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Are Prisons Obsolete?

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Angela Y. Davis

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“There is no word that admits of more various significations, and has made more varied impressions on the human mind, than that of liberty.” (Montesquieu) In order to exist, liberty and justice in a society, there should be equality in this society before them and together with them. Only then can we speak of humanism. Only socially equal personalities are free. And only free and equal in rights personalities could “love each other like brothers.”

SocietyHistoricalCommunismUssrEffectiveRegimeTotalitarian GovernmentEast EuropeTotalitarian SystemOppressive Regime
Book:Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!: The Marx Code-Socialism with a Human Face
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“We seldom realize, for example, that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society. We copy emotional reactions from our parents, learning from them thatexcrement is supposed to have a disgusting smell and that vomiting is supposed to be an unpleasant sensation. The dread of death is also learned from their anxieties about sickness and from their attitudes to funerals and corpses. Our social environment has this power just because we do not exist apart from a society. Society is our extended mind and body. Yet the very society from which the individual is inseparable is using its whole irresistible force to persuade the individual that he is indeed separate! Society as we now know it is therefore playing a game with self-contradictory rules.”

SocietySocial Learning
Book:The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
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“Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them?”

GovernmentAmericaLawRightsSocietyUnjustHumane
Book:Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
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“A slut is someone, usually a woman, who’s stepped outside of the very narrow lane that good girls are supposed to stay within. Sluts are loud. We’re messy. We don’t behave. In fact, the original definition of “slut” meant “untidy woman.” But since we live in a world that relies on women to be tidy in all ways, to be quiet and obedient and agreeable and available (but never aggressive), those of us who color outside of the lines get called sluts. And that word is meant to keep us in line.”

SocietyFeminismEqualityConsentFemale EmpowermentFreedom Of ExpressionSocial NormsRape CultureDouble StandardsFemale LiberationSlut ShamingSlutSocietal Standards
Author:Jaclyn Friedman
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“The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they became with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier to see something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow. When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle's eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn.”

Society
Book:A Canticle For Leibowitz
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