Manga Review: Lady Snowblood Vol. 1: The Deep-Seated Grudge Pt. 1
Manga Review: Lady Snowblood Vol. 1: The Deep-Seated Grudge Pt. 1
Manga Review: Lady Snowblood Vol. 1: The Deep-Seated Grudge Pt. 1 story by Kazuo Koike, art by Kazuo Kamimura
It is the Meiji Era, and Japan is rapidly modernizing. Some have even suggested abolishing the Japanese language in favor of one easier to communicate in! But some traditions are more deeply rooted than others, like revenge. If you can find her, and pay her exorbitant price, the assassin…
Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Carceri d'Invenzione, 1749, etching and sulphur tint. This etching is a part of a series of invented prisons, which include torture instruments, wandering lost prisoners and a surreal illusionistic depictions of architectural space. In such dramatic imaginative scenes as this it is not difficult to forget that Piranesi started his training as a theatrical stage designer.
*sigh* I can’t believe yall are gonna make me say this depressing shit again, but the majority of rapists and child molesters already don’t go to prison. Only a small fraction of sexual assaults ever get reported, only a small fraction of those ever lead to arrest, and an even smaller factor of them ever get convicted and face prison time.
You repeatedly ask prison abolitionists “but what about the rapists?” Well I’m asking you, what about them? What does prison do to prevent sexual assault when most of our politicians and police are the ones committing the assaults? When prisoners themselves are sexually assaulted, often times by the guards?
Stop falling for the propaganda that prisons keep dangerous people away from you. They don’t. The dangerous people get to walk around every day with guns and badges.
A group of students entered the offices of Columbia University President Bollinger monday morning to deliver a letter demanding an end to the university’s $8 million dollar investment in Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), GEO Group, and a number of other corporations involved in the private prison industry.
The student activists, according to their press release, launched Columbia Prison Divest:
Wishing to hold their university accountable to its commitment against discrimination, and visited the President’s office hoping to discuss how these kinds of investments were affecting their own communities, which are communities of color, LGBTQ, international and working class communities, disproportionately represented in prisons.
The student-led campaign has advanced three core demands:
Columbia divest all shares from private prison giant CCA, the British multinational security services company G4S, and the second largest private prison company in the US, the GEO Group;
Columbia’s fund managers reach out to 36 specific companies in which the university is invested –which collectively over two thirds of CCA and the GEO Group – insisting that they too divest from these private prison giants;
Columbia provide fully disclose its investments – information on only 10 percent of which students can access – to the university community.
They’ve requested that President Bollinger respond by this Friday, Feb 7.
5 truths about immigration and criminalization that are more important than Bieber
by Isabelle Nastasia and Jenny Marks
Teen pop singer Justin Bieber was arrested last week in Florida on charges of drunk driving and resisting arrest. Because he is living in the U.S. on an O-1B Work Visa, many people reacted by demanding that he be deported. Given the American peoples’ affinity for organizing around inconsequential causes, it is no surprise that the “Deport Bieber” White House petition hit 100K signatures this week.
While Bieber’s case has captured public attention, there are a few things that we could be paying attention to instead! In his State of the Union address, President Obama didn’t mention deportations once. He commented vaguely that we need to “get immigration reform done this year,” as he has said every year since he’s been in office. (The not-so-Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill, however, remains nowhere.)
As a result of the 100K-strong petition calling for Bieber to be be “removed from our society”, the White House is required to make a statement. As the Beliebers wait anxiously for their response, we’d like to put forth five points that are helpful in understanding the limitations of immigration reform:
1. No One is Illegal; No One is Undeserving
The United States is a settler-colonial state with a revolving door for opening and closing borders to maximize the exploitation of undocumented workers. Criminalization, as a tool for social control, has always existed here in connection to the terms of citizenship – determining who is entitled to basic rights and freedoms and who is not. Our laws legitimize the forcible removal and confinement of some groups of people who are deemed undeserving. This is why, today, more than 2.3 million people are in jails and prisons across the United States, and why more than 2 million people have been deported since Obama was sworn in.
