Mass Incarceration

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.

NY Inmates Sue Rikers Over Solitary Confinement Rollover Minutes

November 1, 2014 RYOT, www.ryot.org Resist! Law, Mass Incarceration, Solitary Confinement

NEW YORK (AP) — Inmates held in solitary confinement at Rikers Island as punishment for violations during previous stints in jail are suing to stop the practice, known as owed time. A class action lawsuit filed Thursday in Manhattan federal court says inmates are unduly placed in 23-hour confinement for breaking jailhouse rules in previous detentions, sometimes years earlier. For example, if an inmate is sentenced to a month in solitary confinement but is released or transferred before completing it, he can be forced to serve the remaining time during his next incarceration. The practice, which experts say is unique to New York City, is described in the lawsuit as arbitrary and unfair because it doesn’t allow for a hearing or other rights normally afforded under the internal disciplinary process.

A Mother Protests Solitary Confinement

October 31, 2014 Victoria Law, www.wagingnonviolence.org Resist! California, Mass Incarceration, Solitary Confinement

By 2011, SHU prisoners had had enough. They declared a hunger strike, demanding an end to these policies and conditions. Over a thousand people, including Johnny, joined in. Although not the first time SHU prisoners have gone on hunger strike, this particular call came at a time when prison organizing was intensifying. Less than a year earlier, in December 2010, people in a dozen Georgia prisons united across racial lines to go on work strike. Their demands included wages for their labor, educational opportunities, decent health care, nutritious meals and improved living conditions. In Illinois, activists were on the verge of closing the notorious Tamms prison, where men spent years in extreme isolation. Across the nation, lawsuits against inhumane prison conditions were filed — and won.

Time Served For Barrett Brown

October 30, 2014 Free Barrett Brown, www.freebarrettbrown.com Organize! Journalism, Law, Mass Incarceration, political prisoners

We’re making an appeal to Judge Lindsay to apply leniency and sentence Barrett Brown to time served, and we could use your help. Brown is a talented journalist who accepts responsibility for his charged conduct. He was originally charged with sharing a hyperlink to stolen information, and after that was dropped, he pled guilty to hiding his laptops, transmitting a threat, and accessory after the fact to an unauthorized access to a protected computer. He is now facing 8.5 years maximum in prison. When he is sentencedon November 24th, he will have already spent over two years in jail. Given the nature of his crimes and the lack of tangible harm resulting from them, we feel that it’s past time to let him go.

Political Prisoners In The Sacrifice Zone Of Empire

October 28, 2014 Nozomi Hayase, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Human Rights, Mass Incarceration, Political Prisoner, Solitary Confinement

Abu-Jamal and Hammond, two men with very different backgrounds share much in common. Both were placed in prolonged solitary confinement, which the UN Special Rapporteur on torture called “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and may amount to torture.” Since his arrest in March 2010, Hammond was regularly cut off from contact with his friends and family and was more than once in solitary. Abu-Jamal has spent the last 30 years in prison, almost all of it in solitary confinement on Pennsylvania’s death row before prosecutors agreed in 2011 to reduce the sentence. They both have always held strong commitment to social justice. Hammond revealed secret collusion of corporations and the state to engage in unconstitutional spying on human rights activists.

Policing Isn’t A Solution For Youth In Baltimore

October 28, 2014 Angel Elliot and Bart Lubow, www.therealnews.com Educate! Education, Mass Incarceration, police brutality, Racial Justice

We have essentially two sets of youth policies in Baltimore, as is true in most large urban settings. We have a group of policies that are aimed at kids who we think are causing trouble or are likely to get into trouble, and then we have policies that apply to the rest of youth and that provide them with opportunities for development that all of us would like to see all children have. And we've got to somehow reconcile the fact that we have these two systems, one that affects primarily kids of color from the poorest of our communities, and the other that apply to the more privileged kids, and especially to white kids. So the first question is: are we providing all children with the right set of opportunities for them to grow in healthy ways?

Ferguson and Beyond – Next Steps to End Police Brutality

October 27, 2014 Staff, www.clearingthefogradio.org Strategize! Ferguson, Mass Incarceration, Michael Brown, Police abuse, police brutality, police murder, Racism

This edition of Clearing The FOG Radio, co-hosted by Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, focuses on where the movement against police abuse is going. With the decision of the grand jury possible any day now, and the likely result being no indictment according to law enforcement leaks to the press, how should the people of Ferguson and the nation react? What would be a constructive to response for the lack of justice for Michael Brown? And, what should the movement be demanding. In the first half hour two guests who have worked in Ferguson as part of the movement for justice for Michael Brown discuss next steps, the mood of the community and how those of us outside Ferguson can help. In the second half hour, two African American activists in Washington, DC and New York City comment on the situation, not only in Ferguson but regarding police abuse nationally. In DC, Kymone Freeman has been part of the #DCFerguson coalition and in NYC, Glenn Ford long-time commentator on African American issues and editor of Black Agenda Report comments. Ford proposes that rather than "community policing" we need "community controlled policing" that includes the ability of communities to remove officers who are racist or abusive.

Union Federation Gets Vocal On Harsh Prison Sentencing

October 22, 2014 Dave Jamieson, www.huffingtonpost.com Organize! Human Rights, Labor Unions, Mass Incarceration, police brutality

Backers of a California ballot measure that would release thousands of non-violent prisoners have found a surprisingly enthusiastic ally in their fight: the nation's largest federation of labor unions. On Friday, Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, is expected to deliver a speech in Los Angeles offering robust support for Proposition 47, a proposal that would reduce the penalties for simple drug possession and shoplifting. According to his prepared remarks provided to The Huffington Post, Trumka will declare that mass incarceration is a "labor issue" and that unions need to join other progressives in pressing for reform. "It's a labor issue because mass incarceration means literally millions of people work jobs in prisons for pennies an hour -- a hidden world of coerced labor here in the United States," Trumka's remarks read. "It's a labor issue because those same people who work for pennies in prison, once they have served their time, find themselves locked out of the job market by employers who screen applicants for felony convictions."

National Day To Stop Criminalization Of A Generation

October 21, 2014 Steven Yip, www.stopmassincarceration.org Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Mass Incarceration, Police abuse, Youth

Protests on October 22 against intensified police killings, tortuous conditions being inflicted on tens of thousands of incarcerated people, and young people treated like criminals, guilty until proven innocent if they can survive to prove their innocence, will mark 19 years of the annual National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation. Continuing defiant protests in Ferguson, MO, in response to the police killing of Michael Brown are part of heightened resistance to police murder all across the country. Against this backdrop, people in more than 38 cities across the U.S. are planning to take to the streets and act in other ways on Wednesday. The Organization for Black Struggle has called for civil disobedience outside the jail where people arrested in Ferguson have been imprisoned.

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