Mass Incarceration

Radical Farmers Use Fresh Food To Fight The New Jim Crow

February 7, 2015 Leah Penniman, www.yesmagazine.org Create! Food and Agriculture, Mass Incarceration, Racial Justice

In August, five young men showed up at Soul Fire Farm, a sustainable farm near Albany, New York, where I work as educator and food justice coordinator. It was the first day of a new restorative justice program, in partnership with the county’s Department of Law. The teens had been convicted of theft, and, as an alternative to incarceration, chose this opportunity to earn money to pay back their victims while gaining farm skills. They looked wary and unprepared, with gleaming sneakers and averted eyes. “I basically expected it to be like slavery, but it would be better than jail,” said a young man named Asan. “It was different though. We got paid and we got to bring food home. The farmers there are black like us, which I did not expect."

Marissa Alexander Released From Prison

January 28, 2015 Free Marissa Now, www.freemarissanow.org Educate! Law, Mass Incarceration, Racial Justice

“We are thrilled that Marissa will finally be reunited with her children, her family, and her community,” said Sumayya Coleman, co-lead of the Free Marissa Now Mobilization Campaign. “Today’s hearing revealed that Marissa intends to attend school to become a paralegal and she is a wonderful mother to her children who urgently need her. Amazingly, the State continued their campaign of punishment by trying to add two more years of probation on top of the two years of house detention included in the plea. Fortunately, they failed. Marissa and her family will need time to begin recovering from this arduous and traumatic experience. It’s been a long and painful journey and, though her release from jail is definitely a win -- no 60 years -- the journey of seeking ultimate freedom is not over.

5 Corporations That Are Making Millions From Mass Incarceration

January 24, 2015 John Kilgore, www.truth-out.org Educate! Mass Incarceration

Likely the most well-known prison profiteers in the United States are the Corrections Corporation of America and The GEO Group. Between them, these two firms pulled in about $3.3 billion last year running scores of private prisons and immigration detention centers. However, these two firms are not alone feasting at the trough of corrections expenditure. Many other companies, most of them off the popular radar, are also benefiting from epidemic prison and jail building. Some may even be even operating in your neighborhood. Here we'll do a quick sketch of five such companies, outline their activities, ponder their deeds of infamy, and reflect a little on how to curtail their profiteering.

Injustice At The Intersection

January 20, 2015 Benjamin Ross, www.dissentmagazine.org Create! Criminal Justice, Law, Mass Incarceration, Racial Justice

Raquel Nelson’s troubles didn’t end there. In the wake of her son’s death, she was charged with vehicular homicide because, with three young children and an armful of groceries, she chose not to walk a third of a mile to the nearest marked crosswalk. A jury whose members never ride local buses found Nelson guilty of a crime whose true perpetrators were poverty and traffic engineering. She nearly went to jail, but after a national outcry, the judge reversed her conviction. She ultimately paid a $200 fine for jaywalking. The death of another young black man this summer has made the setting of these events familiar. Like Ferguson, Missouri, the run-down corner of Cobb County, Georgia, where A.J. Newman was killed is a declining inner suburb.

2014: The Year The American Justice System Officially Died

January 1, 2015 Carey Wedler, www.theantimedia.org Educate! Criminal Justice, Law, Mass Incarceration, Racial Justice, Social Change

In 2014, the problem of police brutality forced itself to the forefront of the national conversation following the brutal killing of Americans at the hands of the police. This increased attention has been a success for activists from all walks of life and for the well-being of citizens. The problem of racism and police murders that involve it is finally receiving widespread acknowledgment and opposition. But as much as the issue of police abuse needs attention, it remains that injustice in America permeates layers of society that transcend law enforcement, race, and problems of direct violence against citizens. Rather, police brutality is a symptom of much deeper decay in the concept and system of “justice” in the United States. In 2015, the fight against police injustice must continue. But that fight must not forget the multitude of other ways that justice is trampled. In fact, if the system is allowed to continue, any small, superficial wins made in the fight against brutality will surely be reversed at the hands of a government whose foundational power is never questioned.

