Mass Incarceration

Read Mumia

July 13, 2015 David Swanson, www.davidswanson.org Educate! Education, Free Mumia, Liberation, Mass Incarceration, Media, Pennsylvania, Torture

By David Swanson - Yes, I also want to say Free Mumia. In fact, I want to say Free all the prisoners. Turn the prison holding Mumia Abu-Jamal into a school and make him dean. And if you won't free all the prisoners, free one who has been punished to a level that ought to satisfy any retributive scheme for any crime he might have committed. And if you won't do that, free him because he was put into prison by a fraudulent and corrupt trial that hid as much evidence as it revealed, and fabricated the latter. More importantly, Read Mumia. His new book is calledWriting on the Wall: Selected Prison Writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and it includes commentaries by Mumia from 1982 through 2014. Mumia went ahead and made his prison a school -- a school in history, in politics, and in morality. And his own moral teaching is primarily by example.

Cops Hold Tasers To Lakota Protesters Stopping Beer Trucks

July 11, 2015 Sarah Burris, www.alternet.org Resist! Indigenous People, Mass Incarceration, Nebraska, police brutality

By Sarah Burris in Alternet - The town sells approximately 5 million cans of beer annually. Protesters have been camping around the clock for weeks holding vigils and doing blockades of the liquor store's delivery trucks. Last week, following a training and workshop, Lakota people took their civil disobedience to a new level with a greater presence and protest of the beer distributors. Bryan V. Brewer, Sr., president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, joined the crowd marching down the road toward White Clay as the beer trucks arrived. "As leaders we should be ahead of the people," he said. "We need to support our activists who are stepping up and confronting this issue." He was quickly arrested by Sheridan County Sheriff Terry Robbins.

2 Yrs After Hunger Strike, What’s Changed For People Inside The Prison?

July 9, 2015 Victoria Law, www.truth-out.org Resist! Calidornia, Hunger Strike, Mass Incarceration, Prison

By Victoria Law in TruthDig - Two years have passed since people confined in California's Pelican Bay State Prison initiated a 60-day hunger strike to protest the conditions associated with the prison's "security housing unit," or SHU. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) continues to claim that "there is no 'solitary confinement' in California's prisons and the SHU is not 'solitary confinement,'" but people inside the Pelican Bay State Prison's security housing unit say they remain locked in for at least 23 hours per day. Meanwhile, in June 2015, the CDCR released proposed new regulations around its use of the security housing unit and administrative segregation - regulations that may, in part, curb participation in future strikes and other prison protests.

12 Corporations Benefit From Prison Industrial Complex

July 7, 2015 Rick Riley, www.atlantablackstar.com Educate! Capitalism, Finance and the Economy, Labor, Mass Incarceration, Prison

By Rick Riley in Atlanta Black Star - According to the Left Business Observer, “the federal prison industry produces 100 percent of all military helmets, war supplies and other equipment. The workers supply 98 percent of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93 percent of paints and paintbrushes; 92 percent of stove assembly; 46 percent of body armor; 36 percent of home appliances; 30 percent of headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21 percent of office furniture. Airplane parts, medical supplies and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people.” With all of that productivity, the inmates make about 90 cents to $4 a day. Here are some of the biggest corporations to use such practices, but there are hundreds more. . .

Inmate Claims He Escaped Jail To Get Surgery

July 6, 2015 CNN Wire, www.kdvr.com Educate! health, Mass Incarceration, Tennessee, Torture

By CNN Wire in KDVR - A Tennessee prisoner claims he was so desperate and in so much pain that his only choice was to escape from jail, acording to WSMV-TV. Don Robin White Jr. said he escaped from jail to get surgery. White has previous drug and theft charges and was put in jail last month for violating probation. “I should never have done it, but I got two kids, and I wasn’t gonna lie back there and die,” he said. White said he was suffering from a hernia before he was even booked into the Trousdale County jail. “When I walked in, I had my papers showing I had to have surgery, and nobody ever helped me,” he said. As days went on, White said it kept getting worse, and he kept asking for help. He claims he submitted three or four medical requests and that the guards also submitted a couple.

