstein
in a recent commentary in the Journal of the American Medical
Association. The authors note that there is a large amount of data that shows significant disparities
million to victims of 100 police brutality lawsuits since 2011.
between low-income communities of color and Baltimores more affluent and predominately white
communities. Jennifer Epps-Addison of Wisconsin Jobs Now told RH Reality Check that systemic
Solvency
The Af gets the ball roling in the right direction to
challenge the myth of public safety , we gotta start where
we.
Erica R. Meiners ,Education and Gender and Womens Studies, Northeastern Illinois
University, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11256-011-0187-9/fulltext.html Ending
the School-to-Prison Pipeline/Building Abolition Futures,
2011
and safer communities? This is local and afective work, and we must
do this together. As many, from Audre Lorde (1984) to Feel Tank Chicago point out, politics and political
engagement is a world of orchestrated feeling (Feel Tank 2008, 3). Addressing questions of fear
and safety in a landscape where sexual and other forms of harm are endemic is difficult, because building responses to these forms of state and interpersonal violence
For solvency
Erica R. Meiners ,Education and Gender and Womens Studies, Northeastern Illinois
University, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11256-011-0187-9/fulltext.html Ending
the School-to-Prison Pipeline/Building Abolition Futures,
2011
Indigenous rights scholar and activist Andrea Smith invites activist scholars to
see ourselves as workers in justice movements before scholarship, and
names the importance of collectivizing and being able to recognize ourselves
and build cultures within universities: The point is that if we are going to
challenge the individualist system, we need to engage in collective action
through relationships built on mutual responsibility and accountability. The
system can handle thousands of oppositional academics who do work on
their own; it is not until these thousands begin to act collectively that the
system can be challenged (Smith 2009, p. 41) I imagine Smiths call for
collectivizing could take many forms, because we know that research is not
confined to colleges and universities, nor is there a best or only recipe for
producing justice-mobilizing scholarship inside institutions (if only it was
hermeneutics or statistics that could snap away white supremacy). Instead,
Smith asks us to imagine and to practice collective models, and to build and
strengthen collective pathways for justice work in our institutions. These
initiatives could be framed methodologically, if, for example, instead of
producing more research on the experience of youth behind bars, or more
reports on why young people are locked up, we shifted our gaze to studying
up (Nader 1972) and organized to document how organizations and
institutions work to naturalize carceral outcomes for select youth. Perhaps
more importantly, Smiths charge suggests the myriad of assets we possess
not simply research skills but other labor, research and pedagogical tools
and asks us who we hold ourselves accountable to at the end of the dayour
scholarship or justice movements? Generally, scholars are professionalized to
produce academic products to get and to keep our jobs, to build our expertise
and to advance our disciplines or the field. But what if we built networks that
moved us to askhow am I accountable to movements? To a larger collective
that is struggling to make a way out of no way? If we are conducting work
with human subjects we must go through an Institutional Review Board (IRB)
process (generally to protect the institution from any liability). What if we
developed processes that asked the questionhow is the work linked to other
justice-mobilizing scholarship? Or, how will this work redistribute resources or
access to life pathways? Changing to whom and how we are accountable can
move us away from research of convenience to research that responds to
express material, political or historical need(s). Our networks could develop
pathways between organizations, people and institutions to focus work. For
example, these networks could channel resources, graduate students who
want experience doing research, with people and organizations that need this
labor. Collectivizing moves against so much of what the academy emphasizes
individual expertise and success (or failure)but as resources continue to
diminish inside universities for justice work, pooling our labors is a strength.
This is how we build justice movements, abolition democracies and end the
school-to-prison nexus.
AT: Cap
Prison and it relation ship to capitalism : its not that
simple but Marxism forgets about the darkies . Idenity
politics This recognition should signal the urgent need to
organize the unemployed and lumpenproletariat other
you cant help black brown and other economicly
disadvantaged boddies as an preventive fascism,
Angela Y. Davis,
The legal apparatus designates the black liberation fighter a criminal, prompting Nixon, [Vice President Spiro] Agnew,
[California Governor Ronald] Reagan et al. to proceed to mystify with their demagogy millions of Americans whose senses
have been dulled and whose critical powers have been eroded by the continual onslaught of racist
ideology. As the black liberation movement and other progressive struggles increase in magnitude and
intensity, the judicial system and its extension, the penal system, consequently become key weapons in the
states fight to preserve the existing conditions of class domination, and therefore racism, poverty and
war. In 1951, W. E. B. Du Bois, as Chairman of the Peace Information Center, was indicted by the federal government for failure to register as an
agent of a foreign principal. In assessing this ordeal, which occurred in the ninth decade of his life, he turned his attention to the inhabitants of the
nations jails and prisons: What turns me cold in all this experience is the certainty that thousands of innocent victims are in
jail today because they had neither money nor friends to help them. The eyes of the world were on our trial despite the desperate
efforts of press and radio to suppress the facts and cloud the real issues; the courage and money of friends and of strangers who dared stand for a principle
freed me; but God only knows how many who were as innocent as I and my colleagues are today in hell. They daily stagger out of prison doors
embittered, vengeful, hopeless, ruined. And of this army of the wronged, the proportion of Negroes is frightful. We protect and defend
sensational cases where Negroes are involved. But the great mass of arrested or accused black folk have no defense.
