I’m not completely sure if I’m analyzing this quote right, but I chose it because it reminds me of how oftentimes people end up in prison not because they are inherently bad people, but rather because of their situation in society. This quote is saying that we need to understand that the actions of oppressed people reflect how they are treated by society. This quote ties in both to the documentary It’s Criminal and to what Angela Davis explains in Are Prisons Obsolete?. In Its Criminal Malika talks about how when she gets out of prison she will most likely need to sell drugs again in order to make a living. Because she was incarcerated she is very unlikely to find a job that will hire her and she won't be able receive government assistance. She is stuck in a cycle of crime because it is the only way she can survive in society. In Are Prisons Obsolete, Angela Davis says “Mass imprisonment generates profits as it devours social wealth, and thus it tends to reproduce the very conditions that lead people to prison” (Davis, 17). The criminal justice system actively keeps people oppressed and creates a generational cycle of imprisonment. This comes back to the quote in the beginning, incarcerated people’s actions are not completely determined by their character but rather their situation in society and the active oppression they are subjected to.

I chose this quote because I think oftentimes people fight for certain causes without truly reflecting on what will be effective so therefore their actions are unhelpful or even detrimental to the original issue at hand. This quote describes that phenomena by saying that without the act of reflection people will take action without a concrete purpose in mind. This specific quote reminded me of a section in chapter 4 of “Are Prisons Obsolete”. This particular section describes how Tekla Miller used the idea of feminism to advocate for equal treatment within men and women prison systems. She claimed that it goes against gender equality that women's prisons have a smaller arsenal than men's prisons. Davis goes on to explain that if she was truly making a feminist argument she would note that the entire criminal justice system is flawed for both men and women. Arguing for equality in the severity of punishments that men and women receive is a misguided feminist argument. Productive feminism is intersectional and would oppose the racist and unjust prison system and like Angela Davis said, “calls for the kind of critique that might lead us to abolition” (Davis, 75). Tekla Miller may have been attempting to fight for the feminist cause, but in the end she took “action for action’s sake” rather than reflecting on the true efforts of the feminist movement.

I chose this quote because the idea a person believes they have more agency and power in the world than another is one of the main ideologies that contribute to oppression. Freire is explaining within this quote and passage that true dialogue cannot occur when one person has power over another and thinks of themselves above a certain group. I think that this concept connects with the book “Are Prisons Obsolete” because Angela Davis reiterates the idea that prisoners are looked down upon within our society. In chapter two Davis states that “In Alabama and Florida, once a felon, always a felon, which entails the loss of status as rights-bearing citizens” (Davis, 38). This proves that the powerful people in those states believe that being incarcerated at one point in a person's life is their defining trait and because of that trait they no longer have the same status as other American citizens. Incarcerated citizens are ostracized from society and are seen as an entire separate group rather a part of the whole population, much like how Freire describes in this quote. Because of this, we are unable to have a successful dialogue in our society because there are members that are denied the basic freedoms and do not have equal opportunity in contributing to the dialogue.