The people deemed disposable have been constructed as “illegal”: dependent, and criminal. This image is mobilized to justify unimaginable violence, from the continuing torture of inmates at Guantanamo Bay, to countless ICE raids and deportations, to the murder and sexual violence of migrants at the border. Immigration legislation reflects this undeserving/deserving dichotomy by explicitly excluding those who have criminal records or show signs of “moral turpitude.” For example, individuals are only eligible to apply for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) if they have never been convicted of a felony or “significant misdemeanor.” Significant misdemeanors include drug related crimes, burglary, and any conviction for which the individual has served more than 90 days in prison.
We have to ask ourselves how the process of criminalization turns people into criminals. Because our criminal-legal system is systemically racist, classist, ageist, and xenophobic, it is no surprise that low income youth of color are disproportionately represented at every step of the way. Youth of color are more likely than white youth to be stopped by the police, arrested, charged, convicted, sentenced to adult prisons, and to be sentenced to prison for more time. This is despite the fact that white youth are more likely, for example, to use drugs and alcohol than Black or Latino youth, and it’s also why (let’s be real) Justin Bieber will not be deported, despite possible convictions of multiple felonies. Undocumented youth, who know this all too well, have been making #Undeportable memes go viral on social media, drawing further attention to the racist double-standard in the prison and immigration system.
In the movement that goes beyond Comprehensive Immigration Reform and instead seeks the destruction of borders, we must resist replicating neoliberal framing of the “undeserving” and “deserving” immigrant. We must instead recognize that all people impacted by borders, prisons, and policing are facing extreme violence, and that access to survival should not be conditional. Instead of centering the folks in the movement who are the most “normative” – the straight, college-educated, nuclear family members – we should center those who are the most marginalized and impacted by violence. We have to stop organizing around exclusion and claims to innocence, and instead confront the process of criminalization as inherently violent.
2. Sustaining Communities is Extraordinary Labor
High-profile immigration cases like that of Bieber (and John Lennon almost 40 years ago,) expose the visa system’s biases towards certain types of work. As a O-1 Visa holder, Bieber is granted ability to live and work in the US because of “extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business or athletics.” What if we flipped the script on the language of “extraordinary ability”? What if we held up the incredible labor that it takes to, for example, cross borders, as well as the work it takes to build, support and sustain communities in the face of structural racism and xenophobia?
O-1 visas are reserved for immigrants with “special talents that allegedly cannot be carried out by an American citizen,” reflecting the misconception that immigrants are coming to the states to “steal our jobs.” The discourse of “stealing citizens’ jobs” is particularly violent, and disturbingly ironic, because the projects of colonialism, imperialism and neoliberalism have stolen the lives, land and labor of people from the Global South, forcing many to migrate here in the first place.
For example, neoliberal “free” trade agreements like NAFTA have destroyed Central American economies, while setting up the U.S. economy to depend on exploiting the labor of undocumented workers. More than a million farm workers (over half of the U.S. agricultural labor force) are currently undocumented, meaning that they are especially vulnerable to wage exploitation, abuse, environmental health hazards, and unsafe work conditions, all without access to quality and affordable healthcare. Consistent labor under these conditions takes extraordinary ability.This is why we must continue building a labor movement that prioritizes the most marginalized workers and advocates for a living wage for every kind of work.
3. Really, Treat Us All Like Bieber
Thepetition to “Treat Us All Like Justin Bieber” points out that Bieber had consumed alcohol (underage), smoked marijuana, was charged with driving without a valid license, driving under the influence, and resisting arrest. Despite this set of illegal shenanigans, Bieber was promptly released on bail and has since left to frolic on the beach in Panama with a supermodel.
