S2, Ep20 | The Ultimate Abolition

Amy [00:00:11] Hey hot cakes, welcome to Hot Take, the podcast where we talk about the climate crisis and all the ways we are talking and not talking about it. I'm Amy Westervelt.

Mary [00:00:21] And I'm Mary Annaise Heglar. This episode, we have a conversation that I've been looking for it, too, for a really, really, really long time. We are going to talk about climate change and prisons, more specifically climate change and prison abolition and restorative justice and transformative justice and all of those sorts of things that are not exactly I think that they're easy to talk about, but they're hard questions to answer. And it was just really great to have this conversation with one of our favorite guests and our second repeat guests on Hot.

[00:00:55] Take Amy. Tell them who it is.

Amy [00:00:58] It's Drew Costley!. Oh, yeah,.

Mary [00:01:05] Drew is just a really great person to talk to. He's done a lot of there, actually isn't a lot of reporting on climate change in prisons in in detail. But Drew has done some of that work, and he's also just a great person to talk to and have these messy kind of conversations with. So very excited to share this.

[00:01:24] I think Drew might be my favorite environmental journalist right now. I just I really like

[00:01:29] oh,

[00:01:30] you know, they listen to the show,

[00:01:32] Amy.

[00:01:32] I really like his writing. I like his writing.

[00:01:35] And I think he's just a really solid reporter.

[00:01:38] And and he thinks about things you just alienate at 70 percent of our audience. But I will say that,

[00:01:46] I mean, I like all the climate writers, OK? Yeah.

[00:01:51] Don't cancel me and cancel Amy.

[00:01:53] Don't cancel me. Actually, don't cancel anybody.

[00:01:56] Do restorative justice. You'll learn about it in this episode.

[00:02:00] Yes, that's right. That's right.

[00:02:03] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Without further ado, are you ready? It's time to talk about climate.

[00:02:18] Drew, welcome back to take our second repeat guess. It's great to have you back here with us. The last time that you were here was the August or maybe it was September, but you were out in California like Amy and it was on fire. And both of you had to cancel last minute because you lost your voices. How are you doing now?

[00:02:40] I'm doing all right. I, I moved. And it's not because it's not because of all of the various calamities that could happen in California. It's to be closer to home and closer to my parents. So I'm doing all right. And I'm glad that it's warming up on the East Coast. I also do not like the fact that I'm back where I'm back in a place where meteorologists always report warm weather as good without any sort of, you know, understanding that like if it's 70 in December, that's not a good sign. So so, yeah. So I'm I'm like, am I getting used to being back home? But I'm doing I'm doing OK.

[00:03:27] Yeah, good. So the main reason we wanted to have you on is to talk about prisons because [00:03:36]so in doing the research for this show so many times I found articles that were like most people don't think of prisons. When I think of climate change, I was like, how the fuck not? [9.2s]

[00:03:47] [00:03:47]It's one of the most [0.8s]

[00:03:48] [00:03:48]vulnerable populations on Earth. So if we're going to think of climate change, you should be thinking of the most vulnerable populations and you don't have to look much further. And prisons are inhumane by design. They're the outgrowth of slavery. There's the school to prison pipeline. They are designed to be inhumane and they're already like kind of this chronic emergency. And then you throw climate change on top of them and it gets so much uglier. [31.7s]

[00:04:21] [00:04:21]Yeah, I mean, I feel like this past year we really saw that. Right, with like not just all the natural disasters, but that on top of covid and like, just how horrific it was in prisons. [10.6s]

[00:04:33] [00:04:33]Yeah, I mean, all over. And it's been like I mean, you know, it's like one of the front line pop. It is one of the front line populations people don't think about are just starting to think about front line populations right in like there are a lot of them. You know, we you know, often when I report on the environment and climate, so it's like race and class. But, you know, all these other vulnerable populations that are being impacted and, you know, in prisons have been sort of, you know, for years now going back to Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Katrina. Yeah. Yeah. It's been, you know, people who can't can't escape, literally. [42.3s]

[00:05:17] Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:19] In doing a lot of the research for this show, I found some really like just harrowing stories out of prison. And I'll start with extreme heat and cold just because of the cold snap in Texas this past year or Texas and all over the south as a Mississippi. And I should be careful to note that every time I talk about it, how that ice storm just completely took out heat and drinking water from all the prisons. But also most prisons don't have air conditioning or heat in them. And the ones that are in the south, people can literally bake to death. There are people who just like collapse from heat stroke. It's not uncommon. And most prisons are old and they're made out of these heat retaining materials. So they're designed to stay hot when it's really and that becomes a problem as the country becomes hotter. And then when there's when it's cold, there's just no respite. There's no like way for people to protect themselves from the from the elements. And there's no plan. So, yeah. Like and also the other thing about heat and extreme cold is that it increases violence and that's violence in between prisoners. There's also violence against themselves. So suicide attempts increase when it gets hotter. And probably the the scariest thing I read about was about prisons in Israel, because this is a global problem right now. It's going to it's going to be worse in certain parts of the country. So I looked at Israel where prisons are underground and where that means they have no ventilation at all and they're designed that way to present to prevent prisoners from having access to sunshine. And it turns it into hell. And so also the guards. Yeah, right. And. So the guards are also, you know, kind of conditioned to be cruel to prisoners, and so they will take away their fans in the summer and a lot of the same things happen in prisons here. And so people are just like in these unventilated cells, packed together with no fans and like trying to cool themselves by putting, like I read about people having a barrel of water and one prisoner per day could get in the barrel of water to try to cool themselves off.

[00:07:48] Hmm.

[00:07:49] That's that's ridiculous. Oh, my God. I hadn't heard about that.

[00:07:54] That's crazy. Yeah.

[00:07:56] Yeah. I really had to dig for that story. But like, that's the thing about about how prisons fare when it comes to climate change is that you kind of have to dig for those stories because people don't like looking at what's happening there. Honestly, even last summer when we were talking about prisons and the wildfires, most people were talking about prison labors and prison firefighters. They weren't talking about like what's actually happening to the people in prisons. Are they being evacuated or are they safe? Do they have?

[00:08:25] Yeah, there's this like respectability aspect to that, too. It's like these people who are like saving our lives, you know, so they they're worthy of all of our attention, you know, whereas like the people who aren't firefighters somehow, like, have less humanity because of that. Yeah, I think it's fatigue. And I mean, that's part of the you know, I guess like part of like the thesis of prison is like you go away and we don't the normal people, quote unquote, don't have to deal with you while you ostensibly rehabilitate, you know, in in and it's led to so much neglect.

[00:09:03] Well, it just is so like it's so none of it is conducive in any way to rehabilitation to it reminds me of when you were talking about the guards in Israel. It reminded me of that whole like Stanford prison experiment thing, which I feel like people reference all the time. But it's like, you know. Yeah, like your. [00:09:22]Yeah, I don't know. You're giving some people total power over other people and like and also kind of. Yeah. Pushing this story that those people, you know, deserve to be punished. It's about punishment. It's not about rehabilitation. [13.8s]

[00:09:38] [00:09:38]It's really actually it's more about revenge, I believe, than it's even about punishing, because the thing about punishment is like punishments end and the way that we treat prisoners in this country is like, you can never redeem yourself. You will suffer for the rest of your entire right. [18.2s]

[00:09:56] That's right. The punishment never ends, even for the most minor of I don't know. It's just it's very it is really troubling. And then, yeah, on the wildfire front, it's like, OK, you know, you have prisoners that are trapped in in prisons like they never did. Did you ever see any stories, Mary, about people about like organized evacuation of prisons in California

[00:10:21] during the years? Not not in

[00:10:24] California, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. So last summer when the wildfires raging, my first thought was like, what's happening to the prisoners? And I was looking for people being evacuated. And I did read stories about areas where prisons were in the evacuation zone. But last minute they would decide not to evacuate them. In Oregon, I did read about prisoners being evacuated, but where do they go? They go to another prison that is already overcrowded, that is already like got covid all over it. So like, well, what is the actual plan to deal with prisoners when it comes to these sorts of things? And there doesn't seem to be one.

