Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Jacobin-43 40 1 41
Jacobin-43 40 1 41
Jacobin-43 40 1 41
C O M
LO W E R T H E C R I M E R AT E
Distress due to poverty gives the
worker only the choice of starving
slowly, killing himself quickly, or
taking what he needs where he finds
it — in plain English, stealing. And
it is not surprising that the majority
prefer to steal rather than starve to
death or commit suicide.
Nicole Aschoff is on the editorial Andrew Fishman is an investi- Fergal Kinney is a freelance music
board at Jacobin. She is the author gative journalist based in Rio de and culture journalist based in
of The Smartphone Society: Janeiro, Brazil. Manchester.
Technology, Power, and Resistance
in the New Gilded Age and The
Benjamin Fogel is a historian and Roger Lancaster is a professor of
contributing editor at Africa Is a anthropology and cultural studies
New Prophets of Capital.
Country and Jacobin. at George Mason University and
Jaclynn Ashly is an independent author of Sex Panic and the
journalist currently based in the
Marie Gottschalk is professor of
Punitive State.
political science at the University
Dominican Republic.
of Pennsylvania and the author of Branko Marcetic is a Jacobin
Teo Ballvé is an assistant Caught: The Prison State and the staff writer and the author of
professor at Colgate University Lockdown of American Politics. Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against
and the author of The Frontier Joe Biden.
Effect: State Formation and Violence
Owen Hatherley is the culture
in Colombia.
editor of Tribune. He is the author Cecília Olliveira is a Shuttleworth
of several books, including Foundation fellow and a former
Ross Barkan is a writer and Red Metropolis: Socialism and the contributing editor at the Intercept
journalist in New York City. He Government of London. Brasil.
is a Jacobin columnist.
Donald Hughes is a writer living Tashan Reed covers the Las
Marta Fana is the author of Non è in Cobourg, Ontario. Vegas Raiders for the Athletic.
lavoro, è sfruttamento (“This Isn’t
Work, It’s Exploitation”).
Eileen Jones is a film critic at Adaner Usmani is an assistant
Jacobin and author of Filmsuck, professor of sociology and social
Daniel Finn is the features editor USA. She also hosts a podcast studies at Harvard University.
at Jacobin. He is the author of One called Filmsuck. He serves on the Catalyst editorial
Man’s Terrorist: A Political History board.
of the IRA.
Data Attributions — Page 41: FBI United Crime Reporting Program; Page 43: CDC; Page 45: United Nations; Page 46: US data from CDC, International Data
from the United Nations, 2018; Page 90–91: “Crime in the United States 2015,” Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2015; Economic Policy Institute, 2017; Statista, 2021;
Marianne Levine, Politico, 2018.
Photo Attributions —
Page 25: Photo by David Fenton/Getty Images; Page 26: Photo by Frank Hurley/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images; Page 28: Village
Preservation; Page 30–31: Photo by David Fenton/Getty Images; Page 32: TriCollege Libraries Digital Collections; Page 35: Getty Images; Page 36: Interscope
Records - 2Pac – Dear Mama / Old School (Vinyl) at Discogs. Discogs. Accessed 4 August 2017; Page 49: Photo by Ben Davies/LightRocket via Getty Images; Photo
by Tom Stoddart/Getty Images; Page 50: Photo by Wally McNamee/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images; Photo By BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Imag-
es; Page 53: Photo by Bettmann / Contributor via Getty Images; Photo by John van Hasselt/Sygma via Getty Images; Page: 54: Photo by Claude Urraca/Sygma
via Getty Images Photo; Photo by Alfredo Estrella/AFP via Getty Images; Page 57: Photo by David Furst/AFP via Getty Images; Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty
Images; Page 58: Photo by Heidi Spöhel/RDB/ullstein bild via Getty Images; Photo by Bill Gentile/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images; Page 61: Photo by United Art-
ists/Getty Images; Page 64: Photo by Richard E. Aaron/Redferns; Page 66: From Creating Defensible Space, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Office of Policy Development and Research, April 1996, page 79; Page 68: Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic; Page 92: Photo by Zahim Mohd/NurPhoto via Getty
Images; Page 95: Bettmann via Getty Images; Page 96–97: Photo DigitalGlobe via Getty Images via Getty Images; Page 99: Photo by Pat Young/Pix/Michael
Ochs Archives/Getty Images; Page 100: Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.
Features
ISSUE 43 FA L L 2 0 2 1
When Lula and the Workers’ From the Wolf of Wall Street
Party took power in Brazil, they in New York to Jho Low
had a plan to take on crime and in Malaysia, globalization
the power of the police. Their unleashed a world of well-
failure helped undermine their connected and superrich
entire program. con artists.
Departments
Refusing to stop there, Glazek rising. Last year, 21,570 people that doesn’t render perceptions
makes an unequivocally liber- were murdered in the United about rising crime less politically
tarian argument for a new, States — the largest single-year significant — nor the fact that
private sector–based criminal surge in the country’s history, crime seems more concentrated
justice system that would be and an increase of 4,901 killings than ever in poor areas. “Hey,
achieved by simply letting all the from 2019. Last year also saw murders are way up — but
inmates out and forcing “the the highest number of gun deaths robberies are down!” are not
free market” to clean up the mess, in history. The overwhelming exactly comforting words.
what he approvingly refers to as majority of these deaths were
Polling shows that 86 percent of
“a deregulation of criminal concentrated in America’s poorest
all Americans want the police to
punishment” and “letting the and most racially segregated
spend the same amount of time or
private sector determine how best neighborhoods. It’s not surprising
more in their neighborhood. But
to prevent ourselves from getting that commentators are speculating
whatever conservatives say, that
robbed.” Or, you can merely about whether we’re set for a
doesn’t mean there’s a budding
arm yourself and protect your return to the “bad old days” of the
“Blue Lives Matter” coalition in
own. This isn’t too different than 1980s and ’90s.
the country. Americans also
arguments coming from the
While there is no simple explana- indicate that they want a different
militia movement in America or
tion for this rise, the political right type of policing — 58 percent
the chainsaw-wielding Colombian
is quick to blame the development say that policing requires major
paramilitaries that arrive in a
on growing anti-police sentiment changes, and 79 percent think
village promising to restore order.
following Black Lives Matter police violence is a serious problem.
“In high finance, the laissez-faire protests. Facing increased
What should we have to say about
approach has proved to be a scrutiny, they say, cops have
crime, then, an issue that looks
disaster,” Glazek says. “For petty become hesitant to intervene and
like it will be an important part
crime, it would be a boon.” actually stop crimes; as a result,
of politics for years to come in the
criminals are gaining confidence
No mention is made in this story United States and beyond?
that they can break the law with
of the high level of enduring
impunity. But security concerns Anxieties about public security
poverty in America amid great
resonated far beyond Fox News. have fueled the rise of the far right
wealth, nor of the high level
globally, who promise to lower
of violence when compared to Americans believe that crime is
crime through bullets and prisons.
the rest of the developed world — getting worse. A 2020 Gallup
Large groups of people can
yes, even in our “low-crime” poll found that 78 percent thought
sincerely believe that their
era. Readers are led to believe that crime had increased over the
neighborhood, city, or country is
Americans constructed this course of that year, the highest
becoming more dangerous, even
nightmare out of either cruelty number recorded since 1993.
when data points in the opposite
or an insufficient tolerance for It is hard not to see the election of
direction. Republicans will spend
public violence. There is some- figures like Eric Adams as New
much of the 2022 midterm
thing strikingly parochial about York mayor as not, at least in part,
election campaign talking about
this telling of history: crime is driven by crime concerns. In the
a crime wave and crime-infested,
portrayed as a uniquely American run-up to his election, one survey
Democrat-run cities — and
phenomenon that can’t be found that 46 percent of likely
Democrats are already showing
explained by material conditions. voters said crime or violence is a
signs of retreating from mean-
“main problem” in New York today.
For Glazek, it’s much simpler than ingful police reforms.
that: “it’s sadism, not avarice, that Data shows that crime is still down
Many on the Left worry that
fuels the country’s prison crisis.” significantly from 1990s levels
talking about crime only
and that some categories of crime
A decade since the n+1 essay, there empowers the police to commit
actually decreased last year. But
are signs that crime is once again abuses in the name of law and
order, and socialists have rightly consequences for the Left, as particular black and brown
defined themselves over the in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. communities. The average victim
last few decades in opposition to of a crime worldwide is a worker
Moreover, criminal activities,
a staggeringly unjust criminal commuting to and from their
from drug trafficking to extortion
justice system. But we don’t have place of employment.
and illegal mining, are central
to abandon opposition to
to the global economy. According Tackling crime requires the Left
mass incarceration or a critique
to the United Nations, crime to build a platform that dismantles
of police to respond to crime.
generates an estimated $2.1 both racist stereotypes about
The stakes are too high to allow trillion in global annual pro- “black criminality” and the usual
the Right to define the politics ceeds — about 3.6 percent of the bromides about personal responsi-
of public safety through claiming world’s gdp. The money from bility, without simply dismissing
“the only good bandit is a dead extortion and drug trafficking the issue as bigoted media hysteria.
bandit” or “lock them all up” as an flows through the same banks that It also demands an analysis of
expression of popular will. Indeed, the tax cheats and oligarchs use. what happens when the state is
for decades, liberals echoed By conservative estimates, the unable to guarantee public security,
right-wing approaches to public trade in illicit drugs alone is worth and a way of dealing with the
security, introducing harsher drug over $600 billion a year (the threat posed by organized crime.
laws, building prisons, and pairing United States accounts for $150
This does not mean socialists
worthy aims such as reducing the billion of this), translating into
should buy into the moral panics
number of illegal guns in circula- about 1 percent of the total world
that have driven drug wars, mass
tion with racist and anti-poor gdp. Mafia capitalists, after all,
incarceration, and all those other
punitive measures. are still capitalists, and they tend
“solutions” that have merely
to ally with the state, or even
Elsewhere in the Americas, compounded the problem. It
the United States, when facing a
economic crisis and the covid-19 means we should take crime and
threat from the working class.
pandemic triggered even more the concerns of the working class
severe increases in crime: 50,033 To make matters worse, seriously, and that anxiety
people in Brazil and 34,515 in the organizations that reap the regarding rising crime can be used
Mexico were murdered in 2020, rewards of illicit activities are to argue for the necessity of
many with guns that were the same mafias used by the change. If we fail to do this, the far
smuggled out of the United States. state and capital to repress calls right and our enemies will seek
Organized crime adapted quite for leftist reform. From Sicily to exploit real concerns over crime
well to pandemic conditions, not to Colombia, organized crime for their own benefit — as we
only retooling rackets but intimidates and murders trade have seen, with tragic results, in
exploiting the new opportunities unionists, peasant leaders, and the rise of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.
presented by the crisis, from fake socialists. The profits from crime
The good news is that socialists
vaccines to siphoning off some of are often reinvested in dirty wars
already have actual solutions to
the massive injection of liquidity and counterinsurgencies.
the problem. Through the radical
that went into the global financial
While not dismissing the ways redistribution of wealth and
system. In some cases, as the state
in which the law is used to power, creating jobs, investing
failed to provide social assistance,
criminalize poor people of color, in education and housing, and
mafias filled the void, supplying
socialists should view crime providing health care and
ppe and enforcing lockdowns in
itself as an index of oppression. after-school activities, along with
the neighborhoods under their
Crime is born out of poverty and measures like taking guns off the
control. When the state is unable
the miseries of capitalism. streets, we can, in fact, reduce
to administer public security,
Simply put, crime is a real social crime through building socialism.
private security and paramilitaries
problem, and those worst affected All our enemies can offer is
close the gap, with devastating
by it are the working class, in repression: police and prisons.
Letters
Why Did Jeff Bezos Decide to Get Divorced? hand held to college and then got sad about boring
’Cause he found out marriage is a union. stuff. And now they’re thirty, and their life sucks.
Belle and Sebastian is like . . . music for people who
— David Nam, Amaranth, Ontario really had opportunities in life but just blew it.
Belle and Sebastian is the sound of suburban medioc-
rity but done poorly. Belle and Sebastian is what
If This Happens, We Demand Royalties
#ImWithHer sounds like spoken over Karl Marx’s
Somewhere, some tech bro is thinking of an app grave. Belle and Sebastian made trite capitalist
that can charge you for sitting in a public park. conceptions of being deep via stewing in depression
— Kathryn Garcia, New York, NY cool to people who spent too much time on Myspace.
No thanks, Jacobin.
A Death
Sentence
for Disorderly
Conduct
It took a little more than a in Rockdale County in September down the driveway. He was a big
week after his arrest for 2017 to help care for him. part of his father’s recovery.”
twenty-two-year-old Shali Tilson
“I think it really upset Shali, “He was very selfless,” she adds.
to be pronounced dead at the
because he never saw his father “He put everyone’s needs before
Rockdale County Jail in Conyers,
in that state before, and he felt like his own.” Tynesha describes
Georgia, about a thirty-minute
he needed to be here to help him Shali as funny, friendly, loving,
drive east of Atlanta. The cause
recuperate,” Tynesha tells me, her and driven. “He was hardworking
of death: dehydration.
voice cracking. “He didn’t think and motivated. Whatever he
“Shali didn’t break any laws. twice about it. He left his school was going to do, he would do it.
He didn’t hurt anyone. and his job. He gave up a lot In his twenty-two years of being
He didn’t steal anything,” says to come back and help his family.” on this earth, if he didn’t do it,
Tynesha, his grieving mother. then he was in the process of
Shali, along with his sister, took
getting it done.”