While “deserving immigrants” like Bieber get off with a gentle slap on the wrist, 34,000 immigrants (a Congressional quota) are jailed in ICE detention centers on an average day for far less severe crimes. In fiscal year 2011, 46% of those deported were convicted of drug-related or criminal traffic offenses (including DUI’s). If we treated all immigrants like Bieber, not one among those 87,000 would have been deported. If we treated all immigrants like Bieber, everyone would be given the respect of personal choice, access to high quality health care, and access to effective drug treatment.
The inequity in government responses to illegal drug use points to the need for addressing drug treatment as a public health responsibility. Harm reduction activists and organizations have been leading the charge on this for decades, pointing to the disparities in funding for drug law enforcement and drug treatment. They have also advocated for models of care that prioritize health and safety and called for the destigmatization of drug users. We must also recognize, in the context of immigration, the connections between oppression-related stresses, traumas, and drug use. Given that minor drug crimes are used as justification to deport tens of thousands each year, the immigrant justice movement must call for the decriminalization of drug use and build on alliances with other criminalized communities.
4. Queering the Immigrant Justice Movement
Theimage of families being torn apart by deportations has been mobilized by immigration-focused non-profits and the mainstream media alike. The horror of families being forcibly divided is unquestionably real, and yet there are a number of concerns that arise when this image is centered at the expense of other narratives in the immigrant justice movement.
Focusing on families reinforces the inherent non-criminality of children, who have captured the nation’s empathy in particular. This emphasis, unfortunately, has the danger of implying that undocumented adults are criminal and that therefore deportation is a legitimate punishment for them. In addition, the need to “keep families together” has been taken up by ICE, which uses this justification as one of the primary reasons to detain and deport entire families.
The focus on (hetero)normative families also erases the existence of queer immigrants. Queer and trans* immigrants often do not have family-based support, or family-based paths to citizenship, because of rejection or estrangement. They are also often denied access to legal status through marriage. These barriers, compounded by the additional barriers of police profiling, employment discrimination, and lack of access to gender affirming legal services and healthcare make trans* immigrants much more vulnerable to profiling, detainment and deportation.
Working within a no-borders/abolitionist framework means rejecting reforms that continue to be exclusionary or that might actually worsen conditions for some undocumented people. This is why we are critical of the demand for a federal marriage equality bill that would allow queer bi-national couples to obtain residency and health benefits via their partner. Subscribing to an assimilation model means that we will continue to exclude some of the most marginalized.
The campaign for marriage equality continues to exclude those couples in which neither partner has health insurance or citizenship, as well as people in relationships that are non-monogamous. Instead of assimilation into normative notions of family, we should be advocating for expansive definitions of family that include queers, trans* folks, chosen families, adopted families, and “blood” families. We should be advocating for universal free health care that will cover all individuals regardless of marital status. Marriage equality and other liberal reforms will not end poverty and racism, nor are they a solution to the root causes of xenophobia and heterosexism. Luckily, we can look to undocuqueers, like LulúMartinezandJulio Salgado, for models of organizing that foreground queer immigrant experience.
5. Walls Turned on Their Sides are Bridges
Drawing connections between abolitionist and no-borders perspectives is helpful in recognizing the ways that immigration and incarceration are intertwined. Both are legal means of state violence, both involve the forcible movement of bodies, and both set up categories that divide us. An abolitionist vision, then, must look forward to the world without innocent/guilty dichotomies, without national citizenship and arbitrary borders, and without prisons.
Abolition means acknowledging that borders and prisons are themselves structures of violence that cannot be redeemed or reformed; that ICE detention centers and jails are home to some of the most dangerous conditions for human life; and that this form of state violence is the “real” terrorism of which we should be concerned. Abolition means rejecting all means of criminalization and exile, and beliebing that all people “deserve” clean air and water, freedom of movement, and the possibility of full lives. As we tear down oppressive institutions and build up communities that nurture our whole selves, we remember: “Las paredes vueltas de lado son puentes.” (“Walls turned on their sides are bridges.”)
