"The eternally repetitive routine, the imposed anonymity and the rigid atomization of numbers and cages are just a few of the dehumanizing, desocializing mechanisms. As for the relationship of prisoners to life outside, it is supposed to be virtually nonexistent. In this respect, the impenetrable concrete, the barbed wire and the armed keepers, ostensibly there to deter escape-bound captives, also suggest something further: prisoners must be guarded from the ingressions of a moving, developing world outside. Disengaged from normal social life, its revelations and influences, they must finally be robbed of their humanity. Yet human beings cannot be willed and molded into nonexistence. In reality the facts of prison life have begun in recent years to bespeak the irrationality of its goals. Even the most drastic repressive measures have not obstructed the progressive ascent of captive men and women to new heights of social consciousness. This has been especially intense among Black and Brown prisoners"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Spiritual teachersVegetariansPhilosophers from the United StatesAnti-war activistsCommunist Party USA politicians
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Chapter 2, "Lessons: From Attica to Soledad"
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Angela_Davis
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Angela Davis
130 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Angela Davis →
Related Quotes
"Where cultural representations do not reach out beyond themselves, there is the danger that they will function as the…"
"Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they l…"
"Prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings. And the practice of disappearing vast numbers of peop…"
"The challenge of the twenty-first century is not to demand equal opportunity to participate in the machinery of oppre…"
"The reason I am a communist is because I believe in a total revolution which is going to overthrow the capitalist con…"
"When you talk about a revolution, most people think violence; without realizing that the real content of any kind of …"
"From her involvement with the Student Nonviolent Coorditing Committee during the 1960s to her current leadership of t…"
"Palestine is a moral litmus test for the world"
"I am a Communist because I am convinced that the reason we have been forcefully compelled to eke out an existence at …"
"It is both humiliating and humbling to discover that a single generation after the events that constructed me as a pu…"