Infographics

The Marijuana Legalization Debate Facts (errors corrected under the graphic)

I like this graphic except for the taxation benefits it lists. They are incorrect, as I point out in the comment I left for them at their web site:

"The $36 billion figure quoted as potential revenue is false because marijuana cultivated in a post-prohibition market, however, would cost a fraction of the figure you gave. 

"To get a sense of the disparity in price between legal and illegal drugs, compare the production value of marijuana—about $1,600 per pound by your $36B estimate—to the production value of tobacco, a legal smoke crop that US farmers sell for less than $2 per pound. 

"Go back to 2005, make marijuana legal, and give it an astronomically high production value of $800 per pound, or half of the per pound value based on your $36B estimate: It would have tied with soy beans in 2006 as America’s third largest cash crop, with an average production value of roughly $17 billion. If it had the same production value per pound as tobacco, or $2, its APV in 2005 would have been $44 million; or less than 10 percent of beans, 2005’s 20th most valuable cash crop. 

"So while pointing to marijuana as America’s largest cash crop is a good indicator of its popularity (and arguably, the safety of its use), it doesn’t follow that taxation and regulation of the drug in a post-prohibition market would be a boon to a floundering economy, especially when factoring in the costs of an aggressive regulatory framework. And the estimate you used skews all the other estimates you gave based on it." --jef

U.S. Legacy in Afghanistan: Giant Prisons

Monday, February 20, 2012 by Common Dreams
Despite claims to hand over control of the main U.S. detention center in Afghanistan to the Afghans, the U.S. military is instead investing millions to double the size of the facility.

Spencer Ackerman writes in Danger Room this morning:

There once was a plan to turn over the main U.S. detention center in Afghanistan to control of the Afghans in 2011. That’s out the window. Instead, the military is offering millions to vastly expand the center’s inmate intake. 

Specifically, $35 million will fund expansions necessary to house “approximately 2,000 detainees” at the Detention Facility at Parwan on the outskirts of Bagram Air Field, an hour’s drive from Kabul. The Army Corps of Engineers wants to expand “detainee housing, guard towers, administrative facility and Vehicle/Personnel Access Control Gates, security surveillance and restricted access systems,” according to a recent solicitation. A Turkey-based company received the contract in late January. [...] 

And Parwan isn’t the only detention center on the grow: the U.S. is spending up to $100 million building jails across Afghanistan.

* * *

As Nick Turse noted last week, the "drawdown" in Afghanistan has been anything but:

Despite all the talk of drawdowns and withdrawals, there has been a years-long building boom in Afghanistan that shows little sign of abating. In early 2010, the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had nearly 400 bases in Afghanistan. Today, Lieutenant Lauren Rago of ISAF public affairs tells TomDispatch, the number tops 450. 

The hush-hush, high-tech, super-secure facility at the massive air base in Kandahar is just one of many building projects the U.S. military currently has planned or underway in Afghanistan. While some U.S. bases are indeed closing up shop or being transferred to the Afghan government, and there’s talk of combat operations slowing or ending next year, as well as a withdrawal of American combat forces from Afghanistan by 2014, the U.S. military is still preparing for a much longer haul at mega-bases like Kandahar and Bagram airfields. The same is true even of some smaller camps, forward operating bases (FOBs), and combat outposts (COPs) scattered through the country’s backlands. “Bagram is going through a significant transition during the next year to two years,” Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Gerdes of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Bagram Office recently told Freedom Builder, a Corps of Engineers publication. “We’re transitioning... into a long-term, five-year, 10-year vision for the base.” 

Whether the U.S. military will still be in Afghanistan in five or 10 years remains to be seen, but steps are currently being taken to make that possible. U.S. military publications, plans and schematics, contracting documents, and other official data examined by TomDispatch catalog hundreds of construction projects worth billions of dollars slated to begin, continue, or conclude in 2012.

Active duty cop: ‘The war on drugs is a war on people’

All prohibition does is cost millions of lives and pack the prisons with non-violent offenders who have a problem with their health, not their morality. Drug addiction is a serious and destructive problem--and their solution? Make it worse and even more destructive. It's bad enough people overdose (though, legally prescribed drugs are now the #1 cause of death in the US--alcohol and tobacco--both legal--cause more and worse health problems than all illegal drugs combined; and now, marijuana has been shown to prevent and cure CANCER and reduce and eliminate tumors); by outlawing drugs, they created a thriving and hungry black market that is pitted against law enforcement and results in multiple deaths daily. Drugs are a health issue, not a moral one. As soon as that reality is embraced, our nation's southern borders and our city streets will become safer---people can get the help they need without having to go through the prison system. Prohibition was a failure in the 1920s, and it has been a failure since 1937.--jef




By Stephen C. Webster - RAW Story
Friday, January 27, 2012

Speaking to Raw Story recently, an active duty police officer who asked not to be named threw down the gauntlet over the part of his job he hates most: the drug war.

“I did not get in law enforcement to destroy a person’s future because that person had marijuana or a pill in their pocket,” the officer explained. “Why would you want to destroy that person’s future and cause them great harm because of that? It’s not worth it.”


Like many Americans, the reality of the drug war was was nothing like what he’d been taught to believe in his youth. But statistics like a citizen being arrested for drugs every 19 seconds in 2010, and 1.6 million people incarcerated over drugs in 2009, were nothing compared to what he actually experienced in the front lines of the drug war on America’s users.

But for those officers who put their lives on the line every day to protect the public from dangerous, violent criminals, the drug war isn’t always just another part of the job. For this officer in particular, it’s much more than that: “The war on drugs is a war on people,” he claimed.


“I just didn’t see problems from illegal drug users that I’d been led to believe,” the officer explained. “Most of the calls that we get on drug use, as police, are alcohol related. Alcohol is a serious drug that can be abused, but I just didn’t see the calls on other drugs like I had been led to believe. I didn’t see these drug-crazed people out there doing crazy things… Even growing up before entering law enforcement, I was always led to believe that the drug war was meant to stop all these people from doing crazy things. But on the street, that’s not what you see. That’s a lie.”

In his view, the officer said that the American public would be much better off if the government would “regulate drugs and keep the control out of the hands of the black market criminals.”

“The cartels have been running a serious drug operation in America for decades, and I don’t think most Americans are really aware of it,” he said. “The money comes from the prohibition of drugs. These criminals are making their money because of the prohibition. If you legalize and regulate it, their profits go to zero.”


For more than two decades in law enforcement, he said that he’s carried an immense guilt: his first drug arrest.


“I was in training, on ‘the other side of the tracks,’ for lack of better words, and we pulled a vehicle over,” he explained. “The guy, I think he had a defective taillight or something. He was sober, polite, respectful, no problems, and my training officer said, ‘Oh yeah, he’s gonna have drugs.’ So, I asked if we could search his vehicle and he gave me permission. Within no time, I found a small amount of (hard) drugs, so he was facing a serious charge. The whole time I was thinking, ‘This is not right. This guy’s keeping to himself, not hurting nobody, he’s a peaceful person.’ I instinctively knew this was wrong.


I changed my perspective immediately. This was not the war on drugs that I thought it would be.”

