5.85 million people in the U.S. (not including undocumented residents) are barred from voting due to felony charges.
The voting rights of 1 our of every 13 African Americans in the United States have been revoked.
Every election in this country is a fraudulent election.
The New Jim Crow: How the War on Drugs Gave Birth to a Permanent American Undercaste
commondreams.orgPerhaps greater lies have been told in the past century, but they can be counted on one hand. Racial caste is alive and well in America.
Most people don’t like it when I say this. It makes them angry. In the “era of colorblindness” there’s a nearly fanatical desire to cling to the myth that we as a nation have “moved beyond” race. Here are a few facts that run counter to that triumphant racial narrative:
There are more African American adults under correctional control today — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.
As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.
A black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery. The recent disintegration of the African American family is due in large part to the mass imprisonment of black fathers.
If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas have been labeled felons for life. (In the Chicago area, the figure is nearly 80%.) These men are part of a growing undercaste — not class, caste — permanently relegated, by law, to a second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits, much as their grandparents and great-grandparents were during the Jim Crow era.
“The deeply flawed nature of colorblindness, as a governing principle, is evidenced by the fact that the public consensus supporting mass incarceration is officially colorblind. It purports to see black and brown men not as black and brown, but simply as men - raceless men - who have failed miserably to play by the rules the rest of us follow quite naturally. The fact that so many black and brown men are rounded up for drug crimes that go largely ignored when committed by whites is unseen. Our blindness also prevents us from seeing the racial and structural divisions that persist in society: Ye segregated, unequal schools, the segregated, jobless ghettos, and the segregated public discourse - a public conversation that excludes the current pariah caste. Our commitment to colorblindness extends beyond individuals to institutions and social arrangements. We have become blind, not so much to race, but to the existence of racial caste in America.”
—Michelle Alexander, The New Jim CrowUGH - viral posts are the worst.
Because they go out into the larger tumblr sphere & get shat on with dismissive comments from people who are either unwilling or unprepared to challenge their problematic ideologies & behaviors.
It makes me sad & it reminds me of how much more work we have to do to prepare our human society for fundamental transformation.
Genuine question/concern: How could a revolution (fundamental transformation of the way we organize ourselves) be successful when there are SO many unapologetic racists hiding behind color-blind ideology?
Please post this brand new incredible video NOW from Jamel Mims and Noche Diaz on national movement to Stop Mass Incarceration, they also announce tonight's Dialogue between Cornel West + Carl Dix on "Mass Incarceration + Silence = Genocide. Act to Stop it NOW!"
In this 5-minute video, Jamel and Noche also announce tonight’s Dialogue between Cornel West + Carl Dix on “Mass Incarceration + Silence = Genocide. Act to Stop it NOW!”
"This cop won't get away with murder" | SocialistWorker.org
socialistworker.org
That night, Mertilla was taken to the police station, drug-tested and questioned. Police accused her of trying to wrestle a gun out of Weekley’s hands. Tests for gunpowder residue, however, came back negative.
It took almost a year and a half for Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Robert Moran to charge Weekley with involuntary manslaughter. Since then, Weekley’s trial has been repeatedly delayed. A date was recent set for April 2013, but Weekley will get a pre-trial hearing on dismissing the charges, to be held in March.
Meanwhile, Charles Jones, Aiyana’s father, faces first-degree murder charges, having been accused of providing the weapon for the murder police were investigating the night of the raid. Charles has been held in jail without trial for almost two years since he was arraigned—despite the fact that the only evidence against him was ruled out as hearsay last May. In an even more Orwellian twist, Robert Moran is prosecuting Charles Jones, too.
Mertilla Jones spoke with Aaron Petkov about the two cases—and about her family’s ongoing struggle for justice.
We can discuss the financial discrepancy racism causes but how many people really sit and engage in dialogue concerning the psychological destruction racism can cause to one’s psyche.
