Story Archives 2016

pThere are several reasons why the prison industrial complex (PIC) continues to grow in America, and I will focus on two of the most important. The first is that in punishing people we as a society attempt to appease the fearful side of our own human nature. The second is that vested interests keep this very unsuccessful system going. Just as steel companies need iron and timber companies need trees, so prisons use people as their raw material./p pnbsp;/p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; When it comes to vested interests, there are many groups who have an interest in the maintenance of the status quo of prisons. In no particular order I will nominate nine such groups. Let me say clearly and emphatically that within each group there is a minority who hold opposing views and are much more open and positive in their approach./p pnbsp;/p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; The vast majority of prison guards, police, judges, forensic psychologists, prison vendors of every description, prosecutors and even some criminal defense lawyers do not want to know about alternatives. The culture within each of these groupings often seems to preclude much genuine dialogye and discussion about the outcomes of the very work they are employed in doing. As I say, thankfully there are exceptions./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;/p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; The media have a vested interest. Despite millions of words of rhetoric to the contrary, the media generally and the tabloid in particular keep alive all the old racist stereotypes by the way they report crime, court cases and criminal offending, often out of all proportion to other news. Where would the tabloids be without a regular front-page crime story? Or the talkshow hosts? Or television (e.g., ldquo;Americarsquo;s Most Wanted,rdquo; ldquo;COPS,rdquo; ldquo;Criminal Minds,rdquo; etc.)? One evening recently on Fox News, nine of the first 10 stories related to crime, here and overseas./p pnbsp;/p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; The construction and subsidiary industries have a vested interest in an expanding prison network and are, by implication, happy to see a high crime rate continue. Warehousing the poor is now a worldwide trend in many industrialized countries, with the United States (especially California), Britain, Russia, and China leading the way. With huge profits being made through constructing, expanding, and providing for new prisons and old, the corporate culture has readily taken up the challenge that crime offers to make a profit out of human misery. A directory called ldquo;The Corrections Yellow Pagesrdquo; lists more than a thousand vendors. While private prisons are the most lucrative, state-controlled ones are also high on the corporate agenda, providing guaranteed payment and regular income [google California Correctional Peace Officers Association]./p pnbsp;/p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Many academics in the fields of law, social work, criminology, psychology, sociology, and psychiatry have a vested interest. Too many sit in ivory towers teaching outmoded theories, denying students opportunities to develop creative responses to the social problems that are largely responsible for crime./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Strange as it may seem, many politicians also have a vested interest in not seeing creative options to crime and prisons researched, trialled and reviewed. Generally they believe it is perceived to be soft to be advocating alternatives. The reality is the exact opposite. Most alternative programs are a lot tougher in that they demand accountability (e.g., restorative justice), with offenders having to take responsibility for what they have done. But few politicians are prepared to promote or fund such programs./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; The new corporate elite running prison policy were brought in to try to change the harsh macho prison culture that had been built up over generations. While to a degree some dimensions of that have been tackled, they have also brought in the culture of measured success, which in corporate terms often means wage cutting, program deletion and prison expansion. Prison numbers have been going through the roof for the past twenty-five years. All this is conducted with the glossy PR expertise so characteristic of the corporate hard sell. Prisons are now presented to the public as desirable industries to have in local communities because of the job creation and new economic spending power available. Little attention is given to the thought of what a prison is, who is locked up, or why. This is a deliberate attempt to shift the public perception of imprisonment from being a scandal and a sign of failure to one that makes prisons desirable acquisition for a local community like a sports stadium, medical center, or public university./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Prison slave labor is now a complement to the international movement of jobs. For decades, U.S. based corporations have been moving abroad to avoid high domestic rates as well as labor and environmental regulations. Now such factors as the increasing costs of overseas slave labor, the expense of relocation, and the shipping expense involved have caused many manufacturers to recognize that American prisons, with their abundant supply of slave labor (2.4 million prisoners), are an attractive alternative to foreign-based production./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; If one had systematically and diabolically tried to create mental illness, one could probably have constructed no better system than the American prison system./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; The prison industrial complex basically has a life of its own. It has become an industry, and a very lucrative one for some. Like its cousin, the military industrial complex, its pernicious spirit, its all-pervasive and needs plenty of crime and long sentences to maintain its financial viability. So whose truly the criminal? Is America a lsquo;Democracyrsquo; or a corporate Oligarchic police state?/p pnbsp;/p pnbsp;/p p style="margin-left:1.0in;"uStreet Crime Vs. Corporate Crime and The Truth/u/p pnbsp;/p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; As a society we need to reassess our understanding of crime and ask why is it that corporate crime advances virtually unhindered, and while localized lsquo;street crimersquo; has become such an obsession for so many. The answer lies somewhere in the mixed realm of our own hidden fears and our sense of powerlessness in the face of crime, and the immense power of vested interests who gain so much from the current situation./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Corporate crime is endemic the world over. Very few are ever held responsible for its devastating effects. It reaches into virtually every aspect of our lives, yet so widespread is its influence, we are often unaware of its presence. It hits us in so many ways: from the added-on costs in our supermarkets to the pollutants in the air we breathe, from the hidden costs of our banking and financial systems to the costs of medicines we take for our illnesses. The tentacles of corporate crime touch all these areas and many more./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Yet we rarely speak of it, read of it, or hear of it for any sustained period. We have become totally preoccupied with individual lsquo;street crime,rsquo; although corporate violence and crime inflict far more damage on society than all the street crime combined. Just one major tobacco company, for example, arguably kills and injures more people than all the lsquo;street criminalsrsquo; put together. Public corruption, pollution, procurement fraud, financial fraud, and occupational homicide inflict incredibly serious damage on workers, consumers, citizens, and the environment. Why on earth is a criminal justice system geared to sifting the poor and minor offenders, pretending it is dealing with crime and social harm, when all of the major harm is being done by the hidden rulers of our world, the multinational corporations?/p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; A major reason for this is the consistent presentation by the media of crime as being primarily personal. Through newspaper, radio, and especially tabloid talk shows, and in the news and entertainment on television, crime is deliberately portrayed in manageable portions of murder, muggings, burglaries and theft, allowing an age-old notion of scapegoat full reign./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; The public perception of crime is largely shaped by corporate media and tabloid television, which focus overwhelmingly on street crime, illegal drugs use, robberies and theft. If these media devoted proportionate time to the corporate muggings and homicides that are carried out through fraud, unsafe products, usurious lending policies, pollution, occupational accidents and starvation wages, public perceptions would shift to reflect reality more accurately. This will never happen. The same big business people who perpetrate corporate crime control the media through colossal advertising budgets, cross dictatorships, and ownership./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; The actual functions of the criminal justice system are unstated, unacknowledged, and even illicit. Any criminal justice system reflects the values (or lack thereof) of those who hold power in society. Thus, criminal law in America has become a political instrument, formulated and enforced by those with status and power against those who predominately are status poor and powerless./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; By and large, our prisons are reserved for those with dark skin, little money, or unconventional lifestyles.nbsp; The powerful manage, most of the time, to escape the sanctions of the criminal justice system. Either they have the means to hire good defense lawyers or they are able to make a better impression on juries and judges. At another level it has been demonstrated time and time again that violations of environmental, workplace safety, and other laws by corporations and hospitals are seldom prosecuted as crimes are punished by incarceration, though they kill and maim far more persons and rob and damage far more property than street crime committed by poor people./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; We are left with the question: what is real crime and who are the biggest criminals? Until we start to focus on crime in its global corporate context and not restrict ourselves merely to the localized street version, we will never learn to identify and grapple with some of the biggest criminals in our society. And we will never create a society where the common good is achieved, where people are truly respected for who they are, where true justice prevails./p pnbsp;/p pCorrespondence: Troy T. Thomas, H-01001, CSP-LAC/p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; nbsp;nbsp; P.O. Box 4430, Lancaster, CA 93539/p

pem style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', helvetica, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"span style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px;"Editors Note: Dr. Voodoo, author of The Boogey Mana political ,grass roots book about power to the peoples, is one of several power-FUL PNNPlantation prison correspondents. As currently and formerly incarcerated poor and indigenous peoples in struggle and resistance with all plantation systems in Amerikkka, POOR Magazine stands in solidarity with all folks on the other side of the razor wire plantation./span/em/p pAfter 14 years in hell and isolation of solitary confinement at P.B.S. P., CPR-SHU security housing unit, I paroled to the streets of Los Angeles and within 27 days I was falsely re-incarcerated on fabricated charges and faced the draconian, biased, racist 3 strike law of life in prison. California is hanging and persecuting black men as if we still being hung by trees like one hundred years ago. Because of my prison activism and grass roots writing that exposes the California Prison Industrial Complex, CDC which means lsquo;California Department of Corruptionrsquo;, I became a target to be neutralized and return back to hell of solitary confinement: uCould you even imagine spending 14 years in isolation then paroled to get a lil breath of fresh air than slammed back down? ldquo;This would drive anybody crazyrdquo;. Yes I went ape shit crazy./u 3 out of 4 of these fabricated charges was dismissed, because not only am I 100% innocent, I could prove my innocence. So I was threatened and terrorized to plead no-contest without no- kind of legal assistance, this is the dirty lil secret of how the racist court system persecute niggerrsquo;s and the poor. They use weak, bogus, false and in my case, fabricated charges to threaten and terrorize me to plea out or face life in prison under the biased racist 3 strike law. My folks u wouldnrsquo;t believe the evil biased terrorism and racist persecution thatrsquo;s going on in todayrsquo;s court rooms in this country and calif is the worst in the nation. Case No. VA119188 John Keller, if 3 out of 4 charges was dismissed this will tell anybody that the case is very weak at least. But the biased insidious court house donrsquo;t give a damn about your innocence and especially if you happen to be a grass roots activist. Your public pretender works for the D.A.rsquo;s office and mine did not file one legal motion to defend me. A Negrow slave Ms. Pamela Decatur so called defense council. So I was up against the whole damn racist court room without no legal counsel and please keep in mind how biased and racist the draconian 3 strike law is applied to the poor population./p pI paroled from solitary confinement and the boogey man court house return me to prison and solitary and I could prove my innocence. Please help a grass roots activist who was set up and framed when I paroled to L.A.. I have one non-violent fabricated charge and received a 15 year prison sentence because of illegal, old, prior enhancements they used to incarcerate me. Innocence project, NAACP and other bull crap so called organizations is full of bullshit and do not help nobody. Innocent grass roots activist need help./p pDr. Voodoo AKA Mr. Keller, John #H-52472/p pP.O. Box 290066, B-5-115/p pRepresa, CA. 95671/p pldquo;Uhuru Sasardquo;/p

pphoto description: nbsp;Kerima Cevik, Black woman with two braids eye glasses holds a Krip-Hop Nation/5th Battalion CD on police brutality against people with disabilities./p pnbsp;/p pbKerima Ccedil;evik/bspan is a topic blogger, a parent activist for autistic rights and social justice, has been active various roles from being an editor and contributing writer at Ollibean, to consultant and contributor to the Autism Women#39;s Network Committee on Autism and Ethnicity. An independent researcher and content contributor, she focuses on shining a light on disparities in supports and quality of life for marginalized intersected disabled populations through grassroots community building activities, resource generation, and pay it forward activism strategies. She is a married mother of two children currently homeschooling her tween son Mustafa, who is autistic and nonspeaking. Mrs. Ccedil;evik gave written testimony before the Maryland State Assembly in support of HB269/SB540 Child With A Disability - Individualized Education Program, which became law in May of 2010 and worked with legislators in support of autism training for first responders. HB 361, a bill modeled on similar legislation presented before the Massachusetts Legislature by autistic disability rights advocate Lydia Brown, was shelved after all stakeholders agreed to a regulatory mandate for autism training instead. After the Autism Training Bill (proposed to be modified to include all disabled people), was shelved, Robert Ethan Saylor died in a catastrophic encounter with off duty law enforcement officers./span/p pspanI talked to Ccedil;evik about the routine responses to police brutality/killing of autistic/other people with disabilities, aka police crisis training and what else we can do as parents, activists and community as a whole./span/p pnbsp;/p pspanbLeroy Moore:/bnbsp; Thanks so much for agreeing to be interviewed on this topic of police training and what we can do to stop police brutality/killing of people with autism and people with other types of disability.nbsp; Irsquo;ve been following you work for years.nbsp; Please tell us about your son and you work now?