Carrying this guilt for his participation in such a system, he got away from making narcotics arrests and received a transfer to another division. There he worked for years, until one day in 2006. Acting on a whim, he ran a Google search for the peculiar terms, “cops against the drug war,” and rather abruptly found a new calling: an activist group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). He’s followed their work ever since, and in 2012, the officer finally decided that he too must raise his voice against the drug war.


Today, he’s acquired a unique extra-curricular activity: an anonymous blog served up by LEAP, examining the innards of the drug war from a perspective rarely put on public display. If his superiors knew, he explained, “I would probably be terminated.”


And, he claims, it’s not just him that’s come to some stark, personal conclusions on the drug war: fellow officers are coming around as well — especially those who’ve been doing it for a while.


“I remember a case just here recently when an officer was trying to find marijuana on one guy, and another officer started looking around in this area where there’s actual crime, and he was kind of making fun of him for wasting time,” he said. “There’s plenty of officers that do want to get away from the petty, small drug arrests that distract them from fighting real crime, which is what a lot of them get into law enforcement for individually.”


To read more from the anonymous cop, visit the Law Enforcement Against Prohibition blog.

How the US Govt Uses Its Corporate Media Servants to Attack Real Journalism

Friday, July 15, 2011 by Salon.com

by Glenn Greenwald

"The US has stopped running its global network of secret prisons, CIA director Leon Panetta has announced. 'CIA no longer operates detention facilities or black sites,' Mr Panetta said in a letter to staff" - BBC, April 9, 2009

Earlier this week, the truly intrepid investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill published in The Nation one of the most significant political exposés of the year.  Entitled "the CIA's Secret Sites in Somalia," the article documented that the CIA uses and effectively controls a secret prison in Mogadishu, where foreign nationals who are rendered off the streets of their countries (at the direction of the U.S.) are taken (along with Somali nationals) to be imprisoned with no due process and interrogated (by U.S. agents).  Although Somali government agents technically operate the facility, that is an obvious ruse: "US intelligence personnel pay the salaries of intelligence agents and also directly interrogate prisoners" and are "there full-time," Scahill reported.  On Democracy Now on Wednesday, the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed it has no knowledge of this secret prison.

This arrangement, as Scahill told me yesterday, is consistent with standard Obama administration practice: "they continue even the most controversial Bush terrorism policies by having some other government technically operate it so they can keep their fingerprints off it."  Indeed, the administration has even resorted to this playbook by using "torture by proxy" -- as we saw when the Kuwait government, with at least the complicity if not direction of the U.S., detained and beat American teenager Gulet Mohamed during interrogation sessions.  Just yesterday, a federal judge "reacted skeptically" to the Obama DOJ's demands for dismissal of a lawsuit (on secrecy grounds) brought by an American citizen imprisoned for four months in Africa, where "U.S. officials threatened him with torture, forced disappearance and other serious harm unless he confessed to ties with al-Qaida in Somalia."

Scahill's discovery of this secret prison in Mogadishu -- this black site -- calls into serious doubt the Obama administration's claims to have ended such practices and establishes a serious human rights violation on its own.  As Harper's Scott Horton put it, the Nation article underscores how the CIA is "maintaining a series of 'special relationships' under which cooperating governments maintain proxy prisons for the CIA," and "raises important questions" about "whether the CIA is using a proxy regime there to skirt Obama's executive order" banning black sites and torture.

Despite the significance of this revelation -- or, more accurately, because of it -- the U.S. establishment media has almost entirely ignored this story.  Scahill thus far has given a grand total of two television interviews: on Democracy Now and Al Jazeera.  No major television news network -- including MSNBC -- has even mentioned his story.  Generally speaking, Republicans don't care that the worst abuses of the Bush era are continuing, and Democrats (who widely celebrated Dana Priest's 2006 Pulitzer Prize winning story about Bush's CIA black cites) don't want to hear that it's true.

Meanwhile, the CIA has been insisting that discussion of this Mogadishu site could jeopardize its operations in Somalia, and while that typical, manipulative tactic didn't stop Scahill from informing the citizenry about this illicit behavior, it has (as usual) led government-subservient American media stars to refrain from discussing it.  Indeed, Scahill said that this site is such common knowledge in Mogadishu (where even ordinary residents call it "that CIA building") that he'd be "very surprised" if international reporters who cover Somalia were unaware of it; he has confirmed with certainty that at least one correspondent covering East Africa for one of the world's leading media outlets was aware of, but never reported, the CIA's role at this secret prison.

While the establishment media has been largely ignoring Scahill's revelations, a few particularly government-pleasing journalists have been dutifully following the CIA's script in order to undermine the credibility of Scahill's story.  CNN's long-time Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr -- one of the most reliable DoD stenographers in the nation (she actually announced that the real Abu Ghraib scandal was the unauthorized release of the photographs, not the abuse they depicted) -- has been predictably tapped by the CIA to take the lead in this effort.  Earlier this week, Starr filed a truly incredible report -- based exclusively on a "U.S. official" to whom she naturally granted anonymity -- that had no purpose other than to refute Scahill's report even though Starr never once mentioned that report:

CIA operatives have secretly traveled to Mogadishu, Somalia, to help interrogate terrorism suspects about operations in East Africa and Yemen, a senior U.S. official told CNN Tuesday.

The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, stressed any suspects were under the control of Somali forces and the CIA was present only in "support" of interrogations in recent months. He described the number of times the CIA was present as "very small," adding that he would only say it was "one or two times."

"Only on very rare occasion does the CIA support debriefings of suspected terrorists who are in TFG (Transitional Federal Government) custody," the official told CNN.

Starr pretended that this was a headline-making scoop for CNN -- that a CIA official had bravely revealed some sort of unauthorized secret to her: that the CIA "helps" interrogate a "very small" number of Terrorism suspects in Somalia in a "support" role -- when it was plainly nothing more than an effort to undermine Scahill's report by claiming that the CIA's role was extremely limited (nothing more than a little help given to the Somalis) and that it was Somalia that controlled, ran and maintained responsibility for the prison.  Not only did Starr never mention the key facts -- that this prison is kept secret from the ICRC and imprisons detainees without due process who are rendered from other nations at the behest of the U.S. and that the CIA pays the agents there -- but she also helpfully wrote down that "the CIA gets assurances from the [Somali government] that detainees will not be mistreated," and then added that the real significance of the story is that it "underscores the growing U.S. concern about the rise of terrorist networks in the region."

In sum, Starr was handed a CIA press release that falsely denied the key elements of Scahill's story, which she then disguised as an anonymous unauthorized leak that she uncovered.  She slothfully and obediently disseminated CIA claims designed to minimize its role in this prison without lifting a finger to resolve the differences between those denials and the numerous facts Scahill uncovered which proved how extensive the CIA's control of the prison (and the rendition program that fills it) actually is.

It's not just lazy but deceitful: uncritically printing anonymous government denials while dressing it up as her own discovery (once Nation representatives complained to CNN, she tacked on this sentence at the end: "Parts of the story initially appeared in the magazine The Nation on Tuesday").  Whether it was Starr who contacted the CIA to obtain this "story" (unlikely) or the CIA which tapped Starr on the head and directed her to print this and she then dutifully complied (far more likely), this was a joint effort by the U.S. Government and its CNN servant to undermine Scahill and his story while appearing not to do so.