Shali was studying criminal responsibility for the family’s bills
justice at Community College so that Tynesha could leave her The pressures of seeing his father
of Rhode Island and working at work and stay at home with Shali’s in a vulnerable state began to
the statehouse. However, after father full-time. “Shali went to weigh on Shali, who suffered from
his father suffered a stroke, physical therapy with his father. bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
he returned to his family’s home He helped his father walk up and In Rhode Island, he was able to
manage some of his mental health charged with disorderly conduct expected to check on him every
issues with diet, exercise, and and obstruction of justice, both fifteen minutes. The cell he was
medical marijuana — preferring this misdemeanors. Shali’s bond was locked inside had no furniture,
regimen to the adverse side set at $6,000 — $850 of which no bed, no sink or other source of
effects of prescription medication. the family was expected to pay. water, and no toilet — only a hole
But they could not afford it. in the floor covered by a metal
In Georgia, however, access to
grate for urination and defecation.
medical marijuana is limited; “I felt panicked,” Tynesha
Shali was forced to juggle the recounts. Despite the family Shali remained in isolation for
emotional turmoil of seeing calling several times to request the next seven days — and died
his father suffering at the same a visit with their son, they were there. According to an autopsy
time that he lost access to told each time that Shali was conducted by the Georgia Bureau
the medicine he depended on to not permitted to see visitors. of Investigation (gbi), Shali died
stabilize his mental state. from blood clots that formed in
On March 9, Tynesha and her
his lungs owing to severe dehydra-
“We saw the toll it was taking on husband went to the jail to
tion. He had also experienced
his mental health, seeing his demand a visitation. They were
a traumatic brain injury, but the
father in that state. He couldn’t told by one of the deputies that
autopsy could not conclude how
communicate with his father like Shali was under medical supervi-
that injury was sustained.
he used to. He didn’t know how to sion due to his erratic behavior.
handle that. It was overwhelming They were assured, however, Mawuli Davis, a civil rights
for him,” Tynesha explains. that Shali was safe. attorney who has taken up Shali’s
case, tells me that Shali was left
A Death Sentence The family was told they could
without water for at least three
return on March 12 for a visit. But
On the morning of March 3, 2018, days. According to the civil suit,
when Shali’s sister arrived at the
Shali suffered a serious mental the jail’s deputies observed Shali
jail that day, she was again turned
health episode and wandered to kicking and banging on the door,
away. Just a few hours later, Shali
the family’s still-vacant former throwing himself against the
was found dead in a five-by-ten-foot
apartment, which they had moved door and wall, crying out for help,
isolation cell — surrounded
out of a few months earlier, and and asking for water in the days
by trash, food, feces, and urine.
began slamming on the door. The leading up to his death — even
owner of the property, located just According to the family’s civil noting these observations in their
down the street from their current suit, when Shali arrived at the jail, end-of-shift logs.
home, called the police on Shali, he “remained in an obvious state
According to a grand jury
assuming he was intoxicated. of extreme mental distress”; an
presentment, which was released
officer punched him and forcibly
According to a civil rights lawsuit after a monthslong investigation
placed Shali into a restraint chair.
the family has lodged against into Shali’s death, the Rockdale
The detention officers used
detention officials at the jail, County Jail did not preserve the
force against Shali on numerous
when the police arrived, it was video recordings inside and
occasions, the suit says. Shali
“apparent that [Shali] was in the around Shali’s cell from March 9
acted in an “erratic and unpredict-
midst of a mental health crisis,” through the early afternoon of
able — but not violent — manner”
and that prior to and during his March 12, despite Georgia
that was “a clear manifestation
arrest, the young man “yelled mandating that visual recordings
of his psychosis,” while repeatedly
words and phrases that revealed in a jail setting be retained for at
requesting medical attention.
that his mental state was com- least 180 days. The grand jury was
pletely detached from reality.” After about three days, Shali was forced to rely on witness testimo-
transferred to isolation in a nies for this period of time, which
Shali was arrested, transported to
padded cell and placed on suicide they had no ability to confirm.
the Rockdale County Jail, and
watch, in which the jail’s staff was
within hours after they put him in dehydrated and dying in front of resigned in April 2018, just a
there because the whole situation their eyes? few weeks after Shali was found
is like a torture chamber.” dead. The gbi arrested him in
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist
September over multiple charges
The grand jury investigation to have basic common sense,” she
of theft. “If he wasn’t qualified to
concluded that the jail’s adminis- adds. “I’m not a medical profes-
be responsible for property, why
tration “failed to live up to [its] sional, but I can tell when someone
would you put him over someone’s
responsibility [of ensuring Shali’s] needs help and when someone is
life? It makes no sense,” Davis
... safety and well-being” and that not well. Shali lost twenty pounds
says. “It speaks to the jail’s lack
this played a “significant role in over those nine days he was in
of institutional control and
failing to prevent [his] death.” jail. When you’re severely dehy-
total disregard for the sacredness
drated, your skin doesn’t look the
Despite this, however, the grand of human life.”
same. Your eyes don’t look the
jury did “not find evidence that any
same. Your organs are shutting Fiefdom Mentality
person criminally or intentionally
down. You’re not the same person.
caused the death of Shali Tilson” No official statistics are made
or that any “person or persons ... “They treated him worse than public on the number of deaths
intentionally withheld water” from an animal. How are you going to inside the thousands of jails
him or “consciously ignored signs train someone to see other people scattered across the United States,
that he was suffering from physical as human beings? How does where about 10.6 million Ameri-
distress and/or dehydration.” that work?” cans are funneled each year.
The grand jury pointed to a lack of Most of those in jail have not been
Despite the family’s civil lawsuit
adequate training of staff as a cause convicted of a crime and will be
against detention officials at
of the deadly neglect and mistreat- released once they pay bail — or,
Rockdale County Jail, no one
ment Shali faced in the Rockdale for those who are too poor, like
has been held responsible for
County Jail. Shali’s family, they will remain in
Shali’s death.
pretrial detention until their case
“I’m so tired of hearing that these
Lang had been transferred to is concluded.
people need more training,”
the jail division several months
Tynesha says, her voice rising A 2020 Reuters investigation
before Shali’s death, while
sharply. “Shali was in that jail for documented 7,571 inmate deaths
criminal charges were pending
nine days. You have medical in more than 500 US jails from
over suspicions that he stole
staff and deputies at the jail, and 2008 to 2019, a number that rose
$40,000 in cash and guns from
three different shifts of people — 25 percent over the last decade.
the evidence unit and sold them
and not one of those people At least two-thirds of the inmates
at local pawnshops. Lang then
noticed that Shali was severely who died in these jails were never
convicted of the charges on which sensory stimulation and do care contractors had higher
they were being held. nothing but inflict more harm on death rates than facilities where
them. Having a psychiatric medical services are run by
According to Atteeyah Hollie,
disability adds to the penalty of government agencies.
senior attorney at the Southern
this whole system.”
Center for Human Rights, jails The Tilson family’s civil suit
are a “catchall” for the most Jails are run by elected sheriffs names Wellpath llc, a private
vulnerable sectors of the American who have “outsize power,” company that was contracted
population, such as those suffering Hollie says. The dramatic power to provide medical and mental
from mental illness, poverty, disparity between sheriffs and health services to Rockdale
homelessness, or substance abuse inmates creates ample opportuni- County Jail, as being partly
issues. Everything from a minor ties for a “fiefdom mentality” responsible for Shali’s death.
traffic violation, which left Sandra among sheriffs in US jails who
“These companies’ primary
Bland hanged in a jail cell in Texas abuse their power.
motive is to raise profits,” Hollie
in 2015, to asking for money on
Since Shali’s death, three other explains. “And the way they do
the street can put someone behind
inmates at the Rockdale County that is by spending as little money
bars in the United States.
Jail have died in custody — one as possible. So, when you have
“We have people coming into jails from alleged suicide, one from a situation where you have people
with a host of issues in the exact medical complications, and who are in the most need of help
moment when they are the most one who was found unresponsive being put in the care of a company
vulnerable and in the height of in her cell less than forty-eight trying to spend as little money
crisis,” Hollie says. “They need hours after her arrest. as possible, then you have this
the most help, and they need potentially deadly situation where
The practice of outsourcing
interventions, but too often they people are not getting the care
medical care to for-profit
enter jail cells or cages, where that they need and losing their lives
companies has added to the
help is not being provided. because of that.”
rising death toll. Reuters’s
“What we see a lot, with people investigation revealed that more Tynesha, meanwhile, has con-
with mental health issues, is than 60 percent of America’s tinued to fight for justice years
that they are further punished in top jails now hire private compa- after her son’s death. “I’m still
jails by being put into solitary nies to administer medical here, begging for justice for my
confinement,” Hollie adds. care to inmates. They also found son,” she says. “We have two
“They are put in cells that, by that, from 2016 to 2018, the jails dogs, and if I starved them and
design, deprive them of all relying on the five leading health left them severely dehydrated,
I would have been slapped
with a felony charge and thrown
in jail three years ago.
How Global Counterinsurgency groups have been largely unwilling — Caught focuses more intently
Transformed American Policing, until recently — to address the on the role of black leaders,
US efforts to create an empire issue of mass incarceration. politicians, and advocacy groups.
of police officers overseas after She attributes their silence to Although they were clearly not the
World War ii had important the challenges of shoehorning main instigators of the punitive
boomerang effects on the develop- the problem of mass incarceration turn, their actions contributed to
ment of local police departments into the traditional civil rights the consolidation of the carceral
back home. It further enhanced framework, especially in this era state, in many cases unwittingly.
their political autonomy while of colorblind racism. But deeper
supercharging them with military factors are also critical in How much do changes in the US
gear and training. In The Punitive explaining why they have not been political economy dating back to
Turn in American Life: How the more strident critics of the the 1970s help to explain the growth
United States Learned to Fight carceral state, including rising of the carceral state?
Crime Like a War, Michael Sherry economic inequality among
artfully traces the blowback effects African Americans and the There’s a common argument that
of the US war in Vietnam on the emergence of “post-racial” African deindustrialization built the
buildup of the carceral state back American leaders like Barack carceral state. That argument cuts
in the United States. Obama. As I explain in my 2006 one of two ways.
book, The Prison and the Gallows: The first is that as people,
Why didn’t the two major political The Politics of Mass Incarceration especially African Americans, lost
parties face more political resis- in America, some key social out through deindustrialization,
tance from African Americans and movements and liberal interest they turned to crime.
other groups as they pursued an groups, including the victims’ The other is that the unem-
unprecedented expansion of the rights movement, women’s ployed and dispossessed were not
law enforcement apparatus? movement, prisoners’ rights actually committing more crime.
movement, and the anti–death But with deindustrialization,
already underway. So this idea What about the role of repurpose excess jail and prison
that African Americans moved private-sector interests in the beds. They increasingly talk
North, got good factory jobs, construction of the carceral state? about the need to invest more
had middle-class lives, and then in the “corrections lifecycle” —
faced deindustrialization gets We need to get away from a that is, to privatize not just jails
the timing a bit wrong. simpleminded, left-leaning and prisons but also to expand
It also obfuscates the fact that approach to understanding mass and privatize probation, parole,
one of the most important things incarceration that blames it all electronic monitoring, and
that helped to incorporate African on economic interests and the drug testing.
Americans during this period was prison-industrial complex. That
the expansion of the public sector, said, what built the carceral state You mention that another big
which created many jobs for them. is not the same thing that now engine of the carceral state buildup
sustains it. The prison-industrial is the war on people accused of sex
complex and economic interests offenses. In Caught, you note that,
How much of the rise of the carceral
were not the primary driving from 1996 to 2010, the number of
BUT THOSE SERVING TIME FOR SEXUALLY EXPLICIT MATERIALS WENT UP SIXTYFOLD.
state do you attribute to the
forces behind the construction of people serving time at the federal
weakness of our welfare state
the carceral state, but they do level for drug convictions went up
compared with other countries?
much to sustain it today. 80 percent, but those serving time
The US states that have experi- The biggest private-sector for sexually explicit materials went
enced a decrease in spending on prison companies, notably the up sixtyfold.
welfare per capita have tended geo Group and CoreCivic,
formerly the Corrections Corpora- People charged with sex offenses
to experience an increase in
tion of America, have become very are one of the most rapidly
spending on prisons. We know
nimble political actors. They have increasing segments of the US
that countries that have weaker
been repositioning themselves prison population. Politicians
welfare states tend to have
to adapt to a new political climate and the general public often talk
higher incarceration rates and
in which calls for criminal justice about these people as deviant
higher crime rates. Countries
reform are escalating. pathological beasts. They don’t
that have gaping income inequali-
They view the criminalization acknowledge that “sex offenses”
ties generally have higher
of immigration enforcement as a is a very capacious category,
violent crime rates and often
new frontier to make money and including everything from
higher incarceration rates.
urinating in public to consensual
underage sex to flashing to are about twelve times more likely men. Leaving aside Thailand,
child pornography to raping and than white people to be confined El Salvador, and the United States
murdering a child. in state prisons in New Jersey, itself, the forty-seven jurisdictions
giving the Garden State one of in the world with the highest rates
How do other countries address this? the country’s highest black-white of incarcerating women are
disparities in imprisonment. individual American states. While
Other Western countries have But New Jersey also has one of the number of men incarcerated
not established extensive the lowest incarceration rates in in US prisons has inched down-
civil commitment systems that the country. So, overall, African ward over the past two decades or
continue to lock up people Americans are less likely to be so, the number of women has
convicted of sex offenses long sent to prison in New Jersey continued to climb. This ongoing
after they have completed their than in much of the South, which growth obscures some important
sentences — in some cases for is a more equal-opportunity shifts. Imprisonment rates for
life. They do not impose onerous incarcerator. black and white women have
residential, registration, and If we reserve prisons for converged sharply. The racial gap
community notification require- people who’ve committed the has fallen from about six to one
ments. They do not require most serious crimes that pose in 2000 to about two to one today
people convicted of sex offenses major threats to public safety, for black and white women, as
to be listed in public databases we’re probably going to have fewer incarceration rates for black
accessible to anyone with an African Americans overall in women have fallen with shifts in
internet connection. prison — but higher racial dispari- the war on drugs. In recent years,
The evidence is thin or ties in the prison population. the number of women imprisoned
nonexistent that such measures Why? Because even though for violent offenses and property
seriously reduce the incidence the rate of violent crime has been offenses has increased substan-
of sex offenses. falling for African Americans tially, especially for white and
while rising for white people, Hispanic women. The rising rates
You mention the uncomfortable African Americans still dispropor- of contact with the criminal justice
fact that states that are less tionately commit more serious system for low-income white
punitive are more likely to have crimes like homicide, robbery, women are likely a consequence of
greater racial disparities in their and aggravated assault. The the recent sharp deterioration in
inmate populations. reasons why are structural factors their health and social conditions.
like poverty, joblessness,
This is a controversial and tough decaying urban neighborhoods, You mention in the book that
issue that has to be faced. Many poor housing stock, and extensive receiving a life sentence in
people, including many progres- segregation by class and the United States used to mean
sives, have set reducing the racial race, which are often difficult something far less severe.
disparities in prisons and jails to disentangle.
as a major goal. The aim is to More than two hundred thousand
incarcerate black and white people are currently serving
One statistic from your book
people at more comparable rates. life sentences in the United States.
that really shocked me was that,
How might that come about? That’s more than four times as
with 5 percent of the world’s
Let’s look at the South. many people as the total prison
population and one-quarter of
Southern states actually have population of Japan, a country
the world’s prison population, we
some of the nation’s lowest of 126 million people. Life
have one-third of the world’s
black-white disparities in their sentences used to be an extremely
female prisoners.
state prisons — much lower than rare penalty. For those who did
many states in the Northeast. Incarceration rates have increased receive one, “life” seldom meant
For example, African Americans much faster for women than for the rest of their life because of the
Pregnant and facing decades in prison, the mother of Tupac Shakur fought for her life —
and triumphed — in the trial of the Panther 21.
feni Shakur is ready to fight. And, to add to her troubles, she is pregnant with
She’s already spent eleven months in the her first child — a boy.
Women’s House of Detention and, although To the jury who will decide her fate, Afeni looks
she’s out on bail, she is not free. It’s Sep- like any other young member of the Black Panther
tember 8, 1970, and she’s waiting inside the Party — an average-size, dark-skinned, short-haired,
New York County Criminal Court in Manhattan. Seven- twenty-three-year-old black woman. A group about
teen months ago, she was indicted on charges including whom the media had spent years conjuring up scare
attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and stories at this point.
conspiracy to bomb buildings. A conviction threatens Soon, she will stand before a white judge and face an
to send her behind bars for the remainder of her life. all-white prosecution as the government of the country
oth violently and nonviolently, in her time as see him die of gunshot wounds at the age of twenty-five,
a Panther and afterward, as an activist, Afeni the same violence she saw break the Panthers taking the
Shakur sought to tear down the system of life of her firstborn child.
oppression that she had been born into. But Afeni, who passed away in 2016, had a life filled with
ultimately, she believed that the Black Panther troubles. She became addicted to drugs shortly after
Party, and she herself, failed. winning her freedom, and it forever strained her rela-
“Instead, we turned against God, and how you gonna tionship with her son, who became distant as his music
win like that? You have to have a moral imperative to career took off, as well as with her daughter, Sekyiwa.
win,” Afeni said. “We didn’t understand that. We drew She was impulsive and selfish at times. She could be
violence to ourselves. We drew bitterness to ourselves.” stubborn, and she had a temper.
