Santa Cruz Book Launch: Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine

Join us on Friday, July 18 for a book talk and signing with author Emile Suotonye DeWeaver to celebrate the release of his first book titled Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine: Reform, White Supremacy and an Abolitionist Future.

DeWeaver during his twenty-one years in prison, DeWeaver covertly organized to pass legislation impacting juveniles in California’s criminal legal system; was a culture writer for Easy Street Magazine; and co-founded Prison Renaissance, an organization centering incarcerated voices and incarcerated leadership. DeWeaver draws on these experiences to interrogate the central premise of reform efforts, including prisoner rehabilitation programs, arguing that they demand self-abnegation, entrench white supremacy, and ignore the role of structural oppression.

“Incarceration helped me to develop as an artist only in the regard that the more deeply you are oppressed,” writes DeWeaver, “the more clearly you see the mechanisms of oppression and how they function without all of the window dressing.”

This…