By Dean Spade
Originally published in IN THESE TIMES. Reposted with permission.
In Seattle, activists are entering the second month of a new stage of escalation in a six-year campaign against the estimated $225 million youth jail and court project being undertaken by King County. On March 19, the No New Youth Jail Coalition—which consists of more than 60 organizations working on issues related to poverty, racism and youth services—delivered a letter to King County Executive, Dow Constantine, the person who can stop the project. The letter from the Coalition, which I actively organize with, details the last six years of resistance, in which many different constituencies in the County and leading youth services organizations have come out against the project. It highlights the County’s attempts to avoid hearing feedback from constituents by canceling public events and changing the County Council rules to limit community participation in hearings. It asks why the County is continuing to rush this project to completion when a lawsuit has established that the tax levy funding the project is illegal, so that if the County does not win an appeal, the project will have to be paid for by the general fund and undermine key services and functions. The letter demands that Constantine declare a moratorium on building and negotiate with the community to repurpose the site and redirect resources toward human needs.
On March 26, given that Constantine had not declared a moratorium on building, the No New Youth Jail Coalition began the People’s Moratorium. Early that morning, activists locked down to block all three of the gates to the construction site to stop trucks from arriving with more construction supplies. The next morning, activists occupied the lobby of the County Office Building. Since then, the Coalition has been in constant action with banner drops, protests at the construction site and at Constantine’s public appearances, and media advocacy. On April 20, people of faith and clergy led a protest at the construction site that resulted in nine arrests: three people who had locked down to beams inside the site, and six people who were part of prayer at one of the gates.
The events in Seattle are part of broader local and national social movement work to halt investment in policing and imprisonment. In 2008, a coalition led by the homeless advocacy organization in Seattle defeated plans for a new $200 million adult jail. In 2016, anti-police activists defeated plans for a $149 million new police bunker in Seattle. In 2017, activists in Virginia won their fight against a new youth prison in Chesapeake. Activists in Richmond, Virginia are currently fighting against more plans for youth prison building. San Francisco anti-criminalization activists are similarly engaged in a struggle to stop a new jail from being built. Chicago activists are engaged in a campaign to stop the building of a $95 million police academy. Activists in Detroit are fighting against a $533 million criminal justice center. Even small towns, like Northampton, Massachusetts, are seeing residents rise up to oppose expansion of infrastructure for policing and criminalization. These campaigns and the many others emerging around the country are examples of how local activists are leveraging the anti-criminalization momentum created by the #BlackLivesMatter movement to demand new priorities for local governments.
Masquerading as progressive
The story of how politicians are justifying Seattle’s youth jail project with talking points about racial justice, progressivism and even “zero youth detention” is worth learning from. In King County and the City of Seattle, most politicians promote themselves as progressive, even though the City and County governments do many of the same things we see in any contemporary city: raid homeless encampments, arrest protesters, build up the cops and jails, court the tech industry and pander to real estate developers. When the plans for the new youth jail and court buildings were first announced, the talking points of the projects’ advocates focused primarily on how the youth jail needed to be replaced so that youth could have improved conditions for their jailing. Even though the current youth jail was built in 1992 and the County’s own studies say it is in “good condition,” the project’s promoters consistently framed it as decrepit and argued that anyone opposing the investment in a new jail was doing so at the expense of the well-being of youth. They made a Black County Council member with a history of activism, Larry Gossett, into the project’s spokesperson. For the first few years of the fight, some opponents were steered toward meetings with Gossett that were directed toward helping plan the new jail, supposedly in ways that would allay concerns. Over the years, Gossett has faded from the front lines, perhaps because using him as the face of the project stopped being an effective way to stem opposition.
Today, Constantine, the jail’s main advocate, continues to promote the new jail as good for the youth who will be caged in it, using methods that are increasingly sophisticated and concerning. Constantine is effectively deploying the talking points developed by decades of anti-criminalization advocacy in order to promote his jail-building. There is, of course, nothing new about jail and prison builders justifying their projects by saying they will be good for those caged inside them. This is the logic used to build prisons in the name of eliminating overcrowding, building “gender responsive” prisons, and implementing other innovations that expand the capacity to cage people. Constantine, however, is developing this framework in ways that are up-to-date with contemporary anti-criminalization strategies. In 2017, he announced that he has a goal of “zero youth detention” and appointed a staffer to lead the County’s “zero juvenile detention efforts.” In response to opposition to the youth jail, the City Council passed a “zero youth detention” resolution that is functionally only symbolic, but represented the significance of the pressure of the movement against the project. Constantine has now joined these talking points. County Council members have also distanced themselves from the project. Since the People’s Moratorium was declared, Constantine has further ramped up this tactic.