But in this early life-and-death fight, Afeni unques- At no point, though, did she forget her people and
tionably won. She would be jailed again, make bail again, her fight. Like many black women born in the South
and thrive as her own de facto lawyer, playing a key role decades before Jim Crow’s defeat, she was born into
in the acquittal of the Panther 21 on all charges in May struggle and violence. The world, it seems, wanted to
1971. A month later, she gave birth to her son. break her into a million pieces.
She would watch him grow into a man who brought But again and again, up until her death at the age of
her values to a global audience, becoming one of the most sixty-nine, Afeni triumphed over them all.
famous and beloved black men in the world — only to
But Afeni was right — “Yedwa Sudan” was really The prosecution was led by Joseph A. Phillips, a
nypd officer Ralph White. skilled lawyer from the Manhattan district attorney’s
“I was pushing and pushing for women to have more office. Luckily, the Panthers were able to raise money for
rights in the party,” Afeni said. “And we fought about a defense by attorneys including William Crain, Gerald
[Yedwa] because I knew he was a fucking cop from the Lefcourt, Carol Lefcourt, Robert Bloom, Sanford Katz,
very beginning and Lumumba wouldn’t listen.” And yet and Charles McKinney.
the very overtures toward street violence and hyperag- Lumumba handpicked Carol Lefcourt to serve as
gression that roused Afeni’s suspicions only proved, to the primary defense for Afeni. But Afeni immediately
some Panther cadre, Yedwa’s authenticity. took issue with the choice.
White, posing as Yedwa Sudan, had been sent not “Carol Lefcourt had a tiny, squeaky voice,” Afeni
only to infiltrate the Panthers but to destroy it by leading said. “And I thought hell no, she can’t represent me! Not
it down a path of violence, where the brutal arm of the sounding like that. The judge wouldn’t be able to hear
American state could both more easily discredit the her objection, not with that voice. There was no meat to
organization and smash it by force, an arena where the her voice, no resonance, no assurance ... Hey, I’m facing
cops would always have the upper hand. the same three hundred and fifty years everyone else is
If Lumumba had listened to Afeni, perhaps they facing, and I am not going out like that.”
wouldn’t have been so caught off guard at 5 a.m. on So, with her life on the line, Afeni took a risk and
April 2, 1969, when detective Francis Dalton and four made a decision that struck many as crazy — she decided
other New York Police Department officers arrived to represent herself in court.
unannounced at their home at 112 West 117th Street. Lumumba tried to persuade her to backtrack on the
Dalton lit a rag, and the officers collectively shouted plan, but Afeni held firm when the pretrial hearing began
“Fire!” to lure Lumumba and Afeni from their apartment in February 1970. The defense team was understandably
before arresting the couple. apprehensive, but the way Afeni handled herself in court
Along with eight other Black Panthers, Afeni and would shock them all — not least of which Afeni herself.
Lumumba were arrested and indicted on 156 charges “I just thought I was writing my own obituary.”
stemming from attacks on four police stations between But Afeni wasn’t entirely on her own. The Panthers
1968 and 1969, and their alleged planning to bomb a had inspired remnants of an older left who, even after
commuter railroad, the New York Botanical Garden, and the disastrous McCarthy years, were there to lend a
shopping crowds in five department stores in New York. hand when it mattered most. While incarcerated in
In total, twenty-one members of the party, who the Women’s House of Detention, Afeni developed a
became known as the Panther 21, were named in the relationship with a group of supportive women on the
indictment. Bail was set at $100,000 for the thirteen outside who had participated in the labor movement
who were apprehended and went on to appear in court. in the 1940s and 1950s. Although they were older and
It turns out it wasn’t just White — nypd officers many of them were white, they were hardened radicals
Eugene Roberts and Carlos Ashwood had also suc- who knew what it meant to go up against the state —
cessfully infiltrated their chapter, providing crucial especially as a woman.
testimony that helped secure the indictments. They’d write her, visit her, and ask how they could
Afeni vehemently denied the accusations. White, help. She asked them to create a bail fund for other
as Yedwa, hadn’t merely spied on them, he’d led them incarcerated women who needed less than $500 for
into a trap — one only Afeni saw coming. their bail. They did so, but they also created a bail fund
“I knew my militant agenda would one day end for Afeni. And on March 1970, following eleven months
here in the hall of justice,” Afeni said, “but there was in prison, Afeni made bail.
no justice in how it was going down. We were spied While she wasn’t yet free, she was no longer incar-
on, infiltrated, set up, and psychologically manipu- cerated. And though she and others believed her life was
lated. I saw people I thought I knew change before my essentially over at this point, she was preparing to fight
very eyes.” with everything she had.
were on the cusp of unleashing a wave of murder and SHAKUR : I understand that. But you said there
mayhem on the citizens of New York. were things you saw me doing, I just want to hear
This also meant that Afeni would finally get to face one thing.
White — one-on-one. It was obviously personal for her.
WHITE: I remember a meeting at the Panther office,
White was, after all, one of the primary reasons she was
you were real charged up about — you went into a
forced to survive in such terrible conditions in a poorly
thing about icing the pigs, along with that military
maintained jail for months during her pregnancy.
thing, and very emotional. I remember that, plus
Rather than lose her cool, however, Afeni lured him
other things I can’t remember offhand. I am only
into a trap — and it was that trap that, once sprung,
saying what I based my opinions on, what ... had
became the pivotal moment in the trial.
seen and heard and I had forgotten most of them.
“Why, Yedwa, have you done this to us?”
It was the first thing she had said to SHAKUR :
Did you ever see me at Lincoln
White since her arrest, and her first Hospital working?
question to him on the stand.
WHITE: Yes, I have.
She stood before him now in
the courtroom wearing a SHAKUR: Did you ever see me
smock that tightly hugged at the schools working?
her pregnant belly, all
WHITE: Yes, I have.
her anger and her sense
of betrayal contained in SHAKUR : Ever see me in
eight words. the street working?
White and the state
WHITE: Yes, I have.
wanted to make the case
that the Panthers truly SHAKUR : Are these some
embodied the violence of the things that led you
and militancy of their to think I was military
rhetoric. That all the talk of minded?
getting “the pigs” was backed
WHITE: No, it was not.
up by a very real thirst for vio-
lence in the streets — one that Afeni SHAKUR : You don’t remember the
and the other defendants were actively other things.
headed toward.
WHITE : At the time I remembered them then. I
So Afeni asked him how he would characterize, in
remember — you reminded me of the good things
his words, not the rhetoric but the day-to-day work the
you were doing. If you reminded me of some of the
Black Panthers were doing — and, more important, how
things you said, I could answer that.
he would characterize her own work.
SHAKUR: Yes, I guess so.
WHITE: As far as your involvement, I thought you were
more military than political.
The state’s case rested almost entirely on the testi-
SHAKUR: What involvement? mony of undercover agents — and that testimony relied
almost entirely on militant rhetoric. Fighting words, and
WHITE: I can’t remember everything you said or every-
little more.
thing you had done or even all your actions; but ... I
And in one cross-examination, Afeni had dealt a
was only basing my own opinion on what I saw about
major blow to it.
you or about anyone else.
little over a month later, Afeni gave birth on Afeni wasn’t the only former Panther to struggle in those
June 16, 1971. She named her son Lesane years. Cofounder Huey Newton was murdered in 1989 by
Parish Crooks. A few days later, she changed a drug dealer and member of the Black Guerrilla Family,
his name to Tupac Amaru Shakur, after the a nominally Marxist-Leninist prison gang. Many others
great Incan leader. “I wanted him to know he had either been killed or incarcerated by then.
was part of a world culture and not just from a neigh- Afeni eventually moved to Marin City to join her
borhood,” she said. “I wanted him to have the name of children, but she got sidetracked again when she started
revolutionary, indigenous people in the world.” a relationship with an imprisoned man. She became
She didn’t return to the Black Panther Party and pregnant and, after initially being denied an abortion,
instead married Mutulu Shakur, who was a member of began heavily smoking crack in an attempt to end the
the Black Liberation Army, in 1975, the same year their baby’s life. By the time she actually received an abortion,
daughter, Sekyiwa Shakur, was born. she was a crack addict.
But in 1981, Mutulu, five other members of the bla, From there, Tupac branched out on his own while
and four ex-members of the Weather Underground Sekyiwa was left to fend for herself. Separated from her
robbed an armored car in Nanuet, New York, stealing children and strung out on drugs, Afeni hit a low.
$1.6 million in cash and leaving one security guard dead “I was dying, and I knew that I was dying because my
and another seriously wounded. Two police officers were spirit was not there at all,” Afeni said. “I would go to bed
killed in their escape. Mutulu then went on the run, with at night and really not care whether or not I woke up.”
the couple divorcing soon after. Finally, after losing her It wasn’t until she moved back to New York in
job in legal services in 1984, Afeni moved with her two 1990 that Afeni shook her drug addiction through Nar-
children from New York to Baltimore, Maryland, to cotics Anonymous meetings. Tupac, who was quickly
make a clean break and start a new chapter in her life. growing into a rap star, was still apprehensive about
But instead, her life began to spiral out of control. reconnecting. That hurt Afeni, but she understood it.
Afeni had used cocaine and lsd during her stressful “As a girl, I just hurt,” Afeni said. “My mama was
days in court and continued her drug use after the trial. weak and sweet. My dad mean and arrogant. We were
She got clean during the first two years that she was in Black and poor in a place where that meant you weren’t
Baltimore but soon relapsed. As her addiction intensi- shit and I wasn’t goin’ down like that. So, I understand
fied, she sent her children to live with a friend in Marin Tupac. He looked for the reasons in me just like I looked
City, California. She explained: for the answers in my parents. When Tupac came at
me with a bunch of motherfuckin’ whys, I knew I had
My addiction was not just to substances but also to
it coming.”
the people I continued to keep in my life. I stayed
But Afeni’s influence on Tupac grew even in her
right there with those people. I never moved on. All
absence. As a teenager, he joined the Young Commu-
the time these men were being killed viciously, being
nist League USA. Later, as his fame grew, he used it to
arrested, disappearing, and I just stayed. I believed
speak out against the system of American justice that
in my heart that this was it. These people were my
his mother had first challenged decades earlier, even as
life. I didn’t know that I had a choice to get out of
the culture, in its “end of history” moment, had moved
it ... Even when I was smoking crack at my worst, I
far away from radical politics of any kind.
would say, “God, how am I gonna get out of this?”
“There’s too much money here,” Tupac said in a 1992
And He would say, “Well, for you there is no way
interview with mtv News. “There’s no way that these
out. Where would you go?”
people should own planes and there are people who
I thought the reason I was getting high was to don’t have houses, apartments, shacks, drawers, pants.”
quiet the vision of all the people dying and all that Afeni was patient, giving her son the space he needed
violence and trauma. So, I would say stuff like, “If as his music began to touch first thousands then millions
of lives. Eventually, they grew closer than ever before. Afeni went on to continue her work as an activist
Tupac even wrote about their renewed relationship in and traveled frequently to make guest appearances and
his 1995 track “Dear Mama.” lectures. Through sharing her experiences, she found
“And even as a crack fiend, Mama, you always was peace. In her later years, Afeni lived in a house in Stone
a black queen, Mama,” Tupac rapped. “I finally Mountain, Georgia, purchased for her by her son
understand. For a woman it ain’t easy before he died. She believed it was the first
tryin’ to raise a man. You always time someone from her family had
was committed. A poor single owned land since her great-grand-
mother on welfare, tell me how mother Millie Ann, who lost it
you did it. There’s no way I after she put it up to bail out
can pay you back, but the her sons from jail.
plan is to show you that When Afeni passed
I understand — you are away on May 2, 2016,
appreciated.” she was most widely
In 1996, less than known not for her fight
two years after “Dear in the Panther 21, not for
Mama,” Tupac was shot standing up to an Amer-
and killed in Las Vegas. ican state at war with
That could’ve sent Afeni her and winning, but for
down a dark path once being the mother of a char-
again. Instead, she took ismatic superstar who died
charge of her son’s estate, before his time — the baby she
starting a company in his honor was striving to protect nearly half
called Amaru Entertainment. Losing a century earlier.
her son reinvigorated her determination But those of her generation who had
to continue her positive trajectory in his honor. been born into violence, into a struggle already cen-
“When I lost my son, I had to remember I had a turies old, who fought their way out, who lost and then
daughter and I had grandchildren and I have a respon- found themselves all over again, knew she was much
sibility to my son to stay clean and live up to my more than that.
duties,” Afeni said. “And my duties did not end when An anger made Afeni Shakur. But it did not
Tupac died.” break her.
The United States managed its objects of social control are not
violence on the cheap — through black Americans in general but the
poor in particular.
police and prisons instead of
Whatever the differences between
social welfare. them, in these arguments, the
culprits behind the punitive shift
are conservative elites. Two
noteworthy books, From the War
on Poverty to the War on Crime:
The Making of Mass Incarceration
in America by Elizabeth Hinton
The United States imprisons and then Reagan-led revolution in
and The First Civil Right: How
more people per capita than any criminal justice. Leading accounts,
Liberals Built Prison America by
comparable society, past or notably Michelle Alexander’s The
Naomi Murakawa, challenge that
present. It is alone among New Jim Crow: Mass Incarcera-
view. Both Hinton and Murakawa
advanced countries in putting its tion in the Age of Colorblindness,
agree with much of the story told
citizens to death, in commonly argue that this punitive turn
by Alexander and others, but
sentencing prisoners to life reestablished a system of social
they argue that existing research
without the possibility of parole, control over black Americans that
has minimized the culpability
in its use of solitary confinement, had been challenged by the
of the Democratic Party and its
and in annually killing hundreds Great Migration and the civil
allies. In both authors’ view, the
of civilians in police encounters. rights movement. In Alexander’s
origins of mass incarceration
account, a white and mainly
For the richest society in world are bipartisan.
Southern elite overturned black
history, these are staggering facts.
gains by means of mass incarcera- To establish this argument, Hinton
Conventionally, mass incarcera- tion and policing. Others, noting and Murakawa are mostly con-
tion is explained by reference to that rich African Americans cerned with American liberalism
the right-wing turn in American have mostly escaped this disci- when it was at the peak of its
politics — to a revanchist, Nixon- plinary trend, have argued that the progressivism. That is to say, their
ideological at root. Nothing good and the pre-neoliberal Democratic standard view without accepting
could come from liberalism. Party. Reviewers have rightly their own accounts of the carceral
applauded this move. The two state’s origins.
