Teaching Tools

Teaching Tools

“From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime” by Elizabeth Hinton

Definitive history of how 1960s “Great Society” programs were gradually eclipsed by investment in policing and prisons, especially in Black communities. Hinton uses federal archives to show a bipartisan consensus built mass incarceration under the guise of crime control, even as deindustrialization gutted cities. Illuminates how economic abandonment and criminalization went hand in hand. — Read on archive.org

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Geographies of Racial Capitalism with Ruth Wilson Gilmore – An Antipode Foundation film

Short film (16 minutes) from the Antipode Foundation featuring Ruth Wilson Gilmore, who powerfully maps how racial capitalism organizes space through dispossession, extraction, and carceral control. Through storytelling and political analysis, Gilmore shows how abolitionist struggle is also a fight over land, life, and liberation. — Youtube

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“Are Prisons Obsolete?” by Angela Y. Davis

A classic (short) text where Davis connects the rise of prisons to racial capitalism—how the legacy of slavery, segregation, and capitalist exploitation necessitated new forms of racial control. She invites readers to imagine abolition by learning from past struggles (e.g., the end of slavery seemed “unthinkable” until it happened). Offers concrete examples of prison alternatives globally and is written in accessible language, perfect for study groups. — Free Online

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