Last night I went with a bunch of cool kids to see Angela Davis at Con Hall. Some of us didn't have tickets and were waiting in line hoping that they would let us in. While in line a queer girl that I knew come up and gave me a ticket and then two different women come up to kim and gave her tickets. She did not know these women at all, it was clear the reason they came up to her was that she was a women of colour. Kim was talking about how strange that was, she had this momentary privildge that due to her race and gender she was given tickets over the white male in front of us, and everyother white person in that line. She didn't know how to react to it since it was so new, so different than her usual experience. I thought it was great, I know that everyone who was there had the right to see Angela and I hope that everyone got in. But I'm not sad that kim got in before the white man infront of us. Sometimes we need these momentary shifts of power and privildge just to remind our selves how unequal life really is. This experience was a shocking, why because as a women of colour she is not use to that type of treatment.

The lecture itself was great, not to mention all the great eye candy. Not only were all my crushes there, and so many interesting and cute people, con hall is shaped in such away that maximizes people watching :) This type of event brings out so many great people, and you start to realize how small toronto really is. There were accedemics, activists and feminists adn just interested people(not saying those catigories don't overlap) I felt that we were all linked somehow, possibly just by two degrees of seperation. Anyways to the lecture itself. The talked was called Punishment and Democracy, and she talked about the abolishment of prisons. This is a thoery that I have not thought about in depth before, I mean I have thought about the prison system arround issues of race, class, sexuality and gender, and how I feel that most crimes woudl be illiminated if we combatted racism, classism., sexism, homophobia, the construction of masculintiy . . .and capitalism (thats another rant). And I have had talks about the construction of the criminal and innosense. It seems that this idea of the abolishment of prisons is the next step in this thinking. Marike, sal and I talked about it on the way home. We has so many mixed responces to the idea. I think for one this idea of the abolishment of prison leads to important thoughts around the prison system just as one idea, and that we are so caught up in it, we rarely step back and say why prisons at all, why not something else. Prison reform, like Davis said, is the topic that most people are working on. But the idea of prison reform is excepting that prisons themselves are a good idea. But are they really. Is our system is a sence like minority reports, where people are being held in prison to prevent future crimes. What if we had spaces where those who had serve mental illness and emotional illness could go inorder to get better. And we came up with a new method of punishment. Or not. it would be interesting to see the numbers of people in jail for small offences. Do we really need to keep these people locked up, without freedom. does it make us feel safer that the prisons are filled with black men?

We found a few problems with her theory, first of all even if we combatted the isms and decrimilaized things like drugs and prostitution, crime as we know it would be so low. But we still have to deal with people who rape and kill for fun. ( actually I truely believe if we created an equity world, with out the isms, that these crimes woudl not happen either-- don't worry I'm not completely disolusional, I know how difficult or impossible it is to create such a world). Would they be in the mental institutes, could we really still protect our families, friends and ourselves from these crimes. How do we ballance the freedomes of someone known to be a sex offender with the freedomes of the rest of society. Marike said that some people are just evil -- I don't think I believe that --- the construction of masculity and the list of oppressions do crazy things and interact with people in interesting ways. Problem is I don't know how to get to that space, even with a revolution, I feel that there would still be so many problems, people were still socialized in this society - - - -again I say there is so much work to do . . . . .