Mass Incarceration

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.

5 Arrested In Lumpkin During Stewart Detention Center Protest

November 24, 2014 Naomi Keitt, www.wrbl.com Resist! Human Rights, ICE, Mass Incarceration

Five human rights activists were arrested Saturday morning as they protested at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin. For 8 years, hundreds of protesters have called for the closure of one the largest immigrant detention centers in the country. This year, five activists were arrested trying to get their voices heard. It was a silent message that spoke volumes as five activists crossed a restricted line and were arrested in Lumpkin Saturday morning. One of those activists was Anton Flores. "Right now in the United States, there are 34,000 immigrants that are detained in detention centers around the United States. We want to see that number decrease and we want to see this facility shut down," said Anton Flores.

On Trial For Protesting Solitary Confinement

November 14, 2014 Victoria Law, www.solitarywatch.com Resist! Human Rights, Mass Incarceration, Solitary Confinement

Are people in prison allowed to stand up for their rights? Or does all organized resistance to inhumane prison conditions amount to rioting? Five men—Andre Jacobs, Carrington Keys, Anthony Locke, Duane Peters and Derrick Stanley—will stand trial in a case that may determine how Pennsylvania’s justice system answer that question. The trial was scheduled to begin today, but the court issued a continuance until February 17. All five had been held at the Restricted Housing Unit (RHU) at SCI-Dallas, a prison in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. In the RHU, men are locked into their cell for nearly 24 hours a day. People can be sent to the RHU for violating prison rules, including various nonviolent infractions.

Californians Vote To Weaken Mass Incarceration

November 11, 2014 Matt Ford, www.theatlantic.com Educate! California, Elections, Law, Mass Incarceration

California's Proposition 47 wasn't one of the most followed votes in Tuesday's midterm election, but it could change thousands of lives soon. Under the ballot initiative, dozens of nonviolent property and drug crimes will be reduced from felonies to misdemeanors, potentially freeing tens of thousands of prisoners. Funds that would have otherwise been spent on their incarceration will now be funneled into mental health and drug-treatment programs. The sentencing-reform measure passed in Tuesday's election with 58 percent of the vote. A large web of donors including California's Catholic bishops, tech-industry giants, and justice-reform groups contributed to its passage; prominent supporters of the measure ranged from Jay-Z to Newt Gingrich.

Dallas 6: Torture & Retaliation Against Prisoner Whistleblowers

November 7, 2014 Shandre Delaney, www.truth-out.org Educate! Human Rights, Mass Incarceration, Prisons

Imagine sitting in a windowless 6-foot by 9-foot room the size of a bathroom for 23 hours a day, unable to communicate with family or anyone on the outside. The lights are on 24/7. The only drinking water you have is brown from rust. You constantly hear mentally ill people screaming and harming themselves. Within days of this torturous isolation you may begin to feel mental breakdown. Is this Guantánamo? Abu Ghraib? A torture chamber in some distant land? A torture chamber, yes, but a homegrown one. This is solitary confinement in a state prison near you. The United States has many like the one in Dallas, Pennsylvania, a modern day dungeon, which imprisons people for years to face abuse and violence out of public view by guards paid with our tax dollars. But men inside also defend themselves and, even locked within their cells, try to fight back. One of those men was my son Carrington Keys.

Man Released From Guantanamo After 13 Years Without Charge

November 7, 2014 Andrea Germanos, www.commondreams.org Educate! Guantanamo Bay, Kuwait, Mass Incarceration

A man held at the Guantánamo Bay prison for nearly 13 years without charge has been transferred to his home country of Kuwait. The Department of Defense made the announcement of his release Wednesday. Thirty-seven-year-old Fawzi al Odah is the first man to be released based on the assessment of the Periodic Review Board, a body established in 2011 through an executive order and tasked with evaluating the merits of ongoing detention for Guantánamo prisoners. Agence France-Presse reports that in 2001, Odah "was seized by tribesmen in northern Pakistan, who sold him to the Pakistani army, which in turn handed him over to the United States." The transfer agreement requires al Odah to spend at least a year at a rehabilitation facility, according to reporting by the Associated Press.

Rev. Pinkney Convicted, Threatened With Life In Prison

November 6, 2014 Glen Ford, www.blackagendareport.com Educate! Mass Incarceration, Political Prisoner, Racial Justice

Rev. Edward Pinkney, the 66-year-old community activist who has battled for decades on behalf of the mostly Black population of Benton Harbor, Michigan, was this week convicted on five counts of forging the dates of some signatures on a petition to recall the town’s mayor. The Berrien County jury was all-white. So was the judge and the prosecutor. Each of the felony counts carries a maximum five year sentence, but prosecutor Mike Sepic is calling for a life prison term on the grounds that Rev. Pinkney “has at least three prior felony convictions” – all of them stemming from his nonviolent resistance to white supremacy and the rule of the rich. Rev. Pinkney’s nemesis – the rich entity that rules in Berrien County – is Whirlpool, the giant corporation that once employed lots of Black people in low-wage positions at its Benton Harbor headquarters, but now wants them gone, so that the land on which the town sits on the shores of Lake Michigan can be put to more luxurious and profitable uses.

The Stories Of Eighty-Nine People Killed By Chicago Police

November 1, 2014 Kevin Gosztola, www.dissenter.firedoglake.com Educate! Chicago, Mass Incarceration, police brutality, Police the Police

The Chicago Police Department shot over three hundred people in the past five years. In that same time span, 89 people were killed, and a grassroots organization led by youth of color in Chicago is calling attention to the stories of eleven of the individuals who were killed and also one who survived. The organization, We Charge Genocide (WCG), started in June to document human rights abuses by Chicago police. They prepared a report that would be presented to the UN Committee Against Torture in Geneva as part of a periodic review process of which signatories to the Convention Against Torture (CAT) participate. The name of the organization comes from a petition submitted by the Civil Rights Congress in 1951. The petition documented 153 racial killings and other human rights abuses that had been mostly committed by police.

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