Privatization: What Money Buys in the Trump Era

• In Event: The Expanding Terrain of Violence Against Women:   Feminist Perspectives on the 2016 Presidential Election and Beyond

Abstract

When billionaires are elected to lead the country for a term, few things are certain about the future of this country except that poor people won’t be able to afford it. Research has confirmed that the richer the upper class has become, the more the underclass has grown. In their best-selling text by a similar title, Jeffrey Reiman and Paul Leighton (2017), for example, describe how poor people are disadvantaged from start to finish by a system of justice that requires money for a chance at innocence. Private prisons will certainly benefit, then, from that desperation. And while Betsy DeVos, Trump-appointed Secretary of Education, seeks “vouchers” as a form of payment for even secondary education, the incredible increase in the privatization of education has also begun, replete with staggering numbers of children of color who are being targeted for suspension in as early as the 3rd grade. What purpose could the suspension of a 3rd grader possibly serve but to attempt to funnel those children into newly-constructed private prisons one day? This paper will examine these issues from an intersectional perspective with some recommendations for how to slow the encroachment of this official plutocracy.

Author

• Allison M. Cotton, Metropolitan State University of Denver