| Right now, in the United States, there are several million people being held behind bars for non-violent drug crimes. They are disproportionately poor and black, although African Americans do not use drugs at significantly higher rates than Whites. Crack Cocaine, though not objectively "worse" than powdered cocaine, is more popular among African American drug users and carries higher sentences. In prison, non-violent drug offenders are exposed to gang violence, racism, physical abuse from authorities and other inmates, sexual assault, and the risk of HIV infection. They have continued access to drugs (a dirty little secret of the criminal justice system) and little access to treatment. If they are paroled, they are often required to find employment, although black men with felony convictions are almost completely unemployable. Recidivism rates are incredibly high.
Many of them are held in private prisons, at both the State and Federal level. The corporations which exploit the prison populations for cheap labor lobby for stricter sentencing laws. Politicians support the building and filling of more prisons because they create jobs in their districts. In NY State, the disenfranchised inmates (disproportionately from Democratic districts in NYC) are counted in the States census as residents of the conservative upstate districts where the prisons are located. This is a slight reworking of the 3/5ths rule; it comes out a bit better for the whites.
(Sources: http://www.hrw.org/b... http://www.ojp.usdoj...)
What does this have to do with the Progressive Movement and Open Left?
Matt has discussed at some length the Military Industrial Complex. (http://www.openleft....) Corporations, voters, and politicians act in a positive feedback loop, constantly pushing for more conflicts, more wars, and more money to fight them. They get richer, they buy more power, they create jobs for their constituents, they take more money from tax payers.
The Prison Industrial Complex is not much different. More African Americans incarcerated senselessly means more jobs for conservatives, greater representation for conservative districts, more Democratic voters disenfranchised, more money for big corporations. More power for those who have it, less for those who don't.
Now, to the Jena Six. They aren't drug users. They got in a school fight after several white students said they couldn't sit under an "all white" tree and hung nooses on it. The first of the students convicted will be sentenced to up to 22 years in prison in September. For a school fight in which he gave a white boy a black eye.
This should be our rallying cry. This should be our starting place for an attack on the Prison Industrial Complex. The story should be forced into the mainstream media, the prosecutor and school principal should be fired, the country should be in an uproar, and the Jena Six should be sent to detention after school for getting in a fight.
There's been some talk from Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, Paul Rosenberg in the comments, Chris and Matt about finding the "moral center" of our movement. This is it.
White versus black, the privileged against the powerless, corporations against citizens, the government siding with racists over their victims. What happened in Jena is everything we stand against. That, Matt, is why it deserves our attention. |
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