[00:11:07] Right. And yeah, I mean, I think like, you know, because like prison like prison culture in the US, like, grew out of just like, OK, well, let's try to limit the let's try to limit or completely take away the freedom of, you know, of blacks that are trying to get free. You know, that was the plan, the no plan besides that. Right. I think I don't think there ever has been one since then. You know, it's just been going to the different marginalized populations that you that you that are vulnerable to one going to prison. And then you just forget about them once they're there or you or you abuse them like you were talking about earlier.

[00:11:42] Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

[00:11:43] And it's it's also the case during hurricanes. That's another really terrible event in prisons. I think we all kind of I say we but honestly, I need to stop saying that because most people weren't paying attention. Right. The three of us farthest back in 2005 with Katrina, people were like Lockton. Sales of the floodwaters are like rising all the way up to their chests. And like these are this is like the Orleans Parish jail, right? Like people are there for drunk driving. It's like dangerous ordinarily, commy. Right, right. Right. Or even just there, because of confusion or there, because they were like, evacuate it. Like, there's all sorts of reasons you can be in jail. But also it doesn't fucking matter because nobody deserves to be treated that way. It doesn't matter.

[00:12:31] Right. Yeah, exactly.

[00:12:34] Like I actually don't care whether they are guilty of a violent offense or completely innocent. I don't give a shit. You don't treat human beings that way. Like I was reading these stories after Hurricane Harvey, where it was like actually the Houston SPCA did better for the one hundred and fifty three cats and dogs than the state did for the prisoners. You know,

[00:12:56] since the American.

[00:12:58] Yes, it does.

[00:13:00] Metropolitan American, urban America.

[00:13:03] Yeah, mm hmm. Mm hmm.

[00:13:06] And it's becoming more and more common, right? Because there is Harvey, I'll just give you some stats on Hurricane Harvey. Three thousand prisoners in Texas were stranded without food or water for days in twenty eighteen prisons within the evacuation zone in Florida, schools were left all by themselves during Hurricane Michael and Hurricane Florence in South Carolina. The state declined to evacuate more than a thousand people across multiple prisons. And two mentally ill women who were being transported between facilities were drowned when the transport van carrying them was swept away by the storm. Because usually these evacuations are left for the last minute and there's no practice involved. And I also remember reading about evacuation drills that were planned and abandoned in the middle because it just got too complicated. So, like. Exactly. So climate change is going to keep getting worse and there's no plan. And there seems to be just no, there's a real resistance to having a plan. Right.

[00:14:08] Meanwhile, there's like a there is a plan to, like, build more prisons.

[00:14:14] Exactly.

[00:14:15] Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:14:20] And a lot of the jails will say that they evacuated their prisoners. And then later on, you find out that that means that prisoners were moved somewhere else on the same property. And even when prisoners are evacuated, they have to leave behind things like family pictures or legal paperwork, things that they can't get back. So if you're working on an appeal like

[00:14:43] now, you lose half

[00:14:44] of it because you had to leave at the last minute.

[00:14:48] Yeah.

[00:14:48] Yeah, right. Like these are all these, like, ripple effects that that folks don't take into account. And I can tell that, like, I'm really bumming you guys out. So I'm just going to throw one more thing on you. The aftermath of the storm is even worse because the spread of disease,

[00:15:05] of course, because it's like standing water. Right.

[00:15:08] So, yeah, standing water he moved to.

[00:15:12] Right. Right. Mm hmm.

[00:15:16] Yeah. That's I mean, that's the Niko's. And then also, like, you know, in a lot of these situations, I wouldn't say that, like, been careful to not lump people who were in prison or in jails with people who aren't, but also are still marginalized like poor folks, people of color. But a lot of these a lot of states, especially a lot of southern states, they just don't have, for some reason, emergency evacuation plans. It's not something that they like across the board for people that they are, you know, supposedly care about who on the outside they don't have they don't have plans for them either. You know, like with Hurricane Harvey, there are you know, there are people reporting that they just want no plan to get poor Latin Exxon black folks to evacuation centers that were like far away from their communities. It was like no plan for that. So, you know, if they had no plan for the people, that there's, you know, that on the outside that didn't do anything, you know, bad. You know, I guess you can't really expect them to do much for people who are inside.

[00:16:25] That totally makes me think of the people that are stuck in ice facilities when these things happen to, you know, which is like a different type of jail cell.

[00:16:37] Oh, yeah.

[00:16:39] Yeah, no, they suffer a lot of the same faith. So to be honest and the thing with ICE facilities, that makes it even more fucked up. I wrote about this in the newsletter recently is that ICE has full power to release people. If they can't safely hold right, they can just say, you know what, we can't do this safely, so we're going to let you go. And they don't do it. They didn't do it during the ice storm. They didn't do it during the hurricanes last year. They just don't do it. And it just seems to me

[00:17:08] like there's this mentality in all of those examples of just, you know, somehow these people deserve whatever happens to them, you know, and like don't and don't deserve sort of, you know, full human respect for because they were poor or because they immigrated illegally or they committed some kind of crime or whatever. And it's just like.

[00:17:33] Yeah, yeah, it's gross, yeah, yeah,

[00:17:39] so I mean, I think that that's all the more reason why prisons are like. There, in emergency. Yeah, the emergency gets more there, like this chronic emergency all the time, but climate change, I think, moves them into the category of an acute emergency.

[00:18:00] [00:18:00]I think Drew's description of them as front line communities is like it's it's weird that you don't see that ascribed to prison populations that much, but that's absolutely what they are. And and probably like, you know. The most vulnerable because they can't they because migration is not an option for them. [20.9s]

[00:18:22] [00:18:22]Yeah, I mean, the sex trip, you know, the whole point is like this trip folks are there, agency, right and right. And when you do that, like, it becomes hard for them to because at least someone on the outside could I don't know, like like for example, like it's a terrible thing to have to decide between. But like, if, you know, you can at least go and hide in a different part of your house if if you can't evacuate in a storm, whereas, you know, if you're in prison, like, you know, they're not going to they're not going to loosen, you know, restrictions of movement or anything necessarily. [35.5s]

[00:18:59] Right. Right. And I worry about as storms and wildfires become more and more unpredictable. Right. Because like like just watching California burn last year. Yeah. One one little gust of wind and things become real unpredictable real fast. And to see prisons be that close to towns that just like completely went up in smoke and the state said, no, we're not going to evacuate them like that, could

[00:19:25] have gone horribly wrong.

[00:19:26] Oh, yeah. I mean, and

[00:19:27] it's really just that people could have just but

[00:19:29] yeah, it's like it's fire is by its very is by its nature, unpredictable, like, you know, it's always unpredictable. So like that's terrible anyway. And then and then. Yeah. Like a big part of what's been happening in California is the big shifts in wind patterns and currents and things like that that like make it even more. And it really can be it's like a minute, you know, and all of a sudden that's what happened. When Santa Rosa burned a couple of years ago, too, was like people were, you know, went to bed under, you know, the assumption that it was sort of far away from them and like literally had to run out of their homes to avoid dying. Yeah. You know. Yeah.

[00:20:16] Oh. Huh.

[00:20:19] Yeah, it's, uh. Yeah, it's irresponsible and it's sadistic and psychopathic, honestly. I mean,

[00:20:31] I would say it's cruel and unusual.