In an April 17 interview, Constantine argued that detention is traumatic for youth, causes recidivism, disrupts schooling and is a result of systemic racism. He said that the old facility is going to be replaced with a “therapeutic facility that will be less traumatizing for youth” and “help them get back on track.” He touted the County’s diversion programs. He argued that some day, when the goal of zero detention is achieved, the facility will be turned over for community programs. He argued that the County should move toward a model of a decentralized juvenile detention system centering highly trained social workers, only locking young people up in rare cases. During the recent ramping up of the campaign, he also officially transferred the youth jail facility into the control of the Department of Public Health, part of his reframing it as a health intervention.
The architecture of white supremacy
King County, Seattle and Constantine provide a useful study of how the architecture of white supremacy is expanding right now in the name of anti-racism. In the context of the Trump administration, it is even easier for politicians to promote themselves as social justice advocates and anti-racists while continuing to fund and build the infrastructure of state violence that anti-racist movements are fighting to dismantle. For example, in December 2016, Washington politicians, including Seattle’s Mayor, Constantine and others, held a press conference to declare Washington a “hate free state.” The politicians made speeches about their commitments to support Muslims, the LGBT community and others facing new threats with the rise of the Right. The cloak of fake progressivism is easier for politicians to put on to cover the reality of pro-criminalization and anti-poor actions when the point of comparison in Trump.
Jurisdictions like King County and Seattle, where social justice branding is nearly universal, demonstrate the cutting-edge versions of this strategy. The King County Prosecutor’s Office promotes its diversion programs nationally as models of progressivism in prosecution, and has recently expanded its staffing by employing prosecutors focused on restorative justice strategies. The Seattle Police Department launched a public relations campaign when it was under investigation by the Department of Justice in which it marketed a rainbow police badge sticker to be posted by businesses all over the City stating that they are a “safe place” and will call the cops for LGBT people facing harassment.
By spending relatively small sums on a few diversion programs and stickers, the City and County continue to expand their capacity to put the lion’s share of their budgets toward policing and imprisonment. At this point, 73 percent of the County’s budget is focused on “criminal justice and public safety.” Meanwhile, the famous diversion programs that police, prosecutors and politicians promote all still focus on legitimizing arrests of poor people and people of color. While basic needs like housing, transportation, healthcare, childcare, and education remain under-funded, a policing-centered approach to governance and spending is justified with a few “softer” options for what can be done with people after arrest. These same programs are lifted up by Constantine to justify the building of the youth jail. He argues that he is supporting such innovative programming, and is so dedicated to zero youth detention that building a new youth jail must be necessary or he would not be doing it. He mobilizes the language of trauma, therapy, systemic racism, alternatives to incarceration and restorative justice to promote a project that ensures ongoing caging of youth.
The fantasy of a therapeutic cage
In this context, it is particularly meaningful that activists are framing resistance in terms of prison abolition. Reforms that create “softer” punishment, diversion, or arrest-based programs—and are run by social workers and health providers—are being deployed by those focused on further investment in criminalizing infrastructure. Abolition is the framework that allows us to discern how progressive-sounding initiatives are actually expanding criminalization. The County funds “alternatives” and diversion programs, some of which are legitimate community-based programs, at small levels primarily to act as a fig leaf for their outrageous expenditures on policing and imprisonment. Constantine consistently argues that protesters from the No New Youth Jail Coalition refuse to dialogue with him. What he is experiencing is that the coalition refuses to partner with him on designing a jail. The coalition refuses to participate in the fantasy of a therapeutic cage, of a jail that would somehow work in partnership with non-profits that care about youth. Activists will not help develop talking points for justifying the disastrous decision to put hundreds of millions more dollars toward the travesty of youth imprisonment. The dialogue he wants, where members of the public collaborate under a shared fake-progressive banner to birth another project of jail and court-building, is one he is finding less and less partners to join.
