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Calvin John Smiley
277 Plays4 days ago
Something Rather Than Nothing Podcast Episode 300!!! We talk ABOLITION.
Calvin John Smiley, Ph.D. is an associate professor of sociology at Hunter College-CUNY. His research and scholarship broadly focus on issues related to justice, inequality, and race. Smiley is the co-editor of Prisoner Reentry in the 21st Century: Critical Perspectives of Coming Home (Routledge, 2020). He is the author of the award-winning Purgatory Citizenship: Reentry, Race, and Abolition (University of California Press, 2023), which explores how system-impacted individuals navigate and negotiate the reentry experience with diminished legal rights and amplified social stigmas. Further, he is the author of Defund: Conversations Towards Abolition (Haymarket Books, 2024), which considers how #defund can bridge the divide between reform and abolition, becoming a catalyst to help organizers realize abolitionist visions. Finally, Smiley has published in an array of peer-reviewed journals and public outlets.
Beyond his academic work, Smiley is committed to public sociology and praxis. He has been a regular contributor to several news and talk show outlets. Additionally, he is the founder and director of Till Everything Better LLC, which works with system-impacted youth through restorative justice practices within New York City youth detention facilities. Finally, Smiley is the Project Director for the CUNY New Paths and Administration of Children’s Services (ACS) program to offer system-impacted youth college-credit courses.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Hosts
00:00:02
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host, Ken Valente. Editor and producer, Peter Bauer.
00:00:17
Speaker
Hey everybody, this is Ken Volante with the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast. And I'm very excited to have Calvin John Smiley, author of The Fund.
Meet Calvin John Smiley: Background and Work
00:00:28
Speaker
And Calvin, I'm just going to read the standard bio on your book, but to give people a little sense of what you've done. Calvin is an associate professor of sociology at Hunter College, City University of New York.
00:00:45
Speaker
the author of Purgatory Citizenship, and a co-editor of Prisoner Reentry in the 21st Century, and ah guest on Something Rather Than Nothing.
00:00:59
Speaker
Great to have the opportunity to to you, Calvin. Hi, Ken. Thank you so much for having me here. And i really appreciate the opportunity to talk a bit more about defund and some other things. And I'll just add to that bio that I also am the founder and director of an organization called Till Everything Better, which we do restorative justice work with system impacted youth here in New York.
00:01:25
Speaker
Thank you for your work. And I really yeah love i love the title.
Exploring 'Defund': Radical Views on Crime and Justice
00:01:30
Speaker
um Your book has a quote right off the top from Mumia Abu-Jamal, a political prisoner of the United States.
00:01:41
Speaker
And um ah i just wanted to tell you you on. am.
00:01:51
Speaker
I've been very interested in um prison systems. as a matter of fact, I've done some research quite some time ago about prison labor. I'm a union activist, the labor activist in my you know day job.
00:02:07
Speaker
um And so i was familiar with just some of the basic territory of exploitation and that particular inquiry around you know wages, incarceration.
00:02:19
Speaker
um I've read Defund, and um it's such a helpful way to learn, for me to learn about the kind of the radical proposition I see at the the forefront of, um if I could try to describe, and I'll ask a question,
00:02:41
Speaker
um
00:02:44
Speaker
ah the idea of of a radical way of looking what how we define crime, ah how we work with people, whether our intent is a for for rehabilitation,
00:03:03
Speaker
um In the context that seems to me within capitalism of a strong desire to capture massive disproportionate amount of ah brown and black citizens and how these systems are deeply tied to um incarceration and and in questions of liberty in the United States.
00:03:30
Speaker
And As you go through to the fund in the background, there's a like a larger um ah question about like our general ah approach.
00:03:45
Speaker
So I wanted to ask you, what is it' such a large topic?
From Police Reform to Defunding: A New Approach
00:03:54
Speaker
um abolition or defund, but can you describe how the movement or that framework, what its conception of justice is and
00:04:12
Speaker
how that compares to what we're in right now? Yeah, so, yeah, it's a huge question. And I think just to give a little bit more context and backstory to that point and why I wrote the book was that I saw something that I thought was pivotedly different than what had been happening, um at least kind of on a national or even like an international scope.
00:04:41
Speaker
leading up to 2020. I mean, you know, not to take anything away from the organizers, advocates and grassroots movements that were happening. But when we look ah prior to that, the kind of national stage was very much calling for what could be said as reforms to the police.
00:05:01
Speaker
Right. Bias training, diversity of who's being hired, body worn cameras. And that became kind of the overarching narrative. Now, that's not to say that there weren't abolitionists and more leftist people speaking to more radical changes. That was always there.
00:05:18
Speaker
But the kind of mainstream arc was how do we make the police better? How do we make them more efficient? How do we make sure they're not killing people in this way? And then what we saw is that police continue to kill people on camera.
00:05:33
Speaker
And, you know, I hate to always say it like this, whether it was the kind of perfect recipe of the murder of George Floyd, where you had four officers who ranged in their careers, right? Some were, I think Chauvin was in his 17th year on the younger end, someone who was in their second year.
