summary.

written by Gari De Ramos | edited by Katya Zabelski

Abolition Democracy is a book that consists of four interviews

with Angela Davis. Davis is a renowned activist and leading
thinker on the prison-industrial complex, prison abolition,
and abolition democracy–concepts that will be explored in
this book.

Davis is the former nominee for Vice President of the

Communist Party of the United States, founder of abolition
organization Critical Resistance, and a feminist scholar and
professor. She was previously placed on the Federal Bureau
of Investigation’s Ten Most Wanted for being a “terrorist,
communist, and criminal.” She was eventually arrested
and incarcerated for several months. The Free Angela Davis
campaign was launched around the world advocating for her
eventual release.

In Abolition Democracy, which originally came out in 2004,

Davis articulates the prison-industrial complex problem,
the need for abolition democracy, and what it all means in
the context of the American-led global war on terror and
human rights violations in detention centers Abu Ghraib and
Guantanamo Bay.

Our The book itself jumps around from concept to concept

book study g
(including concepts that go beyond abolition democracy),

Emp ‘Aboli uide of

so this study guide will not be a chronological summary of
its content. Instead, this study guide’s summary will group

ire, P tion Ange

questions and terms.

rison Demo la D First, we will discuss Davis’s conception of the prison-

s, an crac avis’ 2 industrial complex, prison abolition, and abolition

d To y: Be 0
democracy. Second, we will look at these concepts in the

rture yond 04
modern (i.e., post-9/11) context. Third, we will point out
other observations from Davis that are less directly connected
.’ with abolition democracy, but are still worth articulating.

2 3

The Prison-Industrial
Complex, Prison Abolition,
and Abolition Democracy
From slavery to
Jim Crow to prison
Oppression towards Black people
in the United States has evolved. It
began with slavery, then evolved into
segregation and the era of Jim Crow,
and then now the prison-industrial
complex. Slavery, Jim Crow, and prison
are all institutions where punishments
considered too barbaric for the
democracy are permitted–and they are
permitted because they largely target
Black people and those considered not
to be full humans or citizens.
4 5
Prison and
the military
The term ‘prison-industrial complex’
describes a system in which the
government and industry (read:
economic forces) have created a
system of surveillance, policing,
and imprisonment. It is a term that
purposely mirrors a term that came
before it, ‘military-industrial complex.’
According to Davis, both complexes
“earn profit while producing the
means to maim and kill human beings
and devour social resources.”
Both the prison and military become
important parts of the country’s
economy. We saw this during the
Vietnam War with the crucial role
military production played in the
economy and how prisons now provide
cheap labor to build, among other
things, weaponry.
The prison-industrial complex in action
The prison-industrial
complex perpetuates what
Davis calls ritual violence.
“The prison system
naturalizes the violence
that is enacted against
racial minorities by
institutionalizing a viciously
circular logic: blacks are in
prisons because they are
criminals; they are criminals
because they are black, and
if they are in prison, they
deserved what they got.
Prison is more than one
way institutionalized the
lynchings of the turn of the
20th century when Jim Crow
was at its cruelest and most
violent.”
Like slavery, the prison-
industrial complex
disenfranchises the Black
community since they make
up the majority of America’s
imprisoned population.
In many states, former
felons are stripped of their
right to vote and unable
to participate in American
democracy.
The fact that most people do
not question the process that
robs prisoners of their right
to vote, Davis says, is a way
of thinking rooted in slavery
and how certain people
aren’t full citizens because of
certain factors.
The prison-industrial
complex also robs Black
communities of their social
wealth. Davis defines social
wealth as the wherewithal
of a community to sustain
itself through schools,
homeownership, churches,
and more.
Once you are in prison, you
are socially branded. Things
that allow people to re-enter
society, such as owning a
home, getting a job, and
more, are stripped away
from you.
The prison-industrial
complex exists because of
two assumptions widely
held in society.
First, the understanding
of the racial contract. The
racial contract “refers to the
social, political, cultural and
economic reality in which
it is more advantageous to
be white than a person of
color because all norms are
de facto whiteness norms.
Within the racial contract,
social punishment is
accepted because it is done
primarily to blacks.”
Second, society believes
that surplus repression –
the idea that restrictions
and punishment (in this
case, imprisonment) are an
“inevitable and desirable”
part of society – is a “logical
way to deal with crime.” In
her fight for prison abolition
and abolition democracy,
Davis wants us to question
if imprisonment truly is the
only way to deal with crime.
Davis has two critiques that
question the necessity of
prisons.
First, there is no correlation
between imprisonment and
crime. Instead, the rate of
imprisonment is correlated
with the rate of surveillance.
Second, the prison system
exists as a punitive solution
to social problems that can
and should be addressed by
social institutions to allow
people to lead better lives.
Such social problems
include but are not limited
to houselessness, poverty,
drugs, and more. With these
assumptions, Davis argues
that the state practices
an imprisonment binge
where the state removes the
“dispensable populations
from society” by putting
them in prison.
Davis argues that while
prisons may make people
feel safer from crime,
doing so actually diverts
attention away from threats
that come from the police,
military, profit-seeking
corporations, and intimate
partners–all of which are
more common sources of
violence.
Another major part of the
prison-industrial complex
is the torture and sexual
coercion within it, but this
will be elaborated upon later.