What Liberals Believed works pinpoint a weakness
To start, the anchoring claim of
Hinton and Murakawa’s argument in conventional wisdom. It has
their shared argument — that
amends the typical story in one always been too glib to lay the
liberals concocted the crime wave
significant sense: they widen the blame on a clique of conservative
of the late 1960s and 1970s — is
circle of culprits behind America’s elites. Yet we can grant Hinton
problematic. Hinton argues that
punitive turn to include liberals and Murakawa this criticism of the
official indicators were biased
US Crime Rates
10
400
8
300
Per 100,000
Per 100,000
6 200
100
4
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2
9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 0 0 0 0 0 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 0 0 0 0 0
6 6 7 7 8 8 9 9 0 0 1 1 2 6 6 7 7 8 8 9 9 0 0 1 1 2
0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0
Rape Robbery
250
40
200
Per 100,000
30
Per 100,000
150
20
100
10 50
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2
9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 0 0 0 0 0 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 0 0 0 0 0
6 6 7 7 8 8 9 9 0 0 1 1 2 6 6 7 7 8 8 9 9 0 0 1 1 2
0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0 5 0
by shifting definitions and a new same as (sometimes slightly higher some liberals understood, African
incentive structure, but she fails to than, sometimes slightly lower Americans are not overrepresented
provide any empirical evidence in than) black-to-white arrest ratios. in violent crime because they are
support of this striking claim. She The drug war may be different: naturally predisposed to violence,
is right that these indices can be as Alexander and others have but rather because they have been
misleading, but overtime trends noted, blacks and whites use drugs persistently relegated to hollowed-
in the fbi’s Uniform Crime at roughly the same rates, but out urban ghettos and the lowest,
Reporting program are not very blacks are much more likely to be most deprived reaches of the
different from tendencies derived arrested than whites. Yet only a American class structure. Crime is
from other sources. small minority of those in prison an index of oppression.
are there for drug offenses, and
The homicide rate, for example, Still, even if we acknowledge that
an even smaller minority for
can be reliably measured by crime rose and was concentrated
low-level drug offenses (about 1
mortality statistics. According to in poor, black communities,
percent of all prisoners). The
these data, the rate almost one might wonder why liberals
consensus view is that most of
doubled between the early 1960s chose to make it a public issue.
the racial disparity in incarcera-
and early 1970s, where it remained The idea that politicians goaded
tion rates reflects real disparities
until it began to fall in the early- citizens into worrying about crime
in offending rather than racial
to-mid 1990s. This is roughly the is a frequent refrain of critical
discrimination.
pattern suggested by the fbi’s scholarship. New work on the
violent crime index. For both Hinton and Murakawa, politics of crime and punishment
liberals proved their racism by challenges this view, however,
Second, Hinton argues that claims
fretting about black crime. But not showing how crime didn’t just
about rising crime in African
all who worry about black crime register in official statistics but
American communities were
do so because they are racists. It is profoundly affected ordinary
fictitious. She is correct that this
possible to take heed of racial individuals.
fact is not proved by arrest
disparities in violent behavior
or imprisonment patterns, but In his book on the punitive turn
while also rejecting the view that
surveys of victims of violent in Washington, DC, Locking Up
there are inherent differences
crimes yield black-to-white Our Own: Crime and Punishment
between blacks and whites. As
offender ratios that are about the in Black America, James Forman
Jr portrays a black and mainly
working-class public that was
appalled by the rise in violent and
drug crime in their neighborhoods.
Residents demanded redress from
newly enfranchised black elected
officials. Neither this public
nor its representatives clamored
for straightforwardly punitive
We can’t ignore the reality that solutions, but people needed no
a black person in America is thirty-five prodding to worry about crime:
its impact on everyday life was
times more likely to be killed palpable. Michael Fortner
by a civilian than by a police officer. recounts a similar history in New
York City, where, he argues,
the support of “a silent black
majority” enabled the passage of
the Rockefeller Drug Laws. This final report demanded a massive Homicide Rates of High-
evidence is local, but other work expansion of federal spending on Income Countries (2018)
by Peter K. Enns and Lisa L. employment, education, welfare,
Miller presents general (and, in and housing. And while it was The United States is a much more
Miller’s case, cross-national) remarkable, the document was not violent country than any of our peer
evidence for the view that poli- exceptional. nations. An American is nearly three
ticians worry about crime when times more likely to be the victim of
The Johnson administration had, homicide than a resident of any other
the public does. Enns shows
two years earlier, constituted the high-income country, and over thirty
that popular punitiveness predates
Commission on Law Enforcement times more likely than someone in the
congressional hearings on crime,
and Administration of Justice least violent high-income country,
while Miller argues that the public
(known as the Katzenbach Singapore.
salience of crime covaries with
Commission), whose recommen-
real rates of violence. Per 100,000
dations led to the Safe Streets Act
1 2 3 4 5
What Liberals Did of 1968. The Katzenbach Commis-
sion opened the final chapter of
If we accept these three points — United States
its report by asserting plainly that
crime did rise, it was concentrated
“the foundation of a national
in black communities, and liberals Canada
strategy against crime is an
paid attention to it because the
unremitting national effort for
public did — what is left of Hinton Finland
social justice.” Only a few pages
and Murakawa’s argument?
later, it called social programs
Liberals did not, in other words, UK
“America’s best hope of pre-
misdiagnose the 1960s; these were
venting crime and delinquency.”
real problems. But perhaps Hinton Sweden
Social democratic common sense
and Murakawa are still right to
was mainstream.
indict their policy response. Both Denmark
argue that liberals saw little option Recall that, in Murakawa’s view,
but to upgrade the state’s punitive liberals only worried about racism Austria
arm. Even if their aims were not on prudential and not principled
revanchist, they were shackled by grounds. Yet the Kerner Commis- Germany
build prisons and employ police defendants. Neither author Race and Gender Disparities
directly, they may have set defends the claims that causal argu- in US Homicide Rates
America on a trajectory from ments imply: either that, with
which it could not escape. Hinton these policies in place, the Black men in the United States are
and Murakawa do seem to believe punitive turn was unavoidable, or victims of homicide at nearly four
times the rate of any other group,
that no other future was possible the weaker thesis that, without
over ten times the rate of white men,
once federal-led modernization these policies, there could have
and twenty times the rate of white
was underway. Yet had Democrats been no punitive turn. The real
women.
pursued the recommendations of argument that links these
Per 100,000
the Kerner Commission, modern- disparate pieces of legislation is
ization may have been no more Hinton and Murakawa’s unsub- 0 10 20 30 40
than a footnote in history. Even if stantiated earlier one: liberal
America had funded, standard- advocacy in all cases gave credence Black non-Hispanic males
ized, and professionalized its to spurious claims about rising
criminal justice agencies, had it crime and black criminality. Black males
launched an assault on the root
If this is not sensible history, is it
causes of crime, it would certainly
at least effective propaganda? Native males
not have become the world’s
And to what end? In her conclu-
leading warden. After all, other
sion, Hinton offers the outlines of Males
advanced capitalist countries
a policy agenda: “Residents in
maintain professional police forces
communities should be responsible Hispanic males
and prisons, but their role is
for keeping their own communi-
greatly circumscribed by a welfare
ties safe.” Black non-Hispanic females
state. Many countries have
modernized without militarizing. The growing popularity of this
argument among activists is a Black females
Perhaps Hinton and Murakawa
welcome sign that a new genera-
are not indicting modernization
tion is taking note of the barbaric Hispanics
tout court but rather specific legis-
way the United States metes out
lation. But when either identifies
punishment. Yet it is a position White males
those policies that seeded the
that’s out of step with both wider
carceral state, they are indiscrimi-
public opinion and the realities White non-Hispanic males
nate. Hinton includes Kennedy’s
of life in America.
anti-delinquency programs in the
early 1960s (which provided Despite the decline of crime in Native females
remedial education, job training, recent decades, the United States
and social service programs), remains an extraordinarily violent Asian/PI males
police involvement in social place. It is still the most violent
programs, increased funding to society in the developed world — Females
police under Johnson, and even and by far. Almost 13,500 people
the installation of security cameras were murdered in 2015, of which Hispanic females
in public housing under Carter. more than half were African
Murakawa counts liberal efforts to American.
White females
combat lynching in the South,
Black men in the United States
fund law enforcement, and
face El Salvador–level murder White non-Hispanic females
standardize sentencing practices
rates. Patrols by untrained
across jurisdictions and
residents will never manage crime Asian/PI females
US Black Homicides Compared of this severity. Neither Hinton and the ensuing collapse of the
to 20 Deadliest Countries nor Murakawa gives the problem municipal tax base. To meet
sufficient thought, but the fault the challenges of the moment, the
Black men in the United States are more is not theirs alone. If conservatives government ought to have
likely to die by homicide than residents ignore mass incarceration and fret committed massive resources to
of some of the most violent countries in only about crime, critics of the employment, housing, education,
the world, from Honduras to Brazil. The punitive turn have so far mostly health care, and welfare. Yet these
only two countries in the world where inverted this posture. Present-day were not forthcoming. Why?
one stands a greater chance of being anger at policing and excessive
murdered than black men in the United One answer is that liberals diverted
incarceration is justified, of course.
States are El Salvador and Jamaica. revenues to police, prisons, and
But we can’t ignore the reality
the court system. Even Hinton
that a black person in America is
Per 100,00 sometimes argues that punitive
thirty-five times more likely to
0 10 20 30 40 50 programs “crowded out” anti-
be killed by a civilian than by a
poverty programs. But how?
police officer.
Arresting, sentencing, and imprison-
El Salvador
Why Liberals Failed ing criminal offenders is far
Jamaica cheaper than social democracy.
The failure of Great Society
Even today, in the meager
United States ( black non-Hispanic males) liberalism was not rooted in its
American welfare state, the money
attempt to modernize the state’s
spent on punitive institutions
Honduras punitive agencies. In the late
is far exceeded by the money spent
1960s, efforts to this end were
Venezuela on social programs. Over the
probably unavoidable. The
last three decades, state and local
Mexico Katzenbach Commission noted
governments have spent only
severe problems: rampant
Brazil
about 4 percent of their total
corruption, manpower shortages,
outlay on police and 3 percent on
lagging credentials, enormous
Colombia prisons. At the federal level, these
caseloads in the court system, and
numbers were vanishingly small
Guatemala excessive use of pretrial detention.
(roughly 0.5 percent and 0.2
In a world in which these prob-
Saint Lucia percent, respectively). In 2014, for
lems were left to fester, the lives of
every dollar spent on police,
ghetto residents may well have
Puerto Rico prisons, and the court system, the
been more and not less oppressive.
government (at all levels) spent
Guyana Perhaps the only thing worse than
more than twelve on social
being policed by well-paid
Uruguay programs.
professionals is being policed by
poorly paid amateurs. At the federal level in the 1960s,
Costa Rica
the contrast was even starker. For
Instead, the failure of liberals was
Palau every dollar the Johnson adminis-
to never deliver on the social
tration spent on corrections,
Uganda democratic promises they made in
law enforcement, or the courts, it
the late 1960s. The Johnson
Dominican Republic
spent anywhere between sixty
administration launched the War
and eighty dollars on social
on Poverty, but, as the Kerner
Barbados programs. Had all the money
Commission recognized, these
earmarked for punitive programs
Panama programs were no match for
been redirected to social pro-
deindustrialization, white flight,
Russia grams, the change would probably
T
he cia thought it had buried a sordid story “In such times, even fantastic allegations about cia —
with the death of San Jose Mercury News jfk’s assassination, ufo coverups, or importing drugs
reporter Gary Webb. Webb had spent years into America’s cities — will resonate with, and even
documenting the crack cocaine trade in the appeal to, much of American society.”
United States and the intelligence agency’s complic- According to Dujmovic, the “Dark Alliance” affair
ity in it. had now “largely run its course,” leaving intelligence
Webb took his own life in 2004 after his 1996 “Dark agents to bemoan the “scant public appreciation
Alliance” reporting series came under intense scru- of their dedication and hard work” among the US
tiny from the heavy hitters of American journalism, citizenry:
including the New York Times, the Washington Post,
Ultimately the cia-drug story says a lot more about
and the Los Angeles Times.
American society on the eve of the millennium
Unfortunately for US intelligence chiefs, the accu-
than it does about either cia or the media. We
sations made by Webb and other journalists have
live in somewhat coarse and emotional times —
continued to flare up in popular culture, where the
when large numbers of Americans do not adhere
opportunity to combine two movie archetypes, the
to the same standards of logic, evidence, or even
spook and the gangster, seems irresistible. Hollywood
civil discourse as those practiced by members of
films like the 2014 Webb biopic Kill the Messenger and
the cia community.
2017’s American Made, with Tom Cruise as cia pilot
Barry Seal, have helped keep the allegations in public Happily, there were exceptions to this rule.
consciousness. Dujmovic credited “a ground base of already produc-
In the same year that Kill the Messenger came tive relations with journalists” with helping “prevent
out, the Central Intelligence Agency released a pre- this story from becoming an unmitigated disaster”
viously classified 1997 article from its house journal as the agency got its version of events across: “In the
titled “Managing a Nightmare: cia Public Affairs first few days, cia media spokesmen would remind
and the Drug Conspiracy Story.” Its author, Nicholas reporters seeking comment that this series represented
Dujmovic, described the controversy as a symptom of no real news, in that similar charges were made in the
escalating “public distrust in government,” with the 1980s and were investigated by the Congress and were
cia as an innocent bystander caught in the cross fire: found to be without substance.”
engaged in drug trafficking activity or take action to had come across any connection between the
resolve the allegations.” contras and drug-smuggling, a New York Times
At this point, we might want to imagine the rele- correspondent screamed derisively at him from
vant quotes from Hitz or the Kerry report, but with across the aisle: “Why don’t you ask a serious
the letters “kgb” in place of “cia.” If Soviet intelli- question?”
gence agents had evinced a similar record of collusion
When John Kerry’s team published its own report
with drug traffickers bringing tons of cocaine into the
two years later, the response of major press outlets
United States, we would not have been asking whether
“constituted little more than a collective yawn ... the
they deliberately set out to foster a social catastrophe
Washington Post ran a short article on page a20 that
or simply didn’t care what happened at the other end
focused as much on the infighting within the com-
of their carefully constructed supply chains.
mittee as on its findings; the New York Times ran a
To put it another way: when banks like Wachovia
short piece on a8; the Los Angeles Times ran a 589-
and hsbc have had to pay out massive fines —
word story on a11.” The same newspapers devoted
$1.9 billion in the case of hsbc — for helping Mexican
vastly more space to picking apart Gary Webb’s Mer-
cartels launder their profits, nobody has sought to
cury News series seven years later.
defend them on the grounds that they just wanted to
It was Webb and his editors who finally put the
make money and only dealt with the cartels because
issue on the news agenda in 1996, assisted by the rise
those groups had plenty of it.
of the internet and by black radio stations that ampli-
So how could “Managing a Nightmare” refer so
fied (and sometimes embellished) the principal claims.
confidently to the “cia drug conspiracy story” as a
America’s leading broadsheets then set about tearing
discredited fable that bore a closer resemblance to
Webb’s story down — in particular the Los Angeles
The X-Files than All The President’s Men? Dujmovic
Times, which assigned a squad of seventeen reporters
declared himself to be pleasantly surprised by the
to the task. One member described it pithily as the “get
record of the US media: “The journalistic profession
Gary Webb team.”
has the will and the ability to hold its own members
Inevitably, they were able to find some holes in
to certain standards.” Members of the cia’s Public
the Mercury News articles. Reporting on the activity
Affairs staff were soon “fielding calls from a variety
of criminal gangs, paramilitary groups, and intelli-
of reporters who were skeptical of the allegations and
gence agencies is not like reporting on Capitol Hill:
who were planning to write articles casting doubt on
the leading actors try very hard to cover their tracks,
the Mercury-News series.”
leaving major gaps in the documentary record, and
individual pieces of evidence will often be open to
multiple interpretations.
Even so, some of the “corrections” published by
GATEKEEPERS In a 1997 article for the Columbia
the LA Times were much more doubtful than Webb’s
Journalism Review, Peter Kornbluh took a far more
original reporting. One article accused Webb of
acerbic view of his colleagues’ record. As Kornbluh
grossly inflating the role of “Freeway” Rick Ross, a
noted, there was a long history of gatekeeping in this
Los Angeles drug dealer who also features in Stanley
field, which dated back to the release of the Iran-Contra
Nelson’s 2021 documentary Crack: Cocaine, Corrup-
report in November 1987:
tion & Conspiracy. According to the Times, Ross was
When an investigative reporter rose to ask the lead really a minor figure, of no great consequence in the
counsel of the committees whether the lawmakers
59
ABOVE: Anti-Sandinista forces
of Nicaragua practice drills and
exercises at a military base in
Honduras.