[00:20:34] It's pretty unusual. I mean, prison in general is just cruel and unusual. But yeah. Yeah, it's even more cruel and unusual.

[00:20:49] So I noticed from your Twitter that you are into sports, including basketball, so I looked up at some questions on basketball and I don't know if they're going to make sense because I only hardly understand basketball. So why the chicken crossed the basketball court

[00:21:13] to get a bucket.

[00:21:15] He heard the ref was blowing fouls.

[00:21:18] Oh, wow. That's like a dirty joke. A dirty chicken joke isn't what is blowing, Bowlsby.

[00:21:32] I thought that was like a basketball term.

[00:21:34] I mean, there's I mean, Amy took Amy took it one way.

[00:21:43] Oh, OK. I hope the next word is PG 13.

[00:21:49] Why can't basketball players go on vacation right now?

[00:21:54] Because they're they have code restrictions, too. No, that wasn't a good answer. Let me see. Because. Oh, because they can't travel.

[00:22:10] Melbourne, I don't know what that means, but you do.

[00:22:26] Hey, have you left us a reviewer writing it? If not, why not?

[00:22:29] Yeah, come on, get on that. Well, the fuck are you doing it?

[00:22:33] Yeah, two things. One, it makes our egos feel good when there are lots of readings and it makes us feel bad when there are not a lot of readings.

[00:22:42] Most important part of all of this. OK, tell us. We sound pretty.

[00:22:48] Yes. And two, it is actually

[00:22:52] the way that Apple decides whether to show your show to other listeners. So, yeah, it helps us it helps us go up in the charts and helps us find new listeners, all those things.

[00:23:03] Right. And if you have a negative review, we have a special system for that. Make sure you send it to Brian Darkon at Earthier Dotcom. This our idea and came in at Arthur Dotcom. It'll get to us just in a special package.

[00:23:18] Yes, perfect. Go do that.

[00:23:32] Then you get into the way that prison labor is often used to deal with these disasters, and that is happening more and more to you know, you mentioned the prison firefighters in California just this past year. I think they finally were like, OK, fine, we will allow these people to get jobs as firefighters when they leave prison, which was like a huge deal. And it's like ridiculous that it was a huge deal, you know.

[00:24:01] But I think

[00:24:02] people also forget that, you know, usually, like you'll see stories about the prison firefighters in California, but all of the Western states use prison labor for firefighting. Arizona, it's like actually there are more prison firefighters than non prison firefighters.

[00:24:23] Wow.

[00:24:24] So, hey, Arizona, it's bad. It's bad. And then, you know, there's all sorts of other ways that that prison labor gets used to deal with, with natural disasters, you know, across the board. Didn't you say, Mary, that they were that BP used prison labor to deal with the deep water?

[00:24:47] So I was saving I was saving that for later.

[00:24:51] Yeah. Yeah, that's true. I mean, that's

[00:24:53] another example, right? It's it's. Yeah, it's. It's really gross and, you know, there's been some interesting kind of academic scholarship around the fact that around the idea of mass incarceration as like almost a tool to deal with unemployment, because if, like, a bunch of your unemployed people are in prison, you don't have to count them in your unemployment numbers

[00:25:22] Bob Brulle there.

[00:25:24] So there's like that whole aspect of the like the labor and prisons intersection, too. That's really disturbing.

[00:25:31] Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. I mean, it's like, you know, if you think about it, it's just like the the the the simple analogy of of prisoners picking up trash is like it left to do undesirable jobs. Right. Right. In an even more undesirable, you know, sort of you can justify you could justify them doing more undesirable jobs because there's supposed to be getting punished. You know, as you mentioned earlier, Mary. Hmm.

[00:26:00] It's ridiculous. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's like the chain gang. And I also want to

[00:26:05] note that it's not just fire that prisoners are fighting riot like a lot of them are also like the people who sandbag after floods and after hurricanes. Right. And that is after their prison has has already flooded and they had to stay there through the entire storm. Right. So, like and that that to me also brings back images of the 1927 flood of the Mississippi River, which I've been obsessed with lately, and how it was either prisoner labor or it was black people from like just nearby plantations or nearby towns forced to work on the levees at gunpoint because you could put one picture up next to another. You kind of can't tell the difference. Like the uniforms have changed a little bit, but you really can't tell the difference. And it just like, again, highlights how the prison system is so closely tied to slavery. And I think I was listening to I think it was the Ezra Klein show and he was talking about how, you know, the how it would disproportionately black people are in prison in the United States and how if that were the case in somewhere like Germany, that Jews were disproportionately imprisoned, you wouldn't be able to look at that and not see the problem. Right? Right. But in America, that is very much the case. And people are not seeing the problem.

[00:27:30] Mm hmm. Yeah.

[00:27:33] Yeah, the other thing is that they're paid so little, I'm saying like between two dollars and five dollars a day and they are not allowed to organize, they're not allowed to speak about their working conditions. And so much depends on them. Like I would I would like to see what Fire-fighting would look like without them. I would like to see what hurricane recovery looks like without them. Actually, I think of it look. Really. No, I mean,

[00:28:00] these these yeah. These states are relying on this as part of their disaster strategy. They absolutely rely on prison labor and they do not know where that budget shortfall would come from without it. I mean,

[00:28:14] this it wouldn't be filled. I don't think the California, like recent wildfires going back to 2017 would have probably all been like I would say it may be, except for paradise, because it happened so quickly. But, um, but a lot of the other wildfire, major wildfires are complex. Wildfires would have probably been like like orders of magnitude worse if they didn't have firefighters fighting them. I, [00:28:42]I remember I was covering it was when I was in grad school, it was the it was like my first sort of breaking news, environmental story. It was just a fire that was happening in the Oakland Hills. And there was like a there's an infamous fire from the early 90s that spread really quickly through the Oakland Hills because that area is very dry and windy and there are a lot of trees. And I remember the when I got there, the firefighters, the firefighters who were not in prison were sort of doing preliminary work. But then they brought in prison firefighters to, like, be the ones to scale the hills in, like, get closest to the fire. Yeah. And wow, [49.8s]

[00:29:32] [00:29:32]I sort of like the most dangerous position, basically. [2.5s]

[00:29:36] [00:29:36]Yeah. I mean, they're like on the front lines, you know, really, if they if they really do play a major role in making in mitigating the wildfires, even even smaller ones like the one that I covered back in twenty seventeen that I was that I'm talking about. Yeah. So it's ridiculous that they aren't getting paid more. I mean but it's ridiculous also that just across the board prison labor really prison shouldn't exist if we go all the way back down the rabbit hole. Right. But like it the [30.3s] fact that they're here in like prison labor isn't more well compensated. It's just it's ridiculous.

[00:30:14] Right. Why did the elephant stampede onto the basketball court?

[00:30:23] Um.

[00:30:26] To get a steal, to steal something to. I don't know, because something

[00:30:37] drink

[00:30:39] they played for the Chargers.

[00:30:42] The charges, the charges

[00:30:44] are football team,

[00:30:46] I wish it weren't. Oh, Whited, Cinderella fail at basketball. She had

[00:31:05] to leave the ball,

[00:31:07] right? She writes,

[00:31:15] I got two, four, two for four so far.

[00:31:18] What do you call the

[00:31:19] basketball move where you drink too much alcohol and score

[00:31:23] a drunk slam dunk,

[00:31:26] a slam dunk?

[00:31:28] Got it. Exactly.