/span/p pnbsp;/p pspanbKerima Ccedil;evik:/bnbsp; Thank you for acknowledging my voice; deep respect. My son is very much like a 13-year-old version of Mr. Tario Anderson, of Greenville, SC., the nonspeaking autistic man who was tasered, handcuffed, and arrested over the tears of his mother and protestations of the entire neighborhood on Christmas Day. Mr. Anderson, to be clear, had not committed any crime, nor did he resemble anyone who was being sought by police. Like Mr. Anderson, my son is autistic, non-speaking and nonwhite. Mustafa needs to be able to either move his hands to sign or reach for his iPad and be allowed to turn it on and access his language program to speak. So if he, like Mr. Anderson, were walking alone to visit family on a holiday and police assumed that because he was not white and because he could not give a verbal response to their commands he would suffer Tariorsquo;s fate at best.nbsp;/span/p pspanRacial profiling severely reduces the probability of police accepting my son, a Hispanic presenting male, larger than his peers, walking down the street with an unsteady gait, holding an iPad without challenging him. Which would inevitably lead to them trying to stop him, taking his iPad, and verbally demanding proof his speech device was his and their response to him not being able to respond would be to try and arrest him for stealing it. Situations like the scenario I just described, that I call lsquo;Mustafarsquo;s Dilemmarsquo; and what happened to Tario Anderson is what haunts me. That is where I am now. I am in this moment of polarization along racial lines seeking solutions to avert this and other nightmare scenarios Irsquo;ve witnessed occurring to countless disabled people, for the sake of my son and all his peers.. Training has been done. Trained officers used deadly force in encounters with clearly identified disabled teens and adults. Irsquo;ve changed my entire advocacy strategy based on this truth. The best way for a person in Mustafarsquo;s Dilemma to remain alive and safe is to avoid any circumstance in which police engagement is necessary as much as humanly possible./span/p pnbsp;/p pspannbsp;The painful lesson Irsquo;ve learned is that training initiatives fail. The fallout from the slew of deaths that spurred the Black Lives Matter movement is that the majority of those lives lost were disabled Black lives. I learned the police officers that shot both Paul Childs III and Stephon Watts were thoroughly trained and also knew the victims prior to the fatal encounters. This knowledge changed the focus of both my parenting and advocacy.nbsp;/span/p pnbsp;/p pspanbLeroy Moore:/bnbsp; When why did you get involved with activism around police brutality?/span/p pnbsp;/p pspanbKerima Ccedil;evik/b: I lived overseas for 30 years. There is a history of involvement prior to that (a sit in in the middle of the day at our high school as a freshman over the physical objections of my older sister), but specific to the disability rights community, it began with Mustafarsquo;s Dilemma.nbsp;/span/p pspanIf someone shouts at my son, hersquo;ll retreat. He wonrsquo;t speak because verbal speech is not the way he communicates. Hersquo;ll run because if you shout at him it is an assault to his hearing very much akin to you wearing headphones and listening to music and walking down the street and having someone suddenly turn the volume up to earsplitting levels. I tried to look at Mustafarsquo;s dilemma from the point of view of the average police officer. They would see his nervous giggling as insubordinate. They would presume that if he can laugh he can speak and that would be an incorrect assumption. They would want to try and handcuff him. He would resist. He has weak lungs and brittle bones despite his size. My son has a 70% chance of encountering law enforcement in his lifetime simply because he is disabled. It is a thought that chills me to the bone. That is how a woman who has little time from the care and homeschooling of a disabled son gets involved in this battle for the life of her child and other peoplersquo;s disabled children./span/p pspanOn the legislative end of things, as I was trying to think of solutions to this dilemma of helping my son survive potential encounters with police, I met the great Lydia Brown, an autistic activist of color who had been trying to get an autism-training bill theyrsquo;d written at age 16 passed in Massachusetts for several years. I had come away from the 2010 legislative session here in Maryland very ambivalent about the approach to passing legislation taken by some disability advocacy organizations here. The approach was to support small, nondescript disability related legislation that no one would object to. The purpose was to claim the victory when the bills passed and very slowly build to more critical bills. But the bills themselves were not doing much to change the quality of the lives of disabled people like my son. So I talked to Lydia and reached out to my State Delegate to run a bill based on a combination of the bill shersquo;d written and legislation that had become law in New Jersey and I presented an expanded bill template to my Delegate for first responder training. nbsp;/span/p pspanbLeroy Moore:/bnbsp; I know my mother back in the 70rsquo;s didnrsquo;t really get into the disability rights movement because of many reasons.nbsp; How do you think the disability rights movement is doing especially today dealing with race and our issues such as increase police brutality?/span/p pspanbKerima Ccedil;evik:/bnbsp; A great deal of bad things happened to me in the 70rsquo;s. People think of us as the children of the civil rights movement and the first generation to benefit from the Civil Rights Act. But we were also the children who bore the brunt of the retaliatory backlash from those who resented us sitting in their schools and moving into their neighborhoods. So I canrsquo;t say I blame your mother.nbsp;/span/p pspanIrsquo;ve been quite vocal about the fact that the disability rights movement has been historically recalcitrant in acknowledging the roles played by itsrsquo; intersected activist populations. This is especially true in autism organizations, where nonwhite representation in decision-making positions is either nonexistent or at the token representation stage. Irsquo;ve spent part of my time trying to shed light on the structural bigotry embedded in autism organizations. It has been particularly tough dealing with racism in other stakeholders who are supposed to be on our side in fighting against injustice. Until very recently one would only see autism nonprofits rush to put out position papers when someone white and disabled was the victim of injustice unless shamed into doing otherwise. When autism organizations donrsquo;t need to be reminded that Black disabled lives matter as much as white ones, the direction of autistic advocacy for black autistics can move beyond placing them in the awkward position of being the de facto race relations activists. How they are doing at fighting police use of excessive force and catastrophic encounters? It doesnrsquo;t seem to be very high on their agenda, if on it at all. Right now Irsquo;m still disappointed that I must speak out when each new project or book or conference or action for our autistic community is announced excluding nonwhite autistic voices. If the privileged voices of the autism community continually erase us from entire histories of autism, they arenrsquo;t going to be there when police reforms are needed unless those harmed are white. That is a reality that is extremely slow to change.nbsp;/span/p pspanbLeroy Moore:/bnbsp; In this time of the heightened attention of police brutality against the Black/Brown/LGBTQ communities and the activism toward it in your view what has come out of it and what we still need to work on?/span/p pspanbKerima Ccedil;evik:/b Michael Brownrsquo;s murder and the protests in Ferguson resulted in a serious look at the urgent need for demilitarization of our police force. Everyday Americans asked why this shift to a militarized police force happened when the National Guard exists to fill the role of guarding the homeland. The reality of redlining was made public for the first time in ages. Most white people today had no clue what policing for profit or redlining was before the protests in Ferguson began. Zimmermanrsquo;s trial for the murder of Trayvon Martin began a chain of events that has forced a national spotlight on injustice in our criminal justice system. The murders of Islan Nettles and two other black transgender women in quick succession taught the general public what activists already knew; that the most vulnerable population at the highest risk for harm are nonwhite, disabled, transgender community members. They know now that all this time, the deaths of these people were diminished and erased from public attention. The gaslighting done to us for years, that rhetoric that race was a card that is played, that by speaking out we were practicing reverse racism, that we voted for a Black President so that means that racism is over was blown aside by the raw hatred of the Mother Emmanuel church murders. And still the attempt at erasure by some media outlets, saying this mass shooting was actually not a racial hate crime but an attack on Christianity was so awful I recoiled in disgust. When the killer was treated like royalty and given a fast food meal on his way to jail, I was furious. That man confessed to deliberately attempting to start a race war and still there was an attempt to deny. But so much has happened now that they canrsquo;t gaslight it away./span/p pspanWhat we need to work on as activists is entirely dependent on who we are as individuals, and what our skillsets are. I shy away from trying to advise others on scale, scope and direction. You and other activists have tried top down change for years. Politicians promise everything until they are elected; then they forget those promises. We need to work on going from a fear based post Columbine mentally of policing on steroids in every aspect of our lives and return to the role and scope of the law enforcement officer as a peace officer, there to help the community by enforcing laws and protecting and serving the public. What are our reform points as black disability rights activists?nbsp; #CampaignZero as added them as an afterthought in their list of policy change demands. But what do we need to live our lives free of being targeted by criminals and being harmed in police encounters? We havenrsquo;t gotten together and discussed that as academics, activists, and disabled activists fighting for the same reforms. Yet we have people everywhere lecturing on police brutality. That needs change specific to the needs of disabled people. There are reform issues missing from everyonersquo;s agenda related to how police interact with disabled wheelchair users, and what accountability will occur when a person is dumped from their wheelchair or physical support equipment. It is just unacceptable. The lack of interpreter support for nonspeaking people is unacceptable. There is no plan in place for how interaction safeguards can be put in place so someone like my son can keep from being shot by police. This is an example of an issue that is not being addressed by other activists and campaigns. What is the protocol for someone trying to sign police that they are deaf if police choose to ignore this and treat the individual like a noncompliant suspect? There needs to be a communication paradigm that is inclusive of nonspeaking people so that police can interact with victims and persons of interest without harm or violation of human rights.nbsp; I have too much to say on my personal agenda for what needs to change.nbsp;/span/p pnbsp;/p pspanbLeroy Moore/b:nbsp; As a Black parent of an autistic son, what do you think about what some cities want to do like having a name bracelet and some want families to register to the police so they now about family members with autism?/span/p pspanbKerima Ccedil;evik/b: Many autistic adults choose to wear GPS and tracking devices. Not because they are what the autism nonprofit industrial complex has mislabeled ldquo;elopersrdquo; or ldquo;runnersrdquo; but because they need the assistive technology support to navigate safely.nbsp; Irsquo;ve listened to autistic adults who support tracking devices as a choice for themselves because they tend to get disoriented. The key words are individual understanding about what this device is, how it assists them, and obtaining the individualrsquo;s consent. If consent cannot be obtained the device should not be there. I am very concerned that tracking bracelets not become a new form of restraint, and pathologizing behavior we make no other attempt at analyzing or understanding may be an indication of discord in the autistic childrsquo;s home that is not being addressed. In any other child, elopement would be a red flag that requires investigation to rule out abuse. In autistic children, teens, and adults, where the only goal seems to be compliance for non-speakers and forcing verbal speakers to be indistinguishable from their peers, the rush to remove responsibility from everyone and blame autism for every event or habit in a childrsquo;s life that is not acceptable to general society, we insist on coming up with solutions that equate our offspring with dogs in need of training or wild horses needing breaking. I am very concerned about the tracking bracelets that failed in Colorado, and the mother who was charged because her frequently lsquo;elopingrsquo; sonrsquo;s braceletrsquo;s battery failed. She was cited for child endangerment for what the police say was failure to charge the braceletrsquo;s battery. We still donrsquo;t know if the bracelet, from the same company that manufactured the two, which failed, has a defective battery. I think if the person chooses to wear the bracelets it is okay. If not, it is very much like house arrest with an ankle bracelet. Shackling people with an electronic tracking device for the crime of being curious about the world at large while being disabled is a limited, and rather draconian response to autistic wandering. . I am against databases full of innocent autistic childrenrsquo;s DNA and fingerprints, another part of the tracking device initiatives, because we don#39;t know that the data in them will be limited to use for its original intent. It is too creepy.nbsp;/span/p pnbsp;/p pspanbLeroy Moore/b:nbsp; There is no surprise that you have written about the ineffectiveness of police crisis/training.nbsp; In your August 26th/ 2014 article, Why Autism Training for Law Enforcement Doesn#39;t Work you bring up many police shootings including those of two young Black teens with autism who were killed by police in Denver Chicago, where the officers involved have receive training and you said ldquo;You can#39;t train away racism or ableism.rdquo;nbsp; Please give us your views and experiences when it comes to police training of people with disabilities/span/p pspanbKerima Ccedil;evik/b: Right. Paul Childs, and Stephon Watts are examples that police, regardless of disability sensitivity training, will always fall back on their primary training and shoot anyone with an object in their hand first and worry about the consequences later. The murder of Ronald Madison, the 45-year-old Autistic man and his brother on the Danziger Bridge after Katrina is a clear indication that racism is not being factored into the concept of training for disability sensitivity in law enforcement. In fact to date, disability training in law enforcement has been presented as risk management rather than ableism sensitivity for the most part. Ableism sensitivity is only applied to evacuation scenarios. We expanded the responsibility of police beyond the scope of their intended purpose.nbsp; That is the root of this problem.nbsp; I think we need to understand the concept that training for invisible disability in particular may have its uses, but it is not the antidote to catastrophic encounters with law enforcement. So it is time to begin looking at the solution from the reality that racist ableism exists, police are equally subject to human biases and failings, and when we expand the definition of what a police officerrsquo;s job is, we put everyone at risk.nbsp;/span/p pnbsp;/p pspanbLeroy Moore:/bnbsp; If itrsquo;s not police training then what are your suggestions and it can be for our community (For me I think we only focus on what police need and not what the community need)?