00:05:54
Speaker
They had all done the bias training. They had all had body-worn cameras, um, you know This was supposed to be the diversity wet dream, right? Two white, an Asian, a black man.
00:06:08
Speaker
And what happened? They still killed still kill George Floyd. um And so that, along with the murder of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and others, we saw this kind of shift in that radical flank that had been there.
00:06:24
Speaker
move to from the margin to the center. And we started people sort of hearing people use terms like defund. we heard We heard abolition. That was, again, at one point only seen as this kind of radical utopian pipe dream as something that people were now wanting to say, how do we make that a reality?
00:06:46
Speaker
And so to bring it to your question, right, this idea of like, what what does the defund movement give us in terms of a new framework for social justice?
Impact of the Defund Movement
00:06:57
Speaker
I think you know the the answer can kind of boil down to what happened let this past Tuesday in New York City, that Zoran Mondani won the Democratic primary.
00:07:10
Speaker
Now that's not, you know, you know, I think, you know, one of the biggest, one of the biggest hits that mainstream conservative Democrats and Republicans alike have hit him on was that during the 2020 uprisings, he was tweeting out defund the police.
00:07:29
Speaker
right yeah And one of the biggest critiques that I've received why for writing this book was that defund is over. Defund, you know it came, it went, it was a flash in the pan.
00:07:39
Speaker
But anyone who studies social movements knows that social movements take time. They take a lot of time. But what we are now seeing is someone who moved their way from...
00:07:55
Speaker
you know I'm talking about Mandani here, yeah yeah you know moved his position from someone who was an organizer and doing all this work, and now he is in a position to become the mayor of one of the largest cities in the world.
00:08:10
Speaker
yeah And so I think that's where we can kind of see... So let me let me let me sum all that up with, I don't think we have Zoran Mandani if we did not have defund.
00:08:21
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I, um, uh, yeah, thank you. I was stunned. I, um, have friends in New York city and, um, you know, was just kind of good on social media. I'm like the, what, the, what I wasn't following closely and, uh, the exuberance of some of my friends who are supporters in the, maybe some of the genuine surprise, uh, all, all around.
00:08:47
Speaker
Um, uh, uh, I really appreciate i really appreciate ah your answer.
Dialogue in 'Defund': Engaging with Complex Topics
00:08:56
Speaker
One of the pieces is here in kind of like a little bit of of the form in maybe how ah we talk, one of the cool pieces about your book, The Fund, and it comes out of a tradition in Haymarket Books, the great publisher,
00:09:13
Speaker
ah published your work, um the framework of dialogues. And I'm a trained philosopher, traditionally trained in a certain sense. um But and in doing the show, always love ah ah dialogue.
00:09:31
Speaker
Can you um kind of just, and and I love that so many of the interviews in the book, can you just speak to as a form of inquiry what you think something that that this brings, even as classical as is, that the dialogue ah brings to a discussion like this?
00:09:56
Speaker
Yeah, so... i I did it in this frame for a number of reasons, and I'll go through them. One, to your point, I really do love the tradition of Haymarket Books. you know I believe you know We Still Here by Mark Lamont Hill.
00:10:14
Speaker
Angela Davis's from Ferguson to Palestine also do it in this kind of stylistic manner. And I really loved when I read those books because, you know, as I was telling people, I'm writing a book that reads like a podcast. That's what I was trying to like. That's how I was trying to frame it, right? that that I must say immediately needed to contact you. I'm like, he's already in the format. Yeah.
00:10:38
Speaker
right But you know this idea that watching ideas through an exchange, I think, really can help people, particularly people who are not necessarily well-versed in some of the more nitty-gritty or academic issues.
00:10:56
Speaker
terminology, right? So I wanted to write a book that one was accessible and readable. and i And I hope that I kind of struck those um ah to to allow for folks to read. And so, you know, as I said at at the top, I do a lot of work with young folks in New York. And so part of, in my mind was, could I write a book that young folks who are system impacted want to pick, would they want to pick up and read? And if they did pick it up and read,
00:11:25
Speaker
Are there things that they would be able to want to pull from this, want to discuss more, want to hear more about? And so I look at the book kind of as a it' kind of a broader platform, as a jumping off point. I know throughout the book, both myself and a lot of the folks I talk to, name drop scholars, named up historical figures, named up, name drop organizations that they're either directly a part of who they've been inspired by, um who they wish to work with.
00:11:58
Speaker
And so I think about the ways in which I came to a lot of this work. you know When i was reading as a teenager and you know hearing you know the Black Panthers talk about this guy Che Guevara, so I go read about Che Guevara, I hear Che Guevara talking about this guy Patrice Lumumba, and then I read... you know yes and So I look at the book as hopefully this is a book that if
Dialogue's Role in Abolitionist Movements
00:12:21
Speaker
someone picks it up,
00:12:22
Speaker
um who might be like new to abolition new or wanting to hear a different way that defund is framed, um that they can then go on to other readings.