60
In May 1984, shortly before he began plotting to
assassinate the president of his country, Bueso Rosa
received the Legion of Merit from the Reagan
administration for “exceptionally meritorious conduct
in the performance of outstanding services.”
The US relationship with Colombian president US legal officials involved in handling the men’s
Álvaro Uribe offers one striking example. During his cases, none of which went to trial, had no qualms about
first term in office, Uribe brought in the so-called “Jus- expressing their admiration and respect for the narcos.
tice and Peace Law,” granting amnesty to right-wing One judge described the man he was sentencing as
paramilitary leaders who had killed many thousands being “substantively different” from run-of-the-mill
of Colombian civilians. The Colombian courts later crime lords, since he used the money from drug traf-
ruled that the terms of the law were unconstitutional. ficking to help fund a war against the Colombian left:
The paramilitary chiefs, now facing the prospect of “he was engaged in some activity that had some posi-
serious jail time, felt that Uribe had betrayed them, tive perspectives.” A federal narcotics prosecutor was
and they were about to start speaking freely about his equally generous in his assessment: “Clearly, they did
long record of collusion with their activities. some nasty things. But, you know, it was a civil war
Happily for Uribe, he had friends in Washington down there. I always wanted to believe that if I was
ready to help him out of a sticky situation. The para- put in the same situation, I would have done things
militaries were wanted for drug trafficking offenses in differently. But I don’t know.”
the United States, but Uribe had hitherto refused to By any rational standard, the fact that the paramil-
extradite them. He suddenly reversed that policy and itary leaders had used their drug profits to pay for a
had them bundled out of the country overnight so that campaign of mass murder should have been an aggra-
no Colombian judge could interfere. Infamous figures vating factor, resulting in stiffer sentences.
like Salvatore Mancuso now passed into the hands of The dark alliances that helped foster a social
the US authorities. calamity during the 1980s and ’90s fit into a much
A 2016 New York Times investigation found larger pattern. There’s a chasm between “national
some extraordinary irregularities in the handling of security” as interpreted by government agencies like
their cases: the cia and the actual security of US citizens. In the
name of protecting the homeland and keeping its
The leaders extradited en masse will have served
people safe, these agencies have consistently pursued
an average of 10 years, at most, for drug conspira-
policies that increased the dangers they were supposed
cies that involved tons of cocaine. By comparison,
to combat.
federal inmates convicted of crack cocaine traf-
The work of reporters like Gary Webb brought
ficking — mostly street-level dealers who sold
that reality home to everyone who suffered, directly or
less than an ounce — serve on average just over
indirectly, from the explosion of crack addiction and
12 years in prison .... [T]hey were treated as first-
the violent criminality that accompanied it. The intel-
time offenders despite extensive criminal histories
ligence agency’s pr nightmare was the shadow cast by
in Colombia; and they received credit for time
a real nightmare in urban neighborhoods throughout
served there, even though the official rationale for
the United States.
their extradition was that they were committing
crimes in Colombian jails.
Everywhere
Grime in
America, Terrible
Time in America
This year marks the sixtieth spoofs, along with the waning of gritty slum setting, depictions of
anniversary of the film West Side the once enormous popularity deadly gang violence, and scornful
Story. If you’re only familiar of the film musical since the late satire of corrupt, racist policing.
with this landmark musical from 1960s. But even in its heyday, it
If you’ve never seen West Side
the innumerable spoofs of it was startling — and, to some, off-
Story, or not recently, you might
in sitcoms and sketch comedy, putting — to find such intense
not realize how hard-hitting it is.
you’re at least vaguely aware topical issues tackled in a genre
Both warring gangs vying for
of the way it portrayed the violent thought of as the frothiest, lightest,
turf hate the vicious goon cops
conflicts of warring street gangs and most romantic of them all.
policing their neighborhood and
through song and dance numbers. The hitmaking team of Rodgers
refuse to cooperate with them.
See the late, great Norm Mac- and Hammerstein had been
In a scene in which the gangs are
donald in the “Cobras and building toward this, addressing
planning a rumble at the local
Panthers” skit on Saturday Night themes like racism in shows
candy store, the bigoted cop
Live, as just one of many such as South Pacific as far back
Lieutenant Schrank kicks out the
examples. as 1949. But the 1957 stage version
Puerto Rican gang, the Sharks,
of West Side Story took a far
It’s clear that some degree of saying scornfully, “Oh yeah, sure,
more radical approach, with its
machismo motivates a lot of these I know. It’s a free country, and I
Anyone attempting to
remake a masterpiece like this
must be out of their mind.
ain’t got the right. But I got a antipathy to bond together against while the young men condemn its
badge. Whatta you got?” The their real enemy. discrimination and expense.
Sharks leave, sardonically
You may be more familiar with So, come for the still-sharp
whistling the anthem “America,”
the comic song “Gee, Officer cultural commentary, and stay for
the opening lyrics of which go,
Krupke,” sung by the Jets. They’re the brilliance of the cinematic
“My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet
mocking the way “juvenile achievement overall. West Side
land of liberty, of thee I sing ... ”
delinquents” such as themselves Story, which was loosely based on
Schrank then tries to bond with are seen by judges, psychiatrists, Shakespeare’s Romeo and
the rival gang the Jets over their and social workers as they’re Juliet, represents genius at work
shared bigotry, and when that ground through a stupidly at every level. The screenplay
doesn’t work, he erupts at them, incompetent system, starting with from Ernest Lehman was adapted
too, calling the various teenagers their inevitable early encounters from Arthur Laurents’s stage
of Irish, Polish, and Italian with the cops. But most memo- book, with Leonard Bernstein’s
descent the children of “immi- rable is “America,” performed by score featuring lyrics by a
grant scum.” It’s one of several the Sharks and their girlfriends young Stephen Sondheim. Jerome
tantalizing scenes when on a tenement building rooftop. Robbins choreographed the
both gangs, rightly identifying the Led by the dazzling Rita Moreno dances, and he was considered so
police as their most immediate as Anita and George Chakiris as indispensable to the performances
oppressors in a brutal system, Bernardo, the young women that he was brought on as the
seem for a moment as if they defend their new homeland for the film’s codirector with Robert
might be able to overcome mutual freedoms and comforts it provides Wise, editor of Citizen Kane and
Breaking up
the Party
The year 2007 should have been Form 696 demanded that pro- left. Mainstream department
the year that British grime music moters provide names, addresses, stores were pressured to cancel
burst out from the underground. telephone numbers, and dates promotional signings by black
Drawing on the realities of urban of birth for all artists performing grime stars. The moral panic
life in Tony Blair’s Britain — at an event, to be delivered two around grime seemed to belong to
as well as decades of black British weeks before any proposed show. a climate of fears over antisocial
creativity from dancehall to Crucially, the form also asked behavior — often policing
jungle — this new music had a which particular ethnic group simply the crime of being working
network of musicians, mcs, and would be attending, and which class or black in public space.
promoters, as well as the audience musical style would be played.
Form 696 was the most recent in
to take over the mainstream.
When promoters did not comply, a long history of the British
But it was at this exact point that a
events were closed down on state using legal means to shut
new risk assessment protocol
an industrial scale. Plainclothes down emerging music cultures
introduced by the Metropolitan
policemen turned up at venues throughout the postwar era.
Police choked the prospects of
and searched performers as they In the late 1950s, first-generation
grime’s live success.
Planned
Paranoia
Defense was always built into Haussmann, were predicated There was a sharp rise in petty and
cities. From Beijing to Lisbon, on the occasional need to shoot violent crime between the 1950s
cities throughout history protesting workers. The and 1980s, which happened to
were reinforced by castles and wide boulevards, intended to coincide with the mass construc-
ringed with protective, turreted discourage barricades and tion of new public housing. As
stone walls to secure them create free-fire zones, were much of this crime happened to
against hostile outside forces abundantly used in the suppres- poor people in the places poor
from outside. But it was only in sion of the Paris Commune people lived, a link was made
the nineteenth century that and became an inspiration to between the design of these new
their rulers decided to protect authoritarian city planners from housing developments and the
them from the majority of the New Delhi to Moscow. In the levels of crime. Jane Jacobs
people inside as well. 1970s, however, a novel planning believed that crime was kept low
innovation emerged, which in certain areas through natural
It was an open secret in Napoleon
claimed to protect city dwellers surveillance created by “eyes
iii’s Paris that the beautification
from a new enemy — themselves. on the street,” and that new public
efforts under its planner, Baron
Few events inspire the kind of As is often the case with con- the lapd’s robbery and homicide
frenzied speculation as the spiracy theories, the likely reality division, until he saw no option
murder of rap star Christopher is at once more banal and more but to quit the force, accusing the
Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls, who menacing than any of these. top brass of frustrating his efforts
was gunned down in 1997 while Though Biggie’s murder is still at every turn.
leaving a Los Angeles awards officially unsolved, decades of
What Poole uncovered was a
show after-party. Was it the fbi investigative work suggest that
criminal faction of gang-affiliated
who orchestrated the hit, bent on the emcee’s killing was the
lapd officers who worked
ending the gangster rap culture by-product of criminal elements
off-duty security for Suge Knight,
that defined the ’90s? Was it Sean within law enforcement itself.
the ceo of Death Row Records,
“Diddy” Combs, his friend and
The most promising theory for Shakur’s former label and
producer, who wanted to drive
Biggie’s murder is still the one the leading rival of Combs’s New
up sales of what would become
originally advanced by former York–based Bad Boy Records. The
Biggie’s posthumous sophomore
Los Angeles Police Department hit on Biggie, Poole concluded,
album? Or is Biggie still alive,
(lapd) detective Russell Poole, had been ordered by Knight and
living it up in some exotic locale
later immortalized in Randall orchestrated by two of these cops,
with rap rival Tupac Shakur, shot
Sullivan’s 2002 tome LAbyrinth. David Mack and Rafael Pérez,
to death in similarly murky cir-
Poole, who died in 2015, spent a who hired Mack’s former college
cumstances just six months prior?
year investigating the killing for classmate and Nation of Islam
departments around the country This was the mindset Poole mentality that meant cops always
exhibit gang-like tendencies, encountered all those years ago, protect one of their own.
namely by closing ranks to protect as his investigation into Biggie’s
A bill banning police gangs is
their fellow officers, no matter murder turned up more and
currently sitting on Gavin
how dirty. Whether in Baltimore, more evidence of wrongdoing
Newsom’s desk. But even if the
Spokane, or Weirton, officers within the lapd. Poole was not
California governor signs it,
who have complained about or only stifled and undermined
what’s rotten with US policing
refused to engage in questionable by his superiors, he soon started
won’t be solved without
behavior faced ostracism and getting “looks [and] raised
many further measures, from
more aggressive forms of retalia- eyebrows” from other detectives,
stringent whistleblower protec-
tion within their departments. too, and he became “an outcast,”
tions to legal consequences for
Shannon Spalding, a Chicago as he told Sullivan. Poole’s father,
abusive officers.
narcotics officer who helped himself an lasd veteran,
expose an extortion ring within recounted to his son the time More than two decades later,
the city’s police department and he’d nearly caught a group beating Biggie’s murder is remembered
forced the city to acknowledge its for testifying against another as a symbol of the tragic costs
code of silence, was first bribed deputy who had planted a gun on a of gang violence. It should also
and then threatened by colleagues suspect he killed, and he told remind us that some of the worst
to shut her up. Poole that the nature of policing gangbangers wear badges.
created an us-versus-them
74
a
ANDREW FISHMAN AND CECÍLIA OLLIVEIRA
BRAZILIAN
BLOODBATH
WHEN LULA AND THE WORKERS’ PARTY
TOOK POWER IN BRAZIL, THEY HAD A
PLAN TO TAKE ON CRIME AND THE POWER
MOUTHS OPEN, EYES CLOSED, faces spattered with
blood, two freshly decapitated heads lie on a filthy floor.
A pushcart full of dismembered limbs stands in front of
a wall of iron bars as men yell in the background. These
are just two of many brutal scenes captured in shaky cell
phone videos that spread across Brazil in January 2017.
OF THE POLICE. THEIR FAILURE HELPED The Northern Family criminal syndicate had staged
a rebellion at the overcrowded Anísio Jobim prison
UNDERMINE THEIR ENTIRE PROGRAM. complex in the Amazonian city of Manaus, home to
over 1,200 prisoners, more than double its maximum
capacity. Within hours, they had executed fifty-six
alleged members of their São Paulo–based rival, the
First Command of the Capital, or pcc, the most pow-
erful syndicate in Brazil.
Days later, 450 miles to the north, the pcc
responded at another penitentiary in the state of
Roraima with thirty decapitations. Videos of human
hearts being removed from bodies made the rounds
on messaging apps. “Here is the answer for you — you
killed our brothers in Manaus, and now you’re going to traditional drug gangs in their ability to capture state
pay for it.” It was a particularly gruesome episode in a institutions, pushing Brazil’s drug war to new fron-
cycle of violence that the Brazilian government appears tiers. Decades ago, criminals carried rusty revolvers.
powerless — or unwilling — to stop. Today, gangs tied into global markets have rifles
More than thirty-five years after the rebirth of powerful enough to shoot down armored helicopters —
democracy in the country, in many of Brazil’s favelas, and even a rocket launcher or two.
prisons, and remote rural villages, criminal gangs rule In its mainstream press, Brazil’s rampant armed
with impunity. Their violence and terror seeps into the violence is mostly treated as a police question — and, as
surrounding communities of the relatively privileged a result, politicians have invested in armored vehicles
and pervades the body politic. Like colonial barons, and allowed cops to gleefully lean into President Jair
their power is granted with the connivance of local gov- Bolsonaro’s “shoot first, ask questions later” approach
ernments. And, just like the olden days, everyone is to their work.
expected to kick up a fat share of their ill-gotten spoils. In deeply unequal Brazil, it is the oligarchs, the fear-
Corrupt law enforcement in many areas decided in mongering right-wing politicians, the dirty cops and
recent years to forego the middlemen and establish their military men who most profit from and perpetuate the
own paramilitary mafias, dubbed militias, to control violence that serves as a mechanism for and justifica-
the streets themselves. These mafias have innovated tion of social control. The poor and working classes,
in cruelty and methods of extortion and far surpassed overwhelmingly black, suffer almost all the conse-
quences. It would be reasonable for you to assume, then,
that the Brazilian Left is laser-focused on the issue of
public safety and brimming with winning proposals to
TODAY, GANGS TIED INTO GLOBAL end the madness.
You’d be wrong. The Left’s failure on public security
MARKETS HAVE RIFLES POW- is one of the most puzzling and complicated political
realities in a country notorious for its inscrutable politics.
ERFUL ENOUGH TO SHOOT DOWN
DAILY INDIGNITIES
ARMORED HELICOPTERS — AND Rampant and increasingly hyperviolent criminality does
EVEN A ROCKET LAUNCHER OR TWO. not impact all Brazilians equally, but the terror and
despair it instills is nearly universal. Brazilians are afraid
to leave their homes and walk down their own streets.
A 2018 survey of Rio de Janeiro residents — a city with
a typical homicide rate by Brazilian standards, but 5.7
times the average for US cities that year — found that
92 percent worry every day that they will be hit by a
stray bullet.
They’re also angry. Angry at the criminals who rob
them; at the police who are rarely there when they need
them; at the justice system that — despite locking up sus-
pects and throwing them in medieval prisons at record
levels — is seen as soft on crime, corrupt, and ineffec-
tive; at the politicians, with their empty promises and
fake smiles. Angry at the indignity of living with it all
in a country so beautiful and rich in natural resources.