/span/p pspanbKerima Ccedil;evik:/bnbsp; Leroy I agree that we are focusing on what we think police need when we need to reduce police engagement and increase community supports that limit the need for police contact as much as possible.nbsp; I wonrsquo;t advise the community but I can tell you what I personally would like to see happen.nbsp;/span/p pspanIrsquo;d like to see efforts made to establish a 911-type number for mental health emergencies/psychiatric disability related crises and more community crisis response teams to answer them.nbsp; There is a myth that policy makers are exploiting based on a moment in history. This myth that after the Willow brook scandal, we just opened the doors of mental institutions and threw the patients out to wander the streets, and that to this day those same individuals are out there being a danger to themselves and others. The new fear factor story being added to that is we really need to bring back mental institutions. Victim blaming every deceased victim of a catastrophic police encounter with a person with psychiatric disability and sprinkling that disgrace with a healthy dose of posthumously declaring every white male mass shooter as a mental health patient achieves this fear driven train wreck. Uh nope! I think that funding being demanded for the return of the infamous mental institution model of mental health treatment, research, and lsquo;residential carersquo; should be given to desegregated, community supported mental health solutions that work in accord with the Olmstead Decision.nbsp; I think we need to build on peer mentoring and peer respite centers, an idea that has already been proven successful in other parts of the country.nbsp; I think we need to be seeking preventative solutions that solve the main series of events that ends in catastrophe for so many disabled victims, and that is the present situation where a mental health call is lumped in with a 911 call and therefore has police responding where they shouldnrsquo;t be. I think we should be increasing healthy inclusive school environments for neurodivergent students at school by paying school support staff wages that retain them and training them, not calling SROs to handcuff autistic children to squad cars.nbsp;/span/p pspanI could go further:nbsp;/span/p pspanI think that police transport vehicles need to be made safe and wheelchair accessible. I think that blind suspects should be given a copy of their rights in braille, and law enforcement should understand that removing a personrsquo;s wheelchair is removing they spinal support and their legs. They need to be made aware that removing a personrsquo;s service animal deprives them of the assistive technology they need to navigate. I think that deaf interpreters who are body language qualified should be on call or available in every precinct. I think we have to get to a place in neighborhood law enforcement where the people who police your neighborhood truly live in it, and therefore know their disabled neighbors and everyone in the neighborhood personally and live through what those living there live through.nbsp; Inclusion in all aspects of society must mean insuring universal design in the criminal justice too. Wheelchair access in courthouses shouldnrsquo;t be a thing anymore, yet we still lack this.nbsp; We still havenrsquo;t achieved proper therapeutic supports of prisoners found to be neurodivergent. People are dying in county jails because the police protocol for dealing with anyone they label a mental health risk is to place them in a restraint chair ndash; for hours. This is the strongest evidence out there that police should not be involved in calls about autistic meltdowns, potential suicides, and mental health crises. We have community members with prosopagnosia, but we expect them to look law enforcement in the eye. How is that going to happen, when they may not be able to distinguish your facial features? Police demand compliance to their orders. How does that happen when some autistic adults have diagnosed auditory processing disorders and may not understand the command although they heard it?nbsp; I always come back to the question of how someone like Neli Latson had his case go to trial? It is because everyone but the autistics themselves is informing the entire criminal justice system about autism. Autistics are the scenery in autism training for police. I donrsquo;t know of one police training program for autism that addresses invisible disabilities that could bar communication in a police interaction like synesthesia, auditory processing disorders, photosensitive seizure disorders, and face blindness. Hopefully things will change. But if organizations that claim to advocate for autistics try and exclude autistic disability rights activists from the complexities of how autistic victims or persons of interest might come to harm from simple interactions with law enforcement, you get a hot mess of experts thinking that training by generalizing both autistics and police will solve everything. Training based on managing risks and generalizations when the people involved are such a diverse and unique population cannot succeed. Invisible disability is not something a training seminar, even one 40 hours long, can prepare police for when other factors are ignored to do so.nbsp;/span/p pspanbLeroy Moore:/bnbsp; You followed the aftermath of the shooting of Robert Ethan Saylor and now Maryland has police training by people with disabilities.nbsp; Your thoughts and what did you experience covering that case and do you think if Saylor were Black would his family get the same amount of attention fro the disability and general community with media?/span/p pnbsp;/p pspanbKerima Ccedil;evik: /bEthan Saylorrsquo;s case was local, and I did follow it. It was determined that there were no grounds to prosecute the officers involved. This kind of thing is no surprise to people of color but to the Saylor family it was like a hard slap in the face. The ableism in the lack of accountability broke my heart. The grieving family did what many grieving families do. They directed all their efforts at training, presuming that the officers involved had no training in this area and that mandated training might have changed the outcome for Ethan. I would argue that it would not. I donrsquo;t know how many of Ethan#39;s peers were involved in decision making about training. This is the third statewide disability training effort attempted in Maryland. I am afraid it will fail as much as the attempts before it. The premise behind training police for this is fundamentally flawed as I stated earlier. I canrsquo;t emphasize this enough. It presumes police are not subject to human weaknesses like ableism. It ignores racism or presumes that racism can be trained away. It does not address instances of excessive use of force by individual officers. Right now in Baltimore, there is another case of excessive use of force, the victim of which has broken bones. The victim knew one of the officers involved. That officer was well aware that the individual involved was not disruptive at all. But that did not impact the outcome.nbsp; I have not even addressed police culture.nbsp; Most police training doesnrsquo;t either.nbsp;/span/p pIf the family and the victim were Black no, the Governor would not have gathered a task force, and in my opinion this would not have made national news. Verbiage would have been generated to criminalize Ethan Saylor and he would have been posthumously victim blamed. That is the reality of where we are in race relations today. It is a time of dangerous polarization and overt unpunished hate crimes.nbsp;/p pnbsp;/p pspanbLeroy Moore:/bnbsp; What is you advice to first anti-police brutality movement, the disability and Black community on the issue of police brutality against people with disability?/span/p pnbsp;/p pbKerima Ccedil;evik/b: My policy as a stakeholder in the anti-brutality/police reform movement is when the victim is found to be a black transgender woman, making my best effort to give the podium to a black transgender activist, either live or through amplifying their words, and allowing those voices to be heard. When the victim is black and disabled, the tendency of prominent white activists to speak for the black disabled community or simply say the important identity is the disabled one is wrong. Because when victims are limited to a single identity, key reasons why this is happening are erased. It is the combination of identities that makes the victims targets. But white dominated organizations do this. No one should speak for the black disabled community when there are activists out there who can speak for that intersected population. Understand your privilege, be the ally, and give the voices of disabled black activists the platform to be heard.nbsp;/p pspanTo our Black community: We have tried to reform from the top down. My personal conclusion is that it is right to continuing filming and speaking out when we see excessive force and anything in an exchange between police and people with disabilities we know is beyond the scope of the law.nbsp;/span/p pspanI think all advice needs a giant disclaimer: this is one personrsquo;s opinion. I think what is making modern human and civil rights movements work is that the decentralized, online/offline, ebb and flow of the activism has allowed a great deal of room for a preponderance of ideas that will bring an eventual series of innovative solutions to our causes.nbsp; I can only speak my truth, with the understanding that it this womanrsquo;s attempt to insure her son survives an encounter with a militarized police department in a time of extreme racial polarization. It is difficult to see my son growing up and not communicating well enough to tell everyone what he thinks. We are also working on that./span/p pspanI have felt the personal need to focus more on grassroots activism. I am trying to support pushes for the establishment of respite centers, community crisis teams. I continue the work of calling out nonprofits that present themselves as emergency crisis response centers but in fact only act as resource generators who hand out phone numbers, and leaflets and watch people who need urgent help die. If organizations donrsquo;t have real action plans and policies aimed at preventing these deaths and permanent injuries, they are part of the system perpetuating them. I ask myself, why then are we not speaking out against funding them? No organization calling itself a disability rights organization should be ignoring this issue. If they are, we should be ignoring them. So I guess the advice Irsquo;ve given myself is again a series of answers to the question how can I save my sonrsquo;s life? The answers I came up with are:/span/p pspanReduce potential for catastrophic incidences.nbsp;/span/p pspanReduce police presence in school behavioral management of disabled students./span/p pspanReduce police involvement in non-criminal disability related crises.nbsp;/span/p pspanReduce nonprofit distancing from involvement in catastrophic encounters with police.nbsp;/span/p pspanReduce symbolic feel good training being marketed to police departments by diverse stakeholders in the disability nonprofit industrial complex and fund things that find solutions to how our people can survive these encounters./span/p pnbsp;/p pspanbLeroy Moore:/bnbsp; As a legislative advocate what do you see needs to be done on the legal level?nbsp; Recently we are citing more states including disability apart of their anti-profiling bills.nbsp; What else can we do especially when it comes to the increasing abuse of disabled youth/young adults in our schools by resource officers?/span/p pnbsp;/p pspanbKerima Ccedil;evik:/bnbsp; I think we need to legislate to phase out SROs (school resource officers) from schools and refocus on strong anti-bullying culture infusion in public schools instead. I donrsquo;t think police should be profiling disabled children in school. Police officers are not trained to evaluate students with psychiatric or invisible disability. This entire concept is just frightening. I think that the role of legislation is to create laws to provide community based respite, location and recovery services for lost people outside the police force for those disabled people who themselves feel they need monitoring and tracking, and I think funding needs to be created for mental health crisis response teams with non lethal means of engaging individuals in crisis. I think laws generating funding to go towards community supports, assistive technology should exist and be operative in every State. Isnrsquo;t it sad that if a bear is up a tree or a wild predator is wandering in an urban area, we tranquilize and relocate them, and wersquo;ll come to blows if anyone thinks of shooting them, but people are okay with police shooting a disabled adult in crisis? How is it that our society has failed to progress on how they view disabled people?nbsp;/span/p pnbsp;/p pspanbLeroy Moore:/bnbsp; As a long time activist what do you think the activist world needs to know to make their work, protest and campaigns not only inclusive but to gain more realization that many times the disability component of a police brutality case is a key?/span/p pbKerima Ccedil;evik:/b I think those of us who write need to increase our body of work to educate other activists as well as the general public that a victim with an intersected disability label is in fact the key to defining the problem and solving it. I think activists need to understand that they may be marching against racism, but erasing the disabled identity of the victim makes them ableist. I actually think we need activist networking and strategizing events that are intersectional to impart on activists across causes that not erasing one marginalized group from activistsrsquo; efforts might make a major difference in how change happens. Keeping it real, I was disappointed to see Deray McKesson on Late Night With Stephan Colbert and he chose not to at least give a shout out to Heather De Mian, who was on the ground in Ferguson protesting as well and was dumped from her wheelchair hit with her own cell phone and arrested for being an ally against racism. Typical example of disabled activists being erased and made invisible when a platform existed where she might have been able to voice our perspective on this.nbsp;/p pspannbsp;I have been more vocal about racism and the racial polarization we are all witnessing because of where and how these events intersect with black disabled lives lost. I burnt out dealing with that type of ableism and disability bias.nbsp; My personal focus changed. Irsquo;ve spent the past two years fighting to make our voice heard to our disability rights activist colleagues who are speaking for us and arenrsquo;t allowing us to speak for ourselves or worse, are part of the machine that is erasing the voices of our victims from their own stories. Doing the right thing begins with our own stakeholders and community./span/p pnbsp;/p pspanbLeroy Moore:/bnbsp; I really believe that cultural activism plays a very important role in not only protecting our rights but also educating our community, politicians, legislators and the media.nbsp; So in this area of police brutality how do you see cultural activism of people with disability fit in, how has it made a difference and if you had a magic wand how would you expand it??/span/p pspanbKerima Ccedil;evik/b: Wow, great question. Absolutely agree that cultural activism has been the definitive transformative change agent in recent history. I just saw Jon Connor and Keke Palmer performing ldquo;Fresh Water For Flintrdquo; on The Nightly Show and I thought about ldquo;Disabled Profiled,rdquo; ldquo;Where is the Hoperdquo; and how much cultural activism is part of the way those of us who are Black activists move though social justice space. A documentary or a spoken word poem or a musical performance has the potential to make a much more visceral connection to people and pairs well with social media to make that message a global one. As you know I wanted to make that connection with disabled activists and stakeholders with you, Keith Jones, and KripHop Nation but that failed. A dream would be witnessing KripHop on a platform like The Nightly Show. Disabled cultural activism needs a wider audience./span/p pnbsp;/p pspanbLeroy Moore:/bnbsp; In these days what are you working on for your son and his community within and beyond eliminating police brutality?/span/p pspanbKerima Ccedil;evik/b: I actually sat down with my daughter, who has a Masters in special education, and later with my son, and reprioritized what he needs as a nonspeaking disabled tween, and included his older sisterrsquo;s professional opinion of what services he was denied as a multiply disabled student of color while in the public education system. What we came up with are new perspectives on inclusion, public education, and our thoughts of what the future of educating disabled people throughout their lifespan might look like and Irsquo;ll be writing about later.nbsp;/span/p pspanMy sonrsquo;s expressions of what his educational needs and interests are compared to what the public entity, the school system, wishes to track him towards is very much akin tonbsp; the difference between what my racist high school freshman counselor decided I needed and what my aptitude tests said I needed in terms of a high school education. When I entered high school and found that a counselor had ignored my aptitude and high school placement scores and placed me in both a remedial math class and a home economics course I never registered for because I was a Black female I was furious.nbsp; My math teacher marched me into the freshman counselorrsquo;s office and asked why a student who scored in the 98/spanspansupth/sup/spanspan percentile in math reasoning was placed in his remedial math class; the counselor calmly answered that there was no room for students my color in the college track math classes and I was in home economics because colored girls needed to learn their place was to clean houses and cook for white people.nbsp; Mustafa experienced both the racial bias and the addition of the presumption of incompetence that is carried into the school system by the structural ableism of society in general. On the other hand, those who witnessed the injustices done to my son because he is a nonspeaking multiply disabled student were silenced because they have no whistle blower protection from reprisal if and when they step forward. Irsquo;m working on what needs to happen to go about changing that.nbsp;/span/p pnbsp;/p pThe other cause Irsquo;m involved in is the fight against the attempts to pass right to die legislation in Maryland. nbsp;On February 13, 2014, Belgium legalized euthanasia by lethal injection for children and Europersquo;s escalation of assisted suicide on anyone who they think shouldnrsquo;t live stinks of eugenic mentalities that are frightening../p pspannbsp;The revised assisted suicide push is a based on a rebranded, seductive, presentation of a very ugly idea complete with a young woman with brain cancer who promoted the myth of the beautiful and dignified death on social media by making herself the star of her own reality show as a heroine of assisted suicide, making her personal choice and insistence on mandating this for the rest of us. Now other cancer patients who want to continue life sustaining treatments are being denied the medical insurance to do so in states where such legislation has passed, while insurance companies boldly state in rejection letters that theyrsquo;ll pay for drugs to end patientsrsquo; lives but not hospice care or medical treatments to keep them alive. That is inexcusable.nbsp; I need to give a shout out to Not Dead Yet, Carrie Ann Lucas, esq., Corbett Orsquo;Toole who introduced me to Carrie Ann virtually, and ASANrsquo;s Sam Crane, esq., for fighting this fight longer than Irsquo;ve been in it.nbsp;/span/p pspanbLeroy Moore/b:nbsp; Any last word where can people read about your work?/span/p pspanbKerima Ccedil;evik/b :Irsquo;m actually doing a great deal of amplifying disabled activist voices so Irsquo;d recommend they follow my blogs on Facebook or follow me on twitter @kerima_cevik. I hope more people amplify and support the ldquo;Where is The Hoperdquo; documentary, it explains the topic of excessive use of force and delves into the lives of some victims of catastrophic encounters with law enforcement and their families attempts to find closure well. I am not an organization type human but I think a shout out to ASAN activistsrsquo; efforts to end violence against disabled people by continuing cross disability vigils is worth mentioning. I think that disabled victims of violent death in general should all be remembered but that is a topic for another time.nbsp;/span/p pspanI have become a rather itinerant blogger because of offline goings on. These days, when I blog, I write about:/span/p pspannbsp;autism related topics on The Autism Wars: a href="http://theautismwars.blogspot.com/"spanhttp://theautismwars.blogspot.com//span/a/span/p pspanIntersectionality and Disability on InterSected: a href="http://intersecteddisability.blogspot.com/"spanhttp://intersecteddisability.blogspot.com//span/a/span/p pspanRacism and Social Justice on Brave: a href="http://overcominghate.blogspot.com/"spanhttp://overcominghate.blogspot.com//span/a/span/p pnbsp;/p pnbsp;/p pspannbsp;nbsp;/span/p