[00:31:39] So that takes us into the other thing that I you know, I think a lot about how climate change affects prisoners and affects prisons, but I don't think a lot, to be honest about how prisons affect climate change. And, Drew, you've done some writing about this, like, completely open my mind to that. So I was wondering, we could get you to read from your January article how the U.S. prison system contributes to climate change.

[00:32:10] Now, research in the sociology journal Social Currents suggests that the prisons and jails that cage them are also contributing to climate change, according to the research, which looked for correlations between carbon emissions from nineteen ninety seven and twenty sixteen and increases in populations that state, federal and private prisons. Every incarcerated person in the US accounts for a point for a one percent increase in carbon emissions. The study counted two point three million incarcerated people in the US. Mass incarceration creates three social conditions that are likely responsible for increased carbon emissions, authors argue. The first is the construction of new prisons and maintenance of older prisons. The second is the production of goods and materials used in prisons. Both of these conditions, Uschi, prison labor wages are between zero and two dollars an hour, and they create a third social condition US economic growth driven by prison labor, which in turn increases demand for goods and services that ultimately require fossil fuels to be produced in. Right. And then. And then. Yeah, and then. So, yeah. So that's like a lot to chew on the appreciate. You said you want me to break that down and. Yeah. So, so if I think in I mean I want to give, I want to give props to the lead author on this study, Julius McGee, because I too once I saw this study, you know, I like always scan studies scanned for studies as part of just like my beat. And this one really caught my eye because, yeah, I had I also had not been thinking about how prisons as an institution contribute to global emissions or to global emissions. So I just want to shout out Julius McGee, the lead author on this study. So from from my understanding of it is like so the first the first social condition. Construction is a new prisons and it's like infrastructure projects that wouldn't exist if we didn't have prisons. Right. Like so those infrastructure projects are going to generate emissions one. Right. Just because you have construction vehicles and things like that that have to, you know, be around and drive. Exactly. And then. Right. And then you also you also create environments that are less conducive to sequestering carbon and things like that that aren't well ventilated. And so you use electricity to ventilate jails if they are prisons or jails, if they are ventilated. So you generate you generate electricity and fossil fuel, you burn fossil fuels for that. The second is production of goods and materials used in prisons. So that just just literally the industrial like if you think about prisons as like as factories. Right, right. Factories and factories in warehouses, they are sources of of emissions that we need to question. Right. And so in so some in order to power the goods and services that are like the goods and materials that are produced in prisons, you need to have like electricity. You need to have diesel trucks to come in and drop off the materials that are used to create goods to take them away for shipping. So there's all these different ways that sort of if you look at prisons as a spot for industrial activity, that they create industrial emissions. And then and then because and this is and this is the the sort of framework that the authors of the study are using. So and then the third the third social condition is that is that by by having cheap, cheaper labor, you free up, you know, money for people on the outside, ostensibly to actually go out and buy more goods and services. And so I think they're saying sort of this like economic churn that's created by B, by There, being cheaper labor in somewhere in the labor market is like fueling consumption that then demands fossil fuels at this point in order to like meet that consumption with goods and services.

[00:37:03] So what I'm understanding is that a prisoner in prison obviously is. Emitting more carbon than they would have if they were out in the general, that is this.

[00:37:16] Yeah, the theory of the thesis of hypothesis of the

[00:37:20] of this study.

[00:37:21] Yeah, yeah. And so I just hear that is incredibly fucked up when I think about what we were just talking about, how prisoners don't have access to heat and don't have access to air conditioning. They don't have computers. So they're emitting more carbon without any of the fucking benefit. Right. Right. And so, like I think about all the people that I'm sure you've also seen on Twitter who are like, oh, you're worried about climate change, but you just type that tweet from your iPhone. Well, maybe you should just, like, drop all of that. Right. And then I think about prisoners are emitting more carbon completely against their fucking head.

[00:37:55] Right. Yeah.

[00:37:57] I mean, it's also like if you think about it, just like these all these other cycles, right. That that other marginalized people get like caught up in, I'm sure that there's probably like patterns of consumption that create more global like that, that create more emissions that that. So like, I don't know, like I'm trying to think of like an example, a good example, but oh, here's a good example. People who have to commute to work, you know, like essential workers that have to commute to work even in the pandemic, like the these aren't necessarily jobs that these people chose for themselves. They had maybe a set of circumstances in their life that led to them needing needing employment. And they go to do this job. Right. So, like. Right. It's it's just like these cycles where people are one, they're robbed of their agency and then they're left to sort of deal with the consequences of of cycle that they didn't necessarily have have have a lot of like sort of control and creating.

[00:39:02] Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good example. [00:39:07]I mean, this is why I hate the whole like. Well, what about your individual choices? Because it just like. Yes, individual choices are a that are you know, but I feel like the the segment of the population whose individual choices actually make a big difference on this stuff or another. Never the ones that are being criticized for not making the right individual choices. [24.4s]

[00:39:32] [00:39:32]Yeah. [0.0s]

[00:39:33] [00:39:33]Yeah, yeah. Right. [2.5s]

[00:39:36] [00:39:36]Yeah. [0.0s]

[00:39:37] [00:39:37]And when you're like dealing with a system like this, how many of your individual choices are actual choice. Right. Right. [4.9s]

[00:39:42] Exactly. Yeah.

[00:39:43] Yeah exactly. That's yeah. That's what I mean. It's like there's maybe like five percent, 10 percent of the population who have real agency who like should be criticized for not making different choices because they can, you know, but like the vast majority of the rest of us are dealing with a constrained system that offers increasingly fewer choices. The like, the more marginalized you are.

[00:40:08] Yeah, I this is like off the top. This is like a little bit I was just really off topic, but yesterday I published a little bit of a dunk on these comments that Mark Zuckerberg made about smart glasses and augmented reality and virtual reality. And he's like, this is going to like put a real dent in climate change because look at how many people worked remotely last year and look at the look at the technology and look at the dip in global emissions. And like that is some rich people stuff. You know, like

[00:40:41] that's that's that's more

[00:40:43] like that is for people who have that economic privilege to be mobile, to, like, go move to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the pandemic in China or do a road trip like, you know, my you know, like that's that's not everybody.

[00:40:59] And also I write that

[00:41:02] stuff, too, because so I live in a place that a bunch of, like, rich Bay Area tech people have moved to in the pandemic. Right. And that like I'm probably

[00:41:11] sorry, some of them

[00:41:12] will be like buying up those glasses to do their remote work. And what it's doing is like driving up the cost of everything, eating up all of the housing stock. So there's like almost no places to rent anymore overcrowding. The schools like creating huge problems around infrastructure and resources and whatever. And it's just like there's there's no consideration given to that. They're just like, oh, isn't this great?

[00:41:41] We don't have to live in San Francisco anymore. Yeah. Oh, yeah,

[00:41:47] yeah, yeah.

[00:41:48] I'm sorry. I'm sorry for you. I'm sorry for you, Amy.

[00:41:53] Thank you. Thank you.

[00:41:55] I just want to read the headline to Tiddlers piece just because we're on this rabbit hole. Mark Zuckerberg comments on smart glasses and climate change are not based in reality. Well, perhaps virtual reality.

[00:42:07] That's about that was a fun. I'm always I'm always writing about my writing about, you know, sort of bummers, numbers of topics. And so, you know, it's it's fun to to reflect on on on Zukerberg a little bit

[00:42:22] to do it donc once in a while. Well done. Yeah, it's a slam dunk. Yeah.

[00:42:28] It's kind of like the same reason that we troll fossil fuel companies on Twitter. I mean, it's fun. It's nice to punch somebody who deserves to be punished.