Serving the same purpose was this ABC News report by Luis Martinez, which at least has the virtue of being more honest than Starr's report:  ABC doesn't pretend to do anything other than serve as obedient stenographer to the CIA by uncritically writing down and passing on the statements of an anonymous Government official in denying Scahill's report.  Leaving aside the slovenly practice of granting anonymity to government officials to do nothing other than issue official government claims -- so common a tactic of journalistic malpractice as to not merit comment at this point -- the article does nothing other than print the same CIA claims without expending a molecule of energy to determine if the claims are true.

Worse, ABC allows the CIA to depict Scahill's report as false by uncritically printing the blatant strawmen against which the CIA rails ("CIA Doesn’t Run Secret Prison in Somalia" . . . CIA "refutes a report that the agency runs a secret prison in that unstable country" . . . "A story published in The Nation said that the CIA was running a secret prison to house and interrogate terror suspects").  The whole point of Scahill's article is that while the Somalis exercise nominal control over the prison, that's merely a "plausible deniability" ruse to allow the U.S. to use it at will, as evidenced by the fact that the CIA pays those agents and is continuously present.  The "denials" uncritically printed by ABC confirm and bolster Scahill's story, not "refute" it.

Worse still, the ABC report justifies the CIA program by quoting the anonymous CIA official as describing the program as "the logical and prudent thing to do."  ABC then helpfully adds that "senior U.S. officials have expressed concern that al Shabab may be trying to expand its terror operations beyond Somalia" and that " U.S. government officials worry that those lawless regions might become a safe haven for al Shabab and other terror groups."  There is no discussion -- zero -- of the illegal aspects of maintaining a secret prison, the dangers of allowing unchecked renditions of prisoners to Somalia hidden from international human rights monitoring, or the likely violations of Obama's highly-touted Executive Orders.  Like Starr's CNN report, this article is nothing more than a CIA Press Release masquerading as an ABC News "news article," the by-product of a joint effort by the CIA and another establishment news outlet to make Scahill's report look erroneous, sloppy and irrelevant.

Just consider what happened here.  Scahill uncovered this secret prison because he went to Mogadishu -- dangerously unembedded, as very few journalists are willing to do -- and spent 9 days there aggressively digging around.  By contrast, Starr published her report by being handed a CIA script which she blindly read from without any other work, and ABC's Martinez then did the same.  But it's CNN and ABC that are considered -- by themselves and establishment D.C. mavens -- to be the Serious Journalists, while Scahill's report is heard only on Democracy Now and Al Jazeera.  That's because "Serious Journalism" in Washington means writing down what government officials tell you to say, and granting them anonymity to ensure they have no accountability.

Through this method, the U.S. Government need not directly attack real journalists.  They simply activate their journalistic servants to do it for them, and those servants then dutifully comply, this ensuring that they will continue to be chosen as vessels for future official messages.

End the 'War on Drugs'

Thursday, June 16, 2011 by The Nation

by Peter Rothberg

Tomorrow's 40th anniversary of President Nixon's declaration of the War on Drugs comes amid growing recognition that the policy, and all that it wrought, is a complete disaster.

Shifting priorities toward a more sensible approach that offers treatment rather than punishment for addicts may seem like a daunting task but public opinion is increasingly opposed to the war on drugs, and many states facing tight budgets are de-emphasizing expensive criminalization in favor of strategies that decrease the penal population.

As Sasha Abramsky explained in an extensively reported and still-timely 2009 piece, "out of economic necessity and because of shifting mores, the country will likely get more selective, and smarter, about how it uses incarceration and whom it targets for long spells behind bars."

Last week, the Global Commission on Drug Policy issued a report declaring unreservedly: 

“The global war on drugs has failed.” 

This strong criticism of the status quo was endorsed by the three former Latin American presidents who organized the commission — Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, César Gaviria of Colombia, and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico — along with 16 other prominent world leaders, including former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former head of NATO Javier Solana, Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, and Virgin Group founder Richard Branson.

Meanwhile, in the US, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of police officers, judges and related professionals, held a well-attended DC rally this past Tuesday, citing its own report criticizing the Obama Administration for doing precious little to reframe drug abuse as a matter of public health rather than one of criminal justice. The report calculates that the war on drugs has brought us 40 million arrests at a cost of one trillion dollars without making even a tiny dent in drug use.

The transpartisan coalition of people who want to end the drug war is one of the most diverse, broad-based alliances in America today, drawing from all regions and most spots on the political spectrum.

Comic Books as a Path to Prison Reform: An Interview With Activist Lois Ahrens

"Comic books place an individual's experience in a political context by describing how the prison system is built on racism, sexism, and economic inequality," Ahrens says.
By , Angola 3 News
Posted on May  20, 2011

Lois Ahrens is the Founder/Director of The Real Cost of Prisons Project (RCPP) and has been an activist/organizer for more than 40 years. First started in 2001, RCPP brings together justice activists, artists, justice policy researchers and people directly experiencing the impact of mass incarceration to work together to end the U.S. prison nation. RCPP created workshops, a website that includes sections of writing and ‘comix’ by prisoners, a daily news blog focused on mass incarceration and three comic books that were first created in 2005: Prisoners Town: Paying the Price, by artist Kevin Pyle and writer Craig Gilmore; Prisoners of the War on Drugs, by artist Sabrina Jones and writers Ellen Miller-Mack and Lois Ahrens; and Prisoners of a Hard Life: Women and Their Children by artist Susan Willmarth and writers Ellen Miller-Mack and Lois Ahrens.

Hundreds of organizations around the country use the comix in workshops, outreach and organizing. 135,000 have been printed, while over 115,000 have been sent, free of charge, to organizations and thousands of people held in prisons and jails. Due to lack of funding, Prison Town is now out of print and Prisoners of A Hard Life will soon be as well. Prisoners of the War on Drugs is still available. Print-ready versions of all three are available to view and download here.

In 2008, the three comix were published in an anthology, edited by Ahrens, entitled The Real Cost of Prisons Comix, (PM Press, 2008). Through the RCPP, Ahrens has been fortunate to have built an extensive correspondence with prisoners, which has grown into working relationships and friendships. In Massachusetts where she lives, Ahrens is involved in working to stop the state from charging $5/day jail fees to convicted prisoners and those held "pretrial." She is also working to stop new "3 Strikes" legislation from being passed.

Angola 3 News: Who is your target audience and what is the message that you are communicating with the comix?

Lois Ahrens: The comic books were created to communicate complex ideas in language that could be easily understood despite the fact that they are filled with information, research, analysis and a glossary. We wanted them to look and feel like comic books since people are not intimidated by comic books.

Initially, my goal was to create useful materials for organizers working to challenge and change punitive and destructive drug policies, activists opposing the building of new prisons and jails, as well as educators, and health workers. After publishing the comic books, we realized that prisoners were extremely interested. Comic books have been sent to prisoners every day since April 2005, with many requesting that comics be sent to family members and other prisoners.

The comic books place an individual’s experience in a political context by describing how the prison system is built on racism, sexism, and economic inequality. They include alternatives to the current reality so that readers can strategize and act to make change no matter where they are. The goal of the comic books is to politicize.