p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"span id="docs-internal-guid-db6df1e4-c44b-8176-0b2c-ea6b9de451e1"span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;"ldquo;Republiklan Presidential Klandidaterdquo; Donald Trumprsquo;s views on such deeds as building great walls, kicking out all ldquo;immigrantsrdquo;, muslims and other elements that donrsquo;t fit into the UWO (Upgraded World Order) of wite (non) supremacy has invoked the true spirit of this colonized, racist, stolen country. nbsp;Repeated nightmares of necks snapping like #2 pencils under the hateful noose of wites haunt me as I uneasily watch Trumpsrsquo;s tirade to sway his supporters to bring ldquo;picnicsrdquo; back to whomever he sees fit (in particular, people of color and muslims). Blacks and wites, possible ldquo;John Brownrdquo; endorsers are being attacked at Kla- oops,Trump rallies with no consequences to the parties involved but instead, legal support./span/span/p p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"nbsp;/p p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"span id="docs-internal-guid-db6df1e4-c44b-8176-0b2c-ea6b9de451e1"span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;"The false-superior feelings of racist wites towards ldquo;We, who are darker than bluerdquo; has always been the same. Wersquo;re looked upon as so-called slaves who were stolen and brought here not out of love, but for profit and destruction. We WERE NOT suppose to rise no higher than being 3rd class citizens and servants to be used for chattel breeding and horrendous medical experimentations. Now, in 2016 we still have to plead to the world (and in some cases, each other!) that ldquo;Black Lives Matterrdquo; to a racist US system who has been historically known to lynch any person darker than blue who dared to speak out against the mistreatment of his/her people./span/span/p p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"nbsp;/p p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"span id="docs-internal-guid-db6df1e4-c44b-8176-0b2c-ea6b9de451e1"span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;"The fact that Donald Trump is allowed to push his agenda on the world with impunity terrorizes me as a ldquo;slitizenrdquo; (so-called slave/stolen citizen) and as a Black Woman. I see Jim Crow again along with Jerry Crack. I see my brown comrades continue to be stamped with the term ldquo;Illegal Immigrantsrdquo; by Illegal Immigrants who has the same fate for us all in mind. Trumprsquo;s attitude and arrogance further fueled my hunch that the Ku Klux Klan has never ldquo;died offrdquo;. They (the klan) either traded in their uniforms for ldquo;politically correctrdquo; ones, like Trump, or hid low in a fake slumber waiting for someone like Don to lead the way and get the ldquo;good orsquo;l boysrdquo; platform back on track./span/span/p p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"nbsp;/p p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"span id="docs-internal-guid-db6df1e4-c44b-8176-0b2c-ea6b9de451e1"span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;"Coincidentally, this comes at the same time Amerika is pushing propaganda to convince us here how important it is to mend ldquo;ourrdquo; relationship with Cubahellip;.ORhellip;.. Is it to get their hands on Assata Shakur???/span/span/p p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"nbsp;/p p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"span id="docs-internal-guid-db6df1e4-c44b-8176-0b2c-ea6b9de451e1"span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;"Assata Shakur, a Sistuh Souljah and a courageous soul who stood up against the prejudices and crimes committed on her people here has been in exile in Cuba for decades. Assata survived an assassination attempt when she, along with other oppressor-fighting comrades were ambushed on the New Jersey turnpike.She survived incarceration by the US for the death of a New York state trooper during that ambush (who, according to ballistics, was killed by a bullet from his fellow officerrsquo;s service revolver). /span/span/p p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"nbsp;/p p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt;"span id="docs-internal-guid-db6df1e4-c44b-8176-0b2c-ea6b9de451e1"span style="font-size: 14.6667px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: transparent;"As the ldquo;US moves to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba and loosen the five-decade trade embargo, which has ldquo;the potential to end a legacy of mistrust in our hemisphererdquo; and has ldquo;added uprdquo; to new hope for the future in Cuba,rdquo; as President Barack Obama was quoted saying on tuesday nightrsquo;s address, and it makes me wonder if our prez is the posterboy for the ldquo;catch 22rdquo; hidden agenda of the 1 million-dollar bounty on our dear Sister Shakurrsquo;s head? Does this ldquo;New Hope for Cubardquo; refer to if Cuba cooperates with the US when the subject of Assata comes up? According to ldquo;Dummy Darardquo; Sarah Palin, resistance against racism is considered ldquo;punk ass thuggery.rdquo; nbsp;I say resist on- and stay in Peopleskool because there is a no-good hidden agenda brewing up and the so-called black supporters of Donald Trump do absolutely nothing to put my mind at ease. Instead they reminded me that ldquo;slavemastersrdquo; had ldquo;employeesrdquo; too./span/span/p

pImprisonment is usually justified by appeals to one of two philosophies: protecting the public or rehabilitating the prisoners. By either standard, however, the evidence is overwhelming that prisons do not work. In fact, if one had systematically and diabolically tried to create mental illness, one could probably have constructed no better system than the American prison system./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; In this context, the image of the lsquo;bleeding-heart liberalrsquo;- that universal object of scorn-is one that deservesnbsp; particular scrutiny. Implicit in this characterization is an assumption that public safety and social justice are somehow at odds- that policies which protect the civil rights of prisoners or challenge racism/white supremacy in the prison systems cannot really be effective in stopping crime./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; A far more compelling case can be made that social justice is a requirement for public safety. Racism and economic bias are structural features of the U.$. prison system. Understanding this relationship can yield important insights into why that system functions so poorly to protect the public./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; At present, the United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the industrialized world. Nonetheless, crime continues to plague our society to a degree unknown in other countries- which do not come close to Americarsquo;s rate of imprisonment./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Studies have shown that more than 90% of the adult population has committed offenses that are punishable by imprisonment. Few, however, actually go to prison./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Contrary to popular belief, the seriousness of a crime is not the most crucial element in predicting who goes to prison and who does not. Societyrsquo;s losses from lsquo;white-collar-crimersquo; far exceed the economic impact of all burglaries, larcenies, and auto-thefts combined. Nonetheless the former class of criminals is far less likely to go to jail or prison than the latter./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; What does determine who goes to prison? A large part of the answer is certainly race. Black men born in America and fortunate enough to live past the age of twenty are psychosocially conditioned to accept the inevitability of being sent to a so-called ldquo;correctional facilityrdquo;. For most of us, it simply looms as the next phase of profound humiliations. Nationwide, the rate of imprisonment for African-Americans is nine times that of European-Americans. In ten states, all in the north, the incarceration rate for African-Americans is more than fifteen times that for whites. Another striking indicator of institutional racism is the lengths of prison terms. When time served is compared for similar offenses- including first-time offenders- African-Americans serve far longer sentences than whites./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; The discussion above is not intended to minimize the seriousness of crime, whether violent or not. The point is rather that swelling the prison population has failed to reduce crime. The racial and economic bias built into the prison system also works against crime victims. Poor people and people of color are also the most frequent victims of crime, and they stand to suffer the most from repressive policies that fail to stop, and in many cases fuel, criminal activities./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Prisons illustrate how racial and economic discrimination reinforce one another. As noted above, prison inmates are drawn from the ranks of the economically marginalized of all races. As an institution however, prisons have a far greater impact on communities of color, because of their disproportionate representation in prison populations./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; The social policies of the 1980s and 1990s up until now have caused an unprecedented increase in the numbers of people living in poverty in the United States, as well as a widening gap between the incomes and living standards of the rich and poor. Throughout this entire period, prison populations grew rapidly. With budgets slashed for every type of social service, prisons now stand out as the countryrsquo;s principal government program for the poor./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; If you go back in history and plot the population of all prisons and compare it to all the other variables you can think of, you will find a positive correlation only with unemployment; the higher the rate of joblessness, the higher the rate of prison commitments. It doesnrsquo;t take a PhD in economics or criminology to see the patterns./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Ironically, in many cases prisons have been touted as a solution to economic decline, especially in rural areas like Crescent City, California the location for super-max prison Pelican Bay. Prisons, filled with unemployed people of color, along with poor whites, from the inner cities, are being sold to economically depressed rural communities as a source of jobs for their growing numbers of unemployed who are usually poor whites. Again, with local and national lsquo;leadersrsquo; often see a potential state or federal prison as a recession-proof economic base. In fact, prisons are more than recession-proof economic base. In fact, prisons are more than ldquo;recession-proofrdquo;: they are the one industry next to war that greatly benefits from recession. Actually, in many cases the two industries overlap./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; From architects to academics who study prisoners and the prison system, from food service vendors to health care firms, from corrections bureaucrats to forensic psychologists and social workers, there is a lot of money to be made from the proliferation of prisons. The cost is estimated at 100 billion to run Americarsquo;s entire prison system!/p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; It is a bitter irony that the high cost of prison cuts into the health, education, and social services needed by the very people who, lacking such supports, often end up in prison! The real roots of crime in America are associated with a constellation of suffering so hideous, like at Pelican Bay State Prison, that as a society, it cannot bear to look it in the face. So it hands its casualties to a system that will keep us from its sight./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; If one views the U.$. prison system as a reasonable response to lawbreaking, then crime, violence, and drugs seem like problems that can never be solved. To gain a deeper understanding of the purpose of prisons, it is far more helpful to analyze them as a response to major recent transformations of the U.$. economy: capital flight, the shift to a service-sector economy, the depopulation of the inner-cities, an increasingly segmented labor force, the economic marginalization of communities of color, the rise in youth unemployment, and the defunding of social services of every description./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Crime could be fought by increasing the participation of poor communities in educational, social and economic institutions. The money poured into maintaining the prison systems of America, which exceeds $200 billion a year, is money which could be used to create jobs, improve education and training, and stimulate economic activities. President Obama didnrsquo;t include this in his lsquo;stimulus packagersquo;./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Instead, the social policies of the last two decades have reflected a consistent choice to abandon poor communities, especially communities of color, to increasing dislocation and the inevitable growth of lsquo;criminalrsquo; activity, which is quite criminal in itself. As a result, lsquo;ourrsquo; society is polarized further and further-not only into the haves and the have-nots, but also into the incarcerators and in the incarcerated./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Meanwhile, African so-called lsquo;Americansrsquo; and other people of color are stigmatized as criminals and drug addicts, through media images that subtly (and not so subtly) mask the equal participation of whites in the culture of addiction, crime, and violence. The deepening polarization of society thus becomes a self-perpetuating cycle in which the image of the criminal lsquo;under-classrsquo; is used to garner support for the very policies that greatly contribute to the destruction of poor urban communities./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; It has been said that lsquo;the truth will set you freersquo;. But the truth does more. It indicts, it convicts, it rends and shreds excuses, denials and the simple ability to live at peace with the past. The truth is hard, which is why people often choose instead the soft comfort of lies./p pnbsp;/p pCorrespondence: Troy T. Thomas, H-01001, A1-130/p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; nbsp;nbsp; CSP- LAC/p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; nbsp;nbsp; P.O. Box #4430/p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; nbsp; nbsp;Lancaster, CA 93539/p pnbsp;/p pP.S. A people already invisible can be easily made to disappear as this is the primary function of ghettos and prisons in America!/p