00:12:33
Speaker
And so that's one part. The other part is that coming from an abolitionist tradition, we know that abolition um is a dialogue and not a monologue. It's it's really hard to um make change in silos. And so I didn't want to write a book that was just...
00:12:51
Speaker
um going to be ah somewhat of an echo chamber for myself. I wanted it to be in conversation because part of being in conversation means that you're willing and open, you're willing and open to hearing other people's positions on the subject matter in real time.
00:13:11
Speaker
And so in real time, you're having to respond to them and kind of think about what they're saying, why they're saying it and how they come to that position.
00:13:22
Speaker
And one of the things that I really love about the book is that, you know, I have people in the book who, um, are doing the work in in a multitude of ways, um but might not necessarily be household names to people in even leftist circles.
00:13:42
Speaker
you know One of the things that people have asked me since I wrote the book was, you know why didn't and why didn't I interview Angela Davis? And you know my my initial response is, I'm so flattered that you think I have access to Angela Davis in that way, right?
00:13:58
Speaker
Thank you. Right? But on a more serious note is we know what Angela Davis's positions are. i know And they're wonderful but positions. and we yeah and and we And we build from her position. And I think, and and Angela, asthma Professor Davis, Dr. Davis so writes amazing work.
00:14:16
Speaker
But I also wanted to give a platform for organizers and system impacted folks who are also doing this work, who sometimes because they don't have that credential behind their name, sometimes can even be overlooked even within leftist circles. And I think that it's really important to have folks ah doing that work.
00:14:38
Speaker
i I really like the, I mean, I thought a whole bunch about the way you're put in that, but one of the pieces that that that I like in the format as ah ah is, uh, it's almost sometimes it'd be referenced to particular, uh, situations that are time of, of the time.
00:14:59
Speaker
And it captures in the conversation, some of the like almost reportage of like what a situation is or what the reference point that somebody makes.
00:15:10
Speaker
And like, for me as a reader, you know, um ah Michael and and Debbie Davis um a chapter in connection to the, the move bombing in the of ah Philadelphia.
00:15:30
Speaker
I, you know, just like as a, like a, as a topic, ah ended up in um at the time out in Cambridge mass revolution books and just came into contact with the, with the whole world. Right.
00:15:48
Speaker
Never heard anything about move. The only way I would have heard about it, it if somebody laid down a track, a public enemy laid down a track or something, because the report reportage for me. And when I grew up was the, you know, the freaking cassette tape, but what was public enemy telling me? What was somebody else telling me?
00:16:06
Speaker
I never heard of it um But then connecting in just being an alternative bookstore, a radical bookstore, reading about move and being like, Holy fucking shit.
00:16:19
Speaker
They bombed them. Like, like, you know, just a shot. Um, So for me, even like reading, I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm hearing their voices in their hope, in their tiredness, in the struggle. It was a beautiful thing for me just to come in contact, say, with those voices.
00:16:43
Speaker
um And um ah some and some some incredible discussions that that you had. Yeah.
00:16:57
Speaker
So one of the big questions I had, because I've come in contact with your area in Korea, I'm a labor guy.
00:17:11
Speaker
And um whenever I encounter a social issue, I tend to ask, you know, does the labor movement, you you know, as a whole, I know it's a complicated question, but like,
00:17:24
Speaker
What role does it have? I'll give you an example. um Missing and murdered indigenous women, girls and two spirit.
Labor Movement's Potential in Social Justice
00:17:34
Speaker
um The kind of disproportionate disappearance murder rate ah for native folks.
00:17:42
Speaker
And those things take yeah there's high danger points around. labor camps or what are called man camps for labor around pipelines or other construction um that that create this um really dangerous place and and thinking about that i was like i'm an activist within the labor movement it means different things it's different people but
00:18:12
Speaker
what role like is this is there a larger organizational voice to speak to this? And I wanted to ask you about that. um Like, for example, on the outside, labor movement, well, they're going to be representing a bunch of the people who are gainfully employed in the public sector.
00:18:31
Speaker
And unions and prison guards, there's a structure that exists. Nobody wants to lose jobs. But on the other end of it, as a movement...
00:18:43
Speaker
People are still being snatched up, incarcerated, bodies used, money basically pulled out of their families, pulled out of them. like And I say, is where is there a role for the labor movement? And i don't I'm not asking for a dispositive answer, but that's the way I think about I'm like, hey, labor, what's going on?
00:19:13
Speaker
um any comments on that? Yeah. um i have I have a bunch actually, but I just want to ask, do you want me to respond to the stuff about move? or hot wise love I would love to. Yeah.