What remains to be seen is how significant our impact has been in the County. Another city in King County, Tukwila, is now facing resistance to a new effort to build a police station and court buildings. Has the coalition’s six-year fight against the youth jail, the victory of a stalled police bunker project and the defeat of the adult jail project decreased the viability of more police, jail and prison infrastructure in our County? What will it take for the current crisis of legitimacy facing policing and imprisonment to move from providing rationales for expansion to actually establishing political conditions that stop expansion? Constantine and the King County Prosecutor’s Office are useful case studies for anti-criminalization movements right now. They are working to portray prosecution and jail-building as “social justice” projects, and are co-opting anti-racist and anti-law enforcement language and analysis with great sophistication to do so. Their tactics indicate one path through the legitimacy crisis for apparatuses of state violence—a path that cements and expands those apparatuses using new takes on the old themes of health and reconciliation. The #NoNewYouthJail campaign’s abolitionist praxis is a testing ground for the possibility of actually stopping the expansion of policing and imprisonment that has characterized the last 40 years.
Workers in food service, maintenance, clerical and technical services are central to the university, but occupy lowest the rungs of the university, often paid a low hourly wage, or with salaries that top out below $50,000 in most cases. This inadequate pay is most felt during the summer breaks as many nonprofessional employees have to find another job in the summertime when campus operations are significantly scaled back. In recent years, outsourcing and subcontracting food services and maintenance have exacerbated these poor conditions. A 2014 study showed that the substantial reduction in wages caused by outsourcing and contracting exacerbates both the gender and race pay gaps. On the clerical and technical side, a model of “shared services” is used to cut costs by centralizing business and IT offices. This practice often results in layoffs of workers and more work for the same pay for those who are left to work in the shared services centers.
As on the academic side, labor in university-hospitals is hierarchically structured and locates women of color in marginalized positions where they do much of the daily care work. Among Registered Nurses, which tend to be the most professionalized care workers, are 91% women, 79% are white, 11% are black, 8% are Asian and 5% Latina. Their average pay is about $71,000/year. In contrast, among “nursing, psychiatric, and home health aides” are 54% white, 37% black, 13% Latina, 5% Asian, and 87% women. These positions tend to pay in the range of $10-12 an hour. The stratified nature of healthcare has proven a difficult place to organize workers and the absence of broad based union drives (as is the case on the academic side) tend to diminish the power of organized labor.
As college and university becomes increasingly unaffordable, work-study programs through which students meet their “student income contribution” are central to financing higher education. For universities, relying on student workers is often a source of casualized labor. For instance, students working in UCLA Dining Halls make $10.50 while the starting wage for full-time workers is $16.32. At wealthier schools with large endowments, student workers have argued that the student income contribution reproduces class inequalities among students as wealthier students do not have to work. In addition to work-study, student athletes also share the conditions of other campus workers. From the contracts they sign before attending the recruiting university to the 50-60 hours of training and game time a week and the profits their sportsmanship brings, there is little difference between college and professional athletes who are understood as workers and unionized in the NFL and NBA.
Almost three quarters of the faculty are currently contingent workers with no access to tenure, a disproportionate number of whom are women and people of color. Women now constitute 51-61% of contingent faculty, a stark contrast to their continued underrepresentation among the ranks of tenured and tenure-track faculty. Underrepresented groups also continue to see increased representation in contingent academic jobs with the pay disparity to match. For instance, part-time black faculty earn significantly less than other racial and ethnic groups. The growing rates of contingent workers along with the central role graduate students play in the work of teaching demonstrates a move towards cheaper sources of instructional labor.
Given the connections between militarism and higher education discussed above, the “global turn” in universities and colleges has largely followed US strategic interests with universities prioritizing the Middle East and China in particular as sites for intellectual exchange and collaboration. In keeping with the marginalization of the African and African Diasporic world in the Americas in US foreign policy, these areas have seen comparatively little engagement from US universities. The global university thus remains only partially global and the consequences of this partiality can be seen in curriculum, faculty hires, and the distribution of resources.