There is desperate need of nationwide organizations to oppose this national racket of railroading to jails and chain
gangs the poor, friendless and black. Almost two decades passed before the realization attained by Du Bois on the occasion of his own
system at its inception. The penitentiary was projected as the locale for doing penitence for an offense against society, the physical and spiritual purging
challenges the symptoms of capitalism, but not its essence. Some Marxists in recent years have tended to
banish criminals and the lumpenproletariat as a whole from the arena of revolutionary struggle. Apart
from the absence of any link binding the criminal to the means of production, underlying this exclusion
has been the assumption that individuals who have recourse to antisocial acts are incapable of developing
the discipline and collective orientation required by revolutionary struggle. With the declassed character of
lumpenproletarians in mind, Marx had stated that they are as capable of the most heroic deeds and the most exalted sacrifices, as of the basest banditry
and the dirtiest corruption. He emphasized the fact that the provisional governments mobile guards under the Paris Commune-some 24,000 troops-were
manifests itself in the judicial-penal complex can lead to a questioning of his own past criminal activity and a re-evaluation of the methods he has used
to survive in a racist and exploitative society. Needless to say, this process is not automatic, it does not occur spontaneously. The persistent
educational work carried out by the prisons political activists plays a key role in developing the political
potential of captive men and women. Prisoners-especially blacks, Chicanos and Puerto Ricans-are
increasingly advancing the proposition that they are political prisoners. They contend that they are
political prisoners in the sense that they are largely the victims of an oppressive politico-economic order,
swiftly becoming conscious of the causes underlying their victimization. The Folsom Prisoners Manifesto of Demands
and Anti-Oppression Platform attests to a lucid understanding of the structures of oppression within the prison-structures which contradict even the
avowed function of the penal institution: The program we are submitted to, under the ridiculous title of rehabilitation, is relative to the ancient stupidity
of pouring water on the drowning man, in as much as we are treated for our hostilities by our program administrators with their hostility for medication.
The Manifesto also reflects an awareness that the severe social crisis taking place in this country, predicated in part on the ever-increasing mass
consciousness of deepening social contradictions, is forcing the political function of the prisons to surface in all its brutality. Their contention that
prisons are being transformed into the fascist concentration camps of modern America, should not be taken
lightly, although it would be erroneous as well as defeatist in a practical sense, to maintain that fascism has irremediably established itself. The point is
this, and this is the truth which is apparent in the Manifesto: the ruling circles of America are expanding and intensifying
repressive measures designed to nip revolutionary movements in the bud as well as to curtail
radicaldemocratic tendencies, such as the movement to end the war in Indochina. The government is not
hesitating to utilize an entire network of fascist tactics, including the monitoring of congressmens
telephone calls, a system of preventive fascism, as [Herbert] Marcuse has termed it, in which the role of the judicial-penal
systems looms large. The sharp edge of political repression, cutting through the heightened militancy of the
masses, and bringing growing numbers of activists behind prison walls, must necessarily pour over into
the contained world of the prison where it understandably acquires far more ruthless forms. It is a
relatively easy matter to persecute the captive whose life is already dominated by a network of
authoritarian mechanisms. This is especially facilitated by the indeterminate sentence policies of many
states, for politically conscious prisoners will incur inordinately long sentences on the original conviction.