00:19:27
Speaker
And then, and then I'll come to the, ah so I'll do both. I'll talk about move and then I'll go into the labor
The 1985 MOVE Bombing: Impact and Justice
00:19:32
Speaker
stuff. So, yeah you know, I think for me in, in, in, I think your, your reaction is the way that anyone's reaction is, is that holy fucking shit. When you learn about the city of Philadelphia, dropping a bomb, a literal bomb yeah onto a home, a residential home in May of 1985 of, of Philadelphia residents. And then allowed the, the, the fire to burn to several, right. Several city blocks. I mean, for me,
00:20:05
Speaker
um I came to know what move was from reading about Lumia. And at the time I was in school in Pennsylvania. And I remember there, there's been two, um,
00:20:19
Speaker
things that I read about that I had to kind of say, I need to go, i can need to go look this up. First is yeah if you've ever read the autobiography of Assata Shakur and her experiences being in prison in New Jersey and being locked in a men's facility and all of this. And then the second was the move, uh, the 1978,
00:20:40
Speaker
um standoff that incarcerated Mike and Debbie Davis along with seven of their family members, but also the bombing. And I remember looking this up and this must have been 05, 06, somewhere in that realm.
00:20:57
Speaker
And I remember YouTube was still fairly new. And I remember YouTube had the video or somebody had it because I remember watching because there's a video. You see the helicopter going above and this in something falling out of the helicopter or being dropped out. And then seconds later, you see the explosion.
00:21:16
Speaker
And so for me, you know, yeah we see this, And we see this over and over again in American history, this kind of horrific form of violence, whether that is being done to Mamiya and members of MOVE in Philadelphia, whether it's happening to Native and Indigenous folks, um ah both in the United States and in Canada.
00:21:39
Speaker
You know, sometimes we let Canada off the hook. Yeah, right. But when it comes their native indigenous populations, it is a horror show. um but You have, ah you know, Leonard Peltier, who spent damn near 50 years in prison and just was released at the in January of this of this year of 2025.
00:21:59
Speaker
orange And then, you know, you can look at a lot of the histories of. infiltration, disruption, and all-out violence that the FBI did, that the CIA cia does in terms of coups and all you know all the way back to slavery and and and things like that.
00:22:18
Speaker
um And so for me, it was really important to have that voice. And and really, um it was very serendipitous that I was able to have Mike and Debbie Davis in the book.
00:22:31
Speaker
They had given a talk m in in Brooklyn. And I was able to attend and it was at at ah at a really cool space over here in Bushwick called Mayday Space.
00:22:45
Speaker
And after the event, I was able to go up and introduce myself and told them the work that I had done. um you know They were willing to share their email with me, told them that I was interested i was interested in interviewing them for this book project.
00:22:59
Speaker
And so we met on Zoom. And one of the things that intrigued them to say yes to this was how I was really interested in who Mike and Debbie Davis were before Moon yeah and who Mike and Debbie debbie Davis are today.
00:23:16
Speaker
yeah ah didn't, I mean, obviously spending 40 years in prison is a large part of their story, but as I had said to them and as they knew, a lot of people have told that story. They can tell that story, right? And they can, they are the only ones who can tell it best.
00:23:32
Speaker
But the fact that I was so interested in learning who they are today and, And the name of that chapter, Justice Healing, Healing Justice, comes from something that they had said at that talk ah in Brooklyn.
00:23:46
Speaker
and it was something that was really, really interesting. cathartic for them. That's, you know, that's kind of how they they phrased it for me because, you know, as as they say, and as it's written in the book, you know, they did not wake up that day in August of 1978 and say, hey, I'm going to leave my community for the next 40 years. Like, you know, people don't wake up to be martyrs.
00:24:08
Speaker
um It happens. and And so there's the the different images that they have. There's the public image that people like you and i look towards for strength and resilience in these moments of hopelessness or helplessness.
00:24:22
Speaker
But then there's the reality of their being human and losing that time with their family and losing family members and not having those um different milestones and abilities to celebrate, you know, as, as they talk, i mean, their youngest son, Mike Jr.,
00:24:43
Speaker
was born in a Philadelphia jail. And it took 40 years for him to hug his mother and father um outside of a prison wall.
00:24:54
Speaker
I mean, you know that's ah that's ah that's a really hard thing for anyone to yeah to go to go through. And so I really felt it was it was really important for me to have their voice in this book because when you think about what had happened in those 40 years, right, they, they had been locked up kind of at the, you know, one of the, the, the high points of kind of the black radical, um, uh, uh, era of the, of the second half of the 20th century.
00:25:21
Speaker
And they were being released in 2018 into this black lives matter era, right. Where people were once again, yeah having a racial reckoning around, policing prisons.
00:25:34
Speaker
What does it mean to have a statue of Frank Rizzo, the mayor of Philadelphia, who was a racist piece of shit. Right. Um, and so to me, that was really important. And we've just seen in the last couple of years, um, the city of Philadelphia has recognized the wrongs, but you know,
00:25:55
Speaker
How do you repay that? And they haven't repaid that. I mean, I think that's the other big thing is that there has been no real reparations given to members of move descendants of the members of move who who've lost their life.