Twenty-First Century Barbarism

July 6, 2015 Marlene Martin, www.informationclearinghouse.info Educate! Mass Incarceration, Torture

By Marlene Martin in Information Clearing House - It is a wet, dreary day in Chicago when a group of thirty-five people gather at Precious Blood Church on the southwest side of Chicago to make the long drive to Menard Correctional Center. The prison is at the southern end of the state, a six- or seven-hour drive from Chicago, depending on traffic. Julie Anderson has made the trip, on her own, with a friend or with her husband, five times a month — the maximum number of visits a prisoner is allowed — every month for the past twenty years. Her son Eric was fifteen when he was convicted of a double homicide and given a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. “I never knew my life was going to be like this,” Julie tells me. “What I once thought of the criminal justice system has completely changed. I used to believe in it — I don’t anymore.”

LGBT Immigrant Rights Protesters Arrested Near White House

July 2, 2015 Dhyana Taylor and Jacob Kerr, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Immigrant Rights, LGBTQ, Mass Incarceration, Patriarchy, Torture

By Dhyana Taylor and Jacob Kerr In Huffington Post - Six LGBT immigrant rights activists were arrested Tuesday after blocking a street near the White House to protest the Obama administration's treatment of LGBT immigrants in detention. Protesters, organized by advocacy group United We Dream, took turns criticizing Obama administration detention policies as some participants linked themselves with chains or lay in the street and blocked traffic. “We are asking President Obama to free all LGBT people from detention because detention is not protecting them. Detention is brutalizing them,” said Brooke Cerda-Guzmán, an undocumented transgender woman who was arrested. The protest came a week after an undocumented transgender woman was kicked outof the White House for heckling President Barack Obama about immigrant detention.

Santa Cruz Supports Statewide Coordinated Actions To End Solitary Confinement

June 25, 2015 Bradley Allen, www.bradleyallen.net Resist! California, Mass Incarceration, Prisons

Over 14,000 people in California prisons, and 80,000 in the United States on any given day, are kept alone in steel and concrete cells the size of a parking space, with no fresh air or sunlight, for years and decades, some over 40 years. Many more are in solitary confinement in jails, juvenile facilities, and detention centers. Activists gathered on June 23 outside the Santa Cruz Post Office to expose and end the torture of solitary confinement in all lock-ups, in Santa Cruz County, statewide, nationwide, and worldwide. On the 23rd of each month, since March 23, 2015, Statewide Coordinated Actions To End Solitary Confinement (SCATESC) are held in cities throughout California.

200 Detainees Stage Hunger Strike At Eloy Detention Center

June 18, 2015 Phil Benson, www.kpho.com Resist! Hunger Strike, Immigration, Mass Incarceration

By Phil Benson in KPHO - More than 200 immigrant detainees launched a hunger strike Saturday at the Eloy Detention Center. At 9:45 a.m., the men sat down in the recreation yard and declared a hunger strike over what they call brutal and inhumane conditions, according to grassroots justice organization Puente Arizona. Protesters stood outside the detention facility all day Saturday, holding signs to show their solidarity with the strikers. The group said it is demanding improved conditions, access to legal resources and court hearings and an independent investigation into two recent deaths after what it calls “guard abuse.” "The deaths of these two men has triggered outrage of people that have nothing but their bodies as a way to demand justice,” supporter Francisca Porchas said.

New York City Council Restricts Use Of Criminal Records In Hiring

June 18, 2015 Christopher Mathias, www.huffingtonpost.com Create! Mass Incarceration, New York City (NYC), Politics, Worker Rights and Jobs

By Christopher Mathias in Huffington Post - Carl Stubbs, 63, stood outside New York City Council chambers Wednesday in anticipation of the council’s vote on the Fair Chance Act -- a bill that would delay when many of the city’s private sector employers can ask job applicants about their criminal history. “I feel [that] being black, having a felony, you don’t get hired,” he told The Huffington Post. “I have had a felony for over 30 years.” Stubbs, who’s also an activist with the group Voices of Community Activists Leaders (VOCAL-NY), wanted the bill to pass because it could improve his chances getting a job. “I would love to go back to work,” he said. Earlier, Piper Kerman, author of the memoir-turned-hit-Netflix-series Orange Is The New Black, offered her support of the bill.