According to Louis S. Nelson, warden of the San Quentin Prison, if the prisons of California become
known as schools for violent revolution, the Adult Authority would be remiss in their duty not to keep the
inmates longer (San Francisco Chronicle, May 2, 1971). Where this is deemed inadequate, authorities have recourse to the whole spectrum of
brutal corporal punishment, including out and out murder. At San Quentin, Fred Billingslea was tear gassed to death in February 1970. W. L. Nolen, Alvin
Miller, and Cleveland Edwards were assassinated by a prison guard in January 1970, at Soledad Prison. Unusual and inexplicable suicides have
occurred with incredible regularity in jails and prisons throughout the country. It should be self-evident that the frame-up becomes a powerful weapon
within the spectrum of prison repression, particularly because of the availability of informers, the broken prisoners who will do anything for a price. The
Soledad Brothers and the Soledad Three are leading examples of frame-up victims. Both cases involve militant activists who have been charged with
killing Soledad prison guards. In both cases, widespread support has been kindled within the California prison system. They have served as occasions to
link the immediate needs of the black community with a forceful fight to break the fascist stronghold in the prisons and therefore to abolish the prison
system in its present form.
81-3
The prison operates with the concept that since it has a persons body it has his entire being, because the
whole cannot be greater than the sum of the parts. They put the body in a cell and seem to get some sense of
relief and security from that fact. The idea of prison victory, then is that when the person in jail begins to
act, think, and believe the way they want him to, they have won the battle and the person is then
rehabilitated. But this cannot be the case because those who operate the prisons have failed to examine
their own beliefs thoroughly, and they fail to understand the types of people they attempt to control.
Therefore, even when the prison thinks it has won, there is no victory. There are two types of prisoners. The
largest number are those who accept the legitimacy of the assumptions upon which the society is based.
They wish to acquire the same goals as everybody else: money, power, and conspicuous consumption. In
order to do so, however, they adopt techniques and methods which the society has defined as illegitimate.
When this is discovered such people are put in jail. They may be called illegitimate capitalists since their
aim is to acquire everything capitalist society defines as legitimate. The second type of prisoner is the one
who rejects the legitimacy of the assumptions upon which the society is based. He argues that the people at
the bottom of the society are exploited for the profit and advantage of those at the top. Thus, the oppressed
exist and will always be used to maintain the privileged status of the exploiters. There is no sacredness,
there is no dignity in either exploiting or being exploited. Although this system may make the society
function at a high level of technological efficiency, it is an illegitimate system, since it rests upon the
suffering of humans who are as worthy and as dignified of those who do not suffer. Thus, the second type
of prisoner says that the society is corrupt and illegitimate and must be overthrown. This second type of
prisoner is the political prisoner. They do not accept the legitimacy of the society and cannot
participate in its corruption and exploitation, whether they are in the prison or on the block. The prison
cannot gain a victory over either type of prisoner no matter how hard it tries. The illegitimate capitalist
recognizes that if he plays the game the prison wants him to play he will have his time reduced and be
released to continue his activities. Therefore, he is willing to go through the prison programs and say the
things the prison authorities want to hear. The prison assumes he is rehabilitatedand ready for the
society. The prisoner has really played the prisons game so that he can be released to resume pursuit of his
capitalist goals. There is no victory, for the prisoner from the git-go accepted the idea of the society. He
pretends to accept the idea of the prison as a part of the game he has always played. The prison cannot
gain a victory over the political prisoner because he has nothing to be rehabilitated from or to. He refuses
to accept the legitimacy of the system and refuses to participate. To participate is to admit that the society
is legitimate because of its exploitation of the oppressed. This is the idea which the political prisoner does
not accept for which he has been imprisoned, and this is the reason why he cannot cooperate with the
system. The political prisoner will, in fact, serve his time just as will the illegitimate capitalist. Yet the
idea which motivated and sustained the political prisoner rests in the people. All the prison has is the
body. The dignity and beauty of man rests in the human spirit which makes him more than simply a
physical being. This spirit must never be suppressed for exploitation by others. As long as the people
recognize the beauty of their human spirits and move against suppression and exploitation, they will be
carrying out one of the most beautiful ideas of all time. Because the human whole is much greater than
the sum of its parts. The ideas will always be among the people. The prison cannot be victorious because
walls, bars and guards cannot conquer or hold down an idea.
AT: to school af
CP: affirmative action for low income to Ivy league
universities funding and access.
Gordon Telling Poor, Smart Kids That All It Takes Is Hard Work to Be
as Successful as Their Wealthy Peers Is a Blatant Lie
http://atlantablackstar.com/2015/06/03/telling-poor-smart-kids-takes-hardTaylor
work-successful-wealthy-peers-blatant-lie ,
2015
And if youre one of the many Americans that believes there isnt much
universities can do about that sad fact, youre sadly mistaken. Americas
top-notch, elite universities have the money and funding to open their doors
to low-income students and help guide them to graduation but they rarely
decide to do so. A report by Insider Higher Ed revealed that while Harvard
University has an endowment of roughly $43 billion, making it the wealthiest
college in the country, it hasnt dedicated a significant amount of funding to
making sure intelligent low-income students have the opportunity to fill their
prestigious halls. The trend is the same for other wealthy and prestigious
universities across the country. Yale University and the University of Notre
Dame have $25.4 billion and $9.5 billion in cash and investments,
respectively, but had the lowest portion of Pell recipients among this group,
at 12 percent, according to the report that took a closer look at the countrys
10 wealthiest universities. Columbia University, with cash and investments
of $9.9 billion, enrolled the highest number of Pell recipients, at 30 percent.