Public insecurity is perhaps the best prism through
which one can understand Brazil’s often bewildering
politics. It is at the root of Bolsonaro’s ascent to power,
the rise of the anti-corruption movement that led to the
76
A BRAZILIAN BLOODBATH
77
ANDREW FISHMAN AND CECÍLIA OLLIVEIRA
78
A BRAZILIAN BLOODBATH
79
ANDREW FISHMAN AND CECÍLIA OLLIVEIRA
Rousseff, who took office in 2011, was far less ambi- In 2014, Rousseff also signed a “Guarantee of
tious in her broader public security agenda than her Law and Order” (glo) decree that deployed the mil-
predecessor had been, but even more zealous on the itary in Rio’s favelas to fight drug gangs and “pacify”
crime question. them ahead of Brazil hosting the World Cup that year,
In the first weeks of her government, the newly resulting in a laundry list of abuses, crimes, and rights
appointed secretary for drug policy, Pedro Abramovay, violations.
who had previously served as a top justice official under “The favela streets and life were brutally militarized
Lula, told the O Globo newspaper that the administration by the rulers in that recent so-called democratic period,”
wanted to end prison sentences for small-scale, nonvio- wrote Gizele Martins, a journalist and activist from the
lent drug dealers who were selling to support their own Complexo da Maré favelas, which were occupied under
habits. This would correct one of the principal failures the glo. For seventeen months, “we lived with cur-
of the 2006 drug law. “We are talking about people with fews, surveillance, arrests, and house raids, in addition
no ties to organized crime, putting them in prison, and a to the prohibition of any type of activity on the street.”
year and a half later, now with organized crime connec- According to Martins, local activists like her were “cen-
tions, returning them to society,” explained Abramovay, sored” and “threatened” for documenting daily abuses.
who argued that the policy was also contributing to Left-leaning politicians counter that they are limited
prison overcrowding. by conservative popular opinions. This is largely true.
Rousseff was furious. She demanded that the justice Only 24 percent of Brazilians support legalizing recre-
minister fire him immediately and go on the record ational marijuana, for example. But the pt’s own polling
making clear that the government was in fact moving data from 2015 reveals a complex mixture of opinions
in the opposite direction. Abramovay resigned, and the that suggests the public could be persuaded either way
proposal never saw the light of day. on many public safety issues, if presented with the right
Soares, Lula’s former public security secretary, leadership and messaging.
recounted another emblematic disappointment for pro- While 72 percent said cops ignore wrongdoing by
gressive reformers that occurred that July. Ministry of colleagues, the same portion said they trust the police,
Justice leaders had spent six months preparing new and the most cited problem was not enough police on the
policy proposals to tackle skyrocketing murder rates. streets. “Invest more in police training and equipment”
“The long-awaited date arrived: the meeting with the and “combat police corruption” tied as the most pop-
president. The minister handed her the document while ular responses for how the government should improve
the technician prepared to present it,” wrote Soares. safety. And while 82 percent approved of using the
“Homicides?” Rousseff replied. “That’s up to military to fight crime, the same number said police
the states.” As Soares recalls, “she put the document should change their strategies to avoid deaths and that
aside and ordered that they move on to the next greater oversight was necessary. Overwhelming major-
item on the agenda.” Homicides rose 18 percent during ities believed that “Brazilian prisons are a school for
her presidency. organized crime” (84 percent) and that “overcrowding
Under intense pressure from the United States ahead of prisons violates human rights” (77 percent).
of hosting the Olympics and World Cup, and facing Interestingly, 90.8 percent said they had never
unexpectedly vehement anti-government protests, in heard the phrase “demilitarize the police,” a popular
2013, Rousseff passed a repressive counterterrorism slogan at left-wing anti-government protests two years
law and another that gave police greater power to obtain earlier that had already been embraced by some pro-
evidence and infiltrate suspected criminal organiza- gressive politicians.
tions — both broad enough to be used against social In the end, the pt’s conciliatory strategy led it to
movements. These choices alienated allies on the Left seek institutional arrangements with the Brazilian secu-
but also provided the legal tools that the Lava Jato rity establishment rather than pursue reforms. As a
(Operation Car Wash) anti-corruption investigations result, without progressive leadership framing the issue,
would exploit to persecute the pt, setting in motion a the most reactionary elements of Brazilian society have
chain of events leading to Rousseff ’s 2016 impeachment dominated the public safety debate with a simple, clear,
and Lula’s 2018 imprisonment. and vengeful message.
80
A BRAZILIAN BLOODBATH
81
ANDREW FISHMAN AND CECÍLIA OLLIVEIRA
82
A BRAZILIAN BLOODBATH
83
The Tumbrel
WALL STREET
SUPERPREDATORS
THE TUMBREL
THE WORST ESTATE BY ROGER LANCASTER
ILLUSTRATION BY
DANIEL ZENDER
The longest-running and most through the air”; that Peggy A police search of Buckey’s home
expensive trial in US history, the McMartin Buckey (Ray’s mother turned up “evidence” — a rubber
McMartin preschool case, began and the school administrator) duck and copies of Playboy. After
in the fall of 1983, when Judy had stuck scissors in the boy’s arresting Buckey, the Manhattan
Johnson claimed that her son, eyes, and that she had beheaded Beach police chief sent a letter to
Billy, had been sodomized by Ray an infant and made Billy drink parents naming him as a suspected
Buckey, a twenty-five-year-old the dead baby’s blood. Johnson’s child abuser. The letter asked
teacher at McMartin Preschool in accounts involved a goat, a lion, parents to question their children
affluent Manhattan Beach, an elephant, and day trips via train as to whether they had witnessed
California. and airplane to other sites for or been victims of abuse, helpfully
sex abuse and torture. Her son naming several possible variations
Over the weeks that followed,
showed no signs of physical abuse, of sexual assault they might have
Johnson’s accusations became
and Johnson herself would later experienced. It also suggested
increasingly bizarre: she alleged
be diagnosed with acute paranoid that nude photos might have been
that Buckey and other teachers
schizophrenia, but her accusations taken. Persistent questioning
had dressed as witches to abuse
set in motion an elaborate chain by panicked parents produced
her son; that Buckey “flew
reaction. further accusations, and a major
part of the police investigation was story of how a horse was slaugh- Making of a Modern American
handed over to Kee MacFarlane of tered in front of students to Witch Hunt, called attention to
the Children’s Institute Interna- intimidate them — this, at a busy how such framings undermined
tional, a clinic for the treatment of day care center, where parents rational law: “By 1986, in many
child abuse. were coming and going at all states, hastily reformed criminal
hours. The magazine went on to statutes made it unnecessary
This would have been a good time
warn that “[p]arents were too for children to come into court;
for sober, dispassionate, even
trusting, assuming that separation parents could act as hearsay
skeptical reportage. But in
anxiety was the reason their witnesses, or kids could testify on
its early coverage of the story, the
children cried when dropped off at closed-circuit TV, giving juries
mass media inflamed the public,
school.” Another article matter- the automatic impression that
fanning fear of ritual abuse
of-factly referred to “the 125 defendants had done something
(along with precise descriptions
children who were molested at the to frighten the child.”
of salacious details) across the
McMartin School.”
country. Newsweek reported, By spring 1984, a grand jury had
without qualification, that “some The McMartin furor stimulated indicted seven people — Ray
of the children are now strong congressional hearings, and the Buckey, Peggy McMartin Buckey,
enough to relate” details of “the New York Times uncritically Peggy Ann Buckey (Ray’s sister),
Naked Movie Star game.” The reported MacFarlane’s testimony Virginia McMartin (Ray’s
article continues: “The horrors before the House Ways and Means grandmother, who had founded
may only have started with Subcommittee on Oversight and the preschool thirty years earlier),
sodomy, rape, oral copulation the Select Committee on Children, and three other McMartin
and fondling. For years, the Youth, and Families. teachers — on 115 counts of child
authorities now suspect, parents abuse. Additional counts were
In the New York Times, Brooklyn
had unwittingly delivered their later added, eventually bringing
district attorney Elizabeth
children to an outlet for child the total as high as 354 counts
Holtzman wrote of “a cloak of
pornography and prostitution.” against 369 alleged victims.
immunity” for child molesters:
Hinting that they were onto a
Noting a string of similar accusa- legal requirements for corrobora-
criminal conspiracy of enormous
tions erupting at other day care tive evidence, in addition to
scale, police informed the media
centers, the magazine quoted children’s testimony, had the
that thirty more people linked to
Gary Hewitt of the Center effect of “encouraging [molesters]
McMartin were also under
for Missing Children saying that to continue to sexually abuse
investigation.
the problem was “much bigger children — so long as they do
than anyone wants to believe.” it secretly.” Long-standing legal
Pondering how such elaborate conventions — the right of Tried in the Press
horrors could have happened the accused to face the accuser in Pretrial hearings lasted more than
over many years at a preschool open court; the right of the a year, as attorneys for the
with an excellent reputation, defense to conduct a rigorous defendants mounted an aggressive
Newsweek suggested that “staff cross-examination — were said to defense. On the stand, child
members terrorized their further traumatize already- witnesses related stories
young charges into silence with traumatized children, constituting that involved sex abuse, satanic
threats by example — mutilating extensions of the original acts rituals, underground passageways,
pet rabbits or squeezing to of abuse. secret rooms, excursions to
death young birds.” far-flung sites, the actor Chuck
Debbie Nathan, coauthor with
Not to be outdone, Time uncriti- Michael Snedeker of Satan’s Norris, animal sacrifices, orgies,
cally recounted the implausible Silence: Ritual Abuse and the and the mutilation of corpses.
occurred at McMartin and other children, which involved hand TV shows — Geraldo and Oprah
preschools simply could not have puppets and anatomically correct among them — and prodded
happened: teachers and staff dolls, were profoundly biased, to by public opinion surveys, which
were alleged to have ritually put it mildly. Guided by the showed that overwhelming
abused students in open, unlocked conviction that any denial majorities believed the accusations
classrooms at a busy school. that abuse had occurred was itself (90 percent of those who followed
evidence of abuse, MacFarlane the news, in one poll), prosecutors
The charges themselves were
and her associates had slogged on, refiling charges
more suggestive of “a toddler’s
asked leading questions and used against Buckey on eight counts
notion of unspeakable transgres-
coercive methods to cajole involving three children.
sion ... than ... any known profile
accusations from 384 out of 400
of adult sexual perversion,” as At the second trial, it was the
interviewed children.
Margaret Talbot subsequently put defense team who put MacFarlane
it in the New Republic. Large One child was asked, helpfully, on the witness stand. The jury
circus animals were involved in “Can you remember the naked never heard evidence that Judy
several of the children’s stories. pictures?” Children who said that Johnson was disturbed when
And then there were the physically they recalled no abuse were she made the original accusations,
impossible acts: impracticable asked to speculate: “Let’s pretend or that she had made similar
copulations, corporeal flight, and see what might have hap- allegations against her estranged
undetected day trips by air balloon pened.” They were fed the desired husband, Billy’s father. In the
or spaceship. answers to questions. Details were end, the second jury deadlocked
provided, which children were on all eight counts, leaning toward
Typically, during these conversa-
asked to confirm. Young children acquittal on six of them. And so
tions, I was reminded that terrible
who supplied stories of abuse the McMartin case died, not with
things happen to children — or
were rewarded with hugs; those a bang but with a whimper.
I was quoted the emerging refrain:
who did not were harassed:
“We have to believe the children.” By the end of the process, Ray
“Are you going to be stupid, or
A few times, I was given the Buckey had spent five years
are you going to be smart and help
logically suspect argument that in jail awaiting trial on crimes
us here?”
the more fantastic elements of the that defied all logic. Hundreds of
children’s stories, while probably The jury voted to acquit on children had made similar
false, nonetheless revealed fifty-two of the sixty-five accusations against hundreds of
an underlying truth — that some remaining charges; it remained adults nationwide. Their
terrible trauma had, in fact, hopelessly deadlocked on thirteen hearings revealed much the same
occurred. Prosecutors pressed on, charges, all against Ray Buckey. script, involving panicked
and judges allowed the scaled- (A majority of the jury had parents, coercive interviews, and
back case to move forward. voted to acquit on all thirteen of sensational journalism. More
them.) McMartin Preschool than seventy people were
The wheels of justice turn slowly.
parents, child protection groups, wrongfully convicted during the
The first trial got underway
and victims’ rights advocates ensuing hysteria, then later
in 1987. Kee MacFarlane was
demanded a new trial, marching in exonerated.
examined and extensively cross-
Manhattan Beach under the
examined. It was shown that the Few in the media had the decency
banner “We Believe the Children.”
techniques she used to interview to mutter even a cursory apology.
Goaded by afternoon tabloid
Communists
Against
the Mafia
On May 9, 1978, Italians woke to nonpartisan history that crosses as an organization designed to
news reports about the murder of political divides, which suits those protect the profits that the spike
former Christian Democratic who want to relegate the fight to in the citrus fruits trade (and its
prime minister Aldo Moro by the a question of mere law and order. foreign exports) had brought the
Red Brigades. The same morning, Yet while the mafia has, for big landowners, the latifondisti.
in the small Sicilian town of more than a century, waged war Mafia gangs defended profits on
Cinisi, the police found the body on rebellious peasants and farm not only lemons and oranges but
of Giuseppe “Peppino” Impastato, laborers, trade unionists and also sulfur, as the mine owners
a young anti-mafia activist left-wing members of parliament, sought organized protection. The
murdered by Cosa Nostra — the the resistance against its control gabellotti — entrepreneurs who
Sicilian mafia. has been just as militant — and rented and managed the big
every bit as political. landlords’ properties — were also
Impastato is commemorated each
mafiosi or mafia-linked. They
year as an example of young
Italians’ fight against what was Early Battles were flanked by the campieri, a
private police force that kept
once the country’s most powerful The mafia first emerged in the last order in the estates, an ancestor
criminal organization. Official decades of the nineteenth century of today’s caporali (work-gang
memorialization presents this as a
bosses) — figures who controlled massacre. At a May Day rally that Cardinal Ruffini went so far as to
the workforce by means of violent year in the small town of Portella lobby Alcide De Gasperi’s
repression. della Ginestra, a hail of machine Christian Democratic government
gun fire killed eleven people and to ban the Communists, having
These efforts were resisted at
left almost a hundred injured. already secured their excommuni-
every turn.
The leader of the Sicilian branch cation from the Church itself.
The movement of farm laborers, of the Communists at the time, But the repression was only just
sulfur mine workers, and peasants Girolamo Li Causi, and beginning, soon to reap fresh
demanded better working many contemporary historians victims among the ranks of
conditions, a shortened workday, since, saw the act as just the Socialist and Communist trade
increased wages, and a reduction most extreme example of violent unionists.
of the taxes owed to the land- collusion between threatened
owners or the gabellotti running mafiosi and big landowners. A Political Movement
the farms.
