No justice for inmates, in schools or prisons

By Laura Bonham 

Illustration by Kevin "Rashid" Johnson

Institutionalized racism has moved into the forefront of the American consciousness following the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri, the ensuing protests, an an innocent verdict by the Grand Jury. Then came numerous reported accounts of similar police encounters resulting in death in communities across the nation. In his article "Why We Won't Wait", Robin D.G. Kelley clearly articulates the reality of communities of color underpinning the racial strife occurring now. Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow further illustrates how institutionalized racism has resulted in mass incarceration. So much for justice and the rule of law in America.

Recall the 2013 California prison strike. The strike lasted two months before an agreement was reached with the prisoners who were demanding an end to long-term solitary confinement, a harsh form of psychological torture. A hearing was held in the state assembly, outrage was registered by elected officials, and the torture policy remained unchanged. To hell with justice and the rule of law.

Evidence shows the US prison system is becoming more and more privatized and with this comes a disincentive to rehabilitate prisoners and maintain or increase recidivism rates. The corporatization of the prison system demands profit, and that requires prisoners in cells and the bilking of taxpayers for services which can be provided more cheaply by the state. The goal is to keep building more prisons to warehouse more prisoners, and to pass more and more laws criminalizing behavior, which target poor and working people and people of color at an alarmingly higher rate than in richer white communities. According to the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), "In 2010, black men were incarcerated at a rate of 3,074 per 100,000 residents; Latinos were incarcerated at 1,258 per 100,000, and white men were incarcerated at 459 per 100,000."

Justice demands that people convicted of crimes should undoubtedly be held accountable, but accountability does not require torture, or necessarily even incarceration for that matter. It is in the best interest of crime victims, the community in which the crimes occur, and the criminals themselves to partake in restorative justice practices, which can eliminate the need for incarceration except for the worst and most violent offenders. For the prison industrial complex, there's just no profit in real justice.

PRB goes on to say that, "Prisoners also tend to be less educated: The average state prisoner has a 10th grade education, and about 70 percent have not completed high school."

The relationship existing between education and mass incarceration, known as the school to prison pipeline, is directly connected to corporate America as well. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the Top (RTTT) are the direct result of corporate America's endless thirst for profit. The penalties of these policies result in low performing schools, (which are mostly located in communities of color and in poor and rural districts), losing funding and qualified educators, and along with it, the one opportunity our children have to break free of the pipeline. We are basically seeing the warehousing of students until they finally commit a crime, which is often related to the War on Drugs. Where's the justice for these communities? How a child caught in this circumstance should be expected to become a valuable member of civilized society buggers belief. 

The direct cost of incarceration to states exceeds $5.4 billion annually. If we were to establish restorative justice practices and imprison only the worst and violent offenders, we could afford to fund our failing schools and cut the flow of inmates before the first crime is committed.

It has been far easier to privatize prisons than privatizing schools, because we don't regard criminals and convicts as deserving--they are the "bad guys" after all--and they don't have well-educated unions, like the teachers, fighting for their very limited rights. Corporations recognize the power teachers wield and are doing their best to break teacher unions. Unfortunately even at their zenith, teachers do not have the power to overcome the wealth and power of big corporations. There is a disturbing trend whereby we set adrift entire communities of innocent children in poor underfunded school districts, knowing full well that a certain and growing percentage of them will land in jail--and that's okay. Well, it's not okay--not for our children, and not for our prisoners, either.

Quarterly profits are not the reason that we created schools or prisons. Education is paramount in a democratic society and to achieve a prosperous economy. Prisons are a necessary evil, but restorative justice can reduce incarceration rates, recidivism rates and help heal victims and their communities. The Justice Party affirms that we all profit in numerous ways when our children grow up to become productive members of society. We profit through the realization of entrepreneurial spirit and scientific discovery. We profit from minimizing poverty and through better health practices, not to mention the savings realized when we don't need to imprison our youth. We profit when young black and brown men provide for their families rather than wasting in jail.

Laura Bonham is a grassroots organizer, current member and past co-chair of the Justice Party. She is an acting board member of Move to Amend.org for which this article was written. The article has been revised by the author and republished here.

A War to End Wars?
by Mackenzie Nellis, Member NSC


READ THE FULL TEXT OF THIS AUMF -->

The name given to World War I, before the world knew it would have a sequel, was The Great War. Europe had seen nothing like it before. It was called the War to End All Wars. A noble thought, but in retrospect, we see that the title was, at the very least, misguided.

Now we stand at the threshold of yet another war proposed to end war, so it might be prudent to think about what conditions led to the Second World War, only a few years later. The justification used by the madman who led Germany to action in that time was that they had suffered a collective dishonor, a collective injustice, foisted upon them by external international forces. His words were believed in not because they themselves were persuasive, but because the people he was speaking to had felt real loss, and wanted to do something about it.

Wars are not fought by ideologies. This war that is proposed by the White House will not be a war of Western Democracy against Fundamentalist Islam. It will be a war of people against people. People with memories, with lost loved ones, with personal struggles that are only sure to be worsened by the strife of war. And where did this war come from?