pPunishment is central to criminal justice practice in the United States. Punishment is the act of making someone suffer for a fault or crime. According to the 1994 Meriam-Webster Dictionary, ldquo;Punishment stresses that giving of some kind of pain or suffering to the wrongdoer rather than trying to reform the prison.rdquo; Punishment as a response to violation grows out of the revenge concept of justice- returning pain for pain. In terms of the criminal of the criminal justice system, punishment is the legitimized use of force and violence (psychological and physical) against individuals who have violated laws./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; The physical or emotional pain or injury of punishment done to a child or an adult creates only fear and trauma; it not only damages the person being punished but damages and enslaves those who inflict the punishment. The net result of any kind of punishment is internalized oppression, humiliation, and degradation for both the giver and the receiver of the punishment. It is difficult indeed to really see the profound depth of this truth because we as individuals and collectively as a society live within an oppressive and coercive environment as arrogance and aggression permeate our society, our history, our religious traditions, our so-called judicial system to the point that we cannot dare to even question the premise of punishment without drawing shocked response from our fellow citizens. We live in a nation surrounded by violence. We worship violence and the infliction of pain in our entertainment, in our day-to-day interrelationships with each other./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Increasingly, American policy makers have come to believe that we can punish our way to a healthy society. We are a punitive, borderline sadistic people and we are now being forced to live with the fruits of our desire for revenge. At the center of our punitive obsession is the prison system upon which we spend billions of dollars a year. Through law and policy, we have created an elaborate system of punishments and rewards. Even the basic human needs of housing and the means to earn a living have become part of the punishment system. Rings of punishment extend out from that center through the criminal justice system and into the child welfare system, health system, educational system, and beyond- into our family system at home, where child abuse and domestic violence are practiced at alarming rates with terrifying fatality, often in the name of punishment. The actions that are punished by these systems are grounded in realities over which the offender has little control: poverty, mental illness, addiction, poor education, race, sexual orientation, or gender./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Society punishes ostensibly to teach offenders a lesson, with the belief that if people are made uncomfortable enough, they will understand that their actions were not in their best interests. This is usually referred to as the lsquo;deterrencersquo; argument. We are told that if sentences are harsh, people will think twice before committing a crime. This argument is most often made in debates over the death penalty of lsquo;the other death penaltyrsquo;- Life Without the Possibility of Parole (emLWOPP-udeath by incarceration/u). /emThis concept is largely invalid; it is further evidence of our cultural ignorance of the true causes or motivations for criminal behavior. Few perpetrators stop to think about the consequences before they commit a crime./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Street crime is typically an act of desperation, insanity, drug-induced behavior, or sometimes all three. Making punishments harsher does nothing to prevent crime it serves primarily to satisfy the desire for revenge and redistribution. Society believes in this false logic of punishment for deterrence and does little or nothing to alleviate the problems that led to the offense. Anyone who has raised children knows that children do not stop misbehaving merely because they are punished. If we punish a child without nurturing, mentoring, and loving, we create at least a dysfunctional adult and sometimes a dangerous adult./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Another rationale for punishment is incapacitation. Whether or not fear of the consequences will prevent wronging, keeping people locked up and isolated (or killing them, in case of the death penalty of life without the possibility of parole [LWOPP]) will not prevent them from re-offending. To some extent this rationale makes sense, but it is hard to argue that our preferred ways of carrying it out constitute a sustainable social policy. Should all of the two million plus people currently incarcerated in the United States be kept in prisons on the chance that they could commit another crime? Would killing all murderers eliminate future murders?/p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Perhaps the most loathsome of reasons to punish is to exact revenge. We legalize our desire for revenge in our criminal code. If this makes you uncomfortable, it should. How far should the state go to satisfy some peoplersquo;s craving for revenge? Is legal murder through the death penalty or life without the possibility of parole (LWOPP) the endpoint? Do we still really believe that revenge brings balance to our communities? In fact, any ideology that demands the intentional increase in suffering rather than its diminution can hardly lay claim to justice./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; The aim of good law is to build a strong, safe, healthy, and just society. In dealing with crime, punishment or ldquo;just dessertsrdquo; must be in proportion, must contain a message of denunciation or moral censure, and must provide protection to the community and reparation to the victims/survivors of crime./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; This essay argues that, for two reasons none of these ideas is being achieved in the current retributive system. One reason is that our social structures are so inherently unjust that achieving such ideals is impossible without social transformation. The other is that the current criminal justice system focuses primarily on punishment, torture, and revenge./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; The basic assumption about the relationship between criminal justice and punishment is the deliberate infliction of suffering: it is legal violence. This essay claims that punishment is counterproductive and needs fresh examination, as does the system that perpetuates it. This system is revealed as an emperor with no clothes. The idea that it can be reformed is a myth. That it is the only or best way of dealing with offenders is not true. Who can take responsibility for a punishment system that has functioned as a tool to support the legacy of colonialism, racism/white supremacy, and imperialism that is so deeply rooted in U.S. culture?/p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; In both cases, the punishment inflicted not only fails to achieve positive change in the offender but also guarantees a high chance of reoffending. It does not treat people fairly, gives a muddied message of moral censure (gross white-collar crime can be very profitable), provides no reparation to the victims, and only partially protects the community./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Repeat offending upon release will be inevitable and will encompass fresh victims. In addition, prisons cannot rehabilitate and punish, torture and seek vengeance at the same time./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Punishment has become something the dominant group in society imposes on those of little status and power who are not in a position to challenge its fairness or its usefulness. The political authorities are seen to be doing something about crime, but because what they are doing is counter-productive and actually a cause of more offending, and more and more disempowered people get caught in its net./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Is there an alternative to retributive penal systems? There always has been. We must be willing to wrestle emuseriously/u/em with the root causes. It requires fundamental change in how people with the community see one another- particularly the way they view those who are struggling or outcast, or who sometimes harm themselves and others; respecting the fundamental humanity of those who violate social order, as well as recognizing systemic imbalances, are prerequisites to developing a new paradigm. The only way to end crime is to address the real causes, among which are poverty, mental illness, despair, racism, and broken relationships./p pldquo;An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.rdquo;/p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; -Mohandas Gandhi/p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; The concrete alternatives are head-start programs, family support systems, nutrition programs, improved education, employment opportunities, housing programs, and adequate family incomes. Together these alternatives would constitute a radical justice. After all, the construction of a just system of criminal justice in an unjust society is all contradiction in terms./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Retributive justice is a philosophy that is bankrupt. It no longer offers any positive contribution to the well-being of communities or the development of a just social fabric for society. The public cry for retribution shows that we are still close to barbarism. Civilization begins when vendetta ends. Itrsquo;s deformed stepchild, the prison system, is an even bigger evil. Prison is a dead-end street. Socially, morally, financially, and spiritually it is a cancer eating away at the heart of the human community. It is as evil and obsolete as slavery; itrsquo;s simply been transferred to the prisons!/p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Americarsquo;s criminal justice system is now so adversarial that actually getting some sort of justice is incidental to the process. America has more than 2 million plus of its citizens in prison and the number continues to skyrocket. Retribution, vengeance and torture are at the heart of this nationrsquo;s approach to crime and punishment. They form an expensive (nearly 100 billion is spent a year to support state, federal, and county jails and prisons), harsh, despairing, and wasteful use of resources in a hungry nation with huge social problems and structural injustice. For example, when news about what was going on in Abu Ghraib broke, President George Bush said, ldquo;What took place in that prison doesnrsquo;t represent the America I know.rdquo; Unfortunately, for the more than two million U.S. citizens and countless undocumented immigrants living in U.S. prisons, this is the lsquo;Americarsquo; that they, their family members, their lawyers, and activists do know and experience daily. What happened at Abu Ghraib, what is happening at secret CIA prisons all over the world and at Guantanamo Bay to Pelican Bay, is a reflection of physical and mental abuse taking place every day to men, women, and children living in the jails and prisons of this lsquo;democraticrsquo; country. A people already invisible can be easily made to disappear, as this is the primary function of ghettos, barrios, reservations, and prisons in America./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Oppression is a condition common to all of us who are without power to make the decisions that govern the political, economic, and social life of this country. We are victims of an ideology of inhumanity on which this country was built. If we dig deeper into U.S. practices, the political function that they serve is inescapable. Police, the courts, the prison system, and the death penalty all serve as social control mechanisms. The economic function they serve is equally chilling. Just as in the era of chattel slavery, there is a class of people dependent on the poor and bodies of color as a source for income- and a government that uses incapacitation as a form of social control./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; emuA test of morality is what a society does to itsrsquo; prisoners, poor people, mentally ill, people of color, along with other marginalized populations./u/em/p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; The Department of ldquo;Correctionsrdquo; is more than a set of institutions. It is also a state of mind. That state of mind led to Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Pelican Bay. That state of mind led to the American style ethnic cleansing that many say occurred in New Orleans. Sending the military into New Orleans instead of caretakers felt suspiciously like war to many of us./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Whichever way we look at it, the well-meaning experiment by American Quakers to develop the penitentiary asnbsp; a way of reforming criminals has backfired horribly. America has become an imprisoned land, with fear of crime imprisoning more and more of those who are not already incarcerated. The ldquo;Land of the freerdquo; has become a society of the caged. In other words, the actual functions of the criminal justice system are unstated, unacknowledged, and even illicit. Any criminal justice system reflects the values of those who hold power in society. Thus, criminal law has become a political instrument. Formulated and enforced by those with status and power against those who predominately are status-poor and powerless. emuChanging/u/em the prison system needs to be the highest priority of the religious community, along with civil and human rights organizations./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; We must recognize as a society that the existence and continued expansion of the penal system represents a profound spiritual crisis, and we must address it as such. It is a crisis that allows fellow human beings to be demonized. It is a crisis that legitimizes torture, total isolation of individuals (sometimes for a lifetime), sensory deprivation, and abuse of power. It is a crisis that extends beyond prisons themselves into judicial parole and probation, law enforcement, mental health, and public education systems. It further damages not only crime survivors and offenders, but also the families of both survivors and offenders, but also the families of both survivors and offenders. As the system becomes more and more dependent on profit-making companies, the ldquo;public missionrdquo; of the system is lost behind the self-interests of every group wanting to make a buck from the unions (CCPOA) representing the guards on the tier to the corporate food-services companies, from the construction firms to the for-profit detention corporations. I know each time we send a child to bed hungry that is violence. That wealth concentrated in the hands of a few at the expense of many is violence, and the denial of dignity based on race or class is violence. nbsp;And that poverty and prisons are a form of state manifested violence./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; The other part of the spiritual crisis that the penal system represents is the long-term harm we do ourselves by legitimizing extreme abuse, and even murder, of fellow human beings. From the very beginning prisons carried the ldquo;attractionrdquo; of locking away people society found offensive. As the prison industry has expanded, so has the legitimizing of such isolation and the brutality that accompanies it. We accommodate what appears to be the ldquo;emnecessary evilrdquo; /emof enforcing harsh conditions and policies. We accommodate the emldquo;collateral damagerdquo; /emrepresented by the children left behind. We accommodate the beatings and lsquo;justifiablersquo; homicides that go with police work. After a while, our own humanity is compromised. Unless the system can be overturned, the damage to us is permanent./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; I have been part of the struggle for civil and human rights for more than ten years. I have seen the horror that criminal justice policies wreak. I have never seen anything like what I am seeing now in these California prisons. My soul is haunted by what I have seen and/or experienced. As a society we need to alter the very core of every system that slavery, racism, and poverty has given birth to, particularly the criminal justice system. The United States must stop violating the human rights of men, women, and children. We need to decriminalize poverty and mental illness. We must eliminate solitary confinement, torture, and the use of devices of torture. We must eliminate the death penalty and life without the possibility of parole also known as emldquo;the other death penalty- LWOPP.rdquo; /emThe restriction of civil rights is something we can and should debate regularly as a society. The violation of human rights simply is not negotiable./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Prisons are the dinosaurs of the modern age. In no other areas of human life and development do we allow 19supth/sup century philosophy and practice to dominate. In health, in education, in medicine, in social science, in accounting and banking, in sports, in family life, and in business management, evolving philosophies have seen changing patterns of social organization more in keeping with modern thought. But not so when it comes to prisons. There we remain stuck in the 19supth/sup century. And the results show it. In other words, the entire criminal justice apparatus has spun out of control. The United States must emuhonestly/u/em re-examine the fundamental purposes on which the system rests. How can there be real change if the system is never changed, only itrsquo;s so-called ldquo;leadersrdquo;?/p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; We acknowledge the difficulty in moving beyond punishment, as we currently live in a violence- and revenge, ridden culture. But just as the first step toward healing comes with truth telling, the first step advocates of social change must take is to articulate a different reality./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; In order for a true discussion of forgiveness to take place, all of us- not just survivors of crime, must learn to see those who commit crime as human beings. It is easy not to forgive when applying the assumption that the person who has caused harm is less than human (e.g., a monster, evil, etc.) incapable of doing otherwise or of changing for the better. Only by re-humanizing those who commit crime is forgiveness/restorative justice possible./p pnbsp;/p pCorrespondence: Troy T. Thomas, H-01001, CSP-LAC/p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; nbsp;nbsp; PO Box #4430, Lancaster California 93539/p

