Geographies of Racial Capitalism with Ruth Wilson Gilmore – An Antipode Foundation film

[Music] the relationship between slavery and race race and unfreedom on freedom and labor is one that we constantly try to untangle and at our peril we ignore it but also at our peril we make it too simplistic because the complexity of it matters for what we do in the current moment to undo the catastrophe of mass incarceration so I go down this path of trying to think globally in order to think about how today given the catastrophe of racial capitalism on a world scale its particular form of austerity and neoliberalism impermanent war that we struggle

through requires an approach to solving problems that however particularly local they are have an international dimension because it is an international problem capitalism requires inequality and racism insurance ladies Ruth Lessing Gilmore I have been a teacher and a researcher into especially the prison industrial complex but in order to investigate that I've had to lift up from that certain general themes that are very excited we're going to be able to explore in our conversation including racial capitalism which is all of capitalism abolition geography and my role as a teacher in the university and in the streets

racial capitalism which is to say all capitalism it's not a thing it's a relation however if we look back through the history of capitalism as it developed we see that the understanding that those who own the means of production had of their differences from those whose labor they exploited were understanding that we can recognize today as racial practice so all capitalism is racial from its beginning which is to say to capitalism that we have inherited that it's constantly producing and reproducing itself and it will continue to depend on racial practice and racial hierarchy no matter

what this is another way of saying we can't undo racism without undoing capitalism [Music] being a good geographer means going to look and see and then to challenge oneself in one's description of what we want to see but politically it is giving all of the attention you have to the thing so they understand how it works the word discovery doesn't sit well with anybody who knows anything about the history of the world and yet people flock here to this Monument unaware or uncaring about its fascist dimensions unaware or uncaring about the compass rose this is

behind it that was a gift of the apartheid government of South Africa to the fascist government of Portugal in the mid 1960s can we try to read ascribe this world that has been described in these particular ways in this tourist location with this Monument and this pavement slavery in the slave trade it's not something that was initiated when some people who became known as Europeans encountered some people who became known as Africans and grabbed them it was never limited to African slavery and in fact we ought take more seriously than perhaps we do the fact

of intra what we call today European slavery as being one of the forces that shaped the modern world the foundations of racial capitalism the foundations of the social organization of human groupings in Western Europe during the rise of capitalism they were anything to do with Africa Asia North America or South America they have to do with what was happening here in Europe between people all of whose descendants might have become white I mean that is the major lesson of racial capitalism and why does that matter it matters because capitalism won't stop being racial capitalism if

all the white people disappear from the story capitalism requires inequality and racism enshrines it it started racial without what people imagined race to mean which is black people and it will continue to be racial without what people imagine they're not raised to be which is white people [Music] [Music] my expertise is on the expansion of criminalization and incarceration in the United States and by extension their expansion in the capitalist world why and how that has happened and what we can do to undo that so I set myself the task of understanding what had happened in

California between say the mid-1970s when anything could have emerged as a solution to surplus labor and what actually happened started in the early 1980s in which California started to build prison after prison after prison after prison when it could have built universities or factories or veterans housing or parks or museums or anything else so prisons then in my view concentrates surpluses I asked questions about how the relatively powerful local elites use the state to get what they want so that brings us back to the question of criminalization there's to be a steady stream of criminals

of those eligible to be categorized as criminal they have to keep coming and so that that group has to either get bigger over time or deeper overturn the sentences have to be longer the list of behaviors the conus crime you've got to grow people who having been caught up in the system to get out of it which is to say to go back home if they can go home be there when people call reentry a word I hate but to go home and be there and be in a community end of it is as part

of how the perpetuation of this category criminal that is the basis of the prison industrial complex can perpetuate itself the relationship of that to slavery is on the one hand very general and freedom is on freedom and the other hand the racial order and hierarchy of the United States founded on both slavery and genocide never stopped reproducing itself through all of its iterations over time abolition geography is always a presence everywhere and when I say uh we're gonna abolish prisons and they get frightened and that in becoming frightened say well let's then think about why

this is so frightening and it has to do with all of these other things that we haven't been talking about how come California stopped building prisons after having built and open a new prison year in and year out every year for 23 years and the answer is it was abolitionists all liberation struggle is place-based deliberation struggle the scale the scale bite differ wildly and the size might differ wildly but it's all place-based liberation struggle is specific to the needs and the struggles of people where they are and that where has many many dimensions we've left

the municipality of Lisbon and come into or shortly we'll come into the next municipality which is called amadora and while a good deal of the housing here was privately developed and some significant chunk of it was socially developers just say what we would call in the United States public housing there are also numerous neighborhoods that over decades and decades and decades were built by the people who live there so some will call those informal settlements either we will call those self-built housing the point is not merely that their shelters but that their communities people in

Colvin amaura in self built houses discovered that they were under threat of losing their homes and therefore losing their entire community because none of their houses were up to code the municipality where they're located promise that everybody would get a new house in some social housing project somewhere that would be adequate and people said no no no no you don't understand we want to live here this is our home not just the house this is our home this communities our home we have people and resources here so people start to organize themselves not only to

save their houses which was the number one impetus to organizing but also to understand how come we of all of the people of Greater Lisbon our under threat of losing our community in our home what is about us at the same time they developed study groups to understand not just about their local vulnerability or how the city government work that kind of thing but also about the history of colonialism the history of racism the current history of citizenship in the EU as it has changed over time fortress Europe all of these things became part of

their own study program and they debate all the time and they create these institutions that I have come to call pop-up university I was invited to be a part of this intellectual political community by way of first a personal relationship that I was developing and then by way of the people who through organizing appear and I became part of them although the doors are very modest the meeting space is quite capacious and then we're probably I'd say 50 or 60 people here to talk about prisons and policing but also to talk about things like African

history and political economy and culture and social life everything like everything that matters to people we discussed in there it's really interesting direction I will be and I would like to see what you said people ask very tough questions then there are people who bring their already existing theoretical political commitments to the debate but they argue it through and nobody says well if you're not gonna agree with me I'm leaving and never coming back not at all it's a very very very deep debate that's held together by the purpose of the movement was wonderful what

we we learn here with rooty oh I used to say usually dirty every time that she's speaking I lose the weight in my head so deep and so clear when we have a university here a lot of people come and it isn't one way sometimes in academia happened that people just stay there and listen and don't say but here was the big debate a discussion and so people agree some people disagree but it was very important because it is the way that you you can move forward we have to be attentive to the many many

different kinds of factors institutions places and processes through which people come to consciousness through fomenting liberation struggle it's a form of solidarity and it's making solidarity and solidarity of something that's made and remade and remade it never just is and I think of that in terms of radical dependency that we come absolutely to dependent each other and so solidarity and this radical dependency that I keep thinking about and keep singing everywhere is about life and living and living together and living together in rather beautiful ways and that's something that I have encountered on this hilltop

and why I like it here so much yeah I love you so much love you and it's possible it's really possible and not in a romanticized way but you know material deliberate consciousness exploding or it's possible [Music]