112 Supplanting The Prison Industrial Complex -Derik Smith, Angel M. Solis, Tyee Griffith

For a half-century now, the US has undertaken an historically unprecedented experiment with human incarceration. Our society has organized itself around a system of punishment that now locks away millions of people. As most know, the members of the human family that we imprison usually come from the least resourced communities, and from Black and Hispanic communities. This panel discussion will consider contemporary incarceration practices in the US, and how these practices might be supplanted by those who believe in the oneness of humanity, and the need to establish just relationships between all people.

See also Dr. Smith’s May 2018 talk Racial Justice: Mass Incarceration in America (BahaiTeachings.org) and his June 2020 WI webinar “Centering the Pupil of the Eye.”

RECOMMENDED BOOKS AND RESOURCES FROM PANELISTS Books Prison Race, by Dr. Renford Reese The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander Makes me Wanna Holler, by Nathan McCall Before the Mayflower, by Lerone Bennett Jr. Wacquant, Loic. Punishing the Poor Walden, by Henry David Thoreau

Websites untilfreedom.com grassrootslaw.org The Abolitionist Toolkit: criticalresistance.org/resources/the-abolitionist-toolkit/

Quote “We cannot segregate the human heart from the environment outside us and say that once one of these is reformed everything will be improved. Man is organic with the world. His inner life moulds the environment and is itself also deeply affected by it. The one acts upon the other and every abiding change in the life of man is the result of these mutual reactions.” –Shoghi Effendi See also: bahai.org/action/response-call-bahaullah/

RECOMMENDED BOOKS AND RESOURCES FROM ATTENDEES Books Becoming Ms. Burton, by Susan Burton The Will to Change, by bell hooks Blood In My Eye, by George Jackson Howard Zehr: Changing Lenses: Restorative Justice for Our Times

Miscellaneous Resources Documentary Film: 13th (Ava Duvernay) Every work by Bryan Stevenson (Book, TedTalk, everything) PBS – College Behind Bars, a four-part documentary film series directed by filmmaker Lynn Novic