Web Letters: Stars and Bars

This is hardly a new phenomenon. Many people--particularly those who are survivors of the imprisonment industrial complex--have been paying attention for quite some time. What the author refers to as "Democracy" is not dead, but rather very much alive. Captivity, slavery and genocide are paradigmatic to US democratic regimes, rather than departures from otherwise just norms.

The author should read Ruth Wilson Gilmore's Golden Gulag and Dylan Rodriguez's Forced Passages, or look to community organizations like Critical Resistance, Justice Now and INCITE! in order to begin to really critically address what it means to live in the US. A place that throughout its entire history has sacrificed people of color to alter of democracy via its systems of death and captivity.

David Stein

New Haven, CT