We believe fully in the capacity of collective movement to challenge the permanence of prisons and borders. We look to queer and trans* abolition-oriented groups, like the Against Equality Collective and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, for concrete lessons on creating projects of accountability and justice, and to undocuqueer organizers for models of organizing that are truly intersectional and leave no part of our identities behind. We also look to groups like the Safe Outside the System Collective and the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project for small scale examples of prefigurative institutions that are building alternatives to the current system of punishment.
Although a future without walls and cages might currently seem impossible, as James Baldwin reminded us in The Fire Next Time, “the impossible is the least that one can demand.”
Follow Isabelle (@IzzyNastasia) and Jenny (@JennyMarkz) on Twitter!
more people would be for prison abolition if they just tried to send mail to an inmate even once
for almost a year now i’ve been trying to send a copy of the literary magazine i edit to an inmate who requested one. his prison prohibits any written materials that so much as mention drugs, weapons, criminal activity, or malicious violence of any sort. i’ve been poring over what’s available of the 95 volumes my magazine has printed over the years, and of those found 3 that might pass inspection. the first two were sent back undelivered two months after i sent them because one had a short story that alluded to a playground fight, and the other a poem that used the word “fist” in a nonviolent context. The third was returned for the stated reason that its contents depicted the use of firearms. i reread the entire issue, there’s not a single gun mentioned in all its 120 pages.
while going back and forth with this guy trying to figure out how to get a copy of the magazine in his hands, two of my letters bounced back for unspecified reasons. i learned that inmates are not given their correspondents’ original letters, but scanned copies, often poorly reproduced and sometimes illegible. these people aren’t even granted the ink their loved ones used to pen their messages, or to hold in their hands the paper their loved ones held, if they’re able to receive their words at all.
The Arizona State Prison Complex - Perryville is a mixed security state prison for women, located in Goodyear, Maricopa County Arizona. The facility houses over 2,300 inmates in eight housing units divided by security class, including administrative segregation and death row. As of February 2018, there are three women under penalty of death in Arizona, although the state has not executed a woman since the botched hanging of Eva Dugan in 1930. Perryville has a troubling history in recent years of failing to provide basic medical care for its inmates, including a breakout of scabies and other unexplained rashes and skin conditions that went untreated for months. In 2009, 48 year old inmate Marcia Powell was found dead after being left in an outside cage in 107 degree weather for four hours. An autopsy showed that she suffered from first and second degree burns all over her body and a core temperature of 108 degrees. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute corrections staff, despite their policy that limits outside confinement to a maximum of two hours.
Notable inmates at ASPC Perryville include:
Sammantha Allen - Sentenced to death in 2017 for the murder of her 10 year old cousin Ame Deal, who died after being padlocked in a metal footlocker outside overnight. Sammantha’s husband John was also sentenced to death, and three other family members are serving prison sentences for child abuse related to Ame’s death.
Wendi Andriano - Sentenced to death in 2004 for the murder of her terminally ill husband, Joe, who had been diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma. On October 8th, 2000, Wendi called 911 claiming that her terminally ill husband was dying. When paramedics showed up, she turned them away, telling them that Joe had a do not resuscitate order. An hour later, she called 911 again and claimed that she had stabbed and beaten her husband to death in self-defense. Given that her husband was weak from chemotherapy and sodium azide poisoning, authorities didn’t buy her story and she was charged with his murder.
Shawna Forde - Sentenced to death in 2011 for the murders of Raul Flores and his 9 year old daughter Brisenia. In May of 2009, Forde and three accomplices went to the Flores home and claimed that they were law enforcement officers looking for fugitives. Forde had heard a rumor that Flores was a drug dealer and had a secret stash of $4000 in the house, which she wanted to steal in order to fund operations for the Minutemen American Defense, an organization she founded. Her accomplices were also convicted of the murders and were sentenced to death and life imprisonment.
And -
Jodi Arias - Sentenced to life in prison in 2015 for the murder of Travis Alexander.
