Erica R. Meiners - Right to Be Hostile: Schools, Prisons, and the Making of Public Enemies

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This book was shaped through a number of projects and by working along-side people. Without the support and the challenges of these encounters and movements this book would not have been possible.

I thank the participants, teachers, and other community members at the St. Leonards Adult High School that I have worked with over the last six years for their humor, commitment, and labor including Mary Zangs, Kevin Glover, Robyn Clark, Renny Golden, Ajitha Reddy, James Hoskins, Bob Dougherty, Ken Addison, David Rutschman, Carla Lewis, Tanitha Dale, Willie Sallie, Roberto Sanabria, T. Manning, Mike Fitzgerald, Jitu Brown, and more recently, Mary Bandstra, Phyllis Porche, Eric Reyes, Karen Biegel, Erica Brown, Toussaint Losier, and Shelley Bannister. This community has been invaluable and sustaining, in particular Jean (Patricia) Hughes, who continues to show me that pragmatism can be radical and visionary and also full of humor and grace.

A number of other organizations in Chicago continue to be places where I learn, and all kinds of change happens, including Beyondmedia Education, Critical Resistance, Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers (CLAIM), and the Coalition for Education on Sexual Orientation (CESO). In addition, I have learned from people who resist prisons in a variety of ways including Yaki, Naoma Dye, Joanne Archibald, and Shaena Fazal.

I benefited from opportunities to workshop parts of this project in 2006. Specific thanks to Stephen Hartnett, Alison Bailey, Dawn Beichner, Char Hill, and the Education Graduate Student Association at Simon Fraser University, and to Leslie Bloom and Valerie Polakow. I thank David Gillborn and Bill Pinar for their support of my academic work over the years.

Therese Quinn, Leslie Bloom, Suzanne de Castell, and Ken Addison all offered smart feedback on parts of this manuscript as did reviewers from Routledge/Falmer and Susan Seals Giroux. If I did not take their suggestions, it is all my error, but their contributions enhanced this project. In addition, Catherine Bernard offered many generous but firm suggestions that improved the book, and, with kindness, Prudy Taylor Board and the staff made my writing better. Wajiha Khan and Anne Seveska provided invaluable research and bibliographic assistance.

Tim Barnett, and then Tyler Barnett Steinkamp, Scott Steinkamp, and now Erik Bataller, Mollie Dowling, and Nic McClellend make a joyously chaotic queer household. David Feiner and Laura Wiley continue to illustrate the value of a fierce, risky love and that art can be astonishing. Conversations and friendships with many made this project possible: Megan Bangs, Katherine Biers, Salome Chasnoff, Chris Cuomo, Marvin Garcia, Fong Hermes and family, Derrick Higginbotham, Nicole Holland, Francisco Ibez-Carrasco, Jodi Jensen, Katherine Lieber, Eleni Makris, Cage McCall, Fran Royster, Ann Russo, Karen Schlanger, Susan Tilley, Joan Varney, and Dave Stovall. Denise Meiners and Elena, Heather, Holly May and Stacia Middlemass continue to remind me of where I come from and the possibilities the future holds. Laurie Fuller offered her editing prowess, critical questions, reminders to get over myself, and crazy love.

This book is written in the early morning hours before my paid job at the university, before teaching, or when I place a note on my office door that I am in a conference call. I write between other commitments I have outside the university, on public transit, at the coffee shop on those beautiful mornings I am free, in my red room when there are no friends, or friends of friends, sleeping. I write this not to be special. I know people who are far busier than I, including my sister who has a traditional 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. job with less than two weeks of vacation a year. I am sure readers have similar, if not more compelling, constraints. My plea is not that I am special or extra busy, but rather this work is partial, and it reflects on going commitments to people and to projects that are always in progress. I fully expect and want next year to have new questions, to take new risks, and to learn more.

Finally, this book is for those hundreds of men and women with whom I have interacted who struggle to survive and to flourish and to make political and personal change amidst systems designed to annihilate.