Harvard, with its $43 billion in wealth, trailed behind at 19 percent. All the
numbers are below the national average of 36 percent. Since students that
graduate from such universities often go on to earn more than their peers,
the lack of low-income students being welcomed to such universities only
works to widen the income gap. And, based on the research reported by
Inside Higher Ed, these universities arent interested in doing much about it.
We are spending the most money as a society educating the wealthiest
people, Ronald Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research
Institute, told Inside Higher Ed. The people who need help the most are the
most disadvantaged. They end up going to the universities that spend the
smallest amount per student. The result is an unfortunate and yet
seemingly endless cycle that keeps low-income students trapped in poverty
regardless of whether or not they did manage to work twice as hard as their
wealthy peers.
Case
Single issue focus fails , dont care about the af they just
wanna save children which force to live with the frames
and social construction of youth
Erica R. Meiners ,Education and Gender and Womens Studies, Northeastern Illinois
University, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11256-011-0187-9/fulltext.html Ending
the School-to-Prison Pipeline/Building Abolition Futures,
2011
Research and organizing within the framework of the school-toprison pipeline struggles with the tensions involved in working with
and challenging a portion of a system and a structure that is flawed;
this becomes particularly troubling as this labor and focus is reliant
on prioritizing a category, youth, that is also constructed and
flexible. Scholarship and advocacy in this field often starts with a
shared understanding that youth are diferent than adults. This a
priori case for a kind of exceptionalism creates problems for both
wider justice movements, and for work with youth as well .These
categorieschildhood, youth, juvenile, adultare anything but
natural or static. Debates about where to draw the chronological
(and culpable) line repeatedly surface in mainstream media; less
visible yet equally important is the evidence used to rationalize any
boundary by the media, child savers, psychological experts and
other parties across the political spectrum. For example, emerging
adulthood, the new development category that elongates
adolescence, surfaced in 2010 in mainstream media at the same
time the Supreme Court debated the constitutionality of sentencing
juveniles to life without parole (LWOP) for non-murder crimes ( the
death penalty for juveniles was abolished in the U.S. in 2005 ).
Science and experience were used to scafold both constructions.
Emerging adulthood, psychologists identify, is demarcated by
delay of common adult experiencesemployment, leaving the
parental home, marriage, childbirthand other seemingly
naturalized life-stage markers. In writing the Courts 6-3 decision to render LWOP unconstitutional for those who commit
crimes under age 18, the New York Times cites Justice Stephenss decision: Knowledge accumulates, he wrote. We learn, sometimes, from our mistakes (as cited in
Liptak 2010). Neurological research was also circulated in material that supported efforts to render the death penalty unconstitutional for juveniles by the American Bar
Association (2004). Psychology, experience and neurology legitimate delay, and are organized as evidence that juveniles need protection and should not receive the
death penalty, or that 26-year-olds (emerging adults) should be able to continue to access their parents health insurance and remain dependent on state or parental
2011
paid to think is to ask what the circulation of these identities makes visible and what is obscured. Yet, as I write this I am daily reminded of the unequal ways in which state
2011
Ferguson argues, the state is not a static entity: The state, in this conception, is not the name of an actor,
it is the name of a way of tying together, multiplying, and coordinating power relations, a kind of knotting
or congealing of power (1994, p. 273). By alternatives to incarceration and punishment, I refer to a range
of programs like the culture of calm in Chicago Public Schools (Huston 2010), and more widely, the
limited moves in some school systems to include forms of restorative justice, and the extension in many
I also
include the growing number of programs that are often mandated
for at risk youth: anger management (men) and self-esteem
(women). Academics and those invested in prison reform (or
educational reform) are often called to support these alternatives,
and we often evaluate, grant write and endorse these options
because these are alternatives to prison or detention for young
people (Haney 2010, Carr 2010). Yet these alternatives, provided by
community-based, non-profit entities that wield considerable power,
participate in forming a neoliberal state capable of government
from a distance (Rose 1999). It is not immediately clear whether
these programs extend or soften the carceral state, or if they are
alternatives. The relationships between these programs and the
state are nuanced. These alternatives form networks of power that
remind us that the decentralization key to neoliberal policies does
not mean that the state withdraws; rather, the states relationships
and abilities to negotiate power, to govern from a distance, shift
and potentially expand. A key concern is whether young people are
made more vulnerable by supporting and implementing, for
example, the proliferation of anger management programs in lieu of
in-school detentions. I use the geographer Jennifer Wolchs term,
shadow state, to describe the foundations, non-profit
organizations, for-profit entities and other non-governmental forces
that essentially fulfill functions that were once identified as the
purview of the state (Wolch 1990). Instances of the shadow state
include when tax exempt private foundations and not-for-profit
corporations fund and run schools that are still legally framed as
public school (for example charter schools where students must be
admitted via lottery). Men and women are paroled from prison and
states to include boot camps and military programs into their menu of public educational options.