The Prison- and Military
Industrial Complexes in
the Modern Context
Davis argues that the prison-industrial complex has
duplicated itself in the American-led global war on
terror that occurred after 9/11 to “divert attention from
the everyday domestic reality of torture and sexual
coercion.”
One way both complexes feed into each
other can be seen with the prevalence
of torture in the Guantanamo Bay and
Abu Ghraib detention centers, which
housed foreign prisoners believed to be
part of what the President George H. W.
Bush administration dubbed the ‘war on
terror’. The abusive acts of torture and
sexual coercion that the public is horrified
by in these detention centers come from
punishment techniques “deeply embedded
in the history of the institution of prison.”
Around the time of the book’s publication,
pictures of the torture in Abu Ghraib
and Guantanamo Bay had been released.
Davis spends some time articulating the
relationship between the pictures from
Abu Ghraib to the pictures of lynching in
American history.
6 7
Another way the prison- Davis also makes the point
and military-industrial that the presence of female
complexes manifest in the torturers says nothing
Sexual
modern context is through
sexual coercion. Davis argues
that sexual coercion (i.e.,
about feminism and gender
equality. Although women
may now be in places they
coercion.
sexualized abuse for social
control) is assumed to be a
normal and routine aspect
were not usually in before,
the places they are in (e.g.,
the military) are institutions
of women’s punishment–
both in domestic prisons and
in wartime.
that rely on ideologies of
male dominance.
Simply adding more women
That said, in the modern to flawed institutions
context of the American- does not achieve gender
led war on terror, sexual equality, but rather the
coercion was used in a “equal opportunity to
racist way to punish Arab, kill, to torture, to engage
Middle Eastern, and Muslim in sexual coercion.” This
prisoners. Female torturers brings us, Davis argues, no
in detention centers were closer to democracy and
Torture. documented, for example,
dressing as dominatrixes
justice. Instead, Davis states
that a more productive
smearing menstrual blood approach to feminism must
Lynching pictures, Davis states, were on prisoners under the consider the “socialization
items that commemorated gatherings that assumption that prisoners and institutionalization of
celebrated Jim Crow, capital punishment, from Islamic cultures are misogynist strategies and
and the oppression of the Black body. This more sexist than so-called modes of violence for men
was done in public, whereas torture today western cultures. and women.”
is hidden behind prison walls.
Extraordinary
Torture and executions have moved from
Both the domestic prison-industrial complex and military-
the public eye to the private eye.
industrial complex practice extraordinary rendition. In
rendition.
the military, extraordinary rendition refers to the process
Davis also argues that because the Bush
of transporting prisoners to other countries to have them
administration has othered prisoners as
interrogated because those countries have more lenient
terrorists in response to 9/11, they have
rules around the use of torture. In the prison-industrial
put citizens in a position of having to
complex, this refers to prisoners being transferred to out-
sever themselves from the pain of others.
of-state prisons with more lenient prison systems. The
The way the public engages with torture
American public does not think extraordinary rendition
reaffirms, defends, and reinforces the
occurs within American borders, but it does.
idea that American democracy is here to
protect the nation from external threats to
democracy.
Further Context
Click here for two examples of extraordinary rendition in
action, courtesy of the American Civil Liberties Union.
 Thinking So, what is the
solution to the
How to Connected
organize. struggles.
About prison-industrial
complex? Prison
abolition and Throughout the book, Davis Davis spends time discussing the

