Killing the Dark Bodies: Execution as Market Sustainability & State Redemption
From: Sam
Subject: Re: The Soul of Money
Date: December 13, 2005 11:40:11 AM CST
To: Lisa Arrastía
Good morning, chica,
Mom and Marty hosted a brunch fundraiser for "Death Penalty Focus" on Sunday, which was uplifting. Mike Farrell (Captain B.J. Hunnicut of M.A.S.H. fame) spoke at the fundraiser. He's a long time death penalty activist. One thing he said really stuck with me. The criminal justice system and especially the death penalty is based on the premise that the "animals" and "monsters" locked up in our prisons are reduced to the worst thing they ever did. He asked the room how we would all like to be reduced to the worst thing we ever did. Now, I haven’t murdered anyone (yet) but it’s a profound question.
The state is an imagined collective, a theoretical "We." We are it. Holding so much of our social strengths and relational apprehensions, it has an endowed power to manipulate our humanity and construct codifications -- by which many of us operate faithfully and some oppositionally -- of economics, race, sexuality, and gender. Collectively, we obey or else become forced to acknowledge the source of codification and be responsible for its insidious, deleterious, and organized systemic arrangement. Execution is an annihilation of possibility, not just the potential of human life, but the opportunity to admit the worst thing we have ever done -- to each o(O)ther.
Full essay available at MRZine http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/arrastia241205.html