A3N: Have you ever had problems from prison authorities when sending comic books to prisoners?

LA: Yes. I think of this as the “tyranny of the mail room.” Often an individual working in a mail room sends the comic books back. Generally, I have found county jails are the worst in turning back comic books. For prisoners who are in “administrative segregation” there are often rules against receiving materials. Because the Real Cost of Prisons is the publisher of the comic books, usually, after a phone call, or an appeal letter, comic books do get in. Since comic books have been sent to prisoners in every state, I always cite many examples of other prisons within that system where they have been accepted. I appeal every refusal.

Interestingly, women’s prisons are more apt to return comic books; however, once I write and say that a prison for men in that state has accepted them, they do get in.

A3N: In your 2008 book The Real Cost of Prisons Comix you wrote that “every year from 1947 through the beginning of the 1970s, approximately 200,000 people were incarcerated in the US. Today, there are more than 2.3 million men and women incarcerated [now 2.4 million], with more than 5 million more on parole and probation.” Subsequently, the US has become the world’s #1 jailer. According to the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London, only China, with 1,620,000 prisoners, and the Russian Federation, with 819,200 prisoners, have a total prison population that is remotely close to the US.

Furthermore, with 751 out of 100,000 people, and one out of every 100 adults in prison or jail, the US also has the highest incarceration rate in the world. The Russian Federation is second with 577 per 100,000 and China is 116th with 120 per 100,000. How do you explain this astonishing level of mass imprisonment in the US during the last 40 years? What are the forces behind this and why have they employed this particular strategy?

LA: In the workshops we first developed, in our trainings, and in the comic books, we wanted to create a bigger picture about how we came to this place. To do this, I think we need to understand how Ronald Reagan and the neo-liberal agenda came to power in 1980 by using covert and overt racist messages fabricating the myth of the welfare queen, capitalizing on fears of affirmative action, tearing away at the gains made in civil rights movement---specifically voting rights—while fostering alarm about rampant crime.

The racist sub-text of the neo-liberal political agenda succeeded in creating acceptance of mass incarceration while simultaneously creating the laws and industries to police, prosecute, cage and control millions of people—almost all poor people and people of color.

Neo-liberal policies have been in place for more than thirty years. As a result many people are not aware that our current political and economic situation is not the result of a natural course of events, but rather, of a systemically created ideology that has pervaded every aspect of our daily lives. Deregulation and globalization have caused: the loss of U.S. manufacturing by outsourcing; corporate agriculture and the disappearance of the family farm; reduction of protections for workers; huge decreases in number of unionized workers; privatization of hospitals, water, education, prisons, and the military; drastic cuts in public spending for welfare, public schools, public transportation, housing, and job training. These policies have created huge disparities in wealth.

Democrats and Republicans capitalized on this “perfect storm”. They ran and won on “tough on crime” platforms and passed legislation that has resulted in one in 31 people now under the thumb of the criminal justice system.

A3N: The corporate media’s support for the prison system has ranged from stoking public fears by over-reporting crime, to portraying prisoners as pampered and over-privileged. The comic books, therefore, provide an important counter-narrative. A major focus of the comic books has been the so-called “war on drugs.” Why do you feel that this issue is so important?

LA: Of the more than 2.4 million people imprisoned, more than one million are African Americans. Almost 5 million men and women are on probation and parole, a disproportionate number due to the “war on drugs.” (According to a Pew Report in March 2009, “One in 11 African-Americans are under correctional control, one in 27 Latinos, and one in 45 white people are in prison, jail, or under correctional supervision.”)

The war on drugs includes aggressive policing, centralized data bases for people stopped and frisked for no cause, surveillance cameras in streets and buildings, police or security in schools, and SWAT teams for communities as small as 25,000, and long and punitive mandatory sentences.

From its inception, African-Americans and their communities were the primary target of the war on drugs. In terms of drug use: African Americans constitute 13% of the nation’s monthly drug users, 37% of drug possession arrests, 56% of drug possession convictions, and 74% of those sentenced to prison for drug possession.

There are mandatory sentences for drug convictions and disproportionate sentencing for crack vs. powder cocaine. After years of organizing against this, the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine has changed from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1, with no retroactivity for those already convicted under the old law. 80% of people sentenced to crack cocaine charges are African American.

A3N: What have been the consequences of this mass incarceration, fueled by the war on drugs?

LA: The consequences for individuals, families and communities are huge, cumulative, and long-lasting. According to Dina Rose and Todd Clear, in African American communities where 15 to 20% of adults are incarcerated community stability is undermined, resulting in more crime instead of less crime, especially when aggressive policing is added. In addition to less safety, what are the effects of removing the earning and spending power of so many who are incarcerated? What are the long term costs of the disruption of the family as both an economic and emotional unit?

There are other costs and consequences of the punitive legislation especially directed at people with felony drug convictions---read African Americans---that prevent them from creating a sustainable life once they leave prison. These include, for some, a ban on higher education and vocational training, as well as a ban on receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) if convicted of possessing or selling drugs, although some states have opted out. Legislation in 1996 and 1998 also prevented people with felony drug convictions and their families from federally subsidized housing, serving to increase homelessness and make family reunification much more difficult—for women especially. For women who are incarcerated, there is always the possibility of losing custody of their children.

A3N: How has the corporate media presented the war on drugs? Strategically speaking, how do you think activists can best confront this and work to publicly discredit the war on drugs?

LA: The media has portrayed the war on drugs as a fantasy of good vs. evil. There is little or no acknowledgement of the truth about who is targeted and why, of the system’s cruelty and destructiveness, nor of its lasting consequences to people’s lives, the evisceration of communities, and the bankrupting of governments. Only now, with huge state budget deficits, have some states begun to look at what 40 years of these policies have created; not because they think they are unconscionable, but because they are no longer financial sustainable. If they could find a way to continue to finance the bloated prisons and jails, I don’t think they would be looking for alternatives.

Despite this, I do think there is a small opening now to look at the catastrophic “war on drugs.” Michelle Alexander, in her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness, details how in many ways, the war on drugs has created a more potent, strangulating and oppressive system than the old Jim Crow.

I agree with her and think this framework can re-energize people who took part in the Civil Rights and Black Empowerment movements of the 1960’s and millions who did not. I believe that what is important about her book is that she articulates the convergence of economic, legal, legislative, governmental policies and political forces which led to the mass incarceration of African Americans.

To overturn these policies and the beliefs on which they were built, we must understand the complexities of why and how they have been put in place. Then we can build the new and strong movement we need now.

A3N: Alongside the printed comic books, how do you use the RCPP?

LA: Early on, we developed a website and a little after that a news blog. Together, every day they receive a minimum of 2000 unique visitors. The website is filled with new research, links to hundreds of organizations, and the comic books. A few years ago I began adding political writing and comix by prisoners. This is now a big part of the website. People inside and outside the country are now using the comix and essays in other publications, which is how I had hoped it would work.

As the website has developed, so has a list-serve that keeps me connected to hundreds of organizers, as well as the media and family members of prisoners.

A3N: Of the many news stories featured on the website in the last couple years, could you tell us about a few important stories that you think were the most under-reported and/or misreported by the corporate media?