[00:42:37] It's true. But, you know,

[00:42:41] you think about Mark Zuckerberg contribution to climate change and then you think about a prisoner's contribution to climate change. And it just like is incredibly like a gut punch,

[00:42:50] like, yeah,

[00:42:53] it's just really deflating. And the other thing, you know, to note here is that it's it's not just prisons that are part of this problem. It's also police. I know that you did some reporting on this last year that we also talked about the last time that you were on the show about how police bring pollution into communities. So can you just, like, give us a reminder?

[00:43:16] Yeah, I mean, it's just it was sort of like conceptual based off of the work of a lot of young environmental justice activists for a lot of them from the West who marry environmental justice with prison abolition and police abolition work. So I don't want to take credit for that. But but yeah, just like you think about the types of pollution that that law enforcement agencies bring into communities, you know, like noise, there's additional noise pollution from their sirens or cars. If you know, you have those scarecrow cars that are just sitting in and sometimes just like running with somebody sitting in there and they're not really monitoring the community, but just sitting in the car to scare people. You know, you got light pollution from floodlights, obviously additional emissions from police vehicles that probably wouldn't be there if we didn't have police or if we had at least less police. And it's just sort of like this. It's like you you have to take those things into consideration, too. When you think about someone's overall like health, especially like There,, There, behavioral health in in the choices they and the choices that they make, you know, where the fates that there is, you know, ascribe to that. Right, exactly. And so I think, you know, it's just worth highlighting that, like, even even people who, you know, the people who end up in prison, you know, sometimes grew up in communities where they did not really have a lot of choice in in what impacted their behavioral health or what impacted their, like, physical health, you know, so so. Yeah. So it's just like, you know, just part of it, just another part of the cycle we're not looking at.

[00:45:05] Exactly. And around that exact same time you published that last summer, there was a story that broke about fossil fuel companies funding police departments because the worst people are always the same people. Amy, you did a lot of like you actually kind of broke that in Haiti. Yeah. Which I love telling you. Well, yeah,

[00:45:25] I, I, I saw it was you know, Chevron was posting all of their like Black Lives Matter stuff in the wake of the George Floyd protests. And I was like, wait a minute. I remember like I reported on Chevron and Richmonders like a local reporter a long time ago. And I was like, I'm pretty sure there was something in there, refinery update plan that included like a lot of funding for police in Richmond. And then I like I, I dug into it more and I was like, yep, there's that line item. And like I remember the chief of police at the time saying that basically, you know, they were they would not have as many policemen in Richmond if they didn't have Chevron chipping in.

[00:46:10] So, yes, it's like really weird.

[00:46:13] And yeah, it's super weird. It's super weird. And then I do think there was a there was a a couple of researchers reached out to me shortly after that and they were like, oh, like we've been wanting to research this. And so they looked to see what other police departments were getting funding from fossil fuel companies. And honestly, it's like wherever they have a refinery, they're chipping in to the police.

[00:46:42] So, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:46:45] I mean, it's like so so it's really funny because like, you think about it in like, who gets targeted because to Chevron in Richmond is like could be a case study for, for like. Oh yeah. For astroturfing. But, but like the police, the increased police presence is meant to target the more affluent people in that community. Right. Like. Who who can afford to move away from the Chevron refinery right there? Ah, I mean, there is weirdly, Richmond is weird because there's some there are there is at least one affluent community that's like downwind of the refinery or like right next to it. Which point? Richmond, There,. I mean, it's actually good that they're there because like, you know, some of those people are are activists and they are concerned about the environment. And they have more they have more and more influence in time and to, you know, try to sort of, you know, sort of try to shut down, you know, Chevron's refinery. I mean, that's what needs to happen to that refinery.

[00:47:56] Yeah, yeah,

[00:47:57] yeah, yeah. Totally. I also I was just I was just spending some time this morning looking at, like politicians that are heavily funded by both the oil companies and private prison companies. And there's like, unsurprisingly, a lot of crossover. And my my favorite one so far is Rick Scott, who was like the governor of Florida for a while and then is now a senator for Florida. Florida, the state most threatened by climate change, by the way,

[00:48:28] why he was

[00:48:30] like the number one recipient of private prison funds and also like one of the top recipients of big oil money. I think he just this year was like it admitted that climate change is happening, but still doesn't think we should do anything about it.

[00:48:45] So let's just let it wash over like the sea.

[00:48:50] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:48:54] I mean I mean, this is just my hunch, but I have a feeling that, like, you dig into who's funding private prisons, you would probably find the same people who are funding police departments. I'm probably not going to do that digging, but that's just my hope. Yeah, because if you dig into anything, you always find these oil guys doing the worst shit ever.

[00:49:14] Yes.

[00:49:14] Because, well, the oil guys

[00:49:16] and also, like, there's a whole I mean, there's just there is a very there's a whole kind of network of funders that, you know, have some connection to the fossil fuel industry, but also, you know, maybe have like a family foundation that funds not only private prisons and, you know, other other kinds of like pieces of the carceral state, but also like that have been pushing for legislative changes that will perpetuate the conditions that lead to mass incarceration and climate change.

[00:49:56] You know, it's it's

[00:49:59] yeah, I

[00:50:00] yeah. Yeah.

[00:50:02] I also think the other connection is these laws like critical infrastructure laws that, you know, fossil fuel companies, actually one of you explain it because you'll explain it

[00:50:14] better than me. Oh, it's basically there's there's actually now more than half of the states have passed these laws now that criminalize protests around, quote unquote, critical infrastructure. In some states, it increases the charges for trespassing on private property near There,. So it basically takes what was a misdemeanor and makes it a felony in other states. They didn't have any laws around this stuff before and it now makes it a felony. So it's really like it's extreme charges for, you know, essentially pipeline protest. You could now be facing like up to ten years in prison in some states for participating in a pipeline protest. And the the fossil fuel industry has been very, very I mean, they've been running this whole thing in both states and at the federal level, too. So, like one of the first things the American Petroleum Institute did in like the wake of the pandemic taking hold in the U.S. was to get all fossil fuel infrastructure declared critical infrastructure, which seemed like a weird move at the time. It's like, what does this matter? And yes, part of that was to get, you know, all of their workers deemed essential workers that could continue working. But another part of it was laying the foundation for more of these state laws to pass to criminalize protest. So, yeah,

[00:51:40] huge

[00:51:43] free speech violation, which, like, you know, is is really runs counter to what a lot of the the sort of libertarian and Republican right wing politicians claim to stand for.

[00:51:58] You know what I mean? Exactly, exactly. Yeah, it's like OK for you, like religious liberty and justice for all that.

[00:52:09] That's like what they said, liberty and justice for all while holding slaves with a straight

[00:52:12] it's almost almost

[00:52:14] it's almost like when they don't vote for stimulus bills, but then brag about the money that they're getting their communities.

[00:52:22] That's right. That's right. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But it's really it's quite troubling because it's now more than actually just in the last few weeks, a bunch of these state laws have passed again. So it's a big problem because the other thing that's happening is the law firms that work with a lot of the oil companies like Gibson Dunn, which, you know, represented Chevron in their whole thing against the indigenous groups in Ecuador, have figured out that they can use the RICO laws. So those are like racketeering laws that were created to deal with organized crime against protesters. So they're starting to like the they they kind of set the precedent with this Chevron RICO case in the U.S. and then they use the same exact strategy against protesters at Standing Rock to say that, like the protesters and Greenpeace and indigenous groups were all part of a criminal enterprise that, you know, like organized damage against energy transfer partners. So I think we're going to see more of that. Like there are there are attempts underfoot to try to do the same thing around the Movement for Black Lives and those protests as well. So there's huge crossover between them. And it's it's really, really, really concerning because they are they are completely trying to criminalize protest across the board.

[00:54:03] Yeah, mm hmm. Mm hmm.