End All Youth Detention & Torture At Rikers Island Now

June 15, 2015 Marian Wright Edelman, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Criminal Justice, Mass Incarceration, mental health, Torture

By Marian Wright Edelman in Huffington Post - Nobody of any age should be held in jail without a trial for three years. No child or adolescent should be held in an adult jail. No child or youth should be housed in facilities where those entrusted to care for them violently assault them. Yet, a 16-year-old accused of stealing a backpack was kept in one of the most violent adult jails in the United States, Rikers Island in New York City, for three years without a trial. This was morally scandalous and inhumane. Even worse, he spent more than two years of that time in solitary confinement, locked up alone except to go to the shower, the recreation area, the visit room or the medical clinic. This was torture. The suicide of 22-year-old Kalief Browder on June 6, barely two years after his release and return home, was the final horror in his tragic and brutal journey into the depths of the adult criminal justice system in New York City and state.

The Plight Of Guantánamo’s Best-Selling Author Worsens

June 11, 2015 Hina Shamsi, www.aclu.org Resist! Guantanamo, Law, Mass Incarceration, Political Prisoner, Wars and Militarism

By Hina Shamsi in ACLU - Mohamedou Ould Slahi's 13th year of captivity in Guantánamo has been remarkable in many ways. "Guantánamo Diary," his story of torture and unlawful detention by the United States, was finally published and has become a best-seller, earning rave reviews around the world and a Hollywood movie deal. Readers continue to marvel at a book that's been called a "masterpiece" and "literary magic," written by a man whose "unfailing humanity is the constant thread throughout." Celebrities like Jude Law and Benedict Cumberbatch are reading Mohamedou's work for a global audience. Almost 50,000 people have signed the ACLU's petition calling for his freedom. But Mohamedou's despair only grows, because the Obama administration is still denying this innocent man what he most urgently needs: freedom.

Black Panther Ordered Released After 40 Yrs In Solitary Confinement

June 9, 2015 Cain Burdeau, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Black Panther, Mass Incarceration, Political Prisoner, Racial Justice

By Cain Burdeau in Huffington Post - The last of the "Angola Three" inmates, whose decades in solitary confinement on a Louisiana prison farm drew international condemnation and became the subject of two documentaries, was ordered released Monday. The ruling would free 68-year-old Albert Woodfox after more than 40 years in solitary, which human rights experts have said constitutes torture. U.S. District Judge James Brady of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, ordered the release of Woodfox and took the extraordinary step of barring Louisiana prosecutors from trying him for a third time. A spokesman for the Louisiana attorney general said the state would appeal Brady's ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals "to make sure this murderer stays in prison and remains fully accountable for his actions."

Man Who Spent 3 Yrs In Rikers Island Jail W/o Trial Commits Suicide

June 9, 2015 Ben Mathis-Lilley, www.slate.com Educate! Criminal Justice, Death and dying, health, Mass Incarceration

In 2014, New Yorker writer Jen Gonnerman reported on the case of Kalief Browder, who was 16 when he was detained at New York City's Rikers Island jail on theft charges—and 19 when he was released three years later, in 2013, without ever having been tried for the crime. An April 2015 follow-up post included video of Browder, who spent a total of two years in solitary confinement during his "term," being beaten by a guard and by a group of inmates. On Sunday, Gonnerman reported that Browder, who had attempted suicide at least twice before, had killed himself. Staggeringly, Browder's experience—being jailed for a period of years at Rikers without trial—seems to be quite common.

The Real Experts In Criminal Justice Reform

May 26, 2015 Glenn E. Martin, www.nccdglobal.org Create! Criminal Justice, Law, Leadership, Mass Incarceration, Poverty, Social Change

I was first bound by handcuffs in 1995, and though I haven’t known their debilitating grip for years, the hypocrisy and destructiveness of our criminal justice system has remained with me ever since. When exiting the belly of the beast, my vision was crystal clear, even if my path was uncertain. Throughout my adolescence, strife was a familiar companion: poverty, crime, meager public support, and violence predictably culminated in a term of incarceration. After leaving prison, like the other 650,000 people who exit each year, I faced barriers to employment, enfranchisement, education, and equality, both mirroring and intensifying the challenges of my youth. I found opportunity in the advocacy world. There, I was valued for my professional skills, but also for the unique perspective that I brought to the work as someone directly impacted. I began to gain national attention as a staunch advocate for reform.

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