LA: There are thousands of stories because the true story about prisons is almost completely missing from not only the corporate media, but the left media as well.

First, there is almost no coverage at all about the growth of solitary confinement in the U.S. The best website for this is Solitary Watch and the RCPP website and blog publishes writing and comix from prisoners in solitary.

Second, there are a number of stories involving prisoners organizing, notably the Georgia Prisoners strike and the hunger strike in Lucasville, Ohio. There are a number of stories posted on the RCPP blog. The Human Rights Coalition (PA) is working to bridge the divide between outside and inside organizing (see The Movement).

Third includes "How prisons and jails are becoming debtors prisons," “Criminal Justice Debt: A Barrier to Reentry” by the Brennan Center, and “In For a Penny: The Rise of America's New Debtors' Prisons” by the ACLU .

Finally, the excellent work by The National Advocates for Pregnant Women, whose groundbreaking work brings together issues of women, reproductive rights, criminal justice, and racism.

A3N: Besides the website, how else has the RCPP evolved since the first comic book was published?

LA: The RCPP has evolved greatly since its beginning in 2000. When I started, I barely knew anyone in prison. That began to change once we started conducting our workshops and created a Train the Trainers program which involved many people who had been incarcerated.

Then, the comic books started flying out the door and the daily stacks of letters began arriving. Reading thousands of letters and beginning long-lasting correspondence-relationships with many prisoners, my focus shifted to their efforts to connect and remain a part of the world outside of prison. I saw how the longer someone’s sentence is, the more difficult it becomes to maintain connections—especially after a loved one has passed away.

Because of my daily connections with prisoners, I have become much more involved in conditions of confinement, sentences of life without the possibility of parole, the lengthening of sentences, the parole process or lack of it, and the non-use of compassionate release—even in states where it is policy.

I am constantly aware of the daily cruelties and indignities that men and women endure at the hands of others. I witness how so many people (against circumstances designed to dehumanize and crush their body and mind) manage to overcome and create lives of meaning to themselves and others.

A3N: What do you focus most of your energy on these days?

LA: In addition to sending out comic books, answering mail, and updating the website, I spend some part of everyday attempting to track down research, contacts, and other information for a large number of prisoners who are writers, researchers and activists/organizers.

In Massachusetts, where I am located, I have led an effort to stop the jails from charging fees to prisoners who are convicted and “pre-sentenced.” We are now waiting for a report that will hopefully recommend against these outrageous fees. I am engaged in various efforts to stop “three strikes” legislation from being law in MA. I regularly write and speak to classes and organizations about what is going on all around them, if they will allow themselves to look.

A3N: In your opinion, what are the best forms of practical action that those of us living outside the prison walls can do to help to improve present conditions for those incarcerated, and to challenge the broader criminal “justice” system, with abolition as the long-term goal?

LA: As abolitionists we must find smaller and larger steps along the way to stay engaged and connected to activists inside and out. There’s a lot of work to do:

--Connect to prisoners via books through bars projects and pen pal programs.

--Create true community-based alternatives programs that are not affiliated with sheriff’s departments and other law enforcement, for people with non-violent convictions to stay at home, connected to family and communities, and not go to jail.

--Create bail reform programs so that jails are not debtors prisons- examples include unsecured appearance bonds, setting lower amounts of bail and lowering bail based on the circumstances of someone’s life. For example, do they have children they are taking care of? Do they have a job that will be jeopardized? Many people plead guilty and then end up jail because they know they can’t make bail.

--Create affirmative action campaigns for people with criminal records, based on models of other affirmative action categories, to begin a conversation with employers about the need for second chances. Expand the campaign to housing fairness.

--Talk about the growth of solitary confinement in the U.S. People will be disbelieving but Solitary Watch is a great resource for information and activism.

--Work to expand parole, rather than restricting it! Attend parole hearings and write letters in behalf of people seeking parole

--Communicate with your governor to reinstate commutation. Most governors no longer commute sentences, although this used to be standard practice. Actively support people seeing commutation through letter writing campaigns and public events.

--Work to end the unnecessary and costly systems designed to send parolees back to prison based on minor violations. Strategically speaking, right now with state budget deficits, is a good time to focus attention on this.

--Challenge the drug laws that criminalize addiction and work with “harm reductionists” to provide needle exchange, safe injection sites, community education.

--Decriminalize sex work by joining forces with organizations of sex workers and make public the harassment from the police suffered by sex workers.

--Work with organizations such as Families Against Mandatory Minimums nationally and in your state to end mandatory minimum drug sentences.

--Begin a conversation with state legislators on the extreme length of sentences, not only for people convicted of non-violent offenses, but for those convicted of violent offenses as well. The new report by the Justice Policy Institute, "Finding Direction: Expanding Criminal Justice Options by Considering Policies of Other Nations,” provides models of what other countries are doing.

--Model the successful organizing strategies and legislation in NY State to end the shackling of women in labor and childbirth.

--Join with family groups and others organizing to end “life without the possibility of parole.” Introduce parole review for everyone beginning at 15 years.

--Make compassionate release real for states where it is already a law. Work with faith-based groups and involve faith-based communities in organizing for compassionate release.

--Work with Families to Amend California's Three Strikes (FACTS) and other organizations to end three strikes and habitual offender sentences.

--Join forces with community-based mental health and addiction treatment centers to advocate for money needed for treatment in communities, rather than jails and prisons filled with people suffering from untreated mental illness and no drug treatment. Drug addiction is a mental illness.

--Question the propaganda about who is criminal and the unchanging nature of people who have committed crimes and how they are portrayed in the media.

--Finally, each of us must fight racism wherever we find it. Fighting racism is a blow to mass incarceration.

A3N: How can our readers support your work?

LA: Your readers can support the work of the RCPP by becoming actively engaged in any areas I suggest in the previous answer. People need to know that they can spend a few hours a week and it can have political meaning.

They can financially support effective grassroots organizations that receive no funding or little funding, including of course, the Real Cost of Prisons Project. Our total yearly budget is approximately $4,000 which provides postage, envelopes and maintaining the website. You can make a donation here.

Mostly, I believe people need to wake-up and get engaged wherever they live in whatever they find most compelling. The fact that there is so much to do is not a reason to do nothing.

How Courts Avoid Doing Justice

Monday 14 February 2011

by: Luke Hiken  |  Progressive Avenues | Op-Ed

It is apparent that in order to put more than 2.3 million people behind bars and keep them there, while simultaneously building a prison guard/police arm of the state that numbers in the millions, courts must make credible findings that an enormous number of American citizens are violent, dangerous, and worthy of extended imprisonment. Such a goal requires creativity in redefining what is “dangerous” to our society and why the incarceration of so many people is in the national interest.

It is too blatant and obvious for the courts to simply say that being poor or black is justification enough to imprison somebody. They have to put it into language that is palatable to Americans.

Thus, in order to find so many people guilty of the massive array of crimes established by the state, courts have had to construct an elaborate maze of rules and exceptions, authorizing and sustaining the convictions of so many people, and making sure that their criminal appeals go nowhere (except to profit those in the legal system fortunate enough to make a living by it). This maze is comprised of a series of rules that, on their own, appear reasonable, but when taken as a whole, demonstrate the total contempt courts have for the judicial process, and highlight the result-oriented nature of the process.

