Prisons

Afrikan Black Coalition Accomplishes UC Prison Divestment!

January 15, 2016 Anthony Williams, www.afrikanblackcoalition.org Resist! #BlackLivesMatter, Black Lives Matter (BLM), California, Divestiture, Prisons

By Anthony Williams for Afrikan Black Coalition. Oakland, CA - After months of research, conversations with the University of California and steady pressure from the Afrikan Black Coalition against the UC’s complicity in the prison industrial complex, ABC confirms that the UC has begun selling all their shares in private prisons. This victory follows an initial November press release from the Afrikan Black Coalition announcing the University of California’s investments in private prisons and a unanimous vote from Black Student Unions calling for divestment from private prisons and their financiers. ABC Political Director, Yoel Haile, states: “This victory is historic and momentous.

NY Eve Parties Planned Outside Of Prisons

December 28, 2015 Staff, www.takepart.com Create! New York (NY), Prisons

By Staff of Take Part - As hundreds of thousands of revelers crowd into Times Square to watch the ball drop on New Year's Eve, a small group less than five miles south will bang drums and pots and pans outside an unlikely venue that couldn't feel farther away: the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Manhattan. The gathering is part of an international day of demonstrations staged every year outside of prisons from Puget Sound to North London to show solidarity with inmates who might not otherwise commemorate the start of a new year.

The Solution Isn’t Kinder, Gentler Prisons

December 21, 2015 Laura Flanders, www.commondreams.org Educate! Criminal Justice, Mandatory Sentencing, Prisons

By Laura Flanders. What got a person locked up – no matter what - in 1790? Piracy. Period. At the birth of the republic mandatory minimum sentences were a rare and targeted thing. Attacking and robbing ships at sea got you life, no ifs, ands or buts. What gets you a mandatory minimum sentence today? Any one of 261 different crimes. It wasn’t until the 1980s, that Congress started passing mandatory minimum’s left and right, and we do mean Left and Right. Two terms of tough-on-crime Reagan and Bush Republicans added 72 new mandatory minimum statutes; Clinton’s two terms added 116. Quoting Joe Biden in 1994, Murakawa reminds us of the liberal Democrats’ approach: “The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is now for 60 new death penalties… 100,000 cops. The liberal wing of the Democratic party is for 124,000 new state prison cells.” This is the period, let’s remember, that saw black-white racial ratios among the imprisoned go from three to one to eight to one.

New York Reforms But Does Not End Solitary Confinement

December 17, 2015 Christopher Mathias, www.huffingtonpost.com Create! New York (NY), Prisons, Solitary Confinement

By Christopher Mathias for The Huffington Post - Tonja Fenton spent 270 consecutive days in a 6-by-10-foot cell, alone for 23 hours a day. She was there for three infractions of prison rules: purchasing socks and a hair dryer for another inmate, mailing a sample of prison food to court as part of an official complaint, and for allegedly falsely accusing a guard of sexual assault. For these apparent transgressions, Fenton, like so many prisoners in the state and across the country, found herself in punitive, solitary confinement.

US Prisons: Human Rights Hell

November 5, 2015 Jack Balkwill, www.dissidentvoice.org Educate! Prisons

By Jack Balkwill for Dissident Voices - When Judge Christina Argyres told accused thief Isaiah Gay that he would become “somebody’s bitch,” and “raped every day,” if he went to prison, she defined one of the human rights violations which routinely occur in US prisons. The only thing shocking about it is that a judge should openly admit it. Law enforcement officers are known to threaten suspects that if they don’t talk, they will be sent to prisons where they will be repeatedly raped. Hollywood movies routinely joke about this. In much of the civilized world the American prison system is seen as a human rights horror in which prisoners are sometimes kept in solitary confinement for years at a time.

Young Black Man Jailed 4 Months For Alleged $5 Theft Found Dead

August 30, 2015 Jon Swaine, www.theguardian.com Educate! Courts, Prisons, Racism

By Jon Swaine for the Guardian - A young black man arrested by police in Portsmouth, Virginia, has been found dead in jail after spending almost four months behind bars without bail for stealing groceries worth $5. Mitchell’s family said they believed he starved to death after refusing meals and medication at the jail, where he was being held on misdemeanour charges of petty larceny and trespassing. A clerk at Portsmouth district court said Mitchell was accused of stealing a bottle of Mountain Dew, a Snickers bar and a Zebra Cake worth a total of $5 from a 7-Eleven. When asked which state agency was ultimately responsible for ensuring Mitchell was transferred to the hospital, the court clerk said: “It’s hard to tell who’s responsible for it.” Officials from the court, the police department and the jail could not explain why Mitchell was not given the opportunity to be released on bail.

Mumia Being Denied Hep C Treatment

August 30, 2015 Noelle Hanrahan, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Free Mumia, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Political Prisoner, Prisons

By Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio - The Campaign to Bring Mumia Home is in court demanding immediate lifesaving medical treatment for Mumia Abu-Jamal, and we are going to win. On Aug. 24, Mumia's lawyers Bret Grote, Legal Director of the Abolitionist Law Center, and co-counsel Robert Boyle filed a preliminary injunction in Abu-Jamal v. Kerestes with Judge Robert Mariani of the Middle District Federal U.S. Court (see link below). The injunction seeks a federal court order to ensure that prison medical staff provide immediate lifesaving treatment to Mumia. The prison administration is simply denying Mumia all treatment. Treatment for hep C has a 95% cure rate. By withholding medication, the DOC would like to see this become a death sentence.