There are over 150 military-educational institutions and according to the American Association of University Professors and hundreds of colleges and universities receive Pentagon funding for research, provide classes to military personnel, create special programs designed to lead to employment in defense industries and support military operations. In the context of limited funding resources, the Pentagon and Department of Defense have stepped up research support and their relationships to Universities now extend to the social sciences and humanities. For example, the Pentagon’s controversial “Human Terrain System” recruited anthropologist and Middle East experts to “decipher” Iraqi and Afghani society at the height of US’s wars in these countries. At times these relationship with the military-industrial complex are parasitic on universities’ rhetoric of diversity, equity, and inclusion. For example, a leaked memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Baruch College-CUNY and the Central Intelligence Agency reveals that the CIA has sought recruitment relationships with colleges and universities that have a diverse student body.
As the University physically expands across the world, the creation of new campuses and degree-granting programs has created opportunities for intellectual engagement and interaction, but has also raised a number of ethical questions. For instance, faculty and students criticized Yale’s creation of a liberal arts program in collaboration with National University of Singapore both because of concerns about freedom of speech at the campus and because the decision to create a campus, the costs involved, the nature of the partnership were not subject to faculty oversight, review and/or approval. More recently, an investigation into labor practices during the construction of NYU’s Abu Dhabi campus found that almost 10, 000 workers were not protected by the university’s labor guidelines that set standards for fair wages, hours and living conditions.
Since the calls for divestment from apartheid South Africa in the late 1970s and 1980s, student activists have highlighted the deep interconnections between university endowments and systems of injustice and exploitation at home and abroad. Most prominently, campaigns to divest from private prisons and fossil fuels demonstrate the ways that universities investments reproduce logics of inequality and help to bolster an unsustainable economy. These divestment campaigns often face an uphill battle as the structure of investments are often mediated through complex financial arrangements and lack transparency.
Given the racialized disparities in inherited wealth, a history of discrimination by lending agencies and higher borrowing, the dependence on debt to finance higher education places distinctive burdens on students of color and particularly black students. According to Demos, “While less than two-thirds (63%) of white graduates from public schools borrow, four-in-five (81%) of Black graduates do so. Latinx graduates borrow at similar rates and slightly lower amounts than white students.” The same study finds that black and Latinx students are dropping out with debt at higher rates than white students. Moreover students of color are more likely to be delinquent on loan repayments. A study by the economists Marshall Steinbaum and Kavya Vaghul found that zip codes with a high concentration of black and Latinx residents had far higher delinquency rates.
While the expansion of universities is often presented a jobs-creation program, but often the opportunities afforded to residents are low wage jobs with few protections. Due to the monopoly on the surrounding labor market that universities often enjoy, they exploit the labor of neighboring residents, resist the demands of campus-based labor unions, and depress wages. For more information on the labor see the University as Employer section.
With increasing expansion, universities perpetuate and reinforce the criminalization of black and Latinx communities. Urban universities maintain large police and security forces and lobby for city police forces to increase their presence in surrounding neighborhoods. Communities of color near universities are thus subject to the overlapping jurisdictions of university and city police forces, which reinforces the over-policing and surveillance of communities of color. While claiming to be working in service of protecting university property and affiliates, police on campuses have also directed violence towards Black staff, faculty, and students, with little or no recourse for violating their rights.
Private, resource heavy universities engage in a form of hyper-gentrification by using local ordinances, capitalizing on their tax-exempt status, and benefitting from state and federal dollars as well as from private sector partnerships to reshape communities. Through these institutional and financial advantages, universities have widened their neighbor footprints by aggressively purchasing properties in predominantly poor and working class black neighborhoods. Moreover, universities fail to intervene when their students perpetuate housing inequality. In many of the neighborhoods adjacent to urban universities, and within the walls of the amenity-rich, planned apartment communities in smaller college towns, students can often afford to pay higher rents than locals. Landlords seeking to profit from the steady stream of student renters become motivated to push out locals, who increasingly will not be able to afford rising rents. Rarely do residents have the political or economic capital to confront and resist this type of gentrification, and universities have little incentive to stop it, particularly if the private rental market fulfills their student housing short falls.