00:26:08
Speaker
And so I think it's really important like to keep that um that story alive and not let it be buried in the history books, because if we don't want it to be repeated again, then people need to know about it.
00:26:19
Speaker
what move is and what happened to move and that the city of Philadelphia, the state of Pennsylvania and the country of the United States is still on the hook to repay them for, for what they went through.
00:26:33
Speaker
Oh yeah. Yeah. please So, so yeah. So i really appreciate having that, having them in the books, particularly, and still having a relationship with them. It's, it's really, it's really been a highlight for me.
00:26:45
Speaker
Um, to go to the question about where does the move, the labor movement
Labor Unions' Resistance and Equitable Policies
00:26:50
Speaker
in this? Yeah. I mean, I think the labor movement has a huge, huge role in how do we resist police prisons, hyper criminalized surveillance.
00:27:02
Speaker
And so, you know, a couple of things that, you know, this makes me think of is that one police or, you know, police unions are not legitimate unions. I mean, right. Right. It's a weird thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's a weird thing.
00:27:15
Speaker
It's a very weird thing, right? Police, police writ large are here to protect capital. there And we see it displayed at every, you know, ah anytime there is a protest, anytime that there is a ah glimmer of people organizing, the police are out there in full militarized regalia, right? I mean, you know, it i always think of the the the the image of
00:27:47
Speaker
the CVS in and West Baltimore after Freddie Gray was murdered by the by the Baltimore police. And you had a CVS that was literally surrounded, barricaded by full police and riot gear.
00:28:05
Speaker
And so it highlights, and there's other images. Here in New York City in 2020, the same kind of image of police surrounding the statue of Columbus in Columbus Circle. It just shows and highlights that. Yeah.
00:28:17
Speaker
Capital. Capital. is protected over people and that police are um disseminated and sent out to make sure that capital is always protected over people.
00:28:29
Speaker
um There have been numerous cases just here in New York of people who were harassed in summer of 2020. And we have it on video. I mean, like these are not hearsay. We we see the ah ah objective video of a person holding a piece of cardboard and getting body slammed to the ground.
00:28:49
Speaker
And the cops, you know, the cops script is always they resisted arrest or we thought that they had something or I was injured. Something was in their hand. Yeah. And it's always this kind of ah thing. so So just off the rip, I want to say police unions are not labor. They are something different.
00:29:09
Speaker
um They are there to protect capital. Yes. And protect their own jobs. But I think when we think about how labor can help disrupt um all of these things, You know, one is thinking about how there can be, you know, people who are architects and in construction and plumbing and electricians and all of these types of labor who will take an active stance and say, we will not build new prisons.
00:29:37
Speaker
Right. I think that is a that is a huge form of resistance, right? That you as the building, the the builders of of this country, the builders of of of a civilization can actively take a role by saying, no, we will not participate in creating these types of death and destruction institutions. That's one thing.
00:30:01
Speaker
I think with, you know, going back to what I said ah when we opened with the um Democratic Party electing Zorhan Mondani as the candidate for mayor, we can see a synergy here where there are now labor unions who are endorsing him or coming around to endorsing him.
00:30:25
Speaker
And what is he calling for? He's calling for affordability. So I think labor has a huge role in creating cities and creating societies that can be more affordable.
00:30:36
Speaker
And that is where In my mind, labor unions have the the most strength is in their numbers, is that labor unions can literally make or break the capital, right? So if things are going to get made, that's that's due to labor, or they're not going to get made, or we're going to put a halt on what we're creating.
00:30:59
Speaker
And I think that is all really important. I think if we think about it through a kind of collective stance, and we see more people in labor who who have a excuse me stake in ownership we can see prices coming down right you know right now real estate is so high because we're paying landlords we're paying these you know faceless nameless kind of shell company over shell company uh of of of property management that you know
00:31:32
Speaker
So that's what's driving the prices. So if we can have more people in labor owning, I think that's really important. I think we can also think, as you mentioned, you know people are afraid of losing their jobs. And and I think that's a serious concern. right i think i don't think anyone is is downplaying that.
00:31:48
Speaker
But I think We should also be thinking about alternative type of jobs. You know, before he was completely co-opted, Van Jones, you know, I can't stand the guy now, but he wrote a book called The Green Collar Economy, which I thought was a pretty interesting and novel um way of thinking about how do we look towards alternative energies?
00:32:12
Speaker
And there is a swath of people, right, formerly incarcerated or system impacted folks, other people who are underemployed or unemployed, ah people who are in dangerous jobs like in coal mining and other areas,
00:32:26
Speaker
Who, if we invested the energy, time, resources and funding into alternative energies, we could create lots and lots of jobs. And so I think that is something that we can think about. Like, what are alternative jobs that people can get into?
00:32:41
Speaker
um And then the last thing I'll say, and and maybe this is even controversial, even amongst labor, But we need to think about universal basic incomes, right? Like, I love the idea of labor and us working, but I'm also like, maybe we all don't need to work all the time. You know what I mean?