p style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0in;"font color="#222222"ldquo;font face="Times New Roman, serif"font size="3"Some of our communities canrsquo;t even drink their own water because itrsquo;s so poisonousrdquo; said Klee Benally, a Dine revolutionary who works all over America but lives in Flagstaff, Arizona. Klee has done work to protect the San Francisco Peaks in Flagstaff from becoming a ski resort. But, the government went along with it anyways./font/font/font/p p style="font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0in;"span class="im" style="color: rgb(80, 0, 80); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"font color="#222222"font face="Times New Roman, serif"font size="3"In Flagstaff, Arizona among the drywallnbsp;span class="il"and/spannbsp;plaster buildings heaped together to form a reservation is the amazing place that is called Taala Hooghan Infoshop. That is where we stayed for one nightnbsp;span class="il"and/spannbsp;interviewed its founder, Klee Benally. Taala Hooghan was founded in October 25, 2007nbsp;span class="il"and/spannbsp;they give classes on the reservation on how to do medianbsp;span class="il"and/spannbsp;artnbsp;span class="il"and/spannbsp;write with youthnbsp;span class="il"and/spannbsp;adults./font/font/font/span/p p style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0in;"font color="#222222"font face="Times New Roman, serif"font size="3"The San Francisco Peaks glisten with fake snow in the afternoon sunlight. The Arizona snow bowl is the company that profits off of this destruction of mother earth. The Arizona Snow Bowl is a ski resort that resides on the San Francisco Peaks. They use the toilet water from Flagstaff to keep the snow going all year long. Then the snow meltsnbsp;span class="il"and/spannbsp;runs into the riversnbsp;span class="il"and/spannbsp;streams where people get their drinking water./font/font/font/p p style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0in;"font color="#222222"font face="Times New Roman, serif"font size="3"Another reason that people shouldnrsquo;t drink or bathe in this water is because of the mountain mines all around Arizona. These mines, too deep for human exposure, use drills that push water into the earth in order to force the things upward that they need./font/font/font/p p style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; margin-bottom: 0in;"font color="#222222"font face="Times New Roman, serif"font size="3"Then they dispose of the water by putting it in the pipes of the people who live in the cities under them. The bad part about this is that 99% of the time the water has extra chemical runoff. Another thing is that they do not test for the pharmaceuticalsnbsp;span class="il"and/spannbsp;drugs. The runoff is comprised of chemicals like uranium, copper, tanzanitenbsp;span class="il"and/spannbsp;iron. All of those things are proven to cause birth defects, cancernbsp;span class="il"and/spannbsp;many other horrible diseases./font/font/font/p

pemIt was a low, silent whisper/em/p pemThe Cries of Mama Earth were those of a woman who believed no-one would find herbr / if you listened very carefully you could hear a low destroyed cry rise up with every drop of grayish-white blood that seeped from her skin/em/p p emMama Earth was screamingbr / It was the scream at the end of a rapebr / when we barely have enough energy to breathe... excerpt of MountainRape bynbsp;tiny/em/p p ldquo;If this act goes through, it will not just mean the privatization of Oak Flats- but of all federal open land all across the US,rdquo; Duke Romero, indigenous land warriornbsp;andnbsp;member of the Apache stronghold occupation at the sacred site of Oak Flats, Arizona, spoke about trying to save Mama Earth from more corporate destructionbr / As Duke said In December of 2014 Arizona Poltricksters Anne Kirkpatrick, John McCainnbsp;andnbsp;others went to congress to present a midnight rider addendum called the Southeast Arizona land exchange to the National Defense Authorization Actnbsp;andnbsp;then it wasnbsp; passed by the U.S. Housenbsp;andnbsp;the Senate. It is a bill pushed by Arizona Representatives Gosar Kirkpatricknbsp;andnbsp;Arizona Senators McCainnbsp;andnbsp;othersnbsp;andnbsp;will effectively open up all federal land to kkkorporate desecration/p p emIt was a low, silent whisperbr / The Cries of Mama Earth were those of a woman who believed no-one would find herbr / a low destroyed cry would emanate with every drop of grayish-white blood that seeped from her skin/em/p p Whennbsp;a href="http://www.poormagazine.org/indigenous_media"POOR Magazinersquo;s Indigenous Peoples Media Project/anbsp;wentnbsp; on a humble journey to the part of Turtle Island the colonizers call Arizonanbsp;andnbsp;specifically a sacred site called Oak Flats. Our hearts were already heavy with the endless war on the poornbsp;andnbsp;indigenous peoples of the Bay Areanbsp;andnbsp;all across Amerikkklannbsp;andnbsp;on the day we arrived,nbsp; the news of the pordquo;Lice murder of Loreal Juana Barnell-Tsingine. in Winslow put us over the edge with sorrow. The war on the poornbsp;andnbsp;our poor bodies of color never stops- never takes a day off,nbsp;andnbsp;yet now it seems, if its possible, its gotten worse./p p As we walked through Miami, Arizona which like Superior, Arizona is a settler-colonial town so small you could miss it, there was a sorrow-filled silence that filled the atmosphere. The grey air was heavy with peoples loss, economic, spiritualnbsp;andnbsp;physical. Following the amerikkklan model, the settler-colonizers who colonized this Apache land: read: perpetrated mass genocide on the 1st peoples of the area, then enslaved, stole, worked themnbsp;andnbsp;the poorest white people among them to death. After they had destroyed everythingnbsp;andnbsp;everybody, the 21st colonizers who call themselves names like Freeport-McMoRannbsp;andnbsp;Rio Tintonbsp; proceed with the rape of every shred of Mama Earthrsquo;s body.nbsp;nbsp;Andthen like the kkkorporate rapists they are, once there was nothing left to steal, take or profit off of, abandoned hernbsp;andnbsp;her earth peoples for dead.nbsp;/p p ldquo;They are even planning to take the whole road out,nbsp;andnbsp;close off the access to very small towns like Top of the World if this goes through,rdquo; Duke proceeded to tell the horror story of the proposed monster mine ldquo;tailingrdquo; of 2500 feet tallnbsp;andnbsp;15 miles long that is being proposed by Rio Tinto, a multinational corporation dredging, bleeding, destroying water, airandnbsp;poornbsp;andnbsp;indigenous peoples liveable land all over the Mama Earth in search for coppernbsp;andnbsp;other metals needed for the endless need for electricity to power all of our electronics.nbsp; Mine tailing is the ldquo;weird , sad moon-like mountain of waste produced when these corporations desecrate mama earthrsquo;s mountains for her resources. In so many of the places we traveled the quietnbsp; medicine bringing mountain ranges of Arizona were transformed into what resembled the surface of the moon. No life grows there, no green, no water, no color remains.nbsp;/p p Duke told us that with this proposed monster mine which was aptly named Resolution there will be even more poisoning of the water than there already was in most of Arizona due to the already existent multitudes of mines, as well as air contamination into an already dust-filled environment of Arizona which will be an increase the dust storms to include arsenic, mercury,nbsp;andnbsp;other dangerous chemicals.Add this to the insanity of nearby Flagstaff, Arizona with the desecrationnbsp;andnbsp;poisoning of the San Francisco Peaks sacred siteandnbsp;the nearby aquifers with fecal matter, hormonesnbsp;andnbsp;pharmaceuticals run-off used for snow so people can mindlessly skinbsp;andnbsp;you have effectively poisoned most of the people in Arizona./p p ldquo;Now that the mine is leaving town we are looking for new things to bring into our economy,rdquo; PNN Indigenous peoples media project attended the City Council meeting of Miami, Arizona, on the day after we spoke to Duke Romero only to hear most of the townsfolk agreeing with the exciting news of the ldquo;new Resolution Minerdquo; which is purported to bring thousands of new jobs into townnbsp;andnbsp;revenue for the town./p p ldquo;People are excited by the jobs, but what they donrsquo;t know, is most of the mine will be run by autonomous machinery, in other words, no humans will be needed to work the mines.rdquo; Most of the time in the destruction of Mama Earth, kkkorporate rapists cite the ldquo;jobsrdquo; that will be generated. Instead, this is usually the way they ldquo;sellrdquo; rape on the people of their own resources.nbsp;/p p ldquo;This is not just an Apache issue - but an everyone issue, all races, all people, mountain climbers, campers, nature lovers, everyone needs to come together to fight this Land Exchange Act,rdquo; Duke Romero concluded with ways folks need to urgently help.nbsp;/p p What people in large urban areas rarely think about is the way that we are impacted by the poisoning of our mountainsnbsp;andnbsp;deserts, but what is rarely discussed is the direct connection that poltrickster desecration moves like the Land Exchange Act will impact everyone. Locally, in California we have hundreds of ldquo;mineablerdquo; mountains, if this goes through it will open up federal land from Yosemite to Yonkers, from Oak Flats to Oakland. From Apache Land to Los Angeles, who knows what these corporate rapists havenbsp; in store.nbsp; Saving Mama Earth from more desecration truly means saving us all.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;/p p emDuke explained that there are two repeals of the Federal Land Exchange Act being presented in congress right nownbsp;andnbsp;that all of us can help by writing ( a snail mail or phone call, email not so good but better than nothing), to ask your local congress person to support the Repeal of the Land Exchange Act. Remember it may not feel like they are listening, bu they have to record it if its a phone call or snail mail. For more informationnbsp;andnbsp;ongoing updates go tonbsp;a href="http://www.apache-stronghold.com/about.html"http://www.apache-stronghold.com/about.html/a/em/p

p dir="ltr"span id="docs-internal-guid-57ed75d4-0d4f-f857-4088-8d4546ab2db3"spanldquo;I know they never had any intention of us being here in their plans,rdquo; said Master Frohm as my Sun Tiburcio and so many young boys and girls call him who attend the beautiful school he founded that is Frohms Martial Arts Academy on BlackArthur at Seminary in East Oakland. Frohms Academy was just served an exhorbitant rent increase by the new owners of their building and are being forced to leave their neighborhood of 16 years. /span/span/p pnbsp;/p p dir="ltr"span id="docs-internal-guid-57ed75d4-0d4f-f857-4088-8d4546ab2db3"spanimg height="339" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/VRjvgyplKHB3tdsgIphLMCeoqojPLulmz4S7x4W0AB_LfmO-3y8FPzijbyuhMBjSpL2lOS0Gc_GY-gk4YEAh6nKY_wWLuXq3kWNilGjwTRb39rZ78BBypIv4L31zgzANc9g9O8iH" width="602" //span/span/p p dir="ltr"span id="docs-internal-guid-57ed75d4-0d4f-f857-4088-8d4546ab2db3"spanldquo;Frohms Martial Arts has been on this block in East Oakland for 16 years,rdquo; Master Frohm continued, ldquo;I started this school because Martial Arts saved me,rdquo; Master Frohm, whose name is Ernest Leon Frohm III, told us the story of his martial arts instructor who saw, even when his mama didnrsquo;t, that he was being influenced by local drug -dealers and going down the wrong road. Challenging him with the dedication necessary nbsp;from martial arts practice, his Sensei stopped Master Frohm in his tracks and put him on a path to become the consciousness building, empowering teacher to so many he is today./span/span/p p dir="ltr"span id="docs-internal-guid-57ed75d4-0d4f-f857-4088-8d4546ab2db3"spanimg height="632" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/eDqrdnIahm8dzyKD-g08hWzfrHUYT25x7dtaPSdQArJJ8AKws8KQqhrG4PxEpVzZTRxadZa52DAp3g4E94fG_cFkuheedh5xQDum3nOgWmwEPA3h_Q5N9NAKsnFxXlaSZ6dB_jxb" width="348" //span/span/p pnbsp;/p p dir="ltr"span id="docs-internal-guid-57ed75d4-0d4f-f857-4088-8d4546ab2db3"spanldquo;Im not sure where i will go, I am currently without a home, luckily i have a community so Irsquo;m staying with friends,rdquo; nbsp;said musician, medicine carrier and elder teacher Val Serrant, teacher and healer with his beautiful drums to so many who also resided on BlackArthur in Deep East Oakland, across from Castlemont high school and was just given notice to leave his home of over 13 years, whose building just like in the case of Frohms, was bought by new residents of East Oakland who under the disguise of ldquo;renovationsrdquo; asked him to leave, ldquo;I call it a gentrification tsunami,rdquo; Val concluded. /span/span/p pnbsp;/p p dir="ltr"span id="docs-internal-guid-57ed75d4-0d4f-f857-4088-8d4546ab2db3"spanI am worried about our Drum teacher at Deecolonize Academy, Uncle Val, who like Master Frohm and so many more should not have been forced to leave our neighborhood, ldquo; said Tiburcio Garcia and Kimo Umu from Deecolonize Academy who spoke at a recent Oakland City Council meeting which dealt with a proclamation for the powerful Love Life movement and an eviction moratorium. /span/span/p p dir="ltr"span id="docs-internal-guid-57ed75d4-0d4f-f857-4088-8d4546ab2db3"spanimg height="515" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/h9nmE1LKXsLrkI3_MDr-hMnk2_6zoWwhS48guhIhSWzR5e4tHoCeLY1POTKVyAx4EkK2lLUyHiaKyw_LTF0aIgk0XxpORbhSdnQvbYOWGXvTp_ZVDQ1v51SUpk9lLLgVbxur4M2a" width="515" //span/span/p p dir="ltr"span id="docs-internal-guid-57ed75d4-0d4f-f857-4088-8d4546ab2db3"spanYouth and adult poverty skolaz from POOR Magazine interviewed Val Serrant and Master Frohm as part of an investigative study Deecolonize Academyrsquo;s Revolutionary Journalism class and POOR Magazine reporters are launching on who is buying up BlackArthur and all of East Oakland, which will be part of the launching of an offensive plan we call a DeGentriFUKation Zone meant to help longtime small businesses and families stay rooted in this, a low-income, intentionally blighted, majority African-descendent East Oakland neighborhood./span/span/p pnbsp;/p p dir="ltr"span id="docs-internal-guid-57ed75d4-0d4f-f857-4088-8d4546ab2db3"spanDONT Sell that Beautiful (Ugly) House/span/span/p pnbsp;/p p dir="ltr"span id="docs-internal-guid-57ed75d4-0d4f-f857-4088-8d4546ab2db3"spanPredatory advertising ( Billboards, Bus shelter and bus bench ads) blanket East and West Oakland telling you to ldquo;Sell That Ugly Houserdquo; ugly and dirty are code words for poor. Us poor and working class peoples are so caught up nbsp;and historically lied to about our cultures and languages and spirits and homes and barrios and hoods that we believe they are ugly. We believe the myth of the suburbs and the police created narratives of safety and security. And so countless of us sell and move and leave and donrsquo;t ever look back./span/span/p p dir="ltr"span id="docs-internal-guid-57ed75d4-0d4f-f857-4088-8d4546ab2db3"spanimg height="339" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/i7o9BYuM_pXwNNy5sH5xqVvawi9_G2Aq3DaDuJo65kgqTOAeP9ZAcy3ds56RK6m31NuyBkHxrC0j50QbIOu2CPccwZiO_bRvWpqs3THF4U1C1oKyNCwugVkeDOYbONzWZTlWRTLx" width="602" //span/span/p p dir="ltr"span id="docs-internal-guid-57ed75d4-0d4f-f857-4088-8d4546ab2db3"spanUncle Val Serrant and Master Frohm are just two of the faces of BlackArthur displacement, the speculators and real estate snakkkes and poltricksters, who like Libby Scaaf and Ed Lie invite the corporate developers in to buy these neighborhoods up in one gulp are moving to push us all out. Next door to Homefulness and Deecolonize Academy, at 82nd street two long-term very low-income, disabled elders and all of their extended family of children and families who would stay in their home when there was nowhere else to go, were displaced when 30 something tech workers bought their run-down building which had stayed that way for years while the real estate snakkkes let the property values drop with every year of intentional east Oakland blight. /span/span/p pnbsp;/p p dir="ltr"span id="docs-internal-guid-57ed75d4-0d4f-f857-4088-8d4546ab2db3"spanFrohms Martial Arts has secured another location a few blocks away, which although it is a blessing that they are safe for now, it will be an immeasurable loss to the Seminary neighborhood which, before Frohms Academy came there, was in deep struggle. /span/span/p pnbsp;/p p dir="ltr"span id="docs-internal-guid-57ed75d4-0d4f-f857-4088-8d4546ab2db3"spanFrom East to West Oakland, these are the tragic, violent and sorrow-filled stories of displacement. As revolutionaries like the E 12st Peoples Plan warriors who fought for Oakland public land to actually be used for the public instead of more devil-opers, we Po folks who have struggled with displacement for years also need to build our own, refuse to leave and demand that the people making money off of our departure support our stability. /spana href="http://www.poormagazine.org/node/5516"spanThis is why we are leading nbsp;a stolen land tour demanding something we at POOR Magazine call Community Reparations, rooted in interdependence and redistribution of stolen and hoarded wealth. /span/a/span/p p dir="ltr"span id="docs-internal-guid-57ed75d4-0d4f-f857-4088-8d4546ab2db3"a href="http://www.poormagazine.org/node/5516"spanimg height="339" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/fFTQvpvmO6I42D32Tjw16-racvcNKXWRPDctHyMGfsHCnBOJXc3YpKCLO9IIVtcbhGPYdMQ8I7w1gWEn4xQ_eE8Cn_YhVbgKxV8YyHJdEej-V03CGnEFZyJGqKdiNlwOY-0YzjIb" width="602" //span/a/span/p p dir="ltr"span id="docs-internal-guid-57ed75d4-0d4f-f857-4088-8d4546ab2db3"spanAnd for those of us still here while we bang on the poltricksters and government we nbsp;also need to stop taking the chump change they give you for ldquo;that so -called Ugly Houserdquo; and move proactively into collective ownership and self-determination like we do at Homefulness. nbsp;As Black, Brown, poor and indigenous people across Mama Earth, we need to refuse to keep letting them profit off our destruction. /span/span/p pnbsp;/p p dir="ltr"span id="docs-internal-guid-57ed75d4-0d4f-f857-4088-8d4546ab2db3"span90 Day Eviction Moratorium in Oakland /span/span/p p dir="ltr"span id="docs-internal-guid-57ed75d4-0d4f-f857-4088-8d4546ab2db3"spanAfter hours and hours of testimony and trying to wait people out to the bitter end causing many of us mamas and children to leave or lose sleep and jobs, an 90 day eviction moratorium in Oakland was won, but to be real the fight to keep us all here has just begun. for more information on the/spana href="https://www.facebook.com/DeGentrificationZones/?fref=ts"span DegentriFUKation Zone/span/aspan, email /spanspanpoormag@gmail.com/spanspan or come by any thursday from 12-2pm at 8032 BlackArthur at 82nd St to speak with us at the Sliding Scale Cafe at Homefulness. To join us on our stolen land redistribution tour in /spana href="http://www.poormagazine.org/node/5516"spanSF on April 22nd or Okland /Huchin on May 20th /span/aspanemail /spanspandeeandtiny@poormagazine.org/span/span/p p dir="ltr"span id="docs-internal-guid-57ed75d4-0d4f-f857-4088-8d4546ab2db3"spanimg height="8" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/8W5zPQhZDfGlgsfndGzyNG94hFuAjnt1ChEhW4kSlcBAVQWUIUoQluc4lfS8hYoaSM7N9ROL7UfFbG_yaLA5JBBIV-PBUdUu_1L7iowtV5qFYr4WxUsqiS2Wk5j4sie4sZ8HSndE" width="20" //span/span/p