Lynching is often given a brief description as murder but what isn’t nearly discussed as often is the barbaric acts that followed a lynching. After lynchings witnesses would remove parts of the body to keep as souvenirs, ears,fingers, photos of the bodies were sold as postcards. A small business was was funded by the defiling and demeaning of black peoples bodies
When given this account of history and of police officials participation in these crimes is it a surprise that blacks hold general negative feelings towards the judicial system. When police brutality is still an issue and unarmed black men and women are being murdered is it a surprise when blacks have no faith in the police? What is considered paranoia by whites is really a defense mechanism against the continued assault of police on blacks.
The answers are there but people would rather hide by broad blanket statements lies rather than comprehend that perhaps this country is not as removed from it’s past as it would have you beleive
What Prisons are actually like
So earlier I reblogged something from this person who obviously had never spoken to a convict or been anywhere near a prison was saying stuff about what a cushy place prison is, how you get free medical care, three meals a day, and don’t have to work and all of that in jail.
The fact is that the medical care is basic at best and horrific in most cases - even if they’ve been badly hurt they don’t get pain meds any stronger than over-the-counter pills, and the cost of those come out of their own pockets. I know one guy who got bit by a brown recluse spider, which literally makes your flesh rot away, and once he was out of the hospital and back in the general population he didn’t get any meds. Ditto a guy who tore something in his leg.
There are absolutely no mental health services. The standard treatment for a suicidal inmate is to put him in segregation (which is only slightly less hellish than solitary) in an empty cell until he gets “better.”
Anyone who’s having mental health problems is viewed as a trouble maker. Ditto anyone who comes to CO/administration with concerns about their personal safety. This isn’t entirely the fault of the people employed in the prison; it’s not simply they are callous or sadistic (though often they are) but there is a complete lack of resources. Everyone is understaffed and being pulled in two dozen different directions.
I’ve got a friend in the prison who is Jewish, and they put him in a cell with a neoNazi - swastika tattoo and everything. And he went to the administration four or five times trying to get a new cellmate, and every time she told him she’d take care of it then she didn’t - she forgot or the CO lost the paperwork or shit fell by the wayside (in her limited defense, I don’t think he told her outright why he wanted to be moved, and there are a lot of reasons why he kept that to himself that I don’t want to get into a moment).
But the point is that he was sleeping in the same cell with that guy for about two months, and in the end he only got a new cellmate because the Nazi was transferred to a different prison. He could have “checked in” at any point and refused to go into his cell with that guy on the grounds that he feared for his safety, and theoretically something would have been done. But if he did that then he’s a troublemaker and that’s a reputation that follows him around for the rest of his term. It might effect his chances for parole. Even worse, if he goes to the COs now the neoNazi and all of his AB buddies have it out for him more than ever, so if you go looking for help you end up in more danger then ever before.
And that’s an equation that anyone who’s afraid of getting attacked or raped has to try to solve. It’s not a special situation.
But so far as the “three meals” thing goes, the food is incredibly horrible… Like, sometimes we go into the visiting area for meetings and you can smell the stuff they’re cooking… often it literally smells like vomit. The sandwich meat looks like rubber… I mean, that’s not an exaggeration. It doesn’t look edible.
The only fresh food, so far as I am aware, are these tiny little apples and oranges. The first time I did a prison tour they had a guy in segregation for stealing an orange…. these are the shittiest little oranges, you wouldn’t pay a quarter for one, but they’ve got him locked up all by himself for like three days over it, in this cell up where they store the food trays between meals. We where up there for the tour but otherwise he’s been mostly alone without so much as a book, and when we walked by he held onto the bars and he stared at us and that was the first time I think that I saw eyes that looked that trapped and pained.
You only get fresh veggies if you are on the vegetarian or kosher diet, and from what I’ve been told it’s hard as fuck to get on the second because the administration doesn’t want to pay for it. It took the friend I was talking about before months to get his kosher certification.
When we had our hub meeting last year we got to bring in outside food, including fruit trays. One of the guys told me that was the first time in more than ten years that he had eaten a strawberry.
And BTW, on weekends there are only two meals, not three.
And everyone works. The prison is like a little city and the inmates do most of the work involved in keeping it up and running - cooking, cleaning, etc. There’s a plastic bag factory factory inside the prison. It is one of the best paying jobs available, and even then for two 40 hour weeks they get paid less than $20.
So yeah, it’s not a fucking vacation. It is hell.