00:32:58
Speaker
Maybe we should put less of an emphasis on work in some areas and more of an emphasis on leisure and creativity. And if we created a society or a system that gave people all of those basic things, housing, health care, opportunities and education, then we would be able to um use our time in the way that we see fit. If we
MOVE Bombing Reflections: Systemic Injustices
00:33:22
Speaker
want to, you know, be creative, if we want to just binge Netflix, I don't think there's anything wrong with with that, right? I think oftentimes we get boggled down into this idea that, you know, we need to be working all the time. And I think that's just a vestige of capitalism.
00:33:40
Speaker
And I think that we need to be moving away from that altogether. Yeah, I appreciate your thoughts. um Calvin, I wanted to run something by you. And I just want you to give me your thoughts on this.
00:33:59
Speaker
ah Just on the move story. i want to I want to mention as a seminal learning point for me in the discovery process. in the narrative, in reality of the true corruption of our system. And I want to describe myself like the elements that crystallize for me there, the veneration,
00:34:25
Speaker
of the racist piece of shit prank rhythm the firefighters who don't put out the fire the inferno that goes through the neighborhood a statue put up for frank and one of the victims within move child victim
00:34:47
Speaker
bones aren't even handled properly and end up in a college or university research area remains dehumanized, not given respect.
00:35:04
Speaker
There's aspects of the story when people are like, oh, is like the system really this? Is this all see deliberate? um It's so dehumanizing and so insulting. And part of me feels like there is a conscious,
00:35:22
Speaker
intent of disregard for humans that is just beyond somebody being wrongfully arrested or being up that is so much more severe about a complete degradation.
00:35:32
Speaker
And so for me, the impact of the full story, and there's all elements to this to move in and other crimes against the people that for me, sometimes when they're trying to explain, like, why do you think the system's all like all the way deep down corrupt?
00:35:48
Speaker
Because I said, Because here's an example of where it is. It isn't an accident. And so there's a crystallization ah in in in in the move situation for me. I just wonder had any comments or reflection on just the impact on me and how I've thought about it.
00:36:13
Speaker
Absolutely. i think I think what you said is perfect in the sense that A lot of times people are shocked when they hear this story because it sounds like a Hollywood script.
00:36:24
Speaker
right Like if you were to tell anyone that there was an organ, a group of people who are living who a city then surrounds their house. gets into a kind of, you know, not kind of, into a standoff with them, yeah shoots bullets into that house, then drops a bomb on the house, then does not allow the fire, like all of these things to happen. yeah And then the bones, the bones discovery wasn't until, or at least it wasn't made public until I believe 2021 or 2022. Like this was not like, oh, well they knew about it. Right.
00:36:59
Speaker
And so think about how that just, is degrad you know degradation to the the survivors of that bombing, to the members of the family, to the siblings, to everyone who did not know where their...
00:37:16
Speaker
their family members' bones were. They think that they're they've been incinerated, that they are gone and not allowed to have a proper burial. And so this, you know, what it really reminded me of, too, was, again, this is not unique to to the United States either, but it reminded me of the story of The South African woman, Sarah Bartman, who in the 18th century was a South African woman who was brought to France, was paraded around in some of kind of the earliest sideshow um exhibitions, which would later become circuses.
00:37:49
Speaker
When she died, and she died very young, part of her body was... part of her genitalia, a cast of her um torso, were put on display in museums in France and were on display up until the 1980s and then kept in storage up until the early 2000s because France wouldn't give them back to South Africa. And it wasn't until, I can't remember the exact year, your listeners can look it up, but until Nelson Mandela
00:38:22
Speaker
brokered the deal with France to receive this woman's, what remains left had been left and put in storage in a French museum to be buried properly in South Africa. So it took this woman nearly 300 years to be returned France.
00:38:41
Speaker
You know, the site at that which he had been abducted. So I say all this to say that we hear and I think this also gets back to a bit of the crux of defund and where I'm trying to where I was trying to go with that book between reformists and abolitionists is that oftentimes reformists will say the system is broken.
00:38:59
Speaker
The system needs to be fixed. But abolitionists are like, no, this is not broken. This is doing exactly what it intends to do. yeah right And yes, are there broken pieces of what and when this when it what is intended to do happens?
00:39:16
Speaker
Sure. But more than not, a system that has hyper surveillance, overreach targeting of particular segments of our society that follow very clearly distinctive racial, ethnic, religious, socioeconomic lines, that is not a broken system.
00:39:42
Speaker
like That is a system that is actually, you know, in a very warped way, a very efficient
Systematic Oppression in the Justice System
00:39:48
Speaker
system. I mean, you know, the United States has achieved something that really no one else has achieved in history with the amount of people that we have locked up, right, at one time.
00:39:59
Speaker
I mean, that is that is a true feat of of depravity, but also, and again, a warped way, ingenuity, right, to figure out that how can we Hold this many people at any given point.
