i agree about this, the popular movement says that they all determined to keep going with the protests . they say that they're going to have a sit in, and they're going to continue the purchase and to what they call toys sides. who do tal comes to an end, and they assured that teenagers back on a demick democratic policy, one small ah the main stories now, corona virus infections and deaths are reaching alarming levels in the united states. on average, more than a $120000.00 infections are reported each day, which is a rise of 40 percent on last month. the number of deaths is climbing as well, with almost 1300 fatalities a day. many universities across the country are voting to online teaching and sport events have been canceled or postponed. president joe biden is one the unvaccinated

. there are great risk. a message echoed by the head of the white house covey response team for the un vaccinated. looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families in the hospitals you may soon overwhelm. meanwhile, u. k is reported another record number of covered cases for 3rd day in a row, just over 93000 infections of rochester on friday. about $3200.00 of those cases, confirmed to be the only con, varied total number of cases of the case, risen by about 39 percent and just 7 days. but the death rate remains relatively low. and then francis announced that major public parties and fireworks will be banned on new year's eve as a current of ours infections rise that communist visual sec says that all citizens, even if vaccinated, should take a should test themselves. before attending social events, he said on the con would be the dominant strain and france from january. and all

the headlines, the u. s. is called on all sides in ethiopia is brutal year long war to renounce and, and violence against civilians. this is the united nations human rights council agree to establish and international commission to investigate alleged abuses in the country. the un says it's receiving credible reports that all sides in ethiopia is conflict to committing severe human rights violations. if you're dismissed. the counsel statement is politically motivated, philippines, as counting the cost of typhoon ry, which has killed $12.00 people and left a trail of destruction. when you close to 200 kilometers an hour, destroyed thousands of homes across the central and southern philippines, forcing hundreds of thousands to seek safety. it's now heading towards vietnam and china. up front is next looking at the growing movement in the u. s. to abolish prisons and the police. ah,

it the united states as a world's current leader in incarceration with almost 2000000 people serving time in u. s. jails and prisons. that's an increase of 500 percent over 40 years. according to the sentencing project in india, working to promote humane responses to crime. in recent years, voices calling for police and prison. abolition have grown louder, making them in inexorable part of mainstream discourse on how to confront police brutality and racism in the u. s. criminal justice system, but the cause for abolition are not new. j. o. in 1970 political activists in university, professor angela davis was jailed for 16 months with the early part of her incarceration spent in solitary confinement. the case against davis,

who was once caught a terrorist by former president richard nixon and listened by j edgar hoover, on the f. b i's. 10 most wanted fugitive lists for heretical politics, lead to a global outcry, calling for her freedom. 2 years later, she was acquitted. of all charges and began a movement to abolish the prison industrial complex. but his abolition really possible and what would take place instead of police and prisons this week in upfront special with angela dave with angela davis. thank you so much for joining me on up front. the past couple of years have revealed to many americans and much of the rest of the world. what people of color have long known, the u. s. criminal legal system is racist and attempts at incremental reform have failed. you and others have called for the abolition of police. why?

well known for a very long time that the structure of racism is such that it invades virtually all of the existing institutions in our society. and especially the penal institutions and law enforcement institutions . one cannot study the history of the police without also studying the history of racism. and so i would say that since the aftermath of slavery, a, people have been aware of the role thans of police play and producing and reproducing racism. and you know, but i think that over the years we focus largely on addressing specific cases. and we call for justice for specific

individuals and we call for specific police offices to be brought to justice. and in recent years, it's become clear that that isn't going to solve the problem. and i, i want to point out to the fact that the coming together of, of movements against racism in the us and movements against the occupation of palestine and the gun to make it clear how the structures of racism insinuate themselves into the police. and to the very nature of policing, and especially recently through the militarization of policing. so in recent years we've been looking at structural issues more so than the notion of bringing individuals to justice. and you know,

certainly the call to de fun, the police which emerged in relation to that campaign against police racism unleashed by the police wrenching of george floyd. you know, certainly that, that movement begin to make it clear that, that we, what we need, we need, we need different forms of guaranteeing safety security. so the call to div son, the police was really actually a call to imagine new lays, of guaranteeing the safety and security of our community. some people haven't made arguments, that gesture toward abolition, but don't maybe go all the way there. for example, some people have argue to disarm the police. and why is that insufficient in the minds of abolitionists?