[00:54:05] It's gross and, you know, it's like, oh, then there's like more people in prison and then there's more money for private prisons and there's more you know, it's just this, like, gross kind of rice system,

[00:54:16] which makes me feel like they've got to be in cahoots

[00:54:19] because.

[00:54:20] Yeah, I mean, there's usually yeah. It's like, well, if it protects their pipelines, but it also maybe drives profit in some other ways too. I don't know.

[00:54:30] Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

[00:54:42] Why did the fish refuse to play basketball

[00:54:44] because it couldn't save Pittsburgh. That's that's an old movie reference.

[00:54:49] What?

[00:54:50] It's an old movie reference that I'm sorry,

[00:54:54] but that's my answer.

[00:54:59] He was afraid of the net. Why hasn't Europe ever won Olympic gold in basketball?

[00:55:04] But because black people took over the sport and they live in America

[00:55:10] because

[00:55:10] Europe isn't a country.

[00:55:14] This is true, what

[00:55:18] do an angry bunny and a pro basketball

[00:55:21] player have in common?

[00:55:23] They both got hops here. I don't know.

[00:55:26] Uh. Matthau's.

[00:55:54] I think that brings us to the pretty big question around this, which is like I, I feel like it's kind of clear where I stand on this. I don't see how there is a future for prisons. It's already bad enough that there's a path for it. To be quite honest, I think they were never viable. I think they become even more cruel and unusual once you like climate change on top of them. And at the same time, though, climate change is going to make crime more likely, like people are going to hurt one another as they get put in more and more unstable positions. We know that he increases the likelihood of violence. So there's uncertainty. Right. And I think that prisons have proven themselves to be unreformable and like they themselves. That was another very interesting thing I learned in the research for the show there, the result of reform themselves, because people used to be like publicly flogged and drawn and quartered and hung in the public square. So then prisons were presented as this like this more humane alternative, but they're not humane. So what do we do now? I, I am a budding prison abolitionist. I'm not like I have some books on order. I feel like I need to educate myself more before I can, like, claim that mantle. But I don't believe in a future for prisons and I don't know where you all fall on that.

[00:57:18] Yeah. I mean, I

[00:57:19] mean, I agree with you, I, I, you know, you can be I think we all probably spend so much time on Twitter. We're afraid to claim things because we have like these awesome like experts who are like way deeper in on issues than we are. Right. But like, you know, like you can be just like just like how you could be like a basketball fan tomorrow. Mary, if you decide to be in,

[00:57:44] you know, it's fine,

[00:57:45] but you don't have to know much, you know, to to to feel something, you know, in your heart, you know, or right. And know that you know, that you feel that way. And for me, it's definitely like, you know, I I definitely think that we need to abolish prisons and police. That's just I think it's it's to me, it goes down it really drives down to like really existential questions about, like, how we relate to one another in in in in what we think should happen to people who do things that we think are wrong. That was take a very long winded way of saying bad things. But yeah. Yeah. So that's that's where I stand on it.

[00:58:33] Yeah, yeah,

[00:58:34] yeah, what about you, Amy?

[00:58:35] Yeah, no, I totally agree. I, um, I spent. A period of time, like extremely obsessed with restorative justice and like hanging out in schools where they were doing, they were like had restorative justice programs running to deal with sort of school discipline. And I and I was like 100 percent this is how we should be like running all parts of society,

[00:59:03] because it was

[00:59:04] amazing. You know, I mostly spent time in Milwaukee and in Oakland in schools that had embraced restorative justice to deal with disciplinary problems and then realized that it should just be part of how the whole school was run in general. So they had these kind of morning meet ups in classes and sometimes that would be like by class and sometimes they would have, like all the girls in one grade, meet together and all the guys because there were certain things that, like they didn't want to say in front of each other because it's like high school, you know,

[00:59:41] and

[00:59:43] and they just would like everybody would kind of talk about what was going on in their lives. And the the guidance counselors and stuff were like, yeah, you know, it's really hard to bully someone when, you know, like what's going on in their life, you know? And so they they were doing this kind of daily thing to just foster, like, a real sense of community in the school. And then, you know, if something did happen where like there was a fight or like someone's phone got stolen or whatever, they would bring together kind of all of the stakeholders, including, you know, witnesses that were there and, you know, the two like the two or more like main parties involved and like their parents, sometimes grandparents, and just talk together about like what would repair the rift in the community. So it wasn't about, you know, how do we punish this person? It was like, OK, this incident created a problem, you know, created like a break in the community and how do we repair it? And like, it was amazing. It was really amazing. Like, yeah, I really was like, oh, yeah. Like, this is a better way for humans to relate to each other and a better way to structure, you know, community.

[01:01:03] Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[01:01:06] Well, since you introduced us terms, I want to just share a definition I found in an interview that I actually found pretty useful because restorative justice and transformative justice are words like kind of thrown around a lot. Restorative justice is to try and restore relationships and how they were prior to the harm being done. And transformative justice is the purpose is to try and transform communities so that harm can't happen again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:01:34] We're kind of doing those things. It was like,

[01:01:37] yeah, yeah. Well, well it really works.

[01:01:40] It works so well and it's so healthy and like it's just like, oh my God, I like I wish that every adult I knew had like gone to a school that did this, you know.

[01:01:51] Yeah. Yeah. Right. Sorry.

[01:01:53] Do your hands up.

[01:01:54] No. [01:01:54]Yeah. Well the second definition of transformative justice, like some of the stuff you're talking about earlier, married with like the crime is going to go up because he's going to like that's that's not that's not a given right. That's what we know happens or has happened. But it doesn't have to be the future even though climate change is going to get worse. [16.9s]

[01:02:12] [01:02:12]Like, that's a great point. [0.9s]

[01:02:13] [01:02:13]And like we can't in like communities are structuring themselves to try to, you know, to be able to be resilient. And this is like probably like a way that, you know, hopefully, like more and more communities will start to try to like adopt like principles of restorative justice and transformative justice so that, you know, people are making hopefully making different choices even if the circumstances are worsening. Right. [26.7s]

[01:02:41] Um, I think it's important, too. Like, I, um, before I got into ah, sort of the way I got into restorative justice was like I, I was like researching forgiveness, therapy and and then that led me down to like the restorative justice rabbit hole. But but one of the things that all the researchers I talked to said over and over again was that like there's a they think there's a misunderstanding that a lot of people have that like restorative justice or forgiveness leaves out accountability. And it definitely does not it's not about like some sort of you know, like I talked to one parent that was kind of nervous about restorative justice in schools because he was like, what if like my if my kid gets beat up, like, I don't want to have some Kumbaya moment where the person who beat him up just like gets off scot free, you know, like that was the that was the feeling. But I think there's. Is this yeah, I think actually there's almost more accountability in a restorative justice setting because like There,, the person has to actually acknowledge the harm done and right. And that is part of the process, you know, like so I don't know.

[01:03:59] Yeah, yeah. And because, you know, you're not going to go to prison, you're more likely correct when she's done something wrong. That's right. And because, you know, there's a community that wants to welcome you back after you've, you know, a toits right. Then that gives you more of an even more of an incentive to admit when you've done something wrong and to try to prevent and try to reason to be yourself. And that's right.

[01:04:23] To be part of the repair. That's I just

[01:04:27] I

[01:04:27] think that actually there's more of a sense of like, I don't know, closure and repair for the four victims, too, in that like. Right. That was kind of how how restorative justice started was it was Mennonites going into prisons and like, you know, organizing conversations between victims and perpetrators as a way to combat the death penalty. And like, I'm like, there's there's no I don't think there's any research that says, like victims feel like justice has been served by the death penalty, you

[01:05:08] know, but there's a lot

[01:05:11] of justice.