Solutions
abolition democracy. provides some advice on
how to organize for abolition
democracy. Davis does
distinguish between organizing
What is prison abolition? and mobilizing. She argues
that mobilization (the ability
Prison abolition is not the isolated dismantling of prisons and jails, but rather to bring out the masses) has
a “way of talking about the pitfalls of the particular version of democracy unfortunately taken priority
represented by US capitalism.” over organization (creating a
sustained movement beyond
Davis pulls from the thinking of W. E. B. DuBois, who articulated that prison demonstrations).
abolition is not only the negative process of tearing down, but also the
process of building up new democratic institutions that take away the need Her biggest point is that
for prisons in the first place. everyone must experiment–
when creating something new,
Davis sees prison abolition as a project that “involves re-imagining nobody knows what will or will
institutions, ideas, and strategies, and creating new institutions, ideas, and not work or where things will
strategies that will render prisons obsolete.” She states that “it is up to us end up going. “I think the best
to insist on the obsolescence of imprisonment as the dominant mode of way to figure out what might
punishment, punishment ... by demanding new democratic institutions that work is simply to do it,” she
take up the issues that can never be addressed by prisons in productive ways.” says, “regardless of the potential
mistakes one might make.”
Vietnam War, which was in full
swing in the lead up to her arrest.
During her activism in the 1970s,
she and others saw connections
between the war against racism
at home with the war against
fascism abroad. Police, for
example, slinked along the
ground like soldiers in combat.
The connection between these
two struggles begged the
question of how one participates
in the anti-war movement
while opposing the strategy
of treating peace as an issue
unrelated to racial inequality?
Davis emphasizes that any fight
for abolition democracy can and
should include and learn from
related struggles against, for
example, fascism.

What is abolition democracy? Visit Radical in Progress’ Connected Movements study guide, which
covers Angela Davis’ 2016 book ‘Freedom is a Constant Struggle.

For Davis, true democracy cannot exist without abolition democracy. Again
pulling from DuBois, abolition democracy includes three forms of abolition:
the abolition of slavery, the abolition of the death penalty, and the abolition
of the prison-industrial complex.

Slavery cannot be truly abolished until the people are provided the economic
means for their subsistence. By this definition, slavery today is not fully
abolished because Black communities are not provided the means for their
subsistence because of, among other things, the prison-industrial complex.

The death penalty, which concealed racism after slavery was made illegal,
and the prison-industrial complex perpetuates the idea that death and
imprisonment are valid forms of punishment. Davis, however, argues this is
not the case. When thinking about abolition in terms of abolition democracy,
she proposes creating social institutions that solve the social problems that
send people to prison in the first place and “render the prison obsolete.”