well, you know, i don't think we need to be so intransigent that we can also embrace some approaches that don't go nearly as far as we think. they should. now i personally think that the call to disarm the police is, is a radical car. as a matter of fact, in connection with efforts to um, address, the fat said there are more guns in this country, then there are people. oh. and the call to disarm the, the country also has to include a call to disarm the police. i think that it, it's possible to, i'm afraid that a demand and a radical abolitionists way in with the same or can be made for

d funding because again, some people say the funding stopped short. but do you see the funding as a stop on the way to abolition, or can it be something that prevents us from ultimately getting to an abolitionist world? you know, there's no easy way to design abolition and, and my, my abolition is a process a and i don't think that we can at this point say that we would, we will have reached a triumphant moment of abolition when 12345 occurs it is a process and we learn of on the way and the fun of the police, of course, it's a short cut. you know, all of these demands are shortcuts. we can't simply focus on isolated issues, isolated phenomena. we can't say defined the police take all the funds away from

the police, but leave everything else and tapped her. the whole nature of that demand is to shift the resources into institutions that so. 2 can't really assist us in a way of producing new modes of safety and security. so instead of having the funding to this maya institution called the police are, you know, from mental health care, fun housing plan, education, fun, free health care for everyone. what do you say are some of the primary reasons why people oppose abolition? i mean there's, of course, there are the died in the wall races who just want to see our police terrorism right there. there, those people. and there are people who might be uninformed about the issue, but there are also people who have a general sense of what abolitionists are asking for and still say,

i don't buy this. i don't, i don't believe in it. 15 percent of americans a support about about in the please them if 85 percent don't. and the majority of black people believe that the police presence should remain the same. what are some of the reasons for that? why are people still in this position? well, you know, 1st of all, mark, let me say that the very fact that we can say that 15 percent of the population is in favor of abolition is kind of amazing because for so long abolitionists perspectives have been considered. so marginal law is that they did not even merit a discussion was in the public sphere. and, and so as someone who has been thinking and talking and organizing around abolition since the 19 seventy's, i would say, since the adequate rebellion in 1971. i'm actually surprised

and i continued to be surprised that we are having this conversation now in the way that we are. i always saw, as i've said many times, that we were doing work that would allow generations in the future to have this conversation, you know, but of course history doesn't unfold in that way. and, and, and the kind of confluence of events that occurred when george floyd and brianna taylor were killed. and the recognition of the nature of racism as structural in connection with the coven, 19 pandemic sort of fast forwarded us to a point where we are now having serious conversations about abolition. so i'm excited that that many people embracing emma, which now i, i do understand that most people are afraid of the new of the unknown

and, and the police have always represented themselves as those who protect and serve. and so i think that particularly black people who have really has the opportunity to be protected and served by the police are still, you know, want to feel safety and security. and the problem is that the police have kind of, in an ideological sense, have, have represented themselves as the only possibility of safety and security. so i think it's our job to begin to urge people to think differently about the very meaning of safety and security. and what would it mean to have real safety, real security? what would it mean to have education available to everyone free education?

what would it mean to have health care? what would it mean not to have to call the police if someone is in, in, in, in, and in the, someone who has a psychiatric episode, what would it mean not to have to call the police, but rather to took, took to call a different kind of agency or institution or where people are compassionate and understand of the nature of, of, of psychic difficulties and would, would, would. 2 would not trouts the person with guns, but rather with the sense of rescuing them and assisting them to find some piece. one of the things that i've encountered is that when i talk about abolition with people, one of the issues that comes up is that the people who are often most vulnerable to police violence and the people were most likely abused by police are also the

people most vulnerable to violent crime, and there's a concern that if police aren't there, and i live in a neighborhood with his high amounts of crime and violence, that there might be either an immediate period during abolition, one especially vulnerable, or a long term period where i don't have that a crime will be reduced, absent a police presence. what? how do we go about thinking about deterring violent crimes? there's a psychiatric piece. there's that piece of it. but what about the violent crime that we see are in community the harm that's done? how do we think about the tearing that well, 1st of all, mark the development incentive lead to the explosive character of violence and our communities have taken a very long time. this this situation is developed over years and decades that i would say hundreds of years. and i don't think that there is one simple solution of the problem is that the police and the prison are

constantly propose as the immediate solutions for problems that require long term examination and long term strategies. if you know, we were looking in a predicament that evolved over time since the aftermath of slavery. and if we think that there is one simple solution, if we think we're going to get rid of these problems tomorrow, and then we'll never get any you talked about prison as well, and that's another key part of the abolition movement. and in fact, prior to a few years ago, i would argue the prison abolition conversation was actually much louder than the police abolition conversation. and so i want to talk to you a little bit about that. as of 2019,

there were 2000000 people in prison in the united states. that's a 500 percent increase over 40 years. that's the highest incarceration rate in the world. and all the black people make a 13 percent of the u. s. population. we still account for 40 percent of the incarcerated population. how do we go about putting a dent in those kinds of stunning numbers? well 1st of all, i think it might be important to recall that for many years and decades, it was very difficult to bring attention to the crisis within the prison system. as a matter of fact that, you know, i can remember in the seventy's we were talking about the numbers of people who bind bars and it was, you know, a few 100000 people. but that to us seemed. 2 to be a major crisis, but people were prepared to hear about it because the nature of the institution is

itself requires a kind of climb destin operation that is hidden from view and people are made to feel ashamed about having relatives behind mars. and so i think we tend to focus more on the prison system than on the police because at least there were campaigns against police violence. you know, i can remember in the seventy's we held hearings and i was working with an organization called the national alliance against racism, political repression. and we held hearings about police races, police violence all over the country. so there was some attention, even though it wasn't the kind of attention that the issue has received in, in the last few years, especially since the emergence of black lives matter. where as

