Reviews and Comments

I've had this book for years (got it in Oakland from that shop close to Lake Merritt).

Returned it to the library; couldn't remember why.

This was a windy read. I had to take a lot of anchor notes to come back. Effectively, the Mafia has taken over ... everything and we're all being played? I know it's a lot more than that but cryptic messaging is ... so ... I have feelings.

This book was an excellent read about workers' struggle against a joint effort between the local governments (and federal?) China (and its clients like the United States, South Korea - a US client state, Japan and other places) and the workers (across the age spectrum) that were looking for basic human decency. Given the outsized role that Apple plays in aiming to influence the direction of technology using aesthetic politics and fiscal prowess to capture talent in Cupertino, it has no issues with the labor atrocities being committed to build everything that fattens its own cash coffer. This is another thick nail in my inability to look at Apple products without seeing someone who can't use their hands.

I had the eBook of this but grabbing the physical at the library lets me tag more liberally in my digital copy and still read on the go (the power of double-note taking via sticky notes, ha)

Feels timely since platform capitalism really is just choking the collective imagination.

YKTV

Told myself I wasn't going to start this any later than a particular birthday. Glad I stuck to that.

This is something I'll start right after Are Prisons Obselete? given its recent (and neverending) relevancy.

There's nothing "easy" about this book. The size of it is a lie because it packs reference after reference, account after damning account, of how prisons not only reinforce society's eagerness to have patriarchial violence run amuck, not only how neoliberalism profits from that, racism and empire, not only how technology and the weapons industry both profit and expand their reach through prison enforcement but how all of this, all of this, is an artifact of a people who had to project their means of life onto the WHOLE WORLD. Without aboltion, we are damning ourselves as a species.

I think in order to actually get back to a place where I can communicate my disdain with neoliberalism, I need to go back a bit. So I'm going to hurt myself and read a Bible-sized book on it.

So far, Angela's made the case and provided evidence that not only are prisons are an inherently racist, xenophobic and anti-social instution, it's been hard to see the full breadth of violence of it on women because they were effectively property and left to men to "maintain". That and the modern forms of prison prevent a violent extension of slavery that highlights capitalism's role in both keeping these institutions around and increasing state violence against Black, Native and migrant peoples.

Starting this with a group and already being reminded of how neoliberalism is one of the greatest exports of Californian exceptionalism at times.

Super easy to read in one sitting but extremely difficult to not grapple with the exit of this book, Roy and Cusack make it clear with their engagements with Snowden and Dan that we live in a place where the policing has gone global, the narratives are wholly owned by the State and it's going to get murkier from here on out.