Week 2

Key Questions

• What is the relationship between the carceral system and the environment? How does the carceral system create the conditions of possibility for ecological destruction and suffering?

• How is the ecological crisis connected to broader histories of racism, anti-Blackness, and settler colonialism?

• Why is an anti-carceral movement necessary to confront the ecological crisis? How can the environmental justice movement be linked to anti-carceral movements?

Required Materials

• The Intercept, "Politicians Ignore Vulnerable Prisoners as Climate Change Worsens"

• David Correia, Violent Order: Essays on the Nature of Police, "Poisoned and Policed to Death: Korryn Gaines, Freddie Gray, and the Nature of Police"

• Axel González, Violent Order: Essays on the Nature of Police, "Policing, Pipelines, and the Capillaries of Capital in a Warming World"

• Adam Mahoney, "America's Biggest Jails are Frontline Environmental Justice Communities"

Supplementary Materials

• Julie Sze, Violent Order: Essays on the Nature of Police, "The White Dog and Dark Water: Police Violence in the Central Valley"

• Candice Bernd, Zoe Loftus-Farren, and Maureen Nandini Mitra, "America's Toxic Prisons: The Environmental Injustices of Mass Incarceration"

• Brett Story and Seth Prins, “A Green New Deal for Decarceration”

• Keala Uchôa, “Critical Abolitionist Environmental Justice”

• Derecka Purnell, Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom, "'We Only Want the Earth'"

• Alleen Brown, "Boiling Behind Bars"

• Alleen Brown, "Dark, Smoky Cells"

• Alleen Brown, "Trapped In the Floods"

• Alleen Brown, “Pipeline Protesters Face Corporate Counterinsurgency in Minnesota”

• Will Parrish and Alleen Brown, “How Police Are Preparing for a Standoff Over Enbridge Line 3”

• Molly Murphy and Research for the Front Lines, “Real Climate Action Means Defunding the Police”

• Adam Mahoney, "Migrant Children Are Being Held in Toxic U.S. Detention Centers"

• Jena Brooker and Adam Mahoney, "Detroit's Prison Population Will Soon Be Stuck Living Next to a Toxic Waste Site"

• Raven Rakia, "A Sinking Jail: The Environmental Disaster that is Rikers Island"

Exercise

Type your location into the interactive map below and click on the prisons and jails surrounding your area. What are the levels of risk for heat, wildfires, and flooding? How does this connect to the climate crisis and environmental justice?