The Prison State Of America

December 31, 2014 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com Educate! Law, Mass Incarceration, police brutality, Racial Justice

Our prison-industrial complex, which holds 2.3 million prisoners, or 25 percent of the world’s prison population, makes money by keeping prisons full. It demands bodies, regardless of color, gender or ethnicity. As the system drains the pool of black bodies, it has begun to incarcerate others. Women—the fastest-growing segment of the prison population—are swelling prisons, as are poor whites in general, Hispanics and immigrants. Prisons are no longer a black-white issue. Prisons are a grotesque manifestation of corporate capitalism. Slavery is legal in prisons under the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States. …” And the massive U.S. prison industry functions like the forced labor camps that have existed in all totalitarian states.

New Year’s Eve Protests Set To Shut Down Major Cities

December 30, 2014 Christopher Agee, www.westernjournalism.com Resist! Mass Incarceration, police brutality

To cap off a year marked by race-based, anti-police demonstrations, a number of activist groups are banding together in an effort to stage significant protests in multiple cities this New Year’s Eve. One New York-based organization is taking the lead by organizing an event in that city scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. at Union Square and continue on to Times Square in time for the New Year countdown. The Stop Mass Incarceration Network has invited nearly 4,000 individuals to attend what it is calling “Rock in the New Year with Resistance to Police Murder” and is encouraging other groups across the U.S. to stage similar protests. In a Facebook description of the demonstration, organizers refer to “Amerikkka” as a nation in which blacks are the victims of “wanton police murder,” an ill that can be remedied only by activism by those ostensibly victimized.

Six Concepts For This Movement’s Continued Political Education

December 26, 2014 Danny Haiphong, www.blackagendareport.com Educate! Imperialism, Language, Mass Incarceration, Revolution, Socialism

Much of my work for Black Agenda Report has focused on an analysis of US imperialism and its relationship to oppressed people in the United States and abroad. Black Agenda Report covers many issues and topics, including the significance of the Obama era, the privatization of education, the Black Mass Incarceration State, Washington's imperialist policy in Africa, and much more. The primary function of independent media is to challenge the dominant narrative promoted by the ruling system around the issues that shape the lives of the oppressed. In this article, I define six revolutionary concepts for organizers, activists, and people struggling against exploitation of man by man. It is my hope that these concepts become popularized through our collective participation in the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the broader struggle for liberation that Black Agenda Report covers weekly.

Davis: Police Violence Takes Us Back To Slavery

December 17, 2014 Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com Educate! Ferguson, Mass Incarceration, police brutality, Rcaial Justice

“There is an unbroken line of police violence in the United States that takes us all the way back to the days of slavery, the aftermath of slavery, the development of the Ku Klux Klan,” says Angela Davis. “There is so much history of this racist violence that simply to bring one person to justice is not going to disturb the whole racist edifice.” “We talked about the fact that people like to point to Obama as an individual and hold him responsible for the madness that has happened. Of course there are things that Obama as an individual might have done better – he might have insisted more on the closing of Guantánamo – but people who invested their hopes in him were approaching the issue of political futures in the wrong way to begin with."

Locking Up Black Dissidents And Punishing The Poor

December 16, 2014 Mumia Abu-Jamal and Johanna Fernández, www.tandfonline.com Educate! Mass Incarceration, police brutality, Racial Justice

This volume is a leap into the abyss that is the American Gulag. Our purpose is to explore the origins of the current system of carceral punishment, which began to mass-incarcerate poor and working-class African Americans and Latinos living in urban centers beginning in the late 1970s. We link the new characteristics of imprisonment as it then emerged to the campaign of state repression unleashed against the civil rights and black power movements in the 1960s. Some of those imprisoned are veterans of these movements, and are political prisoners. Although this important segment of the prison population remains absent from contemporary public debates on incarceration, the political atmosphere within which ‘60 s black radicals were criminalized is key to understanding the frenzied reaction to the black freedom movement that set the stage for today's hyper-incarceration of poor urban black and brown communities.