[01:05:12] So, like,

[01:05:13] I don't know. Yeah.

[01:05:14] [01:05:14]I think a big part of the problem is the way that we talk about justice just in general. That's right. In this country as punitive justice, justice and vengeance are pretty much the same. That's right. Right. So, like even like our knee jerk reaction and we're taught this from the time that we're very, very small, is that if someone hits you, you hit them back. Right, like you. If someone harms you, you want them to suffer. [22.3s] That's right. Right. I like that. I got this. Yeah. I think the way that this shows up in the most gruesome sort of way is the way that we talk about prison. Right.

[01:05:49] Which. That's right. Like, I people

[01:05:52] joke about this really gross. Incredibly.

[01:05:55] Yeah. Yeah.

[01:05:57] Because even if the person is guilty, even if that person is guilty of doing some of the most horrible things on Earth, I don't think any human being deserves. That's right. I don't. Yes. And so. Just the callousness with which we treat people in prison and make jokes about not just not dropping the soap and like people think that like, well, if you raped someone or if you hurt a child or you did this or you did that thing, you deserve to go to the place where that thing can happen to you at any given moment. And it's like that is that is a very strong sign of moral bankruptcy on behalf of our entire society. Mm hmm.

[01:06:35] Yeah, I agree.

[01:06:36] Totally so. Yeah.

[01:06:39] And the other thing I was seeing in a lot of my reading is it's like [01:06:43]a lot of the ways that we talk about prison abolition in the mainstream are kind of problematic these days, like it's just recently become more of a mainstream. Right. But a lot of it has to do with like, well, there's a lot of innocent people in jail. That's true. But a lot of people in jail are guilty and a lot of people in jail are guilty of committing violent offenses. And they really did do it. And so now what? And I'm of the opinion that no human being is disposable and no human being is unredeemable and no human being deserves. And I don't think that you can isolate someone into being a better person. I don't think that you can torture someone into being a better person because that's what happens in prison like these. A fucking horrible. So, however, there is a place where, like, my redemption theory runs out and I'm going to be honest about this and I don't know if I'm going to work on it. Fossil fuel executives [53.1s]

[01:07:40] [01:07:40]like I mean, [0.7s]

[01:07:41] [01:07:41]like put it this way, though. Like, I think about it, think about it, because I talk about this all the time when I think about cops and I'm like, yo, like like I like my my uncle was a cop and saying, like I got a cousin who was also in jail. Right. Like I like I love those I love those people, you know, Exxon. But in my in my uncle was cool. Mom will be passed a few years ago. He was [21.3s]

[01:08:02] [01:08:02]cool. He just needed another job. Just give him so much to do. You give these guys, the fossil fuel executives something else to do. Like I know. Or something. Oh, I don't know about that. I don't know about that. I want to begin not going to like I'm not there. I'm not there. And I'm doing a [22.0s]

[01:08:24] [01:08:24]lot of work on myself. I've ordered some books I've got to like learn all about restorative justice and all of that. [5.3s]

[01:08:30] [01:08:30]But I don't know if I'm going to [3.1s]

[01:08:33] [01:08:33]have it for them. I just feel like [1.6s]

[01:08:35] [01:08:35]throw them in a volcano, slow them nice a oh, that's too quick. That's too quick. [9.2s] So I'll figure something else is I just I mean, the energy I have it for them.

[01:08:53] I mean, yeah. That energy is like what like Amy was describing is like very energy intensive work, you know. And so like you can reserve that energy for people who like need it more. They don't need it as much.

[01:09:08] I mean, they're like committing ecocide, like that's even before the genocide, like and they're like, well, walking around,

[01:09:19] they have missed a critical step in the process, which is acknowledging harm. So.

[01:09:25] Oh, well, what's what's this

[01:09:27] fucking face, David? Coke is out here on an apology tour.

[01:09:30] Oh, I know.

[01:09:33] Anyway, they can rot in hell, that's for damn sure, as far as I'm concerned. And I would be fine with preserving prisons specifically for them.

[01:09:44] Only for them.

[01:09:45] Yeah, I'm telling you, I'm not all the way there. I'm not all the way there.

[01:09:51] I feel like everybody else is redeemable, but not them. And probably, you know, you could throw in Trump.

[01:09:56] Yeah. Yeah.

[01:09:58] Well, he's basically a fossil fuel exec,

[01:10:01] I mean, pretty much. But also in restorative justice, there is a world where there's different types of jobs for like your uncle who's a cop or

[01:10:10] people

[01:10:11] who are at work that needs to be done to, like, avoid. I mean, that's the thing is like and this is what I always think about when it's like, you know, people are like, oh, this person deserves this or that. It's like and this is such a huge part of both forgiveness, therapy and restorative justice is like empathy for where that person came from and what led to them committing that harm. You know, and like the vast majority of people, it's like a combination of poverty and abuse and, you know, like a lot of systemic things that were stacked against them from the jump, I'm sure, you know. Yes, there's like a small handful of people who are psychopaths and like, we have to figure out a mental health system that can deal with that, you know, but yeah. But like, you know. Yeah, like, why don't we why don't we put that whole like all that money in that whole infrastructure to work addressing the conditions that lead to crime, you know, and like and. Sharing that and your uncle could totally have a job doing that,

[01:11:15] you know, right?

[01:11:19] Yeah, I was trying to have that conversation with my mom because my mom is now like, you know, like an old lady who lives by herself and is a little bit like afraid of everything. And so I think that, like, she's like, you know, if there's no police, I'm not going to be safe. And I'm like, like there could be you know, there could still be systems in place that, like, you know, will help you if you're scared. But someone's like breaking into your house or whatever. They just don't have to look the way they do now, you know. Right.

[01:11:51] I don't know. Right. I think that's honestly what victims of crimes usually want is like they want to feel safe again. But in our society, we equate that with the person who hurt you, having been like punished and like broken into a million pieces and put far, far, far away from you. And that's not the same thing as safety.

[01:12:12] We also have this conception of perpetrators is like super villainous. And it's like, how do you know that that person didn't, like, replay the shit that they did already, like seven million times in their head, you know, right. In like, do you, like, punish themselves, atone for the shit that they did? That's right. I don't know.

[01:12:32] That's right. Yeah. I was telling my mom, too. I was like, well, what would make you feel more safe? Like a policeman that might show up and, like, shoot someone on your front steps or like a community where there are no homeless people and there is no extreme poverty driving people to, like, break into other people's houses to begin with?

[01:12:53] Mm hmm.

[01:12:54] You know, and she was like, I guess

[01:12:56] I hadn't really thought about it. I'm like, yeah, like,

[01:12:59] it's not you know, I don't know. It's the same. I don't know. It's like the same with all of the climate stuff and the health system and everything else. It's like we have to stop only addressing problems at the very, very end of the cycle.

[01:13:14] Yeah, yeah.

[01:13:16] I actually think that that is why prison abolition and restorative justice need to become a big part of how we think about climate change and climate action, because we are at this critical moment where we have to reimagine everything, like we just don't have Strangways. And so this is one of the things that needs to be reimagined. And I think, Amy, you were reading or you were telling me you were reading about this like the system that gives us prison. It's the same system that gives us climate change.

[01:13:46] That's right. It's like it's all, you know, when I feel like if you peel it back far enough, you get back to power structures, you know, domination, white supremacy, all of these things that are the root of of like every major problem that we're facing. And it requires a rethinking of community and what we value as a society. And, you know. Mm hmm. Extraction is extraction is extraction. Right. And justice is justice is justice like. That's right.