This was a decisive moment in Back in Sicily, shortly before the
Indeed, it was thanks to the “long Italian history, revealing the 1955 regional elections, mafiosi
wave” of the movement for land dark forces behind the bloc that again slaughtered several
and democratic agrarian reform governed the country in the militants, including Salvatore
that the Italian Communist Party postwar years. The Christian Carnevale, a laborer in the sulfur
(pci) was able to build support on Democrats now ruled Italy caves and a prominent trade
the island and become a mass together with far-right support, unionist.
party by the end of World War ii. forging an alliance between the
Northern industrial bourgeoisie The Christian Democratic
authorities (including the mayor)
An Anti-Left and the Southern landowners —
a pact of which the mafia was now failed to show up for his large
Bloodbath public funeral.
very much a part, having built
Organized crime saw the postwar up its capital over the preceding But Raniero Panzieri, at that time
rise of communists in Sicily as an decades. the Socialist Party’s regional
existential threat. Already in the secretary, called a mass demon-
In this environment, the Commu-
first months of 1947, in the run-up stration to commemorate their
nists and Socialists in opposition
to the regional election, the mafia murdered comrade. National and
were now in the mafia’s crosshairs.
had murdered Nunzio Sansone, regional political figures arrived
founder and secretary of the labor The anti-communist outlook of in the tiny village of Sciara: from
hall in Villabate, as well as the Italian and Sicilian authorities then regional Italian General
Leonardo Savia, another commu- was made clear in the words of Confederation of Labour (cgil)
nist at the forefront of the fight for the ruling bloc’s other great ally: secretary Pio La Torre to the
land reform. Mafiosi also killed the Catholic Church. In the Palermo pci secretary Pompeo
the activists Accursio Miraglia and wake of the massacre in Portella Colajanni and the Socialist mp
Pietro Macchiarella. della Ginestra and another that Sandro Pertini, who concluded the
followed it in June, Ernesto rally with an appeal to the class
Sicilian voters registered their
Ruffini, then cardinal of Palermo, and especially the youth: “From
response at the ballot box that
proudly told Pope Pius xii his death we must take an example
year, giving the Communist-and
that “the reaction to left-wing and an inspiration. And the
Socialist-run People’s Bloc 30.4
extremism is taking on impressive example he left is one of loyalty to
percent of the vote, a plurality.
proportions,” dismissing the working class and to the
But the electoral mandate was no
communists as “anti-Italian and party.”
protection against outright
anti-Christian.”
It was again Panzieri who empha- strife, the mafia also lashed out at anti-mafia struggle was also
sized the intimate connection the opposition coming from murdered by mafiosi: the Commu-
between all the class struggles communists and the legal system. nist member of parliament Pio
against the bourgeois-mafioso La Torre, who had been head of
It was these years of bloodshed
bloc, which he dubbed “the the Sicilian region of the cgil
that culminated in the 1978
squalid and inhuman forces of union in the 1950s and a tireless
murder of Peppino Impastato.
landowners, the barons, the militant in the fight over land.
Impastato supported the struggles
mafiosi, and crime.”
waged by workers, farm laborers, La Torre had insightfully detected
and the unemployed. But above the fault lines in the mafia as
The Fall of the all, he was a defiant voice of an organized system of power and
Movement protest against the expropriation capital accumulation.
of peasants’ land to build
It was not the mafia itself that It was because of his proposal,
the third runway of the Palermo
broke the movement in Sicily which later became law, that
airport: the key power base of
but emigration: according to the the mafia was recognized as a
Cinisi mafia boss Gaetano
Italian National Institute of criminal organization, and thus
Badalamenti, whose control
Statistics (Istat), between 1946 and punished through not only the
guaranteed a sizable flow of drugs
1956, some 274,000 people left imprisonment of its members but
through its doors. Impastato,
Sicily for Northern Italy or abroad the confiscation of the assets
himself the son of a Badalamenti
(out of a population not much under its control, from real estate
clan affiliate, irreverently
above four million), followed by to businesses and farmland. As
reported on these goings-on at
another 352,000 in the following a communist, La Torre knew
street protests as well as over
decade. that striking at the heart of this
the airwaves through the radio
business demanded much more
In those decades, Italy was going station he founded, Radio Aut.
than arrests. Instead, he
through the economic boom that
On Badalamenti’s orders, proposed an assault on the mafia’s
followed postwar reconstruction,
Impastato was killed in an control and ownership of capital.
with accelerated industrial
explosion on the local train tracks,
development across the country. More than three decades have
two nights before the Cinisi
However, in the South, a public passed since that law was intro-
council elections in which he stood
body designed to finance the duced, and the Sicilian Mafia is
as a candidate for the left-wing
development of the region, the not dead yet. It has proven capable
party Proletarian Democracy (dp).
“Cassa per il Mezzogiorno,” of transforming and working its
To hide the mafia’s hand in his
allowed the mafia to rack up way into the inner labyrinth of
murder, the investigators and the
profits and capital, becoming an Italian capitalism, on the basis of
press claimed that Impastato
economic power that would the vast economic power it has
had accidentally killed himself
soon shift to the northern regions, accumulated. While the mafia no
while organizing a terrorist attack.
with even greater opportunities longer deploys mass violence as
Only in the 1990s was the
for profit. What followed were readily as it once did, it lingers on
Impastato case finally reopened,
decades of bloodshed and mafia as a force, in the absence of the
with Badalamenti — who had been
clan wars in which no one was organization and belief in progress
extradited to the United States
spared — coming to a head with that once drove so many commu-
and imprisoned there in 1984 —
the killing of the Carabinieri nists to cut away at the roots of its
convicted of the murder in 2002.
general Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa power.
in 1982 and the judges Giovanni In 1982, a few months before the
Falcone and Paolo Borsellino assassination of police chief Dalla
in 1992. Despite its own internal Chiesa, another key figure in the
42,363
FL
0
22,081 Robberies
GA
0 Burglaries
Larcenies
32,528
IL Motor vehicle
1-9 thefts
Minimum wage
violations
16,731
MI
10-100
Number of police
officers
61,886
NY
100+ Number of state
investigators
who enforce
25,632 minimum wage
NC
10-100
23,103
OH
1-9
25,220
PA
10-100
57,641
TX
10-100
Billions of
dollars stolen
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
US
Total
718,226
894*
*at US Dept. of Labor (about $15 billion)
OTH
Nicole
Aschoff
THE
Tortola, the largest of the British
Virgin Islands, in 2013.
MAN
The man responsible for what the FBI called the “largest
kleptocracy case to date” threw himself a hell of a thirty-
first birthday party. A grab bag of Hollywood party cli-
chés, Malaysian businessman Jho Low’s 2012 Las Vegas
bash included a bespoke aircraft hangar, a Ferris wheel,
a cigar lounge, Cirque-du-Soleil-esque performers,
“Oompa Loompa” impersonators, and booze served
by gorgeous women clad in red dresses.
What the party lacked in creativity, it made up for
in cash thrown down. As Tom Wright and Bradley Hope
describe in Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled
Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World, dozens of A-list
Like Jordan Belfort, whose antics apparently
impressed Low enough that he bankrolled the
DiCaprio-led biopic Wolf of Wall Street, Low’s excesses
caught up to him. Clued in by the Malaysian playboy’s
extravagant spending and mysterious origin story, inves-
tigators eventually connected the dots, forcing him into
hiding in 2019, where he remains to this day. But the sig-
nificance of Low’s crime feels deeper to many observers.
For Wright and Hope, “Jho Low’s story epitomizes the
shocking power of those who learn how to master the
levers of international finance in the twenty-first century,”
indicative of a “failure of global capitalism.”
celebrities, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, If the spate of books released in recent years is any
and Kim Kardashian, came out, many of whom were indication, the sense that globalization and financializa-
paid big money to attend. Swizz Beatz, Kanye West, and tion have spurred an upsurge in transnational crime is
Ludacris provided musical entertainment, with Britney widely shared. In The Laundromat: Inside the Panama
Spears bursting from a cake to sing “Happy Birthday.” Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the
Jho Low himself was gifted a bright red Lamborghini by Global Elite, Jake Bernstein details just how easy it is
nightclub owners Noah Tepperberg and Jason Strauss, for elites to hide their money, through a history of the
as a thank you for the millions of dollars he had spent in now-dissolved Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.
their establishments over the years. For a relatively small fee, the company would set up an
Low Taek Jho, Wharton business school graduate anonymous corporation in an offshore tax haven such as
and professional hanger-on, allegedly bluffed his way into the British Virgin Islands or Bermuda, and for a little bit
the corridors of power in Malaysia and masterminded more, it would have one of its employees pretend to be
the theft of $4.5 billion from 1Malaysia Development the owner so the real money holder could remain a secret.
Berhad, the state investment fund for which he served as “Mossfon,” as it was affectionately called, was the
unofficial special adviser. And he didn’t work alone. Low company implicated in the 2016 Panama Papers scandal,
developed connections around the globe — with the triggered by the release of a trove of documents by an
likes of the now-former Malaysian prime minister, middling anonymous whistleblower detailing the dodgy financial
Saudi elites, washed-up rappers, and a dozen Goldman dealings of the global elite. According to Bernstein, in its
Sachs bankers — using them to successfully implement four-decade run, Mossfon alone “flooded the planet with
the swindle and stash the cash in offshore bank accounts. more than 210,000 anonymous companies, trusts, and foun-
dations” — all vehicles to help the wealthy hide their money.
Mossfon alone “flooded Elites and corporations looking to hide their earnings
are usually engaged in unethical but legal tax avoidance
the planet with more rather than illicit activities. But the secrecy afforded by this
global architecture makes it difficult to tell the difference.
than 210,000 anonymous Indeed, Jho Low, whose friends called him Panda in a
companies, trusts, nod to his “plump frame and cuddly demeanor” as well
as his love for the movie Kung Fu Panda, was a relatively
and foundations” — all benign crook compared to many who employ “corporate
service providers.” Guadalajara Cartel cofounder and
vehicles to help the “Mexico’s first narcotics billionaire” Rafael Caro Quintero
rich hide their money. was a Mossfon customer. Known for the gruesome tor-
ture and murder of undercover DEA agent Enrique “Kiki”
Camarena in 1985, Quintero, like many other drug lords
and mobsters, utilized the shadow banking structure to
hide and launder dirty money.
Satellite imagery of the Salt Pit, code name for a CIA black site
prison and interrogation center outside Kabul, Afghanistan.
NAME OF
CAPITAL
Crime is a trusted instrument in the geopolitical tool kit.
Consider the Central Intelligence Agency, formed in 1947
out of the ashes of the Office of Strategic Services. The CIA
is a shadowy government agency tasked with making the
ISM
world safe for US-led capitalism. From its founding, it has
pursued this mission by any means necessary, including
the funding and facilitation of some of the world’s worst
criminals and most heinous crimes.
CIA fingerprints can be found on criminal activity
around the world. In the immediate postwar years, Pres-
ident Harry S. Truman was already channeling money
through the CIA to fight communism in Europe. Alfred
in Langley, Virginia.
headquarters of the CIA
An aerial view of the
McCoy tells how in 1950 the CIA, through its intermediaries,
hired a crew of local Corsican criminals to suppress a
dockworker strike in Marseille. In solidarity with the Viet-
namese communists fighting the French Expeditionary
Corps, the dockworkers were refusing to load supplies
headed for Indochina. In due course, the local mafia
crushed the dockworkers’ strike, and, thanks to the CIA’s
money and support, the Corsican syndicate forged a
heroin production and smuggling operation in Marseille
that thrived for decades.
In Vietnam, the CIA ran the Phoenix Program, an The local mafia crushed
illegal torture and assassination effort. According to
Sergeant Ed Murphy, a counterintelligence specialist
the dockworkers’
interviewed by Douglas Valentine in The CIA as Orga- strike, and, thanks
nized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America
and the World, “Phoenix was a bounty-hunting program, to the CIA’s support,
an attempt to eliminate the opposition, by which I mean
the opposition to us, the Americans, getting what we
the Corsican syndicate
wanted, which was to control the Vietnamese through forged a heroin pro-
our clients — the Diems, the Kys, the Thieus.” The under-
cover agents picked up anybody deemed a Viet Cong duction and smuggling
suspect, then tossed them into barbed wire cages too
small to stand up in until they got around to interrogating
operation that thrived
and torturing them. Any Vietnamese person could be for decades.
100 № 43 / FALL 2021
E
Smooth Criminals
F
female suspect was raped and tortured simply because
she refused to sleep with an agent.”
In the decades since the Vietnam War, kidnapping,
torture, murder, and narcotics — with some blackmail
thrown in — has remained the CIA’s go-to formula. An
extremely short list includes Operation Condor, MK-Ultra,
Iran-Contra, “enhanced interrogation” and death squads
L
in Iraq, as well as black sites and “ghost detentions,” resur-
rected warlords, and more death squads in Afghanistan.
Do CIA agents and their shady international counter-
parts stand alongside Russian mobsters, Mexican drug
lords, Israeli sex traffickers, and Nigerian cyber scammers
in the global criminal lineup?
The crimes of the CIA are not a secret. They exist in a
gray zone where enough people know about them that
M
they can’t be denied, yet they are rarely, if ever, the subject
of polite discussion and debate. The crimes of gangsters,
drug traffickers, and embezzlers are set apart from the
war crimes perpetuated by the US government. One set
of crimes and criminals is defined as a problem to be
eliminated, while the other is ignored and hidden — it’s
not a crime to murder and torture as long as it’s in the
service of American capitalism.
MUDDY
WATERS
Adding the CIA and similar entities into the picture of
global crime muddies not only our moral framework for
categorizing crime but also how we imagine strategies to
combat it. Granted, “cracking down” on crime demands an
honest assessment of how crime, norms of morality, and
the carceral state interact in the real world. The horrors of
sex trafficking have been used by local law enforcement
to push for longer sentences for sex workers trying to
make a living. For decades, the so-called war on drugs
has been used as an excuse to police and warehouse
poor people, particularly people of color, and to jus-
tify repeated violations of other countries’ sovereignty.
Decriminalization needs to be part of any conversation
about crime, whether national or international.
101
Nicole Aschoff
The fact remains, however, that global crime hurts that could be kept hidden.” So the agency set one up,
communities. Opioid addiction is directly related to using a pseudonymous account holder to hide the US
availability. Unsuspecting women are swept up into an government’s role.
unending nightmare of sexual violence. Assassinations Needless to say, there is very little appetite for elimi-
by shadowy government agents (and the military) wreak nating tax havens and shadow banking. This doesn’t mean
havoc, destroying the sense of safety and security that we shouldn’t try. By the same token, we should call out the
people need to thrive. CIA as the criminal organization that it is, loudly and often,
Jettisoning Manichaean narratives highlights how the and demand its immediate elimination, along with a public
structures of global capitalism that facilitate transnational admission of its long list of crimes and misdemeanors.
crime, like the money-laundering infrastructure, are used But even if we were able to shut down tax havens and
by a wide range of actors, from narco-traffickers and disband the CIA, there is a deeper challenge in tackling
mobsters to CIA agents, from major corporations to mil- global crime. Crime is historical, integral to capitalism,
lionaires trying to hide money from their spouse ahead and fueled anew each day by the logic of our global for-
of divorce proceedings. profit system. This is not to say that we should settle on
The CIA was an enthusiastic early adopter of the the banality that capitalism is a violent system that begets
shadow banking system. According to Bernstein, by the crime — or the naive belief that, if we can just get rid of
early 1950s, the CIA needed a way to pay its covert oper- capitalism, we’ll eliminate crime. It is simply to say that if
atives, and secret bank accounts proved to be the perfect we truly want to reduce global crime, it is necessary to
thing. “In 1952, the agency’s disbursements had grown to comprehend how the internal logic of our for-profit system
P
such an extent that it became unwieldy to hand-carry continually re-creates the conditions for crime to thrive.
the amounts of cash required. It needed a bank account
HO
Smooth Criminals
By the early 1950s, streams of unpaid work/energy from the rest of nature ...
the costs of production would rise, and accumulation
the CIA needed a would slow.” Capitalism cannot survive by exploitation
alone; profit-making requires appropriation.
way to pay its covert These historically grounded combinations of exploita-
operatives, and tion and appropriation carve the landscape of global
capitalism — a landscape fed by the currents of crim-
secret bank accounts inality that connect Montecito, Monte Carlo, and the
British Virgin Islands to Tijuana, Chicago’s South Side,
proved to be and Rio de Janeiro’s City of God. And it is in these latter
the perfect thing. peripheries that the greatest victims of capitalism’s crimes
often reside — the “monetary subjects without money,”
as Marxist philosopher Robert Kurz called them.