We all are familiar with how the law loves archaic Latin phrases that the typical
American knows nothing about: stare decisis (a rule is a rule); habeas corpus (bring us the body, dead or alive), ad infinitum (give us more money indefinitely) and res ipse loquitor (we can talk you blind), are obvious and well-known examples; but what is less known is how courts go about convicting the innocent in spite of laws forbidding it.

Here are just a handful of the excuses conjured up by result-oriented jurists to avoid letting the innocent out of our jails or prisons:

1) Waiver. An example: If you didn’t file your motion to suppress evidence when you should have, we don’t have to consider the fact the police unlawfully broke into your home and car, and seized evidence that would not have been admissible at trial. But you didn’t raise the argument when you should have. It is not our fault that your lawyer was asleep or drunk during the hearing.

2) Procedural Default. The federal court doesn’t have to consider the issues you’ve raised in your habeas corpus proceeding, because you didn’t raise those issues adequately when you were in front of the state court. Even if your argument would have won on the merits, you lose, because the state court didn’t get a chance to rule on it first.

3) Speculative. An example: You are arguing that the lethal injection procedure the state is going to use to kill you is cruel and unusual punishment, and will subject you to unwarrranted and excessive pain. But that argument is too speculative, and you can’t raise it until you can PROVE that the pain is unreasonably harsh. Perhaps you should consider filing again if, once you’re dead, it turns out you were correct. (Honestly, that is the law in Ohio.)

4) Timeliness. An example: You had one year within which to file your habeas corpus petition, and you filed it a day late. We won’t consider it, and you die in prison, regardless of how meritorious your claims are.

5) Presumption of correctness: You are arguing that your trial was unfair, but we, the court, are going to presume that everything was done correctly, and you have the burden of proving that the trial was unfair. The fact that your argument is as reasonable as the state’s doesn’t matter. You lose because of the presumption. But what about the presumption of innocence? Oh, that only applies before you are convicted. Afterwards, the presumption is that the trial was fair and you are therefore guilty as charged.

6) Legislative matter, not judicial. You are arguing that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment, but the legislature has declared it to be the law. If you don’t like their decision, ask them to change the law. Don’t ask us to tell them how to do their job.

7) Factual innocence ain’t enough. The judge says: You might be factually innocent of the charged crime, but your trial was “fair” and that’s good enough for us. Conviction affirmed. (A gift from the U.S. Supreme Court!)

8) State’s Rights. We know that the federal government authorizes you to engage in the conduct we’re prosecuting you for, but this is Texas, buddy. And here, you’re going to jail for it. This is not to be confused with “federalism” that says: even though the state has legalized the use of marijuana, the federal law says it’s illegal, and since federal law trumps state law (except when we prefer the state law), you can’t smoke pot, regardless of what your state electorate says.

9) Harmless Error. This is the favorite excuse for courts throughout the nation: the reliable catch-all “harmless error.” The court explains: “We understand that the prosecutor didn’t give you the exculpatory evidence that would have shown you were innocent. The police lied about your conduct. One of the jurors used to date the victim. The trial judge accepted money to rule against you. BUT, we find these little problems to be “HARMLESS ERROR” and we know, down deep, that you are guilty as hell. Conviction affirmed!

While the examples of these excuses might seem exaggerated, they are precisely what it is like to practice law in American courts these days. It is virtually impossible to read an appellate court decision that doesn’t rely upon one or all of these excuses to create an insurmountable obstacle course assuring that those charged with crimes do the time.

Picture yourself entering a labyrinth – you walk down the hallway and enter the first room. A big sign on the wall reads “Procedural default.” You turn around and keep searching for the next room. You find it, enter, and the sign reads “Harmless Error.”

Same result every which way you turn. Welcome to the courthouse.

Clemency for Wall Street Criminals, Prison for the Powerless

JUNE 30, 2010

"Who the hell are these people?"

"I don't know. I used to say they were the same ones we've always had to deal with. Same ones my granddaddy had to deal with. Back then they was russlin' cattle. Now they're running dope. I ain't sure we've seen these people before. Their kind. I don't know what to do about 'em even. If you killed 'em all they'd have to build an annex on to hell."

Sheriff Bell, from Cormac McCarthy's novel No Country for Old Men

Johnny Gaskins of Raleigh, North Carolina faces a 30-year prison term -- an effective life sentence --  for the supposed crime of depositing $450,000 in his own bank account. The corporate leaders of Wachovia Bank, a criminal syndicate once headquartered in the same state, won't face prosecution despite admissions that the laundered hundreds of billions of dollars on behalf of Mexican narcotics cartels. 

Wachovia was deemed "too big to fail," and thus too important to prosecute. In our system, mercy is reserved exclusively for the powerful and corrupt, and Johnny Gaskins -- a criminal defense attorney -- was neither. 

Gaskins had earned his money legitimately. As a dutiful tax victim, he reported his income to the criminal predators running the IRS. His purported offense was to make numerous deposits in amounts just under the $10,000 threshold at which banks are required to report to the IRS under the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970.

Displaying the proprietary blend of depraved creativity and utter dishonesty that typify their caste, federal prosecutors insisted that these innocuous acts constituted the alleged crime of "money structuring." 

Dr. William Anderson, an economics professor at Maryland's Frostburg State University, notes that "money structuring" was defined as "an `ancillary crime' to give prosecutors leverage in cases where people had amassed huge amounts of cash via drug sales or other illegal activities and were trying to avoid detection as well as avoid paying taxes on their money."

In Gaskins's case, there was no predicate offense. The money was honestly earned and duly reported. Yet according to Pecksniffian federal prosecutor Randall Galyon, "The point of the law is to make sure we don't have people trying to fool the bank. The fact that he was trying is against the law." 

Gaskins was trying to "fool" the bank about conduct that was not innately criminal.  His violations of technical statutes constituted an offense of a severity comparable to ripping the tag from a mattress. 

Yet the sacred majesty of the law requires that Gaskins suffer exemplary, conspicuous punishment. 

As Dr. Anderson observes, there was an unambiguous element of payback behind this vindictive prosecution: "Gaskins had success representing people accused of crimes, and the police and prosecutors paid him back with what can only be a trumped-up charge. Remember, Gaskins was convicted of depositing money in a bank. He did not evade taxes, he did not gain his cash through illegal means, he just put the money in the bank." 

For reasons unstated yet deafening in their obviousness, the same corps of federal prosecutors who went after Gaskins hammer and tongs last year displayed little of the same zeal in pursuing Wachovia Bank on charges that involve both deliberate fraud and financial collaboration with Mexican narco-criminal syndicates. 

Wachovia's corporate headquarters are in Charlotte, North Carolina -- just a three-hour drive from Raleigh. Perhaps the heroes who brought Johnny Gaskins to book were simply too exhausted from that herculean task to grapple with Wachovia, which wasabsorbed by Wells Fargo in a federally engineered takeover. The details are predictably opaque, but Wells Fargo -- which initially resisted string-laden TARP subsidies -- was given $25 billion by the Feds after it bought out Wachovia, which was collapsing under the accumulated weight of its rotten debts. 

