"The prison abolition movement has a long history, and at various times its activists have argued that the conditions prevailing in prisons and detention centers, along with the failure of correctional institutions to fulfill their stated purpose, constitute the strongest argument for their abolition. Of course, conditions have only worsened over the years, and an unimaginable number of people - over two million - are currently held in the US correctional system. Furthermore, we have witnessed how these institutions can be used in the US war for global dominance, which is another argument in favor of their abolition.
When we talk about abolition, we do not imagine the isolated dismantling of the facilities we call prisons and detention centers. That is not the goal of abolition. We have proposed the concept of the prison-industrial complex as a reflection of the extent to which the prison is deeply structured by economic, social, and political conditions that must also be dismantled. So you could say that the abolition of prisons is a way of talking about the traps hidden in the particular version of democracy represented by American capitalism."

Woman. Black. Communist. Intellectual. American.

Angela Yvonne Davis is a physiognomic condensation of all those excluded from the American dream. She emerged as a reference point for all those who enlisted in its overthrow. However, even after the ebullience of the insurgent images, she remained dedicated to the cause of comprehensive liberation, active to this day in the realm of thought and activism, and receptive to constantly new questions.

In this collection of interviews, Angela Davis discusses the nature of power in American institutions, prompted by the revelations about the Abu Ghraib prison. Drawing on her own experience as a "state enemy" and as a philosophy professor and student of Herbert Marcuse, as well as the once "most wanted" woman in America, Davis discusses resistance and the law, institutionalized sexual coercion, prisons and politics, developing, among other things, W.E.B DuBois' view that as soon as African Americans were emancipated from slavery, they were deprived of the full rights of other citizens. This deprivation of rights, as well as the creation of the American correctional system, functioned as a way to maintain sovereignty and control over entire populations.

With original and penetrating analyses, analyses that will endure beyond the current historical moment, Davis reveals the connections between empire, prisons, and torture. The interviews are a direct response - from a former enemy of the state who became one of the most important public intellectuals - to the sharpest, perhaps crisis of American politics and ethics of our time."