00:40:15
Speaker
And for this amount of time, it just it just highlights that it can't be broken. Broken would mean that it would be disorganized and, you know, right. Some places would be it. But across the board, right. In all 50 states, we have.
00:40:28
Speaker
you know, mass incarceration, right? It's not like, it's not like Florida is doing this in New York. We're living in a utopia. In fact, New York is one of the last states, right? Just to kind of bring it back to some of the work I do.
00:40:40
Speaker
It wasn't until 2018 that New York passed what is known as raise the age. It was one of the last states that basically recognized that you probably shouldn't hold juveniles, people under the age of 18, in adult correctional facilities. One of the last states,
00:40:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's one of the last ones. And at one point back in the in the 80s when they had, you know, were doing all of the tough on crime stuff. At one point you could have been as young as 13 or 14 and been an adult facility. Like who's coming up with these things?
00:41:10
Speaker
Right. I mean, like that is that is not a whoopsie. That is it. and And the reason it's not a whoopsie is because this has to go through. different channels. It has to be, someone has to conceive of it.
00:41:21
Speaker
It then has to become written in a, in a, in a formulaic way of a bill. It then gets debated on, you know, a house floor gets voted upon, goes to the Senate floor, goes to that, and then it gets signed into legislation.
00:41:35
Speaker
So all of these things that created mass incarceration, that created a police state with hyper militarized um um vehicles and weaponry, these things didn't just happen overnight.
00:41:49
Speaker
They happened through, you know, systematic violence. funding that was taken away from public social welfare programs and directed into criminal justice.
00:42:03
Speaker
And we see that, you know, as a pivotal point in the 1960s, Elizabeth hit Hinton talks a lot about this, that really some of the earliest ah shifts in policing happen under the Johnson administration where he talks about um police officers as frontline soldiers.
00:42:22
Speaker
And what were they responding to? They were responding to the civil rights movement. yeah right but When you look at when you look at policing, um during that time period. Or just look at the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement wasn't wasn't protesting in opposition to the Klan. I mean, yes, the Klan was was an argument of white supremacy, but when they were walking down the streets, it was the police stopping them, who also happened to be Klan members, but it was the police in their uniforms with their badges.
00:42:52
Speaker
It was Lori Pritchett in Albany, Georgia, who did mass arrests He said, we're just going to arrest them and throw them in jail. We're not going to beat the hell out of them. like fate We'll figure out the math later. right Yeah. And he was praised for it.
00:43:07
Speaker
but He was praised for his nonviolence. Right. Whereas, you know, Bull Connor, you know, played into every, you know, ah psychotic wet dream of um of a person just going out and beating people. But, you know, this idea that that police were going to ever be on someone's side is just it's just noncical that, you know, if we want a true society that is.
00:43:35
Speaker
you know, has public safety at the front, at the forefront, then we have to really think about um labor, we have to think about universal access to things like education, healthcare, housing, leisure, recreation.
00:43:49
Speaker
i think all those are super, super important.
00:43:54
Speaker
You know, thank you for your comments,
Teaching and Research at Hunter College
00:43:56
Speaker
Calvin. I've, there's sometimes as I'm a host, you know, like, managing the show and stuff and sometimes I just start listening and I drift off and I think and I, wait a second, I got something to do here.
00:44:10
Speaker
um ah ah one One little point ah over there at the Hunter College, i um there's a higher education collective bargaining, you know collective bargaining research project comes out of there and I made it do Hunter College.
00:44:29
Speaker
And it was two years ago for the first time on on campus. was just astounded by the intelligence and the the the dedication of um a lot of areas I'm just super interested in. There's a point of ah curiosity in in in talking to you. well about about teaching and what um what what areas uh do you focus in and teach or maybe ensuing research that you're continuing connected to your work yeah so yeah so to your point i've actually i know a lot of those folks over there with the with the um
00:45:13
Speaker
excuse me, the conference that happens at Hunter, I've actually participated as a, as a moderate, as a moderator last year for one of the panels, which was really great because it was, I think the first one back since COVID. So that was really, really amazing. And, you know, CUNY being and New York City's public institution of higher learning, um you know, one of the things that,
00:45:37
Speaker
We are also super proud of, i think, being at a place like CUNY is that, one, it is the university system that the majority of people who ah graduate New York City public high schools enter.
00:45:52
Speaker
We have one of the highest rates of first generation college students, first generation Americans. um it is a it It is a great place to work. And so I'll say that.
00:46:02
Speaker
um to To answer your question about my work, so I teach a lot of courses around areas of race, social justice. So kind of the two classes that i teach pretty regularly, I teach a race and ethnicity course out of the sociology department.
00:46:20
Speaker
I teach another course called Law, Society, and Civil Rights, a course called Criminal Justice and Public Policy, where we really try to look at policy, ah particularly in real time.
00:46:33
Speaker
So um the course usually changes a lot because we try to focus both locally and, you know, so a few years ago, you know, when I taught the course, a lot of it was thinking through about marijuana and legalization. We've talked a lot about the closing of Rikers.