puAmericarsquo;s Other Death Penalty Problem/u/p pWhat does it say about a country that can condemn 50,000 men and women to the slow, grinding death in prison of life without the possibility of parole? In 49 of these United States, the sentence of death by imprisonment is a well-used option. In several states- California, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania- there are thousands of individuals suffering under this sentence, in the worst prisons, with the greatest restrictions, and the fewest privileges./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; The United States is a country that argues about whether a three-drug cocktail or the two-drug version is the acceptable way to execute people. Consequently, the plight of lifers without the hope of parole isnrsquo;t paid much attention. It doesnrsquo;t help that death penalty abolitionists think it is a great success when they convince a state to trade the grotesquerie of lethal injection for the boring drift into oblivion of life without the possibility of parole. Itrsquo;s telling, however, that one of the abolitionistrsquo;s main selling point is that life in prison devoid of an end point is actually a much more severe punishment. For those singularly focused on the roughly 3,000 people on various death rows around the country, the 50,000 of us being killed slowly seems not to matter as much./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Itrsquo;s hard to put a finger on how life without the possibility of parole grew from a rare aberration to the fastest growing form of life sentence in this country. Maybe itrsquo;s roots lie in the punitive streak thatrsquo;s part of the fiber of the United States. Or perhaps itrsquo;s because of death penalty abolitionistsrsquo; insistence that itrsquo;s the lsquo;reasonablersquo; alternative to a death sentence. Yet, I wonder that since both options result in death, whatrsquo;s the difference? Regardless, death by imprisonment has steadily grown into the operative form of capital punishment in the United States./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; For those of us serving life without the possibility of parole, the most frustrating aspect of our situation is being trapped between the punishersrsquo; to trade our lives for their cause, however noble. Because of this conundrum, our plight has never managed to attract much attention from scholars, lawyers, civil rights advocates, or the media. We are the modern-day disappeared inside Americarsquo;s vast system of punishment./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; My experience of challenging the orthodoxy of opposition to the death penalty has taught me several lessons. First among these is the desperate need for intellectual and academic support-support from the brain trusts of the criminology world. The dominant conclusion in the United States is that life without the possibility of parole is the appropriate replacement to death by injection. This position is held and advanced almost entirely without critique. Until therersquo;s strong scholarly research demonstrating the broader truth that my personal body of experiential knowledge has already taight me, it will remain difficult to dismantle these other lsquo;truthsrsquo;./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Deeper still, the accepted position holds that only the worst of the worst, the irredeemables, are sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. The reality is quite different and much more complex. Being sentenced to the ldquo;other death penaltyrdquo; is much less a consequence of the severity of the crime than onersquo;s ability to procure adequate representation, his or her socioeconomic status, and the color of his or her skin. This has been well-established and in regards to the lethal injection form of the death penalty, and Irsquo;d say itrsquo;s no different for the lethal term of imprisonment form./p pnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Itrsquo;s difficult to be optimistic that this situation will change anytime soon. Before long, there will be 100,000 men and women sentenced to die in prison across this great democratic nation o fours. Life without the possibility of parole- a sentence thatrsquo;s mostly unheard of in the rest of the world yet sadly is now being considered in countries like Canada- will continue to spread. What can put a stop to this form of sentencing? Is it okay to punish and torture prisoners for their entire lives? At what point will it become obvious that the terrible bargain was a disastrous mistake?/p pFor more information and/or insight please feel free to contact:/p pTroy T. Thomas, H-01001, A1-227-UPnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;/p pCSP-LAC/p pPO Box 4430/p pLancaster, CA 93539/p pnbsp;/p puLife Without the Possibility of Parole (LWOPP) and The Absolute Prohibition of Torture and Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment or Punishment/u/p pnbsp;/p pLife without the possibility of parole (LWOPP), both as a general practice and through the specific methods of implementation and other surrounding circumstances, canamount to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment (CIDT) a clear violation of International Covenants/Treaties of the United Nations/ Article 7 of the Covenant, expressly prohibits the use of torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. Under Article 1.1 of the Convention Against Torture (CAT), torture is defined as ldquo;any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person./p pnbsp;/p pU.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan argued that it is a moral principle that ldquo;the state, even as it punishes, must treat its citizens in a manner consistent with their intrinsic worth as human beings- a punishment must not be so severe as to be degrading to human dignityrdquo;./p pnbsp;/p pLife without the possibility of parole disproportionately effects African American males which more than suggests that LWOPP violates The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD)./p pnbsp;/p pldquo;The death row/LWOPP phenomenonrdquo; is a relatively new concept that has emerged within the context of the implementation of the death penalty/LWOPP and the prohibition of torture and CIDT. The phenomenon refers to a combination of circumstances that produce severe mental trauma and physical suffering in prisoners serving death row/LWOPP sentences, including prolonged periods waiting for uncertain outcomes, solitary confinement or restricted programming, poor prison conditions (e.g., medical and mental health) which for example have resulted in major class-action lawsuits being filed and won ultimately resulting in the United States Supreme Court intervening on behalf of California prisoners. Prison conditions particularly in California, together with the anxietynbsp; and psychological suffering caused by prolonged periods on death row/LWOPP, constitute a violation of the prohibition of torture and CIDT./p pnbsp;/p pWe believe it is necessary for the international community to discuss this issue and for states to consider whether life without the possibility of parole (LWOPP) per se failsnbsp; to respect the inherent dignity of the human person and violates the prohibition of torture or CIDT./p pAs a nation that prides itself as being ldquo;Democraticrdquo; and largely ldquo;Christianrdquo; and/or religious, we must push for a moratorium on all prison construction, abolition of the death penalty, and the abolition of the mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of parole (LWOPP). It is tempting to separate abolition of the death penalty from penal abolition, but because the death penalty is the centerpiece of our punishment system, work to abolish it must be understood within the context of the penal system as a whole. Often groups that work exclusively on the death penalty advocate life sentences without the possibility of parole (LWOPP), without recognizing the longterm consequences of such a position. Seeing the issues as integrated parts of a whole is crucial. The criminal ldquo;justicerdquo; system as we know it is highly dysfunctional. In addition, policymakers who advocate mandatory life sentences to replace the death penalty are settling for ldquo;death by incarcerationrdquo;./p pnbsp;/p puLWOPP History:/u/p pLWOPP has a long history that stretches back to early 20supth/sup century America, but modern arguments for LWOPP purport its purpose as for serial killers and those so mentally deranged (psychopaths) that rehabilitation is physiologically impossible. Much like Californiarsquo;s Three Strikes law, the initial objective of the law widened as the law manifested. LWOPP has become a common sentence for crimes that, arguably are less heinous than some of those sentenced to 25 years to life, but for some technical trigger, the special circumstance is applied, elevating the sentence to LWOPP. In the poignant critical words of Patricia J. Williams (The Nation Magazine), on mandatory sentencing such as LWOPP: ldquo;The thought of reducing all guilt or innocence, all probation or prison into a soulless system of automation has been thought of as unjust for centuries. To convict or sentence or execute someone based on resolutely mechanistic determinants is the very definition of unconscionable. Indeed, a system based on the word of law alone doesnrsquo;t really need judgesrdquo;./p pnbsp;/p puArguments:/u/p pOne of many problems with LWOPP is that it completely prohibits a prisoner sentenced under its tentacles from being reviewed. The sentence of LWOPP implies that the prisoner is incorrigible, yet any objective study on this class of prisoners will show the opposite. In fact, a recent study conducted by the University of California (UC) and UC Berkeley found that prisoners sentenced to LWOPP were systematically being housed in maximum-security prisons, unnecessarily, wasting millions of dollars, when their long-observed behavior was consistent with lower custody designations. As a result of the study, all eligible LWOPP prisoners were reclassified for the more cost-effective, lower custody designations. In rather interesting language, relevant to the terminal sentence in question here, the statisticians were very critical of the ldquo;mandatory minimumsrdquo; used by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) for the purpose of classification (Expert Panel Study of the Inmate Classification Score System, Office of Research, Research and Evaluation Branch, December 2011 CDCR)./p pCharles Manson, convicted, arguably of the worst case in California history, is frequently reviewed by the Board of Parole Hearings (BPH); through conventional wisdom dictates that he will never be paroled (Associated Press, ldquo;Manson Denied Parole,rdquo; April 12, 2012). Yet any fair-minded observer would find it curious that, no one sentenced to LWOPP is privileged to approach the BPH, like Manson and his followers. In contrast, Mansonrsquo;s 69-year-old co-defendant, Bruce Davis, convicted of killing two people in that horrific series of ldquo;helter-skelterrdquo; murders was able to earn a grant of parole, twice,nbsp; by experts on the BPH. Through Davisrsquo; rehabilitation efforts for 42 years, after 27 hearings, he did in fact, prove he was rehabilitated (Deutsch, Linda, ldquo;Gov. Brown: No Parole for Killer,rdquo; Fresno Bee, March 2, 2013, p. A9). Davisrsquo; parole grants were subsequently reversed by Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown, respectively./p pnbsp;/p pIronically, LWOPP was originally enacted for such persons as Charles Manson, maniacal, incorrigible by his own mouth, and convicted of serial killing. A study, such as the one proposed here, would also reveal that in many crimes committed by the lifer uwith/unbsp;parole, and convicted of more egregious cases than those sentenced to LWOPP, enter the prison system and continue to commit violent acts, and yet, as they age, mature and rehabilitate (which is consistent with developmentalistsrsquo; findings), they are then found suitable by the BPH for parole and subsequently released./p pnbsp;/p pThis writer would proffer that to effectively deny and prohibit a class of people from even attempting to show rehabilitative effort contravenes every standard of decency and humanity, and grossly offends our American ideals of justice, self-determination and the potential for human reformation/restorative justice./p pnbsp;/p puPracticality/u/p pA 2008 study by The Sentencing Project found that during the 1990s,nbsp; period of historic declines in the crime rate nationwide, ldquo;there was no discernable correlation between incarceration rates and criminal offending.rdquo; Between 1991 and 1998, ldquo;states with above increases in the rate of incarceration experienced a 13 percent decrease in crime rates. States with below average increases in incarceration rates, however, experienced a greater decline (17 percent) in crime rates./p pMoreover, during the aforementioned period, tough-on-crime Texas saw a 144 percent increase in incarceration rates and a 35 percent decrease in its crime rate. Yet New York experienced a crime rate decline of 43 percent, despite its incarceration rate of only 24 percent./p pThe Sentencing Project report also stated that, ldquo;while imprisonment may work at some level to reduce crime through deterrence and incapacitation, there is little evidence supporting deterrent effect of increasing longer prison sentences.rdquo;/p pEternal sentences mean that rehabilitated men and women, who are specifically prohibited from showing they have changed every bit as much as other lifers, will not leave prison except in a cold, lifeless body bag./p pCalifornia has the highest proportion of life sentences in the nation, relative to the population (20 percent), with 1 in 6 prisoners serving life sentences. Among Californiarsquo;s 34,000 life sentences, nearly 11 percent are LWOPP. Is LWOPP practical? Is LWOPP necessary? LWOPP will cost America billions of dollars!/p puCalifornia/National Comparison:/u/p pWith nearly 50,000 prisoners sentenced to LWOPP across the nation. America stands unique in its penchant for eternally locking up its citizens. Other countries such as Japan, Mexico, Italy, and Peru find the practice unconscionable (USA Today, ldquo;Van der Sloot Disclosure Reverberates,rdquo; June 9, 2010). Norway, Canada and a host of other countries limit incarceration to thirty years. Oregon has a provision that allows persons convicted of aggravated murder, the statersquo;s most serious offense, to be reviewed after 20 years, for what is called a ldquo;rehabilitation hearingrdquo;. The purpose of the hearing is to determine if the prisoner is on a path to rehabilitation and if so, the prisoner may work toward release. Otherwise, they remain incarcerated. Not only is this approach more pragmatic, but the simple fact that LWOPP prisoners are eventually reviewed adds an element of humanity to the equation./p pnbsp;/p pCalifornia prisoners sentenced to LWOPP can request a review through the executive level, for instance by commutation to the governorrsquo;s office, but not until the 30supth/sup year of incarceration, and there is no provision mandating a response. Given the shallow reasoning governors Schwarzenegger and Brown used to reverse the grants of parole in Bruce Davisrsquo; case, many observers believe the process at the governorrsquo;s level is so entrenched in politics, commutation is not a realistic option./p pnbsp;/p pThis writer believes the sentence of LWOPP is completely unnecessary, because like Manson and others, any life sentence uwith/u the possibility of parole can be stretched into a perpetual term. The humanity in this approach is the individual is reviewed at some point, and consistently thereafter./p pnbsp;/p pOtherwise how does society really know if one is incorrigible? Apparently, they got it wrong with Bruce Davis, according to the experts that granted him parole (not the politicians who reversed his grants). Until 1982, California allowed prisoners sentenced to LWOPP to be reviewed by the BPH after 12 years. The practice was discontinued through an administrative rule change. In 1992 the administrative rule change was codified through Assembly Bill 97, amendments 44 and 45, which eliminated any review by the BPH for those sentenced to LWOPP./p pnbsp;/p pNothing could be more unjust than to be eternally labeled incorrigible, and then wholly prohibited from showing otherwise. Marcnbsp; Mauer of the Sentencing Project said it best, ldquo;Society must question whether the broadscalenbsp; imposition of such penalties has resulted in the use of life imprisonment in ways that too often represent ineffective and inhumane public policy.rdquo; Shreveport, Louisiana, representative Patrick Williams, similarily said: ldquo;releasing offenders whonbsp; are deemed to be no longer a threat to society is not being soft on crime, it is being responsible with taxpayersrsquo; dollars.rdquo; Do we really need LWOPP in California or in America in general? Does the theory of incorrigibility conflict with proven science?