a very few people were even thinking about the vast numbers of people who are hidden away in these dungeons. but i will argue that the 2 issues have always gone hand in hand. abolition requires a much a broader understanding and a view that doesn't focus my off quickly on the particular issue, but one that calls for transformations of throughout the society and, and therefore prison abolition involve a police abolition as well. now the abolition movement was so important and continues to be important because the underlying analysis links the racism in, in,

in, in the criminal justice. ready system and the vast numbers of people of color, not only black people, but indigenous people probably have suffered even greater to a greater extent because indigenous people are per capita the, the, the largest population in relation to the population of indigenous people behind bars us so, so i think that what was critical about that movement is that in the link the, the vast numbers of people who are going to prison, to the rise of global capitalism and to the breakdown of the welfare state. and so there was an anti capitalist dimension present in the prison. evolution is movement that encouraged people to think more broadly,

not only about the prison, but about all the other related institutions and about the structural racism inherently and about the impact of global capitalism and the rise of, of prisons all over the world. not, not only in the developed world but, but also in africa and in latin america. i think the most asked question to the abolitionist is, and i think it's a fair question is, but what about the people who pose an immediate threat to others? what do we do with the child molesters? what do we do with the rapist? what do we do with the serial killers? how do we, in the absence of the current prison as we understand it, deal with people who pose an immediate threat to communities? oh no, it's so interesting, isn't it marks that people always go to the worst possible example and then use that as

a justification for the treatment of millions of people who. 1 have not engaged in that kind of handful of activity. now, you know, no one is denying that there are serious acts of harm and violence that have produced by individuals who are a threat, a threat to others and to themselves. but if we simply argue that because there is this relatively small population of people, then we lock up more than 2000000 people at that, i mean to me that is illogical. oh that's, that's that, that's the 1st point. the 2nd point is that imprisonment reproduces those very problems. and so the

violent individual who goes to prison is, is in a situation where she or he or they become even more violent as a result of the structural violence of the institution. then they were when they went in. so in my opinion, and i think this is what most abolitionists, what are you, it's, it's, it's necessary to pull back and ask larger questions, not only how we deal with this a media issue, but rather how to deal with it in the long term. how can we understand and get rid of the conditions that produce such violence in individuals? you know, i think gender violence is, is, is probably a really good example for this larger problem simply by m,

imprisoning of people who engage and gender violence has not had an impact at all on the incidence of gender violence in the world. it is still the most pandemic form of violence so, so that it seems to me what would a single that we have to figure out how to deal with the problem itself rather than simply incarcerating people who commit to violence. how can we deal with the conditions that, that, that produce individuals that are a prime to engage in these kinds of violence against women against o, l, g, b, g, 2 people against trans people, all of the forms of violence that we would categorize under the term gender miles.

so the larger question is how do we address the ideology that encourages people to, to take out their frustrations and their fear, by attacking others in that way. and it seems that there is a very narrow idea of what restraint can look like what separation can look like. the quakers are talked about in that book instead of prisons. they talk about this idea of restraint of the few saying that there might be some people who need before that of society because they posed an immediate threat. but it seems that the challenge might also be that the only way we imagine that is through caging. and that there might be other ways whether it's mental health support, whether it's some other structure that can allow someone who is a serial killer or someone who is a child molester to be pulled out of the space where they're doing harm without using the cage is the primary mechanism, but that requires

a new kind of imagination. and it seems that there might be a crisis of imagination in the policy realm and the academic realm, the in the activist realm. so i'm going to ask you to help us imagine a little bit before we go. when you think about an affirmative vision of the world, not just what we don't want police and prisons, but what we do want. what does that look like for angela davis? what does the abolitionist future look like? well, i've always linked evolution with socialism. so i would say that in imagining the future, it cannot be a capital, this future. it cannot be a future that is based on the exploitation of others. and this future would be one in which the necessities of life are not commodified and which one's capacity to live. a

fruitful life is not dependent on one's capacity to pay for those services. so, you know, the, the point that i'm making is that we have to go further than these 2 discrete institutions that we have to think about really reorganizing our entire world. and i think that the, the, the danger of, of positing, evolution as a narrow strategy that only addresses particular individuals is, is, is one that will prevent us from understanding that this is about revolution. this is about, this is about environmental justice. this is about

workers' rights, this is the, this is about eradicating gender violence. you know, this is about making education free for everyone. and so i could continue with that, you know, kind of imagining of the future. but i do think that the abolitionists imagination is central to the since envisioning and the world and developing the strategies for challenging the correct one. angela davis. thank you so much for joining me, an offer and thank you much for inviting me. everybody bet is our show up front will be back actually. ah

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what's most important to me is talking to people, understanding what they're going through here. it al jazeera, we believe everyone has a story worth hearing. ah . hello, i'm mary. i'm new mazda in london, a quick look at the main stories. now. corona virus infections and death are reaching alarming levels in the united states. on average, more than a $120000.00 infections are reported each day, which is a rise of 40 percent on last month, and number of deaths is climbing as well. with all my stuff, 1300 fatalities a day. president joe biden is wound on vaccination people. they are at great risk.