[01:14:21] And abolition is abolition. Right. And that's really like the ultimate abolition. And so it does bother me that when I was reading about all of this, that you don't think of prisons when you think of climate changes like like you've never loved anybody in prison. Right. Then like you don't think black people are reading your articles because most of us have loved somebody in prison? Yeah, I'm also reading a lot about like some of the leading voices in the prison abolition movement. And one of them, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, is all about environmentalism, too. Yeah. And prisons as an environmental injustice, so.

[01:14:58] Mhm. Yeah.

[01:15:00] Yeah. I was going to say there's like this like there is also this like generational I've seen from covering it. Maybe I shouldn't be saying this like in a public setting, but I just from covering and talking to environmental activists of all ages, especially the environmental justice movement is very like linked with the elders are like are are bringing along the or like bringing along the younger people. But there is a bit of a like sort of rift in terms of how they view policing in prisons with the younger folks wanting there to be abolition of police and prisons and some of the older folks having, you know, experienced the worst of, you know, of like the drug wars or, you know, stuff like that where, you know, they sort of still see a role for prisons and police along with that. But anyways, this is an aside.

[01:16:04] Yeah, that's interesting. No, I do. I yeah. I mean, I think it's. It's hard for people to to imagine something completely different from everything they've ever seen.

[01:16:17] Right, right. And so that's where I struggle, right? Like is it is very clear to me that there's no future for prisons and no future for police, really. But I am not good at articulating what comes next.

[01:16:37] Well, I mean, I think there has to be a transition period, too, because unfortunately, a lot of people in, you know, like what do you do with people who have been in prison for 20 years and are so badly damaged from that that it's going to take a lot to rehabilitate them into, you know, being able to to be part of a different type of society. And then you also have to like I don't know, I mean, I think I think about it the same again, like so similar to the the energy transition stuff to it's a major, major, major undertaking. And it's not going to be a one step thing. You know, it's like there's a a period of like real transition in a very, very like major way that is way beyond just, you know, a different type of power source or, you know, a slightly like a different job for police. It's it takes like just such a massive rethinking of of how we structure society and what we value, that it's going to be a transition period that might kind of suck at points. You know, like we might really fuck it up in some ways. But we have to, like, try something new. Mm hmm.

[01:17:54] Yeah, for sure. I mean, if that happens with prison reform, too, you know, like the like with the first programs and stuff like that, which shouldn't necessarily be rolled back just because some people go and commit crime. But it does make it harder to say people need to be able to go to go, go, go to their community, you know, go back to their communities. [01:18:14]Um, and then I was I was going to say, like, it seems like it seems like people from from how I hear people talk about in the past year since, quote, the quote unquote racial reckoning, I have heard people sort of who were not familiar with prison abolition before to any degree. They is like two camps. So like the con camp thinks that prison abolition is going to mean that tomorrow is going to be the purge. Right. That like like motherfuckers get out of jail and run all out of jail and kill the prison guards on the way out and go rob everybody. You know what I'm saying? Like and then and then the people who think that prison abolition is going to be like the scene in The Wiz when Evelynn gets killed and everybody chips off their thing and do Brandnew [50.5s]

[01:19:05] [01:19:05]Day, the dance is not going to happen that [3.2s]

[01:19:08] [01:19:08]quickly either. Either one is not how it's going to be. [2.5s]

[01:19:11] It's going to take some time. That's right. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:19:17] I think that's important. And again, like it does, it's so similar to me of like how I see people talking about climate change and the energy transition to that. It's like, you know, people think either like from one minute to the next we're going to be back to like, you know, subsistence farming or that it's going to be some kind of fucking hippie utopia. And it's like, yeah, probably neither guys.

[01:19:43] You know, there's

[01:19:44] a lot of room in between those two.

[01:19:47] Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is the other thing that I

[01:19:50] was running up against in reading about this was like, no prison abolition can't be an immediate thing. It's not like the same as the abolition of slavery, which also was was a lot more gradual

[01:20:03] than most people think. Well, that's right. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:20:08] So there's that. But it's like if we are going to like let people out, like there's two things, right. Like There, is stopping people from going into prisons and also getting people out of prisons. And both of them require a complete overhaul of how we do things and how we think about justice. So the work I've been trying to do on myself is one to like, you know, take my education in this more seriously and like actually go beyond my intuition and into more like actual knowledge. So trying to read more about it and learn more about it. I think the other thing is to like retrain myself for how I think about justice, because just like I said, the whole society has been trained to think about in this vengeful kind of way. So if I and so some of the reading I've been doing, it's been like we should ask victims what they want. And I, I worry about that because if most victims have been trained to think of justice as vengeance, you ask a victim what they want. A lot of the time they might say what they've been trained to say since they were a small child, and that would be that they want the person who hurt them to suffer. So like if a victim of, let's say, like one of one of the worst crimes, like child abuse says, I want my abuser to go to prison. I don't believe in prisons, but I also would want to support the victim. I don't. What to do in that situation?

[01:21:34] Yeah, that's tough, I don't know.

[01:21:35] Yeah, I don't either.

[01:21:38] I, I,

[01:21:39] I'm sure that like yeah. For me I don't, I don't know the answer and I feel like there's probably people who thought about it a lot more than I have.

[01:21:49] Yeah. Yeah.

[01:21:50] I'm not sure, I'm not sure what the I'm sure there is like an answer on that kind of stuff from the, the abolition community. But yeah. Because it does, it feels weird to be like oh we have to talk victims into understanding a different form of justice is that doesn't feel great either. Right. I don't know. Maybe that is part of it. I don't know. Yeah.

[01:22:15] Yeah. I mean I think

[01:22:17] I wanted to have this conversation right. Because there aren't clear answers here, which is what makes it a really interesting conversation, one that we have to keep having and and normalizing. So.

[01:22:28] Yeah, yeah.

[01:22:29] Thank you for coming on. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

[01:22:32] No, I was just saying just keep thinking about I mean I think. Yeah, yeah.

[01:22:37] We have to keep thinking about this stuff and having these conversations and expanding them to like our families and communities.

[01:22:44] Well, that means, Drew, we might be having you back on here sometime soon. So will you now accept our third invitation to Hatake?

[01:22:52] Of course. And they're going to be more basketball puns?

[01:22:56] No, I'm going to figure out something else to troll you, OK?

[01:23:00] You just just

[01:23:01] remember just remember that the the lay charges are a football or football team, not a basketball team.

[01:23:09] I forgot all about that already.

[01:23:13] What do you call a piece of cheese that likes to shoot hoops?

[01:23:17] Um. I'm going through my cheese dictionary in my head. Uh, brie, cheddar, Swiss mozzarella.

[01:23:33] Like a Swiss Swiss. Thank you for coming on, Drew.

[01:23:45] Thanks for having me again. Appreciate it. This is fun. This is fun. This is a bummer. And it still is fun because we contain multitudes.

[01:23:54] Well, it was an important conversation, and I can't think of who else we could have had it with. Huge thanks to Drew, costly for coming on and talking with us, you can and should follow him on Twitter. He is at Drew. Costly and costly is spelled celestially y. And yeah, he's a great environmental journalist and you should look up all of his work

[01:24:24] will drop some links to some of his stories that we mentioned in this episode into the show notes.

[01:24:31] Hmm.

[01:24:32] And also into our newsletter, which you should be subscribed to if you're not already.

[01:24:39] Exactly.

[01:24:40] And you can follow us on Twitter. We are at real hot take. You can follow Amy at Amy Westerfeld and you can follow me at at Mary Hechler. I think that's about it, Amy. Keep fucking that chicken

[01:24:53] I will marry. I was ready for you that time. I was ready for you. What's creepy is I believe you. Oh, gross.