/p pnbsp;/p puThe Political and Special Interests of LWOPP:/u/p pCrime Victims United (CVU), funded almost entirely by the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), helped sponsor the expansion of Californiarsquo;s special circumstance laws in 1990 (New York Times, ldquo;Justice Kennedy on Prisonsrdquo;, February 16, 2010). In addition, suchnbsp; special interests have considerable political clout within the halls of government, especially through their trade associations (for instance, the American Correctional Association). A right-wing political organization called the American Legislative Exchange Council has committees responsible for writing and disseminating ldquo;model criminal justice legislationrdquo;. Again, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association and guards organizations in most other states now fund a number of retributive crime-victimsrsquo; groups that join the guards in lobbying for longer sentences, harsher prison conditions (i.e., super max housing units-SHU), and expansion of the death penalty (i.e., life without the possibility of parole also known as ldquo;The Other Death Penaltyrdquo;- LWOPP). What better prisoner to have in these slave factories than prisoners with LWOPP as there are no turnover rates to worry about? You can literally work prisoners to death!/p pDuring a February 2010 address in Los Angeles, California, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy expressed his disgust of the politicizing of prisons in California, stating that U.S. sentencing is eight times longer than in European courts. A few days later, in New York, Justice Kennedy was more specific in his criticisms of the co-mingling of California politics and justice, calling the tactics of the CCPOA in pushing controversial laws like three strikes, ldquo;sickrdquo;. Do politics and special interests have too much sway in California justice?/p pnbsp;/p puSENTENCING DISPARITIES:/u/p pThe problem with politics and justice beholden to special interests is that justice gets so obviously tainted that, like three strikes, which the CCPOA also helped fund into enactment, sentencing becomes a nonsensical mishmash of results that, to the prisoner, end up more of a luck of the draw than any consistent formula that behavioralists nbsp;recommend to sustain any reasonable deterrent effect, no matter how slight./p pnbsp;/p pLike three strikes, for which common thieves were being sentenced to more time than those convicted of murder, the current LWOPP laws in California offer the same type of admix of injustice. For example, Sarah Dutra was convicted of poison ing her boss with a tranquilizer, and was sentenced to 25 years (Smith, Scott, Sarah Dutra, ldquo;The Stockton Recordrdquo;, August 2011)./p pFurthermore, Omaima Nelson chopped up and dismembered her husband in 1991, and was sentenced to life uwith/u parole (Taxin, Amy, ldquo;Omaima Nelsonrdquo;, Orange County Register, 2011)./p pnbsp;/p pMark Jernigan stabbed the mother of his girlfriend 78 times in 1986 and was sentenced to life uwith/u the possibility of parole (USA Today, ldquo;Mark Jerniganrdquo;, October 12, 2011, p.3). Veronica Paz plead guilty to luring her ex-boyfriend to his death and was also sentenced with the opportunity to rehabilitate (KABC-7, ldquo;Veronica Paz,rdquo; February 11, 2011)./p pnbsp;/p pThen, therersquo;s the case of Raymond E Godlewski, who hired Gene Flack to kill his father, Flack subsequently hired Michael Brown to assist with the murder plot by driving Flack to the victimrsquo;s residence. Flack knocked on the door, and when the victim answered, Flack shot him in the head. Incredibly, Flack was not charged with ling-in-wait, a special circumstance, nor for hiring Brown; only with murder for financial gain in the first degree. A jury found Flack guilty of second-degree murder, along with the financial gain allegation, of parole (People v. Raymond E. Godlewski, et al., 21 Cal. 8ptr. 2d 796 (1993)./p pnbsp;/p pIn light of these facts, is there a wide and unjust series of discrepancies of LWOPP in California as well as across the country? Some would argue for LWOPP in wistful, theoretical terms-it ought to be possible to administer such a punishment equitably. The whole history of LWOPP argues to the contrary: its many flaws are not incidental, as LWOPP arises from a fundamental misconception- you cannot do a wrong thing in a right way. Life without the possibility of parole (LWOPP- ldquo;The Other Death Penaltyrdquo;) is the ultimate form of injustice carried out in the name of justice and is an offense to human decency and is in fact a blatant human rights violation bordering on genocide against African American men./p pnbsp;/p pIt should also be noted that a people already invisible can be easily made to disappear as this is the primary function of ghettos and prisons in America!/p pnbsp;/p puRACIAL DISPARITIES:/u/p pA review by the U.S. Sentencing Commission (1991) found like disparities in the application of ldquo;three strikesrdquo;. It found that African Americans constitute 29 percent of persons serving a felony sentence in prison, and 45 percent of those persons serving a three strike offense. Yet African Americans make up a mere 7 percent of the Golden Statersquo;s population./p pnbsp;/p pRace is important in the criminogenic context because, as behavioral scientists point out, race, like agee, often factor in when trying to determine how influence and perspective to the internal effects on a person or group of persons. For instance, the U.S. Department of justice, the state department of corrections, and the Vera Institute of Justice Center consider age 55 ldquo;oldrdquo; in prison years, as opposed to their mainstream counterpart at 65, because studies show that prison tends to age people, particularly African Americans./p pnbsp;/p pThe reason given is that African Americans are generally in poorer health than those similarly aged in society as a result of lifestyle issues such as excessive drug and alcohol use, long-standing economic disadvantages prior to incarceration and substandard health care. Once in prison the inherent stressful conditions contribute to what developmentalists call allostatic load, the total, combined burden of physiological stresses that an individual lives with as they increase the risk of premature deterioration and chronic disease. Of course, these factors can raise the health risks of people across all sectors, but African Americans statistically have the highest prevalence of premature deterioration and chronic disease (Berger, Stassen, Kathleen, The Developing Person: Through the Life Span, Worth Publishers, 8supth/sup Ed., New York, NY, 2010). Based on these factors, developmentalists say incarceration shortens the life of prisoners, lifers or not, if they are serving a significant stretch of time (Patterson , J. Evelyn, Dr., ldquo;Life on the Inside and Death on the Outside: Complexities in Health Disparities Inside and Outside U.S. Prisons,rdquo; Prison Legal News, April 2013, pp.24, 25)./p pnbsp;/p pDevelopmentalists say this unique, dying population is expanding, attributable to the large numbers who have aged in prison with life terms and mandatory minimum sentences with no parole (LWOPP), after having committed crimes in their youth (it should be noted that the criminogenic risk of adults over 35 decreases steadily and significantly, and those over 50 represent the lowest risk). Moreover, African Americans are disproportionately represented among older inmates: about 700 per 100,000 African Americans adults 55 and older are in prison nationwide, compared with 420 per 100,000 Latinos and 130 per 100,000 whites (Hooyman, Nancy R., Social Gerontology, 9supth/sup ed.nbsp; Allyn Bacon, Boston MA, 2011). Still, these rates of long-term incarceration are devastating to any ethnic group, causing generational, calamitous stunting./p pnbsp;/p pMoreover, according to developmentalists, the primary reasons for the disparities, in every statistical measurement, is the persistent lower socioeconomic status of African Americans, which is tied to their history of disadvantage and discrimination in our society; including limited access to educational opportunities in their younger years; reduced employment opportunities and long periods of unemployment or under-employment throughout their lives; concentration in low-wage, sporadic service jobs, many with no benefits or the option of saving and private pensions (Berger, Stassen, Kathleen, Ibid., p.465)./p pnbsp;/p pOf course, other racial groups suffer the same disadvantages, but not in the historic concentration of African Americans. These facts, and so many more, highlight the remarks of Patricia Williams, that, mandatory sentences with little or no judicial consideration of the factors in an individualrsquo;s life make a person unique, turns the judicial system into little more than a pulseless conveyer belt to a very slow discriminating death sentence. LWOPP is applied disproportionately by race in America./p pnbsp;/p puLWOPP: THE SLOW TORTOROUS DEATH:/u/p pOn the topic of whether lengthy prison terms are lethal, Evelyn Patterson, assistant professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University says that ldquo;hellip;studies on prison morbidity suggest that priosners are at risk for more diseases before, during, and after interaction with the criminal justice systemhellip; I looked at parolees in New York and examined the relationship between the length of time they served in prison and their life expectancyhellip;The study indicated that, on average, every year in prison was accompanied by a two-year reduction in life expectancy. Moreover, while the risk of death declines over time once a person is released, it takes approximately two-thirds of the length of time served for someone to eliminate the life expectancy defecit./p pnbsp;/p pThe diet alone is mortal. Almost everything is served from a can, or is otherwise processed, which translates into high sodium meals laden with PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyl: any of several compounds that are poisonous environmental pollutants which tend to accumulate in animal tissues) certain to kill over consistent and prolonged consumption./p pnbsp;/p pQuoting again from this writer, ldquo;Local prison policies also cause prisonersrsquo; health to decline and health care costs to balloon. Pruno, otherwise known as prisoner-manufactured alcohol, is a popular substance among addicted imbibers. Pruno is easily made from fruit, but can be composed of anything, which can cause fermentation: rice, potatoes, corn, you name itrdquo; (Wiliams, Ibid., p. 24). For the sake of ldquo;securityrdquo;, fruit is all but forbidden, though only a small minority of ldquo;wine manufacturersrdquo; exist. Such policies counter the medical wisdom of health experts such as D. David Katz M.D., who recommends men over forty consume at least ten servings of fresh fruit daily (Brant, John, ldquo;Look Great at Any Agerdquo;, Menrsquo;s Health, March 30, 2011, p. 146)./p pThere are times when policy and environment converge malignantly. In April of 2013 J. Clark Kelso, the court-administrator appointed by the U.S. Supreme Court, ordered CDCR to transfer over 3,000 prisoners due to longstanding, long-ignored valley fever outbreak. CDCR is already under pressure to release 10,000 prisoners after it was learned that prisoners were dying needlessly in alarming numbers due to negligence, and it was brought to light that California has the highest suicide rate in the nation. Kelso limited his order of transfer to Filipinos and African Americans, the most vulnerable to the air-borne ailment, but recommended that Pleasant Valley and Avenal state prisons be closed entirely. While moving the most vulnerable prisoners seems reasonable, Dr. John Gagliani, a valley fever research expert says prison officials have done little to curb high infection rates in both prisons. Kelso reported that 62 prisoners from throughout the state died between 2006 and January of 2013; 70 percent of them African American (Egelko, Bob, ldquo;Transfers Ordered Over Illness.rdquo; San Francisco Chronicle, April 10, 2013, pp. C1, C4)./p pnbsp;/p pStress is by far the most prevalent health risk. Stress is widely defined by behaviorists as ldquo;negative emotional state occurring in response to events that are perceived as taxing or exceeding a personrsquo;s resources or ability to cope.rdquo; Stress adds to and accelerates the ldquo;wear and tearrdquo; occurring in deleterious stages: the ualarm/u ustage/u initiates a variety of internal physical chemicals and responses in attempt to meet the demands of e stress-producing event; namely catecholamine (of the adrenaline group) that can cause hypertension, panic attacks, and other harm. The second stage, the uresistance stage/u, diminishing the alarm stage, but prolonging its physiological arousal above normal levels. The uexhaustive stage/u initiates if the stress producing event endures, awakening the alarm stage, this time irreversibly. As the bodyrsquo;s energy reserves deplete, adaption breaks down, the person becomes exhausted, and may experience physical disorders that could lead to death./p pnbsp;/p pIf a stressor is prolonged, continued high levels of internal chemicals, such as corticosteroids can weaken important body systems, lowering immunity and increasing susceptibility to physical illnesses. There is mounting evidence that chronic stress can lead to increased vulnerability to acute and chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, and even premature death. Chronic stress can also lead to depression, immune compromises, and psychological problems (Berger, Stassen, Kathleen, Ibid., pp. 471, 484; (The Merck Manual of Medical Information, Pocket Books, New York, NY, 1999, p.786)./p pnbsp;/p pBehaviorists have linked stress with negative effects on life span through particular DNA strands called telomeres. The DNA that a personrsquo;s genes are composed of are entwined in 46 chromosomes, each ending with a telomere, a stretch of DNA that protects the chromosome like the plastic tip of a shoelace. A study conducted by Brigham and Womenrsquo;s Hospital in Boston found, among a sample of 5,243 nurses nationwide, that those who experienced certain stresses had shorter telomere. Carol Greider, a molecular biologist at John Hopkins University, a pioneer of telomere research says, ldquo;When the telomere gets very, very short, there are consequences; noting the increased risk of age-related ailments.rdquo; Furthermore, a German study found that people who live sedentary live are at risk for shortened telomeres (Stromberg, Joseph. ldquo;Expiration Dates: New Research Suggests We Can Defy Genetic Destiny,rdquo; Smithsonian, January 2013)./p pnbsp;/p pIn light of the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment where twenty-four college students were randomly assigned to act as prison guards or prisoners, the two week experiment was abruptly ended after just six days when those acting as prison guards became abusive. As Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo (2005), ldquo;Within a few days, [those] assigned to the guard role became abusivehellip;rdquo; Putting it succinctly, prisons are inherently stressful places. It is for this reason that prison guards are allowed eight weeks of vacation time a year./p pnbsp;/p pFor prisoners, exercise is a healthy way to counter the constant stress of prisons. Behaviorists say that exercise at every stage of life protects against illnesses; reducing blood pressures, strengthening the heart and lungs, and off-setting depression. However, frequent lockdowns make regular exercise challenging, to say the least. When prisoners cannot exercise on the yard, cramped cells designed for one, but occupied by two, make it nearly impossible to supplement exercise yard. By contrast, sitting for long hours correlates with almost every unhealthy condition, especially heart disease and diabetes, both of which carry additional health hazards beyond the disease itself (Berger, Stassen, Kathleen, Ibid., pp. 478-564). The evidence is quite clear that lengthy prison sentences diminish the health and life span of prisoners./p pnbsp;/p puCONCLUSION:/u/p pldquo;By creating a justice system based on offense rather than actual risk, yoursquo;re going to end up sweeping more people into the system who donrsquo;t need to be there. It looks to us like itrsquo;s more a public relations measure than a public safety measure,rdquo; says Tracy Valazquez of the Public Policy Institute./p pnbsp;/p pQuoting from John E. Dannenburg of Prison Legal News, ldquo;Fewer than 1 percent of paroled California murderers have returned to prison for committing new offenses- a figure that contrasts sharply with the 70 percent recidivism rate for other released state prisonersrdquo;./p pnbsp;/p pJames Austin, a leading figure in the criminologist profession, says that ldquo;a growing body of science shows that the prison-only approaches may feel good initially- and be safe politically- but an over-reliance on incarceration ultimately can make matters worse.rdquo; In other words, there is limited scientific evidence that longer prison terms reduce recidivism or crime rates. Moreover, sentences that defy the decency of humanity, and make prisoners all but ghosts of society, in a netherworld hinging on life or death, pushing the prisoner to the latter by conditions that offend empirical approaches of contemporary behaviorists are warped./p pnbsp;/p pThe American Civil Liberties Union, American Friends Service Committee and Amnesty International have all openly denounced life without the possibility of parole (LWOPP) or expressed concerns about it./p pThe Sentencing Project listed three major recommendations for sentencing reform in America: Eliminate life without the possibility of parole as costly, short-sighted and a punishment that ignores the potential for growth and transformation. All life sentences should be parole eligible, with periodic reviews like that of Charles Mansonrsquo;s./p pnbsp;/p pIn agreeing with the findings of the criminologists at Universities of California Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, and UCLA, Matthew Cate, the secretary of CDCR, says ldquo;If science says we can move inmates in lower-level settings safely, then that helps us with realignment because wersquo;re able to more fully utilize our lower-level prisons. I know thatrsquo;s what the science says. Should we just rely on the science when it is convenient?rdquo;/p pCorrespondence: Troy T. Thomas, H-01001/p pCSP-LAC/p pPO Box 4430/p pLancaster, CA/p p93539/p