The Threat Of Incarceration To Silence Protest

December 13, 2014 Kathy Kelly, www.vcnv.org Resist! CriminalJustice, Law, Mass Incarceration, Prison, Wars and Militarism

On December 10, International Human Rights Day, federal Magistrate Matt Whitworth sentenced me to three months in prison for having crossed the line at a military base that wages drone warfare. The punishment for our attempt to speak on behalf of trapped and desperate people, abroad, will be an opportunity to speak with people trapped by prisons and impoverishment here in the U.S. Our trial was based on a trespass charge incurred on June 1, 2014. Georgia Walker and I were immediately arrested when we stepped onto Missouri’s Whiteman Air Force where pilots fly weaponized drones over Afghanistan and other countries. We carried a loaf of bread and a letter for Brig Gen. Glen D. Van Herck. In court, we testified that we hadn’t acted with criminal intent but had, rather, exercised our First Amendment right (and responsibility) to assemble peaceably for redress of grievance.

Locked Down, Locked Out Cuts To The Heart Of Mass Incarceration

December 12, 2014 Rivera Sun, www.PopularResistance.org Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Mass Incarceration

Locked Down, Locked Out tells the story of the world's largest prison population from the inside. Schenwar gets into the heart and soul of those who have been incarcerated, unflinchingly exploring not only the imprisoned, but also the effects on their parents, siblings, spouses, lovers, and most poignantly, their children. Beginning with Schnewar's sister who struggled with heroin addiction and cycles of incarceration and recounting interactions with a series of imprisoned penpals, Schenwar uses personal stories to flesh out the statistics. In evoking our shared humanity, Locked Down, Locked Out reaches the reader's heart and leaves one irrevocably altered. It is the most gripping book you'll read this year.

A Society Of Captives

December 9, 2014 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com Educate! Genocide, Mass Incarceration, police brutality, Racial Justice

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plans to launch a pilot program in New York City to place body cameras on police officers and conduct training seminars to help them reduce their adrenaline rushes and abusive language, along with the establishment of a less stringent marijuana policy, are merely cosmetic reforms. The killing of Eric Garner in Staten Island was, after all, captured on video. These proposed reforms, like those out of Washington, D.C., fail to address the underlying cause of poverty, state-sponsored murder and the obscene explosion of mass incarceration—the rise of the corporate state and the death of our democracy. Mass acts of civil disobedience, now being carried out across the country, are the only mechanism left that offers hope for systematic legal and judicial reform. We must defy the corporate state, not work with it.

Private Prison Nightmare For Immigrants In Georgia

December 2, 2014 Azadeh N. Shahshahani, www.thehill.com Educate! Human Rights, Hunger Strike, Immigration, Mass Incarceration

Reports are mounting of a living nightmare in Lumpkin, Georgia, at Stewart, a 1,750-bed detention facility housing immigrants facing potential deportation. According to multiple interviews with detained immigrants at Stewart, they are dealing withmaggots in food, improper medical care, sweltering temperatures, and in many cases no communication with staff due to no translators on site. The Corrections Corporation of America operates the facility for profit, adding fuel to an already roaring fire of opposition. While President Obama’s expanded deportation relief is a welcome move—the truth is that without addressing immigration detention, immigrants will continue to suffer horrifying conditions in detention centers.

Mentor Program Helps Children Of Incarcerated Parents Go To College

November 24, 2014 Eleanor J. Bader, www.truth-out.org Create! College, Education, Mass Incarceration

"LearnServe was an after-school program for high school sophomores and juniors who were identified as leaders in their schools and who were also interested in social change," Arrington told Truthout. "We met professionals who worked in different nonprofits. Through them, I realized the impact one individual can have. I saw the passion these individuals put into their work and it lit a fire under me." Later, when LearnServe asked participants to identify an unmet need in their community and then formulate an action plan, including a mission statement and an organizational strategy to address it, Arrington's passion ignited.

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