Although it proudly called itself "the nation's fourth-largest bank," Wachovia was actually a federally chartered criminal enterprise. 

Granted, this can accurately be said of the entire fractional-reserve banking system. Wachovia distinguished itself by becoming a full-service institution to swindlers and criminals of many kinds. 

In February 2008 it was revealed that Wachovia's corporate leadership "solicited business from companies it knew had been accused of telemarketing crimes," reported the New York Times. "Internal Wachovia e-mail messages, for example, show that high-ranking employees ... frequently warned colleagues about telemarketing frauds routed through its accounts." 

Wachovia had been given specific warnings from investigators and from other banks regarding the scams, yet "it continued to provide banking services to multiple companies that helped steal as much as $400 million from unsuspecting victims." 

A federal lawsuit against Wachovia accused the bank of accepting "fraudulent, unsigned checks that withdrew funds from the accounts of victims, often elderly," continues the Times. "Wachovia forwarded those checks to other banks that were unaware of the frauds, which in turn sent money to the swindlers." 

One Wachovia executive warned in 2005 that one account being used by swindlers had received 4,500 complaints in the space of two months. "There is more," she wrote, "but nothing more that I want to put in a note." 

Despite that warning and others, Wachovia continued to process the fraudulent transactions "partly because the bank charged fraud artists a large fee every time a victim spotted a bogus transaction and demanded their money back," the Times points out. "One company alone paid Wachovia about $1.5 million over 11 months...." 

"We are making a ton of money from them," admitted Wachovia executive Linda Pera in 2005, referring to a company later accused of stealing $142 million through fraud. 

Rather than doing what it could to stop the swindle, Wachovia profited from it as long as it could. The bank's role in that scam -- as well as mortgage fraud, embezzlement, and other crimes -- was known by federal regulators and prosecutors no later than February 2008. Nobody at Wachovia faced criminal prosecution. Instead, the bank was permitted to buy its way out of trouble through a $144 million settlement -- and taxpayers were forced to make good on that amount, and much more, a few months later in the federally subsidized merger with Wells Fargo. 

Last March, federal prosecutors offered an even more generous deal to the Wachovia cabal in the form of a"deferred prosecution agreement" regarding charges of laundering an estimated $300 billion for Mexican narcotics syndicates. In lieu of prosecution, Wachovia agreed to the criminal forfeiture of $110 million and a $50,000,000 fine; it also promised to "demonstrate its future good conduct and compliance in all material aspects with the Bank Secrecy Act...."

The Bank Secrecy Act, recall, is the same law Johnny Gaskins "violated" by making small bank deposits of his own honestly-earned, fully reported money. Gaskins wasn't offered a deal in which he would "forfeit" an amount equivalent to pennies on the dollar and be spared additional punishment in exchange for the promise of future "good conduct." 

According to the stipulations in the federal "Factual Statement" Wachovia endorsed last March, a Miami branch maintained "correspondent bank accounts" for Mexican currency exchange houses (casas de cambio, or CDCs). 

"On numerous occasions, monies were deposited into a CDC by a drug trafficking organization," recounts the "Factual Statement." "Using false identities, the CDC then wired that money through its Wachovia correspondent bank accounts for the purchase of airplanes for drug trafficking organizations." 

Among the offenses to which Wachovia stipulated are "Structured Wire Transactions" intended to launder drug proceeds. Once again, Gaskins was convicted of "money structuring" despite the fact that there was no underlying criminal act. Wachovia, on the other hand, was deliberately washing drug proceeds and facilitating the purchase of aircraft that were used to smuggle at least 22 tons of cocaine. 

In 2006, Martin Woods, a Wachovia compliance officer in London, became suspicious when his branch started to receive a large quantity of traveler's checks issued by Mexican CDCs. The checks -- written for large denominations -- were sequentially numbered and improperly endorsed.

Recognizing this as evidence of money laundering, Woods reported his findings to Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency. A year later, Mexican investigators traced those checks to a CDC used by the Sinaloa Cartel. 

Martin's reward for breaking the case, observed the March 9, 2009 issue of Barron's, was to be bullied and demoted by his superiors at Wachovia, who also threw out his reports of similar suspicious activities in eastern Europe. As was the case with the telemarketing fraud, the dirty dealings Martin had uncovered were much too profitable to stop -- and in this case, they were being overseen by people who make Anton Chigurh look like Mr. Rogers. 

In September 2007, a U.S. registered Gulfstream II jet carrying 3.3 tons of cocainecrashed in the Yucatan Peninsula. The plane was one of several purchased through a Mexican CDC with "correspondent accounts" held by Wachovia. This particular private jet -- tail number N987SA -- was also an important link between the CIA-abetted international narcotics trade and the CIA's global torture network. 

Until a few weeks before the crash, the plane's registered owner was a Florida-based pilot (and alleged CIA asset) named Greg Smith, who was reportedly involved in a series of federal operations targeting Columbian drug networks from1997-2000. 

Only those so ingenuous as to make Candide look worldly would be surprised to learn that the same individual, and the same aircraft, were involved in smuggling drugs into the United States, or that the CIA found even more repellent uses for the same vehicle. 

Mr. "Smith" was the Gulfstream's owner of record between 2003 and 2005, when the plane was used by the CIA for at least three trips between the east coast of the U.S. and the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay. 

The same plane was part of the CIA's fleet of "torture taxis" used to ferry detainees to foreign dungeons, reported The Independent of London last January. 

"In 2004, another torture taxi crashed in a field in Nicaragua with a ton of cocaine aboard," the Independent recalls. "It had been identified by Britain and the European Parliament's temporary committee on the alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transport and illegal detention of prisoners as a frequent visitor in 2004 and 2005 to British, Cypriot, Czech, German, Greek, Hungarian, Spanish and other European cities with its cargo of captives for secret imprisonment and torture in Iraq, Jordan and Azerbaijan."

The gentle treatment given to Wachovia testifies of its value as a pass-through to fundcriminal syndicates used by the CIA to conduct the business of perpetual war -- whether it's designated the "war on drugs" or the "war on terror."

To cite Bastiat's invaluable formula yet again, both of those "wars" are exercises in creating the poison and the antidote in the same laboratory. 

The "war on drugs" -- which is an exercise in corrupt, murderous foolishness greater, by several orders of magnitude, than Prohibition -- will not end as long as it is profitable to the criminal elite in Washington, their allies in the banking industry, and their largely interchangeable and thoroughly disposable minions in the underworld. 
  
As Hugh O'Shaughnessy of The Independent puts it, decriminalization of drug use would impoverish "the traffickers, large and small, and those who have been making good money building and running the new prisons that help to bankrupt governments -- in the US in particular, where drug offenders -- principally small retailers and seldom the rich and important wholesalers -- have helped to push the prison population to 1,600,000." 

That population will soon include Johnnie Gaskins, a principled but powerless man who committed no crime. The majesty of the law requires nothing less. None of the criminals in Wachovia's corporate leadership will be joining him behind bars, of course, since clemency is a gift the Regime bestows exclusively on its valued accomplices in official crime. 

