MJM
25th April 2002, 04:04
Got this in my email.
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the April 25, 2002
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
HAVES LOCK UP HAVE-NOTS:
PRISONS UNMASK U.S. RACISM
By Monica Moorehead
In just a few words, Mumia Abu-Jamal, the world-renowned
death-row political prisoner, describes the impact of U.S.
prisons on human beings better than whole volumes of books.
In "Live from Death Row" Abu-Jamal wrote:
"A dark, repressive trend in the business field known as
'corrections' is sweeping the United States, and it bodes
ill both for the captives and for the communities from which
they were captured. America is revealing a visage stark with
harshness. Nowhere is that face more contorted than in the
dark netherworld of prison, where humans are transformed
into nonpersons, numbered beings cribbed into boxes of
unlife, where the very soul is under destructive onslaught."
The vast majority of people in the United States still hold
the misguided view that incarceration is a means to bring
about social rehabilitation. In a few individual cases, that
may be true. But these are exceptions to the general rule.
RACIST, ANTI-POOR INSTITUTIONS
Prisons are social institutions that arise within a class
society that is divided into rich and poor, haves and have-
nots, colonized and colonizers.
When the vast majority are the have-nots, the wealthy depend
on the prisons to help establish and maintain law and social
order. This means the rich are allowed to get richer at the
expense of the poor getting poorer. An added dimension of
incarceration is the privatization of prisons, which has
generated billions of dollars in profits for Wall Street
firms.
There are close to 2.1 million people incarcerated in the
U.S. and no end in sight to this tragic new form of human
slavery. The U.S. has 25 percent of the world's incarcerated
population. At least a quarter of them did not even commit a
violent act. They are either awaiting sentencing or doing
time for drug offenses.
Sentencing practices for drug offenses help to expose the
systematically racist nature of U.S. prisons. According to a
1999 Sentencing Project report, the proportion of African
American drug arrests rose from 25 percent in 1980 to 37
percent in 1995. African Americans make up only 13 percent
of U.S. drug users, but account for 37 percent of those
arrested on drug offenses, 55 percent of those convicted,
and 74 percent of those sent to prison.
According to the U.S. Justice Department, there are close to
3,500 Black male inmates for every 100,000 Black males in
the total population, compared to 417 white male prisoners
for every 100,000 white males. On any day, 30 percent of
Black men aged 20-29 are in jail or prison or on probation
or parole. These sentencing practices amount to the racist
criminalization of an entire people.
And then there's the death penalty.
MILLIONAIRES NEED NOT APPLY
Studies have repeatedly shown that the death penalty is not
a deterrent to violent crime. But the U.S. criminal-justice
system still chooses to project the myth of deterrence.
The Death Penalty Information Center reports that of the
nearly 3,800 people who languish on death row, 43 percent
are Black. This means the Black proportion of the death row
population is triple the Black proportion of the general
population.
In 2000, 40 percent of the 85 people executed were African
American. If this isn't a racist, genocidal policy, then
what is?
To quote Abu-Jamal, "Millionaires need not apply for death
row."
Whenever the death penalty is carried out against any person
of color or poor person, it strengthens the repressive
machine of the capitalist state. Any execution helps to give
credibility to a bankrupt, barbaric political and economic
system that puts profits before meeting the needs of the
people.
Out of the depths of prison despair many revolutionaries
have arisen, from George Jackson to Malcolm X. Their heirs
include Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin,
the Puerto Rican prisoners of war, Sundiata Acoli, the MOVE
9, the Angola 3, the Cuban 5, Rabih Haddad, Mutulu Shakur
and countless others. Their only "crime" was to openly
oppose racism, capitalist oppression and exploitation.
These revolutionaries understand that the prisons are the
crime, not the poor and oppressed.
To be against the war means to link the struggle against
imperialist wars abroad with the struggle against repression
at home--including the prisons. The enemy is one in the
same.
- END -
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the April 25, 2002
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
HAVES LOCK UP HAVE-NOTS:
PRISONS UNMASK U.S. RACISM
By Monica Moorehead
In just a few words, Mumia Abu-Jamal, the world-renowned
death-row political prisoner, describes the impact of U.S.
prisons on human beings better than whole volumes of books.
In "Live from Death Row" Abu-Jamal wrote:
"A dark, repressive trend in the business field known as
'corrections' is sweeping the United States, and it bodes
ill both for the captives and for the communities from which
they were captured. America is revealing a visage stark with
harshness. Nowhere is that face more contorted than in the
dark netherworld of prison, where humans are transformed
into nonpersons, numbered beings cribbed into boxes of
unlife, where the very soul is under destructive onslaught."
The vast majority of people in the United States still hold
the misguided view that incarceration is a means to bring
about social rehabilitation. In a few individual cases, that
may be true. But these are exceptions to the general rule.
RACIST, ANTI-POOR INSTITUTIONS
Prisons are social institutions that arise within a class
society that is divided into rich and poor, haves and have-
nots, colonized and colonizers.
When the vast majority are the have-nots, the wealthy depend
on the prisons to help establish and maintain law and social
order. This means the rich are allowed to get richer at the
expense of the poor getting poorer. An added dimension of
incarceration is the privatization of prisons, which has
generated billions of dollars in profits for Wall Street
firms.
There are close to 2.1 million people incarcerated in the
U.S. and no end in sight to this tragic new form of human
slavery. The U.S. has 25 percent of the world's incarcerated
population. At least a quarter of them did not even commit a
violent act. They are either awaiting sentencing or doing
time for drug offenses.
Sentencing practices for drug offenses help to expose the
systematically racist nature of U.S. prisons. According to a
1999 Sentencing Project report, the proportion of African
American drug arrests rose from 25 percent in 1980 to 37
percent in 1995. African Americans make up only 13 percent
of U.S. drug users, but account for 37 percent of those
arrested on drug offenses, 55 percent of those convicted,
and 74 percent of those sent to prison.
According to the U.S. Justice Department, there are close to
3,500 Black male inmates for every 100,000 Black males in
the total population, compared to 417 white male prisoners
for every 100,000 white males. On any day, 30 percent of
Black men aged 20-29 are in jail or prison or on probation
or parole. These sentencing practices amount to the racist
criminalization of an entire people.
And then there's the death penalty.
MILLIONAIRES NEED NOT APPLY
Studies have repeatedly shown that the death penalty is not
a deterrent to violent crime. But the U.S. criminal-justice
system still chooses to project the myth of deterrence.
The Death Penalty Information Center reports that of the
nearly 3,800 people who languish on death row, 43 percent
are Black. This means the Black proportion of the death row
population is triple the Black proportion of the general
population.
In 2000, 40 percent of the 85 people executed were African
American. If this isn't a racist, genocidal policy, then
what is?
To quote Abu-Jamal, "Millionaires need not apply for death
row."
Whenever the death penalty is carried out against any person
of color or poor person, it strengthens the repressive
machine of the capitalist state. Any execution helps to give
credibility to a bankrupt, barbaric political and economic
system that puts profits before meeting the needs of the
people.
Out of the depths of prison despair many revolutionaries
have arisen, from George Jackson to Malcolm X. Their heirs
include Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin,
the Puerto Rican prisoners of war, Sundiata Acoli, the MOVE
9, the Angola 3, the Cuban 5, Rabih Haddad, Mutulu Shakur
and countless others. Their only "crime" was to openly
oppose racism, capitalist oppression and exploitation.
These revolutionaries understand that the prisons are the
crime, not the poor and oppressed.
To be against the war means to link the struggle against
imperialist wars abroad with the struggle against repression
at home--including the prisons. The enemy is one in the
same.
- END -