THE
In his essay on Paulo Lins’s cinematic masterpiece
Cidade de Deus, Roberto Schwarz discusses the “mes-
merizing rhythm” of violence perpetrated by and visited
upon residents of the Brazilian favela:
PENT
premises on which they rest. The higher spheres of
drug and arms trafficking, and the military and
political corruption that protect them, do not
appear . . . On their own patch — that of the
excluded — the gang leaders are powerful figures,
men with brains and hard experience who can with-
OUSE
stand the highest levels of nervous tension. Yet they
are still poor devils, dying like flies, far from the opu-
lence the drug trade generates elsewhere.
VIEW
condemnation. Higher up the chain of appropriation,
the elites who buy the coke, the venture capitalists who
In pondering how it has come to pass that the great
gamble the laundered money, and the elected officials
majority has “nothing to sell except their own skins” while
who spend the bribes are much harder to see.
a select few have wealth that “increases constantly
Reckless profligacy like that demonstrated by Jho
although they have long ceased to work,” Karl Marx
Low can momentarily bring this world into view. But for
warned against the “insipid childishness” of bourgeois
the most part, the greatest beneficiaries of crime are
origin stories: “In actual history it is a notorious fact that
blurry or invisible. From the penthouse, the violence and
conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, in short, force,
lawlessness experienced daily by those at the bottom
play the greatest part.”
are nothing more than evidence of a system working
“Primitive accumulation” isn’t relegated to the distant
according to design.
past — it remains an integral component of modern-day
profit-making. As Jason W. Moore argues, accumulation
in capitalism relies on constantly evolving combinations of
According to the Panama Papers, there may have been
exploitation ( paying workers less than the value of what
connections between South Florida condo purchases,
they produce) and appropriation (taking, often through seen opposite lining the beach in Sunny Isle, Florida, and
violence, the fruits of labor and nature): “Absent massive money laundering.
Barbies
and Bullets
Manuel Padilla still remembers Colombia’s rebel groups, had of a much more sophisticated
the last time he pulled an all- killed almost a hundred thousand campaign by paramilitaries to
nighter: it was late November, peasants and displaced millions build popular support for their
2004. That night, he spent hours from their homes. The dolls, brutal counterinsurgency. And, to
unloading contraband from which Manuel’s militia gave out as a significant degree, they suc-
a boat moored in the mangroves Christmas presents in the ceeded. It is a difficult truth, but
of northwest Colombia. As a communities under its control, paramilitary and mafia forces can
low-ranking member of a were a bid to shed its violent only thrive with a degree of
drug-trafficking paramilitary reputation and win hearts and popular support and legitimacy.
militia, Manuel had done it dozens minds. Years later, in 2012, he Indeed, paramilitaries did not
of times before. But normally showed me one of the dolls, which come to control entire regions of
the cargo was ak-47s or kilos he had kept as a memento: “See, Colombia through force alone;
of cocaine. we gave them nice Barbies, not they also relied on a measure of
some ugly little thing — the latest consent from poor farmers.
This time, it was Barbies.
models.”
As one of the foremost leaders of
His militia belonged to an alliance
The gift giving may have been a US military interventions in Latin
of right-wing paramilitary armies
token gesture, but it formed part America, Major John Waghelstein,
that, in the name of fighting
once said, “The only territory you paras began engaging in what kinds of necessities,” said Manuel.
want to hold [in a counterinsur- could be described as Since the paras had an endless
gency] is the six inches between an elaborate form of community stream of cocaine profits, building
the ears of the campesino.” In organizing (albeit funded with a health clinic or a school was a
Colombia, a paramilitary com- drug money and in service minor expense; they even paid
mander named Freddy Rendón of an anti-communist counterin- teachers’ salaries. In other cases,
Herrera, better known as El surgency). they cofinanced these projects
Alemán, was something of an with municipal governments
When I interviewed El Alemán in
expert on that front. It was his through agreements brokered by
2013, he explained the shift this
paramilitary bloc that gave out the the políticos.
way: “We realized guns were
Christmastime Barbies.
never going to be enough. As a Local governments in Urabá were
From 1997 to 2006, El Alemán’s political-military movement, we amenable to dealmaking because
turf was the northwest region of also had to think about the social they were stacked with elected
Urabá. Bordering Panama and and political front.” officials, including mayors and
about the size of New Jersey, councilors, handpicked by El
He began by turning nearly one
Urabá is a long-standing hot spot Alemán. He even made them sign
hundred of his low-level soldiers
of Colombia’s still-simmering an oath in which they pledged
into a cadre of extensively trained
armed conflict; it also remains the loyalty to his cause and agreed to,
community organizers. He
departure point for a sizable among other things, govern
then dispatched these operatives,
portion of the world’s cocaine honestly and without corruption.
who came to be known as
supply. Today, a new generation of Most of the politicians had already
“políticos,” to all the territories
paramilitaries, or “paras,” as made these pledges, since they
under his control in Urabá. El
they’re commonly known in had worked their way up from the
Alemán’s most trusted and
Colombia, dominate the region. Juntas under the tutelage of the
dedicated político was Manuel
They filled the void after El políticos.
Padilla, the Barbie handler.
Alemán and his troops demobi-
As El Alemán said, “We trained
lized in 2006. Manuel explained that a político’s
leaders who carried out their work
most important job was to assist
Paramilitaries first seized Urabá in the Juntas de Acción Comunal,
communities in establishing
in the 1990s by routing leftist so that they’d then go out and
Juntas de Acción Comunal, or
guerrillas and massacring their become municipal council
community action boards,
alleged civilian collaborators. members, and so that they’d work
Colombia’s most basic form of
Campesinos fled from the violence for the communities in which
local governance. The Juntas are
en masse. In their place, paramili- combat operations had ended and
locally elected, state-sanctioned
tary-linked companies swooped in a state presence was needed.”
administrative bodies, but
and established agribusiness In short, the paras invested in the
they are legally defined as nonstate
plantations on the abandoned business of state-building.
“civil society” organizations.
family farms.
Among other things, Juntas Paramilitary operatives also
But then, slowly, El Alemán began manage regional improvement helped local residents apply for
repopulating a small portion of the projects, resolve local disputes, development aid from national
stolen lands by bringing in and give communities a stronger and international agencies.
campesinos from other parts of collective voice before govern- In 2003, posing as a community
Urabá. He gave them subsistence- ment entities. member, Manuel traveled to
size plots of land and offered them Bogotá with a group of campes-
“By working with the Juntas, we
jobs on the plantations. Among inos from Urabá for a meeting
helped them with the construction
this new campesino clientele, the with Colombia’s national welfare
of a small road or a bridge — those
agency. They secured an
New York’s
Cop Coup
“The reason the morale of the Before he was Donald Trump’s The Giuliani image was multilay-
police department of the city of disgraced counsel, Giuliani was ered, aided and abetted by a
New York is so low,” Rudolph the prince of white New York, a fawning press corps. To the many
Giuliani thundered outside City mayor-in-waiting. In 1989, men and women who covered his
Hall, “is one reason, and one running as a Republican, he had legal exploits and preening for the
reason alone: David Dinkins!” nearly beaten Dinkins, who cameras, Giuliani was a reformer
dethroned another favorite of free of the taint of the Democratic
In the early 1990s, Dinkins, New
outer borough reactionaries in the machines. Koch had risen
York City’s first black mayor, was
Democratic primary that year, Ed and fallen with these old-school
short on allies and long on
Koch. Giuliani may have been patronage networks; Giuliani
problems. The local economy was
ghoulish then, but he was taken far would be something better, they
fragile. Violent crime had yet to
more seriously by the city’s fathomed, a neo–Fiorello La
noticeably ebb, with more than
cognoscenti. He was still famous Guardia rescuing the city from
two thousand people murdered in
for busting mobsters as the US chaos. If they were looking for
the five boroughs every year.
attorney for the Southern District, promising signs, they could point
Racial divisions were stark.
winning front page after front to Giuliani the candidate’s defense
Rudy Giuliani was eager to pile on. page at a time when tabloid news of abortion rights and his occa-
coverage could raise heroes sional kind word for immigrants.
from dust.
resistance from their uniformed steps of City Hall, he was loudly eventually dissipating. Dinkins,
colleagues. The rioters climbed booed. While many of the pro- speaking to the media, later
onto cars and dented them, some testing police refused to leave City assailed Giuliani, who was viewed
swilling beer. With them was Hall, others spilled out onto the as a ringleader of the riot. “He’s
Giuliani, who was stumping for surrounding streets, blocking clearly, clearly an opportunist,”
mayor against Dinkins. A traffic. Broken beer bottles littered Dinkins said. “He’s seizing upon
Giuliani supporter moved through the roadway. Uniformed officers, a fragile circumstance in our city
the crowd handing out voter in some instances, egged on for his own political gain.”
registration cards. protesters.
Dinkins was unbowed. A year later,
Many rioters wore T-shirts Along with Giuliani, Philip the Civilian Complaint Review
bearing the words “Dinkins Must Caruso, the pba president, railed Board was created, the first
Go” and buttons with the slogan against Dinkins and the civilian all-civilian agency in New York to
“Fight Crime. Dump Dinkins.” review board. “The forces of evil oversee police misconduct.
Several displayed inflammatory are all around,” he said. “They
In the fall, Giuliani got his rematch
and racist signs, including one are trying to surround us. They are
against Dinkins. The election,
depicting Dinkins with a large afro trying to defeat us.”
once again, pitted white, conserva-
and swollen lips. Another called
The City Hall contingent of tive New York against the
Dinkins a “washroom attendant.”
rioters, hungry for action, broke multiracial Dinkins coalition. This
Attendees chanted, “The mayor’s
out in another direction, heading time, the deeply polarized election
on crack!”
for the nearby Brooklyn Bridge. yielded a narrow victory for
Some of the men confronted Una The iconic crossing was quickly Giuliani, who was helped along
Clarke, a City Council member jammed in both directions. More by robust support from white
from Brooklyn who was outside than two thousand police milled ethnic neighborhoods, particularly
City Hall. Both she and a black on the roadways, holding up in the borough of Staten Island,
television cameraman were called cars for almost an hour. A New which voted overwhelmingly
the N-word. York Times photographer was that year, in a referendum that
surrounded by demonstrators, would never get state approval, to
When the highest-ranking uni-
punched, and shoved. secede from the rest of the city.
formed officer in the department,
Chief David Scott, begged the The off-duty cops remained on Dinkins was gracious in defeat,
off-duty police to move off the the bridge for almost an hour, and Giuliani went on to burnish
the myth that he had saved New The worst police revolt in decades
York from chaos, capitalizing ensued. At two funerals for slain
on a drop in the murder rate that policeman, officers turned their
was national in scope and had backs, literally, on De Blasio.
begun when Dinkins was still Patrick Lynch, a pba president as
mayor. The ccrb, though never reactionary as his predecessors,
the transformational body it was declared De Blasio had “blood on
pitched as, persisted: it remains [his] hands.” In the early months
in existence today. of 2015, police initiated a de facto
work stoppage. Violent crime
Police unions would continue to
remained low, undercutting the
rail against it and whatever mild
message that they were the thin
reforms appeared in subsequent
blue line, in Koch’s words,
years. Another aggressive sup-
between “the murderers and the
porter of police power, Michael
rapists.”
Bloomberg, became mayor after
Giuliani, but he was followed Since then, the rise of progressive
by a former Dinkins aide named Democrats in New York has
Bill de Blasio. diminished the pba’s political
clout. Lynch’s endorsement of
De Blasio was no revolutionary.
Trump in 2020 guaranteed most
But he had campaigned on
Democrats, outside of a select
promising to curtail the use of a
few in suburban-style neighbor-
controversial policing tactic
hoods, would stop seeking out the
known as stop-and-frisk and
pba’s endorsement altogether.
improve relations between police
But while the pba is no longer the
and communities of color. After
force it was under Dinkins, the
a policeman killed Eric Garner
memory of police revolt and a city
in 2014, De Blasio’s first year in
politics dominated by crime fears
office, he spoke movingly about
lingers on.
how he had to warn his biracial son
about police interactions.
Jacobin
Does Crime
We could steal a bunch of expen- How does this help cover our American socialists are already not
sive cars and fence them to fund deficit? known for our athletic prowess — I’m
the magazine. But in the process, not sure we can risk getting Justin
We could declare a temporary auto-
we’ll learn about something more Jackson banned from the NFL.
nomous zone as part of a street
valuable than luxury cars — we’ll protest and use the chaos of the We should run boss-friendly
learn about solidarity. situation to rob many of the banks campaigns in unions on the
in the area. understanding that we get a cut of
Can we loop in Vin Diesel somehow?
major deals to ensure labor peace.
We could assemble a small team Did you rewatch Joker again? Then we’d use the funds to
of commandos and seize one of Socialist athletes could be tapped build large patronage networks.
those free ports that warehouses to throw key games. Then we We’d leverage those patronage
billions in art for investors. Then would bet heavily against them networks to secretly build an
we could open an improvised and use the winnings to help fund underground army of radicals that
museum there, showcasing the art the revolution. They wouldn’t will overthrow the system. I
via livestream. It would teach the receive a cut, so it would be hard call it the “rank-and-file strategy.”
public about the importance of art. to prove anything.
There might be something to this.
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We could promote a miracle cure As a hopelessly reformist publica- slowly convince them that social-
that we conveniently own a large tion, some might argue that that ism is the future and to give their
stake in. Then we can reveal wouldn’t even be a lie. billions to socialist organizations
it was all a sham and turn it into We could get heavily involved in around the world.
a teachable moment about the the illicit arms trade — shipping
importance of a scientific Don’t ever say “honeypot” again.
weapons to radical insurgent
approach to socialism. But we groups around the world. I don’t We could comb through the old
keep all the money. have any experience in this field, opinions of prominent progres-
but it can’t be too hard. Buy sives looking for something that
It’s working for Alex Jones. guns, sell guns. Buy more guns, could get them in trouble these
We could steal a conservative sell more guns. Easy-peasy. days. Then, we privately offer
direct mailing list and send out to overlook the bad opinions in
millions of letters asking for No, not easy-peasy. exchange for cash. If they don’t
tax-deductible donations to the agree, we write a hit piece
I could act as a honeypot for a
Jacobin Foundation to combat about them.
tech ceo to attract them into
socialism. a passionate affair. Then, I can That’s a crowded market nowadays.
You know what they say about the If you’d rather us not pursue any
master’s tools.
of Don’s ideas, please consider
We could reorganize Jacobin as contributing to Jacobin at
a mysterious new religion to avoid jacobinmag.com/donate or via
government scrutiny as we engage check to:
in various criminal accounting
Jacobin Foundation,
schemes. I could be the lead preacher —
388 Atlantic Avenue,
I have a lot of ideas about what
Brooklyn, NY 11217
we could stand for, and I can
sound pretty convincing. And if
some gullible readers join our
fraudulent religion and donate
their life savings, well, I’m not
turning them away.
— Johnny Cash