receive housing from religious non-profit associations and are courtmandated to counseling services conducted by in-training
apprentices from the local for-profit colleges and institutes. These
service agencies, often stafed by women in low-paying non-union
jobs, do not have to be accountable to any public, just to its
unelected board members, or the invisible or too visible big-ticket
donors. The constellation of these organizations forms a shadow
state to deliver central services, and also participates in changing
what counts as the state. In the realm of alternatives to incarceration or punishment,
arenas of service continue to emerge, often linked as forms of therapeutic self-governance: anger
management programs, self-esteem workshops, etc. In her study of women locked up in community-based
alternatives to incarceration, and staff members who work in these programs, Haney (2010) documents
the strength and growth of therapeutic governance, or the augmentation of recovery programs and
cultures within the carceral state, particularly for populations, such as women, pregnant teens and
1991
Topicality
Topical version of the af
Lindsey M.
Burke, What Congress and States Can Do to Reform Education Policy, Heritage
2015
2013
The relief ofered through this waiver pact between states and
Washington is a ruse; any short-term relief that states gain comes at
the price of ceding unprecedented authority over education decisions to the U.S. Department of Education. Neither a wholesale
reauthorization of the massive NCLB nor strings-attached waivers
from its regulations is the way to reduce federal intervention and
restore excellence in education. Members of Congress,
superintendents, parents, and taxpayers recognize that schools
need genuine flexibility from Washington mandates. The Academic
Partnerships Lead Us to Success (A-PLUS) Act would allow states to
completely opt out of the programs that fall under No Child Left
Behind and direct dollars to their states most press ing education
needs. Such an approach would help downsize federal intervention
in education, place decisions about education spending and
programs in the hands of state and local leaders, reduce the
bureaucratic compliance burden, and begin to restore federalism in
education. A Half-Century of Growing Federal Intervention. No Child Left Behind is a
continuation of nearly five decades of growing federal intervention in education. NCLBis the seventh
reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which was signed into law in 1965
by President Lyndon Johnson. The ESEA was the education component of Johnsons Great Society
initiative, and began the practice of compensatory education. In the wake of ESEAs enactment, the federal
government began compensating low-income school districts, primarily through Title I of the law, in an
effort to narrow achievement gaps between disadvantaged students and their more advantaged peers.
The original ESEA included five titles, 32 pages, and roughly $1 billion in federal funding. Programs and
spending under the ESEA grew throughout the 1970s and 1980s, marking a shift from the compensatory
model toward attempts at systemic education reform from Washington. That shift became particularly
acute in the 1990s when the focus became standards-based reform. President Bill Clinton signed his ESEA
reauthorizationthe Improving Americas Schools Act (IASA) of 1994into law, after having ushered in
companion legislation known as Goals 2000.1 Prior to 1994, education funding targeted categorical
programs with specific purposes. The coordination of the Improving Americas Schools Act and Goals 2000
funded school restructuring that influence[d] the entire school curriculum and culture. Goals 2000 [was]
essentially a portrait of the Clinton administrations model public school, complete with social services.2
Moreover, the IASA for the first time required states to establish performance-based accountability
systems, marking a shift toward outcomes-based reform and further federal intervention.3 In 1999, in
the face of growing federal interference in local school policy, conservatives in Congress introduced an
alternative: the Academic Achievement for All Act (Straight As). Straight As proposed allowing states to
consolidate funding under ESEA programs in order to drastically reduce the bureaucratic red tape that had
accumulated under the ESEA, and became the foundation of the Academic Partnerships Lead Us to
Success (A-PLUS) Act. American students, principals, teachers, and taxpayers never had the opportunity
to benefit from the flexibility that Straight As offered, which only progressed through the House. Two years
later, as the seventh reauthorization of ESEA, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 was signed into law by
President George W. Bush.