Why did Rev. Simmons attack J.B. Davis? Is there animosity and division between the two? After last meeting, I suspect the answer is yes. At first glance, J.B. and Rev. Simmons have the same project: to represent the best interest of the most dispossessed people in the most dispossessed area(s) of the city. Although I am very cynical of Simmons, I discount racism having anything to do with her animosity toward Davis because her husband and many of the people she represent are black. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that Simmons holds some degree of animosity because Davis is Muslim/Nation of Islam. What fundamentally divides them, I believe, is their strategy for political action. As of late this divide has manifested itself in the strategy for responding to the crime issue. Although their strategies are polemical, they raise many important issues.

Simmons wants justice in a community where a Hobbsian war-of-all-against-all reigns. She assumes that adding more police and heavier policing is the way of ensuring safety and justice for Scranton’s social junk. Despite the fears of working/middle/upper-class whites that are scared to leave their homes because of the (seemingly) never-ending increase in crime, the dispossessed people Catherine represents are FAR more likely to be a victim of a violent crime. They are most likely to feel that the police work against them—thus, partly explaining why so many of them are distrustful of legitimate justice and resort to vigilante justice. And as crazy as it sounds, the poor people Catherine represents are more likely to suffer property crime! In other words, crime in the city is ‘uneven.’ It is uncontested that crime most likely occurs in poor, neglected and disintegrated neighborhoods and the urban outcasts are the ones most affected. This is not to suggest that there are parts of the city where there is no crime: crime is everywhere. Furthermore, it is the political crisis, political challengers (Gattelli), moral entrepreneurs (Simmons) and the anti-crime populism that is finally illuminating crime that always existed.

Paradoxically, the people policed the most experience the most injustices. The injustices they experience in Scranton vary from such things as extreme difficulty obtaining employment to bad run-ins with police. Lets face it folks: police do not treat people from Minooka or Greenridge the same way as they do people from Hill Top or Valley View. Hoity-toity whiteys from Minooka and Greenridge do not get targeted like poor blacks in South Scranton. J.B. knows this (probably from experience) and this is why he asserts that more police/heavier policing is not the answer. The so-called problem population has always been heavily policed! Most importantly, police are only uncovering crime in select areas; they’re NOT preventing it. To reiterate a point I’ve made in a previous post: if there is a relationship between the number of police per person and crime then upper-class citizens of Sao Paulo, Brazil wouldn’t prefer to live in fortified enclaves and hire private police forces.
The issue for Davis is the lack of ‘social capital’ and solidarity in dispossessed communities. Children of these communities do not have the cultural capital (dress, mannerisms, customs) and social networks. We’re quick to label the U of S the ‘Harvard of the N.E.’ since U of S graduates land great jobs. The problem is that we discount the fact that these graduates have social and cultural capital and access to social networks before they even started college. Ask yourself this question: Did Kevin Murphy land a state job and a seat on city council because he’s smart and a graduate from U of S (Although I might be wrong about Kevin graduating from U of S) or because he was born into the Irish Catholic Network? My point is that the lack of social and cultural capital is reproducing the class structure and feeding carceral Keynesianism. We’ve blamed the poor for their own strife, blamed ‘Sister Sneakers’ for drawing them here, and worst of all we have de-politicized the devastation that capitalist restructuring (de-industrialization of the United States) since the 1970’s has had on communities.

Community solidarity is destroyed in many areas. Crime and the fear of crime have legitimized heavy policing and the iron hand of force. It’s been a race to the bottom: neighbors are becoming the eyes and ears for police and police are the eyes and ears for protected criminals and drug dealers. Davis and his band of brothers are responding by forming what Karl Polanyi calls a “double-movement.” As the unfettered economy devastates, communities respond and try to rebuild. Davis has the right idea in that instead of criminalizing the suspected gang members and other undesirables by snitching to the police, leaders of the community organize citizens to deal with the problems. Japan is praised for this model of community policing and its extremely low rate of incarceration. Japan’s model is referred to as “re-integrative shaming” and there is an extensive literature on it. The people that violate rules are actually considered neighbors and members of the community—not aliens that penetrate and spread evil. If people are expected to respect their community they must be a part of it in the first place. Davis and his homeboys, according to Davis himself, try to prevent the problems. Remember the days when the school administrators dealt with problems without the helpless help of police and the juvenile court system? The idea is to let the community (not neighborhood snitch organizations) police the community because the police have proven time and time again to be miserably ineffectual.

Catherine is like most people who subscribe to the talking points of authoritarian populism. She loves Scranton police partly because she believes they’re the homeland’s ‘defenders of freedom’ and they ensure justice and security. Although I praise her for pointing out the unevenness of crime in Scranton, my hunch is that she is gaining power as the community’s moral entrepreneur by exploiting crime and befriending Scranton police. Davis, on the other hand, is saying that it is time the community takes a crack at fixing its problem because the current way of doing things is only creating jobs for prison guards and demand for prison developers. Of course, Catherine’s argument wins because it is so much easier (politically and otherwise) to police the crisis rather than diffuse it.