Warfare in the American Homeland: Policing and Prison in a Penal Democracy [Paperback]

Joy James (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0822339234 | ISBN-13: 978-0822339236 | Publication Date: July 20, 2007

The United States has more than two million people locked away in federal, state, and local prisons. Although most of the U.S. population is non-Hispanic and white, the vast majority of the incarcerated—and policed—is not. In this compelling collection, scholars, activists, and current and former prisoners examine the sensibilities that enable a penal democracy to thrive. Some pieces are new to this volume; others are classic critiques of U.S. state power. Through biography, diary entries, and criticism, the contributors collectively assert that the United States wages war against enemies abroad and against its own people at home.

Contributors consider the interning or policing of citizens of color, the activism of radicals, structural racism, destruction and death in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, and the FBI Counterintelligence Program designed to quash domestic dissent. Among the first-person accounts are an interview with Dhoruba Bin Wahad, a Black Panther and former political prisoner; a portrayal of life in prison by a Plowshares nun jailed for her antinuclear and antiwar activism; a discussion of the Puerto Rican Independence Movement by one of its members, now serving a seventy-year prison sentence for sedition; and an excerpt from a 1970 letter by the Black Panther George Jackson chronicling the abuses of inmates in California’s Soledad Prison. Warfare in the American Homeland also includes the first English translation of an excerpt from a pamphlet by Michel Foucault and others. They argue that the 1971 shooting of George Jackson by prison guards was a murder premeditated in response to human-rights and justice organizing by black and brown prisoners and their supporters.

Contributors. Hishaam Aidi, Dhoruba Bin Wahad (Richard Moore), Marilyn Buck, Marshall Eddie Conway, Susie Day, Daniel Defert, Madeleine Dwertman, Michel Foucault, Carol Gilbert, Sirène Harb, Rose Heyer, George Jackson, Joy James, Manning Marable, William F. Pinar, Oscar Lòpez Rivera, Dylan Rodríguez, Jared Sexton, Catherine vön Bulow, Laura Whitehorn, Frank B. Wilderson III

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The American homeland is a place produced by constant warfare, both domestic and international. The United States is the world’s leading jailer, with 2.3 million people in cages today. These essays detail how the continual intensification of criminalization is grounded in the principles of racism, expropriation, and aggression that centrally organize the land of the ever-diminishing free.”—Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California

About the Author

Joy James is John B. and John T. McCoy Presidential Professor of Africana Studies and College Professor in Political Science at Williams College. She is the author of Shadowboxing: Representations of Black Feminist Politics and Resisting State Violence: Radicalism, Gender, and Race in U.S. Culture and the editor of The New Abolitionists: (Neo)Slave Narratives and Contemporary Prison Writings and Imprisoned Intellectuals: America’s Political Prisoners Write on Life, Liberation, and Rebellion.

Product Details

• Paperback: 376 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press Books (July 20, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822339234
• ISBN-13: 978-0822339236
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #365,558 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The U.S. police state, September 16, 2007

By 

Preston C. Enright (Denver, CO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Warfare in the American Homeland: Policing and Prison in a Penal Democracy (Paperback)

Congratulations to Duke University Press for publishing this excellent collection on the growing prison industrial complex of the United States, which is also being exported worldwide. There are 2.3 million people in cages here in the "land of the free." Many people are there due to a war on non-corporate drugs, involving non-violent offenders.
Private financial institutions like Lehman Brothers are floating the bonds to build more prisons, Halliburton is making money building detention centers, and California has budgeted new prison construction through the year 2040. Meanwhile, the U.S. has seen 288 colleges close since 1990, as higher education becomes cost prohibitive for much of the population. More people see their career options as being in either the military or the police or maybe the CIA/DHS/ICE/NSA/FBI/DIA . . . an authoritarian corporate dystopia is developing before our eyes.
Children of Men (Widescreen Edition)
We need more books like "Warfare in the American Homeland" to wake up a sleepy populace which has been hypnotized by right-wing radio, perpetual "big games", and tv dramas like "Law and Order" that help to normalize a police state.

There's big money in the building of prisons, and in exploiting their labor once they're in prison. Corporatism needs to end.
The Corporation
The Perpetual Prisoner Machine: How America Profits from Crime