Welcome to Prison, USA

Brittany Friedman is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Southern California. She is also a 2023-2024 American Association of University Women faculty postdoctoral fellow and an Affiliated Scholar of the American Bar Foundation, whose writing and other work have been featured by The Washington Post, C-SPAN, NPR, The Associated Press, and Vox. Her new book is Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons. Dr. Friedman explains how America is a type of “carceral society” where the logic and organizing principles of prison and racialized power dominate the culture. Dr. Friedman shares the lessons she learned from the intimate conversations she had with elders who had been incarcerated (in some of the country’s most infamous and dangerous prisons in California) during the Civil Rights Movement and long Black Freedom Struggle and that helped to organize prisoners’ rights organizations. These are essential lessons that pro-democracy Americans will need for navigating life in a time of rising autocracy and authoritarianism. Chauncey DeVega shares a tale about his recent travels during a particularly hollow July 4th holiday, gains some life wisdom, and continues pondering what it means to be the working-class child of an aging parent. Chauncey also reflects on questions of moral culpability and how so many of us are already “Good Americans” who have been deeply and perhaps forever stained by their tacit and active complicity with evil.   And Chauncey DeVega goes to the movies and shares his review of James Gunn’s (not so super) new Superman movie. WHERE CAN YOU FIND ME? On Twitter: https://twitter.com/chaunceydevega On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chauncey.devega My email: chaunceydevega@gmail.com HOW CAN YOU SUPPORT THE CHAUNCEY DEVEGA SHOW? Via Paypal at ChaunceyDeVega.com: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thechaunceydevegashow  https://www.patreon.com/TheTruthReportPodcast