This is intercepted.

I'm Changeri Kumineka and this is intercepted.

That was talking to Ghost by my man, Ady Carson and myself.

Welcome to part two of our two part interview with iconic Geographer, organizer and legendary prison abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore.

Ruthie is professor of geography and director of the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at the CUNY Graduate Center.

She's co-founder of several abolitionist organizations including critical resistance and she's author of the prize winning book Golden Gulag, prisons, surplus, crisis, and opposition in globalizing California.

She's also finishing up a couple of new books including Change Everything, racial capitalism and the case for abolition, forthcoming from hay market.

This is part two of our conversation with Ruthie. If you miss part one, I would strongly encourage you to go check that out and then return to this episode.

As listeners will recall, in part one, Ruthie dissects and debunks the claim that systems of organized violence produce public safety.

She traces the ideological nature of the concept of crime and how prisons and policing have expanded and absorbed the function of other institutions of social welfare.

The point Ruthie makes about police taking over work in many areas of life such as school counseling, mental health, and social work.

Reminds me of a point that professor Mikol Siegel makes in her book Violence Work.

Siegel says that when you take away the role that the police have stolen from other areas and look at what's left, it quickly becomes clear that the police don't really have a specific job of their own, at least not one that improves the lives of working class people.

On the question of whether police are effective at preventing harm, I'm still reeling from a much better question that Ruthie asks, which is this.

Under what kinds of social relations and relationships are people more likely to do harm to each other?

But even under our current arrangement, other countries have proven that other kinds of workers are better than heavily armed police and dealing with those who may intend to hurt people.

Other kinds of workers can march alongside parades and assist people in health emergencies.

Other kinds of workers are better equipped to investigate sexual assault and domestic violence and support survivors.

Siegel says the only real job the police have and the real reason they're hired is to perform violence work.

The graphic displays of violence that we're seeing on our television screens and in our streets are not a departure from their work.

Police are hired to produce spectacular dominance that forces us to submit to an unequal status quo.

Of course, the violence that police enact is only the surface of their misconduct and toxic effect on the lives of those who wind up in their hands.

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