93 Orgs Urge EPA To Consider Prisoners In Environmental Justice

July 20, 2015 Human Rights Defense Center, www.nationinside.org Educate! Environmental Justice, Mass Incarceration, Prison Industrial Complex, Prisons

By Human Rights Defense Center in Nation Inside - The Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC) submitted a public comment to the Environmental Protection Agency today that provides input on the agency’s EJ 2020 Action Agenda Framework, highlighting the lack of consideration for environmental justice among the millions of prisoners in the United States. The comment was co-signed by 93 social justice, environmental and prisoners’ rights organizations from across the country. “It’s encouraging to see the EPA attempting to increase the effectiveness of protecting vulnerable communities that have been overburdened by industrial pollution, but a significant component is missing when impacts on millions of prisoners and their families are ignored,” said Panagioti Tsolkas, coordinator of HRDC’s Prison Ecology Project.

Newsletter – Resistance Is Necessary

June 28, 2015 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Black Lives Matter (BLM), fast track, Prisons, Racism, TISA, TPP, TTIP

By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese. This week, hidden amidst the news of the massacre in Charleston and the Supreme Court decisions on the health law, fair housing and marriage equality, the Senate passed Fast Track legislation and sent it to the president’s desk to be signed into law. Now the path is clear for the president to push the triple threat of treaties through Congress, unless we resist and stop them. The first one, the TransPacific Partnership (TPP), is expected to come to a Congress this fall. It will be followed by the TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade-in-Services Agreement (TiSA). The work to stop the TPP, TTIP and TiSA builds on decades of resistance to corporate globalization and neoliberal policies that exploit the poor and people of color. If we work with intention over the coming months, we could defeat the TPP and reject this paradigm.

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.

How Mass Murder At The Attica Prison Is Still Protected

May 31, 2015 Heather Ann Thompson, www.time.com Educate! Attica, killed by police, Police abuse, Prisons

By Heather Ann Thompson in TIME Magazine, It took more than 40 years, but Attica’s survivors and families of the deceased had finally convinced a judge to force the State of New York to release sealed records relating to deaths of some 39 inmates and staff following the 1971 prison uprising. But the documents released May 21 provide little information as to who was responsible for the dead and wounded when state officials decided to forcibly retake the prison, and why no one has been held accountable. This carnage took place at one of America’s most forbidding penal institutions—the Attica State Correctional Facility in upstate New York—where, four days earlier, over 1,200 prisoners had begun a historic protest against abysmal conditions and abuses.

Protesters Occupy Athens Law School

March 15, 2015 Staff, www.worldbulletin.net Resist! Anarchism, Greece, Prisons

A group of 150 anarchists has occupied the main School of Law building in downtown Athens demanding the release of convicted Greek leftists and the repeal of anti-terror laws. According to Greek media, individuals stormed the building at around 8 a.m. local time, forcing students and others present to flee the premises. Protestors are demanding the release of jailed leftist bomber Savvas Xiros along with the abolition of high-security “Type C” prisons (Type C) and Greek counter-terrorism legislation. Similar occupations are also underway at the offices of the ruling Syriza party on the island of Crete and at the offices of left-wing Thessaloniki newspaper “Avgi.” A similar occupation took place earlier this week at the headquarters the Syriza party in Athens in a protest over the construction of Type C prisons and laws concerning terrorism.

A Gazan’s Wishes For 2015

January 3, 2015 Alaa Radwan, www.mondoweiss.net Educate! Israel, Palestine, Prisons

Electricity, again! Every Palestinian wishes every year to have 24/7 electricity. Currently, Gaza power operates on a “6 hours on, 12 hours off” schedule. Only 6 hours of electricity a day! It is 3:46 AM right now and I should finish writing this piece before the clock strikes 7 AM for I won’t have electricity for the following 12 hours. Today’s share of electricity, for example, is from 1 AM to 7 AM—it’s the time in which “normal” people sleep. Power cuts twist my sleep time to reading or doing my assignments. Can’t I just sleep, not caring about when electricity will come on or go off? I think these two wishes are enough for 2015. I will keep hoping I get my maps sometime soon. Knowing very well that electricity will never come all day long here, I won’t waste my hope for it.

Why Prisons Don’t Work And How We Can Do Better

November 16, 2014 Victoria Law, www.wagingnonviolence.org Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Prison abolition, Prison system, Prisons

As prisons continue to devastate communities — particularly low-income communities of color — and drain government budgets, there’s been a shift from the ferocious “tough on crime” mentality of the 1980s to questioning whether so many people need to be locked up. The continued popularity of Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow,” daily news stories about prison atrocities, and the rise in prison justice organizing both inside prisons and in outside communities demonstrate that more and more people — including those who formerly advocated for draconian prison sentences — are questioning the need for mass incarceration. Conversations about ending mass incarceration often center on people imprisoned for non-violent drug offenses. But what about everyone else? How do we address the harm they’ve caused without relying on locking them in cages? Maya Schenwar, editor-in-chief of the daily news site Truthout, starts to answer this question in her new book “Locked Down, Locked Out: How Prisons Don’t Work and How We Can Do Better.”

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.

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