The United States armed the Mujahadeen to fight Soviets in Afghanistan. Those weapons, and the training we offered, became the inheritance of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. In the Summer of 2012 we began arming certain rebel groups in Syria (meanwhile ignoring others who were mounting effective media campaigns without weapons), favoring them because they violently opposed both Al-Qaeda and the regime of Bashar Al-Assad. Is it any wonder, then, that those weapons ended up in the hands of this current threat, the so-called “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant”?

The Levant is a name for the territory that was carved up in the wake of the First World War. It was carved up by foreign powers to satisfy imperial appetites for resources and prestige. But the real people who lived there, the Kurds, the Alawites, the Druze, the Nizari, became separated by artificial borders, cut off from families and given new national identities and dictators propped up for the profit of European concerns.

Al-Baghdadi, the one who has claimed to be the legitimate Caliph of a dawning Islamic State is undoubtedly as evil as Hitler. He must be stopped. But as we stand on the verge of another war, let's pause to consider: What is our endgame? Are we poised to once again create the conditions for the next war? Is our strategy really a strategy? Is this war really a pursuit of justice, or is it in fact the pretense that helps our American corporate powers scoop up Syria's resources at bargain prices, while funding the weapons manufacturers who profit whether we win or lose? Who profit whether our own service members live or die?

What the current AUMF against the so-called Islamic State lacks is a victory condition. Section five of the authorization defines America's enemy as “individuals and organizations fighting for, on behalf of, or alongside ISIL or any closely-related successor entity in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners.” We have defined not a war to end a war, but a war to continue endlessly war.

This authorization is criminal, misguided, and certain to create more enemies. Instead of timetables, we should recognize that the only way to end a war is to begin peace. When the dust clears and the leaders of this current uprising are quelled, we must have a diplomatic framework in place that offers us a chance to build lasting peace with the stakeholders in the region.

As followers of the Justice Party know, however, that sort of proposal will never be made by a Democratic or Republican White House, because of how deeply entrenched the military-industrial complex is within our government. An end to hostilities means invariably a slump in sales. A Justice Party White House would know, however, that the true cost of war is measured in lives, not in polling numbers or in dollars.

A New President Obama?

by Lenny Brody, Member NSC

Listening to President Obama’s state of the union speech and his recent proposals, you might wonder where this President was for the past six years. We hear calls for free tuition for community college students and support for Net Neutrality. Obama vows to veto the Keystone XL Pipeline and promises joint action with China on climate change. He claims he will support guaranteed paid sick days for workers and create jobs by rebuilding the country’s infrastructure.

"Fool me twice?" We heard promises like this from candidate Obama in 2008. The Democratic Party had a majority in the 111th U.S. Congress for the first two years of Obama’s term. So what happened? Money flowed to the Wall Street banks and the big corporations. Meanwhile, the rest of us faced foreclosures on our homes, loss of our jobs and cuts to safety net programs.

For six years we have been hearing about how the economy is recovering. The big banks and corporations seem to be doing very well. But for regular folks it’s hard to believe that the “Great Recession” has ended. Wages have been stagnant. Government statistics claim inflation has been low, but we know the cost of all the basic necessities of life has been going up. Obama raves about job creation and the dropping unemployment rate. Yet the majority of all the new jobs are minimum wage or close to minimum wage jobs. A large part of the drop in the unemployment rate since the “end” of the recession can be attributed to workers giving up looking for work and therefore not being counted in the labor statistics.

It’s time to put aside the hope that Democrats who act like Republicans “Lite” can rescue the 99% of the country that can’t make ends meet. It’s time for a party that is independent of the big banks and corporations. It’s time for the Justice Party!

President Obama Should Veto the Keystone XL Pipeline Bill

by Jonathan Ruga, Chair NSC

Last Thursday the Republican-controlled Senate passed a bill (53 Republicans and 9 Democrats in favor) permitting the construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. The proposed pipeline would be almost 1,200 miles long, beginning in Canada and weaving through Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska to connect with existing pipelines to the Texas Gulf coast. It would carry approximately 830,000 barrels of oil per day. 

The Keystone XL pipeline is a bad idea and President Obama should veto the bill authorizing it. Here are the facts:

1. The vast majority of the oil that would be transported through the pipeline would be produced through tar sands development in Canada, one of the dirtiest and most environmentally destructive ways to produce oil.
2. As a country and a world, we simply must transition from fossil fuel based energy to clean energy. Permitting the Keystone XL pipeline to be built would perpetuate our reliance on fossil fuels and simultaneously create billions of dollars of profits for the oil industry, which in turn would further impede the transition to clean energy.
3. And, as to the economic benefit to our shrinking middle class, although construction of the pipeline would create a few thousand jobs, those jobs would be only temporary. The permanent jobs created by the pipeline would be a paltry 35!

President Obama: The Keystone XL pipeline is not in our country’s or our world’s best interest. Please do the right thing and veto the Keystone XL pipeline bill.