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Wow, bleak from the get go but thoroughly engaging. Can't wait to get further in this classic for the first time.

This collection of writings is incredible. I came into it very sympathetic to the idea of police and prison abolition but with a lot of unanswered questions. This collection answers nearly all of them so elegantly that it should be required reading for any revolutionary. One thread weaving through the whole collection so far is that we have been so effectively propagandized by law enforcement and the state, that we fail to recognize the assumptions about the validity of police and prisons to be just that-- assumptions, without meaningful proof.

I'm looking forward to finishing this and hopefully writing up something about what I'm taking away from it.

I've harbored a feeling for a while that the pithy dialogue in these books could easily become smarmy. It smacks of the linear descent in Aaron Sorkin's writing from A Few Good Men, one of the greatest movies ever made, to The Newsroom, which is a festering turd of a TV series. It hasn't gotten that bad with this series but the writers better get their act together in the next novel.

For the first time in this book series it felt I was being primed for a sequel at the cost of the current storyline. And that feels a bit exploitative.

Ah well, the need for closure in fictional universes is one of my addictions so I'll shove on hoping that the next one is worth it.

I have never seen and related to a leftist organizer's outlook on people so thoroughly as Kaba in the section entitled "Hope Is a Discipline":

"You can just care for yourself and your community in tandem, and that can actually be much more healthy for you, by the way. Because all this internalized reflection is not good for people. Yes, think about yourself, reflect on your practice, okay. But then you need to test it in the world; you’ve got to be with people. That’s important. And I hate people! So I say that as somebody who actually is really antisocial. [Wilson and Sonenstein laugh]

I don’t want to socialize in that kind of way, but I do want to be social with other folks as it relates to collectivizing care.”

Half way through this classic for the first time and the common refrains I hear from Trotskyists in my life finally have some meaningful context behind them. I'll need time to digest but I feel like I finally understand the rationale that seemed quite arbitrary before. More complete review to follow!