00:46:48
Speaker
um In fact, I think I even write about, I think, I think defund, yeah, no, defund opens, with a um ah vignette from them from that particular course where the students and I in fall of 2021 had been very much watching and thinking about what was happening in the aftermath of of summer 2020.
00:47:10
Speaker
and And so, yeah. And then to my research, um I do a lot of research on incarceration, reentry, social movements, violence, i i have and I have another book that should be coming out in spring of 2026 that I'm co-authoring with a colleague and friend of mine that is under contract with NYU Press that looks at how folks who've been incarcerated and or still incarcerated ah utilize social media, particularly outlets like TikTok and Instagram um as ah as a way to both
00:47:44
Speaker
um memorialize, archive, and understand their lives through these kind of digital platforms. And more recently, I've been doing a lot of work around youth justice and restorative justice. And so um I'm thinking through some some projects that might um move into those directions around what does, you know,
00:48:12
Speaker
kind of a restorative justice pedagogy look like, particularly for young folks who are system impacted. So lots on the plate. Thank you. Thank you. Um, man, a lot, a lot to think about.
Conclusion: Dialogue and Systemic Understanding
00:48:27
Speaker
I, um, I really appreciate the opportunity, um, to, to chat with you and, um,
00:48:36
Speaker
ah have this dialogue. i've i've learned I've learned so much. And I think it's um almost like the conversations we have around organizing or people work, you know, our brains get moving. We're like,
00:48:52
Speaker
you know, like activated and we can do something about this. So it's been absolutely great um to talk with you. Calvin John, smiley, sometimes go by CJ.
00:49:05
Speaker
um Calvin, tell folks where to go ah yeah Get your book, look for your musings, et cetera. Yeah. Everywhere. Yeah. So ah you can get my books.
00:49:18
Speaker
I've now got three. First is the co-edited volume that I did with Keisha and Middlemass, who is an associate professor down at Howard University. You can get that at Routledge.
00:49:29
Speaker
I have my book, Purgatory Citizenship, which is out with University of California Press. And then there is Defund, which is with Haymarket. So I would encourage everyone to either go directly to your to the to a publisher's websites and or go to your local bookstores if you can. And then lastly, and again, i um i don't want to sound like a hypocrite. I use it too when it's convenient, you know all on Amazon as well.
00:49:58
Speaker
That's one thing I'll say real quick. I don't want to get rid of Amazon. i want i want to i want to make it public. I want the workers to own it. I think that's what we need, right? I think that's sometimes one of the things where people say, like, get rid of Amazon. It's no, we don't need to get rid of it. We need to just make sure that the ah the workers own it and get rid of Bezos, right?
00:50:17
Speaker
That's my position there. Yeah, it's a very different frame of how to think about it, right? Because it's like the idea of if there are... and cost issues, which are important to working people or if efficiency issues, if we're doing it for ourselves rather than, um, and then, and then I'll say, uh, I have a website that sorely needs updating, but it's, uh, CJ smiley.com.
00:50:42
Speaker
And, and you can also find me on, on, on Twitter at, at Uptown Castro Castro with a K. And so, um, yeah, those were all so my, all my plugs.
00:50:55
Speaker
Love it. i um I want to let you know, CJ, I deeply appreciate ah your time and um ah the engagement around this. I mean, for me, there there are these kind of touchstones and coming contact ah with this work in history and thinking about it going forward in history.
00:51:17
Speaker
I was very happy to see just a small excerpt. I think it might have been in these times magazine. You know, so how did these things happen? I get a magazine for free that as a union member I get for free.
00:51:31
Speaker
I see a quote ah for you in their basic analysis. I see the the fund. I'm reading about it and I'm like, holy shit, I remember, you know, I mean, study and move for a long time ago because I'll never get over the shock and I'll continue to try to understand and see. And um but it was just such a or rollicking thing that came from that and have an opportunity to talk.
00:51:58
Speaker
These things are important to me. And I wanted to express to you it's an honor. um to chat with you in this in this deep and important work and controversial. And of course, media-wise, Defund died a couple of years ago. But you and i know that whatever that news cycle about the viability of anything can change quickly uh, there could be opportunity and resistance. So, uh, I, again, i wanted to deeply thank you for your, your time, intelligence and your work.
00:52:38
Speaker
Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate it. We might have the defund the police mayor of New York City and then we'll see all that come out. And and then to your point, yeah, you could also find some of my stuff in In These Times Magazine. Definitely support that that magazine if you can.
00:52:54
Speaker
And then I guess I'll give a shout out to my organization, Till Everything Better. You can follow us on Instagram at Till Everything Better. So thank you so much, Ken. I really appreciate you reaching out.
00:53:09
Speaker
and hope to be back at some point. And for and for a better future. for better future It's great chatting with you, Calvin. And thanks for everything you do.
00:53:22
Speaker
Appreciate Take care.
00:53:33
Speaker
This is something rather than nothing.
00:53:43
Speaker
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00:53:54
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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