with a different level of analysis

no thank you i mean you're exactly right and and you know i don't treat this topic at length in tip of the spear but i am working on um some some work that does extend this but that kind of triad of war prisons and slavery is exactly kind of where some of my work is headed.

And you're right that it becomes very difficult when you think about these things, it becomes very difficult to disaggregate these things, both at a historical level And at a theoretical level, really, in terms of the ontology, like what is war? What is slavery? What is prison? And where do they overlap? And where are they different? It becomes quite difficult to do that.

And right.

So, you know, slavery across time and place is a consequence of war.

And you can only enslave someone once you have defeated them in war.

And so, you know, within the context of the Black liberation struggle, which is, you know, what my research focuses on, enslaved Africans were captured as prisoners of war and held in barracoons, transported on slave ships.

And so what do you make of the revolutionary potential of this struggle in terms of changing how people looked at the world and reframing it out of the conventional historiography or liberal reformist tradition that is identified even by this political prisoner as one of the options that needs to be thought through carefully?

And I think what your study does is really historicize how these deeper connections and dynamics of war are related to you know kind of the both the political conditions but also you might say the socioeconomic realities of what's possible And so I'm wondering if maybe you have other thoughts about the development of this kind of system that is often looked at as an extension of you know, techniques of control and so forth after emancipation, you know, and the way that that has been talked about typically from this legal perspective and how your, you know, analysis really departs from that or adds to that with a different level of analysis.

No, thank you.

I mean, you're exactly right.

And, you know, I don't treat this topic at length in Tip of the Spear, but I am working on some work that does extend this.

But that kind of triad of war, prisons and slavery is exactly where some of my work is headed.

You're right that it becomes very difficult when you think about these things, it becomes very difficult to disaggregate these things, both at a historical level, And at a theoretical level, really, in terms of the ontology, like what is war? What is slavery? What is prison? And where do they overlap? And where are they different? It becomes quite difficult to do that.

And right.

And so what do you make of the revolutionary potential of this struggle in terms of changing how people looked at the world and reframing it out of the conventional historiography or liberal reformist tradition that is identified even by this political prisoner as one of the options that needs to be thought through carefully?

I can mute myself.

No, Toussaint, I love what you've put on the table, um, especially uplifting, um, new African identity and these other traditions and, um, urging us to think about how, um, other notions of th- thinking about time were at work here, um, which is something that I've always...

I've never been able to articulate it in quite the way that you just did, but it's something that I've always thought about when, especially as the commemoration of Black August has extended beyond the prison and we're continuing to unearth s- particular kinds of, um, Black revolutionary moments that developed in August.

You know, this idea that, um, in, in some ways I feel like, okay, this is actually fascinating.

August is a powerful month.

And in other ways I'm like, "Okay, well, are, might there be other ways that we might think about time that don't require us, um, to just sort of keep creating, creating this list of what happens in August?" For instance, I would put, I would put Attica in Black August, right, for a lot of reasons, one of which is, you know, the day after George was assassinated, the brothers in Attica, um, engaged in a fast to commemorate, um, his death.

And obviously the, um, the, the rebellion emerges shortly thereafter in part as a continuity.

Orry, did you want to jump in?

You went back in time, of course, the Attica Revolt being one of the biggest in American history and its impact on reforms within the prison system.

Yes.

Well, the role of the guards is really to enforce domination.

And Jose was exactly right in talking about the role of solitary confinement, all of this.

Of course, a repeal of the HALT Act is really the primary demand of the guards.

And this is a legacy of Attica.

So, in the wake of the Attica Rebellion, we saw nationally the proliferation of solitary confinement and the extension of the lengths of time to which people were subjected to solitary confinement.

And explain what happened then.