8 9
 Global
capitalism.
Public discourse gives
the impression capital
has only recently become
global, but it has a “long
and brutal history of
moving across national
Other Observations
from Davis
borders—imperialism …
is not a minor consort of
capitalism, but rather a
fundamental feature of its
development.” In the early
20th century, Davis points
out that global capitalism
existed with American
imperialist ventures into
Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the
Philippines in the wake of
the Spanish-American War.
Today, this era of global
capitalism is defined by
the power of international
financial organizations
like the International
Monetary Fund and the
World Bank, as well as
the ability of capital to
move across murders,
restructure economies,
and, in the process,
“[wreak] havoc on social
relations everywhere.”
Davis believes that there
must be and that there is an
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alternative to capitalism.
“We must be able to
disentangle our notions of
capitalism and democracy
to pursue truly egalitarian
models of democracy
… Communism—or
socialism—can still help us
to generate new versions of
democracy.”
Black
identity and
community.
Throughout the book,
Davis articulates her
perception of Black
political thought and
the Black community.
Traditionally, Black
political thought was
primarily concerned with
the debate between Black
nationalism versus Black
assimilation or integration.
Davis, however, identifies
more with pan-Africanism
described by DuBois, who
argued the following:
“Black people in the
West do have a special
responsibility to Africa,
Latina America, and
Asia—not by virtue of a
biological connection or
a racial link, but by virtue
of a political identification
that is forged in struggle
… We should be attentive
to Africa not simply
because this continent is
populated by black people,
not only because we trace
our origins to Africa, but
primarily because Africa
has been a major target of
colonialism and
imperialism.”
Davis also argues
that identity has
never been an
adequate criterion
around which communities
of struggles can be
organized. Communities
are political projects;
therefore they are never
solely built on identity.
“What would be the
purpose of uniting the
black community?” she
asks. “It would be futile
to try to create a single
black community today.
But it does make sense to
think about organizing
communities, not simply
around their blackness, but
primarily around political
goals.”
Going off of this logic,
Davis states that she would
prefer a white person
in power who is more
committed to ending the
global war on terror than
any Black leader who
does not make the same
commitment.
Equal
opportunity
under the law.
Davis considers the law and
legal system as having strategic
significance in the struggle for
progress and abolition democracy,
but recognizes that it is not the
ultimate authority of social
problems because the law has its
limitations.
The law, after all, cannot take
into consideration the “social
conditions that render certain
communities much more
susceptible to imprisonment than
others.” Davis goes on:
“The law does not care whether
this individual had access to good
education or not, or whether he/
she lives under impoverished
conditions because companies in
his/her communities have shut
down and moved to a third world
country, or whether previously
available welfare payments have
vanished. The law does not care
about the conditions that lead some
communities along a trajectory
that makes prison inevitable. Even
though each individual has the
right to due process, what is called
the blindness of justice enables
underlying racism and class bias to
resolve the question of who gets to
go to prison and who does not.”
The law operates with a blindness
of justice that is due to, in part, the
Civil Rights Movement. The grand
achievement of the Civil Rights
Movement was to purge the law of
its references to specific kinds of
bodies, thus enabling racial equality
before the law.
But, Davis argues, this process also
enabled racial inequality in the
sense that it prevented the law from
acknowledging that people and
communities are racialized.
Multiculturalism
and diversity.
“The challenge of the twenty-first
century is not to demand equal
opportunity to participate in the
machinery of oppression. Rather,
it is to identify and dismantle
those structures in which racism
continues to be embedded. This
is the only way the promise of
freedom can be extended to masses
of people.”
What she means here is that
racism cannot simply be
solved with diversification and
multiculturalism.
We must get rid of the “persisting
structures of racism, economic
and political structures that do not
openly display their discriminatory
strategies, but nonetheless serve
to keep communities of color in a
state of inferiority and oppression.”
Davis points to Black people in
power like Condoleezza Rice,
Alberto Gonzalez, and Colin Powell
as leaders who got to where they are
in part because of the Civil Rights
Movement, but are nonetheless
people who play major roles in
sustaining contemporary racism.
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 comprehension.
Abolition
Before engaging in critical analysis and applying abolition
organizations
democracy as outlined by Davis, we must first make sure we
understand what she is saying.
A plethora of resources articulate
Take the following questions and answer them in your own the prison-industrial complex Davis
words. When doing so, try to limit the number of sentences you describes, including but not limited
use and aim to explain these concepts succinctly. To double- to the following.
check your work, or if you are truly stuck, you may visit the
summary sections that address the question. • Resources provided by Davis’s
organization Critical Resistance
1. What is the prison-industrial complex? Describe its history
related to slavery and Jim Crow, and its present as it relates to
• Resources provided by Black
Lives Matter’s 8 to Abolition
the military-industrial complex. movement
2. How does the prison-industrial complex work? • Resources provided by MPD150,
a. What is ritual violence? a police abolition group based in
b. How does the prison-industrial complex disenfranchise Minneapolis, MN
the Black community?
c. How does the prison-industrial complex prevent the As you learn more about abolition,
Black community from flourishing? it is also important to consider
3. What societal assumptions are present that justify the ‘need’ how you can work towards an
for prisons? abolition democracy. The three
4. What are Davis’s critiques of the need for prisons? aforementioned organizations
5. How do the prison- and military-industrial complexes are all good examples of abolition
practice… work in practice. Go through their
a. Torture? websites and look for the following:
b. Sexual coercion?
c. Extraordinary rendition? 1. What is their vision?
6. What is prison abolition? What is abolition democracy? 2. How do they define the prison-
7. What advice does Davis have for abolition democracy activists? industrial complex?
3. What is their attitude towards
reform?
4. What policies do they support?
5. How do they advocate for those
policies?
6. What work do they do beyond
advocating for policy, if any?
Support the author
Visit and donate to Davis’ organization Critical Resistance.
Read Davis’ books, a collection of which you can find here.
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praxis.
The goal of this exercise is to learn
from organizations that are doing
the work to either be encouraged
to support them or learn lessons
that you can apply to your own
community.
Future Research
and Activities
• Read this article outlining how
global capitalism and the prison-
industrial complex are related
• Read any article from The Marshall
Project, a news outlet dedicated to
criminal justice
• Find and write to a prison pen pal
here or here (before you start, visit
this article for advice!)
• Donate to bail funds, which you
can identify by searching for “bail
funds” on GoFundMe, Twitter,
Instagram, and more
Source
Davis, Angela Y. Abolition democracy:
Beyond empire, prisons, and torture.
Seven Stories Press, 2011.
We based this study guide off the
ebook version, which is why we do not
list page numbers for quotes.
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