On Tues Feb 19, we will meet to discuss Jackie Wang’s recent work, Carceral Capitalism. Our reading will consist of a zine we have prepared specially for this occasion, which contains 3 things: An interview with Jackie Wang from the Los Angeles Review of Books, an edited excerpt of the Introduction to the book published in The New Inquiry, and finally, Chapter 1, “Racialized Accumulation by Dispossession in the Age of Finance Capital.” 

The zine is here: READ | PRINT

From the text:

“In the carceral municipality you are followed in your car by a police officer as you drive to your shit job simply because you are not white. While you are being given a ticket for $300 the cop realizes there is a warrant out for your arrest for an unpaid fine for the length of your grass being three inches too long (though you cannot recall having ever received such a fine). In jail, you call your aunt to bail you out, but she doesn’t have the money and it takes her a day to secure your release through a commercial bondsman. Since your aunt lacked financial assets, she had to list her car as collateral. When she misses a payment due to low-waged and precarious employment, she will be charged additional fees by the bondsman. After you are released from jail, you are reprimanded by your boss for missing work without calling in, and you are written up. Because your license has been revoked for traffic violations and an unpaid ticket, you now have to use the unreliable and underfunded public transportation system to get to work. You arrive late on the day you have been summoned to appear in court because the bus did not arrive on time, and thus you are forced to reschedule your court appearance and pay an additional fee. This scenario could go on and on and on …”