Freedom Rider-September 9th Prison Strike

Submitted by Meteor Man on Thu, 06/16/2016 - 8:13pm

The problem:

“You can’t appeal to the moral [part] of a system that doesn’t have morals.”

The mass incarceration system is inherently merciless and immoral and it must be exposed. There should never again be a call to lock more people away or to further criminalize any violent or non-violent offenses in this country. Racist hysteria about dead beat dads, drug kingpins and super predators has been used to ruin thousands of lives and make money for governments and big business. The call to action must be heeded and the people fighting against the worst cruelty in the country must be supported.

The New Jim Crow

The corporate media ignore the prison protests which have occurred with increasing frequency in recent years. Work stoppages began in Georgia in 2010, and continued in Alabama in 2014 and in Texas and Ohio this year. Not only are prisoners used to fatten the bottom line for corporations by making uniforms for McDonald’s employees or car parts for Honda, they and their families must pay exorbitant rates to make phone calls. They are charged for substandard medical care. Incarcerated women are limited in the amount of feminine hygiene products they can use and are shackled while giving birth.

How you can help:

“…we need support from people on the outside. A prison is an easy-lockdown environment, a place of control and confinement where repression is built into every stone wall and chain link, every gesture and routine. When we stand up to these authorities, they come down on us, and the only protection we have is solidarity from the outside.”

For a brief history of American prison strikes and additional links:

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#Prison Strike #Freedom Riders

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Submitted by Alex Ocana on Fri, 06/17/2016 - 9:10am

From BAR's Margaret Kimberly and Howard Zinn

“You can’t appeal to the moral [part] of a system that doesn’t have morals.”

Prison Strike -- September 9

“Incarcerated women are limited in the amount of feminine hygiene products they can use and are shackled while giving birth.”

Clinton’s “law and order” approach led him early in his first term to sign legislation cutting funds for state resource centers that supplied lawyers to indigent prisoners. The result, according to Bob Herbert writing in the New York Times, was that a man facing the death penalty in Georgia had to appear at a habeas corpus proceeding without a lawyer.

In 1996, the President signed legislation that made it more difficult for judges to put prison systems under special masters to ensure the improvement of terrible prison conditions. He also approved a new statute withholding federal funds for legal services where lawyers used those funds to handle class action suits (such suits were important for challenging assaults on civil liberties).

The “Crime Bill” of 1996, which both Republicans and Democrats in Congress voted for overwhelmingly, and which Clinton endorsed with enthusiasm, dealt with the problem of crime by emphasizing punishment, not prevention. It extended the death penalty to a whole range of criminal offenses, and provided $8 billion for the building of new prisons.

All this was to persuade voters that politicians were “tough on crime.” But, as criminologist Todd Clear wrote in the New York Times (“Tougher Is Dumber”) about the new crime bill, harsher sentencing had added 1 million people to the prison population, giving the United States the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and yet violent crime continued to increase. “Why,” Clear asked, “do harsh penalties seem to have so little to do with crime?” A crucial reason is that “police and prisons have virtually no effect on the sources of criminal behavior.” He pointed to those sources: “About 70 percent of prisoners in New York State come from eight neighborhoods in New York City. These neighborhoods suffer profound poverty, exclusion, marginalization, and despair. All these things nourish crime.”

-- Howard Zinn in People's History of the United States

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From the Light House.