Our Society Is Turning Into One Giant Prison

We've gotten to a point where society is so unmanageable we must partition ourselves off from every feature of it.
By Tolu Olorunda, TruthOut.org
June 21, 2010

Those were the good days when a man had friends in distant clans. Your generation does not know that. You stay at home, arid of your next-door neighbor. 

- Chinua Achebe, "Things Fall Apart"

With too many fists slung, too much spittle hurled, too many guns pointed, too many bats swung, it has now become necessary for tellers, bus drivers and even cashiers to partition themselves from customers. A couple of weeks back, driving through an unnamable Indiana town, I walked into a gas station for a brief break. While waiting in line behind a young black boy (of about 8) who had in hand a bag of chips, I noticed a thick glass window protecting customer from cashier, but with limited opening underneath to roll cash or change through. Excitement built up at once: I self-assured whatever concerns I could conjure were but the exaggerated fears of a paranoid leftist thinker, and that in the next few seconds those fears would be allayed good and well.

Then through a microphone the cashier boomed to the boy, "Is that all?" I wondered if he knew what was about to happen, or if some form of oral manual was required to hold his hand through. Like an expert, however, he flawlessly, and without prompting, held up his bag of chips to the glass, the cashier scanned it from inside, he dropped his cash, she pushed his change, and he walked off undaunted. "Next!" she called out. Disturbed to my core, I burst my gums open, and undoubtedly inspired security concerns. It took a couple of minutes to recompose and let out a short request for $20 worth of gas.

As I returned home, the scene replayed in my mind - the boy stepping before me, lifting his baggage; the cashier responding with precision; the boy stoic but studied in this art, walking off without care; and my inability to pull him aside, shake him up, and let him know what had just happened was a travesty and a manifestation of how unmanageable society has become - where human beings fall into cubicles in the workplace of life, where contact is diminished drastically, where the frenzy-for-safety forces many into partitioning themselves (professionally and personally). I felt a failure for stifling the urge to put in his hand Henry Giroux's "Public Spaces, Private Lives" and clamor: "Read this or Die! You now live in a Glass Society, younger brother; and you had better get used to it because the worst is yet to arrive, and your elders rank you so low on the priority rung that to expect rectification anytime soon would usher in many dashed hopes which at your age cannot be healthy."

So far gone are the days when corner stores provided meaning for a whole community: when customer and clerk spoke the same tongue, shared the same values and communicated without concern. In a Glass Society, occasional "hi's" and "hellos" are exchanged, but sincerity falls short. It becomes just polite conduct to acknowledge the other person's humanity - but briefly enough to prevent unnecessary badger. Workers in the same office don't know each other. Sure, they "collaborate" on "projects" and "brainstorm" on "ideas," but relationships are outlawed. Each one is against the other. Each one just as suspicious of the other. Each one trying to annihilate the other - at any signs of weakness.

Society, not just schools anymore, is becoming modeled after the prison culture: most are inmates, a few are guards (who fare little better than inmates), and only one or two, wardens, can claim autonomy over their affairs. Inmates know guards have families to feed, and that the paycheck often comes at their expense. Guards know inmates deserve better from the society they owe debt to, but to protest policies could lead to loss of paycheck - or worse. Each one works daily to bend rules and cut schemes. Each one is aware of the other's deeds. Each one has, more or less, abandoned hope for a transformed society.

Inmates get their share of family visits - but under the jurisdiction of guidelines and regulations which, if followed correctly, smother just about all that is real and authentic about family time. And time is crucial here - for only a few minutes can inmates spend catching up on the last week, month or year: filled with birthdays, sick stories, prison hardship, Halloween costumes, academic issues, loss, joy, loneliness, melancholy, drama. Many inmates cannot even share the warmth of a child or spouse's hands. A glass window would have to suffice.

Skeptics can wonder through any corporate workplace today, and observe the conducts of employees - how close contact is, how high voices rise, how thick the tension feels. Most likely they would find human beings reduced to numbers and drones, who have functions to perform that must be carried out without complaint - however dehumanizing, however demoralizing. The same batch of skeptics should also escape to any Ivy League school in the country, and take note of the sounds issuing from most classrooms, of the communication between teacher and student, of the sense of rancid competition that destroys any possibility of meaningful education.

The more society drifts toward a partitioned and prisoned sensibility, the less chance young people have at any existence worthy of the title "human." In December 2006, a Texas four-year-old was hit with an in-school suspension for "inappropriate physical behavior interpreted as sexual contact and/or sexual harassment." He hugged a teacher's aide and "rubbed his face in [her] chest." (There goes tomorrow's felon!) With no-touch policies increasingly frequent - and, school officials argue, necessary - five-year-olds comforting grieving friends could end up whacked with the discipline stick.

It's easy to tell the bolts safeguarding the sanity of any society have been capped off when affection is criminalized, when children learn that to care for others, to resist narcissism, might incur harsh reprimand - and even be branded "sexual harassment." Awful as it is that kids today find few adults interested in their affairs, now when they attempt to correct a society losing touch with its humanity, all sorts of arbitrary - and, really, asinine - regulations show up to keep them in check.

If partitioning and prisoning wouldn't do, privatizing sure would. Advertising creeps up at every nook, cranny and corner of schools these days. On buses and scorecards, in hallways and cafeterias, in textbooks and bathrooms - brands drive hard bargains to kids. Schools even push snack and soda products without mercy - the same products highlighted in health classes as sure to command an early grave. No longer considered a public necessity, a condition without with a useful society ceases to exist, schools now fall under the impressions of companies and corporate foundations, flailing around market concepts like "bottom line" and "balancing budgets" and "tightening belts." Four decades back, Hannah Arendt spoke of this "decay of public services" as "the automatic results of the needs of mass societies that have become unmanageable."

A week back, I walked into a recently renovated branch of my local public library and, feeling a bit groggy, whisked off to the coffee table. On it stood two electronic coffeemakers, cream and sugar jars, stir straws and cup lids. There were, however, no cups. A librarian I complained to explained cups were no more free and would have to be purchased at 50 cents apiece. The urge once again overwhelmed me badly, and I let loose in front of him. I ended up with a steaming cup that day, but I knew complicity this time was indefensible.

At the same branch, a lady stands daily by the reception door - the last of three - welcoming and sending off customers. One door away, a DVD vending machine waits, stocked with scores of recent flicks, as well featuring a built-in screen displaying trailers. At the same branch, a plastic "Customer Service" banner hangs high in the main room. No wonder that when most kids stagger into libraries nowadays, their first stop is the computer's section; and not to tidy up an assignment, but to waste hours away on gaming sites.

And who dares blame them?

When they find more in common with animated characters than human beings, who dares blame them? When the jolting thrill that exercise or playtime or recess once afforded is deprived, who dares blame them? When all around glasses are erected, insane policies are presented and public spaces are resented, who dares blame them?

This emerging generation has been set up for what might mark the greatest disaster of a century - and it remains oblivious. Life has been so distorted but yet so normalized that many kids growing up today couldn't tell the difference between W. E. B. Du Bois and Wal-Mart - after all, both have something to say about education. It is natural that kids should imitate adults, but it is self-damning that adults should see how shabby a future awaits youth and refuse to take up necessary action.

It's time for true "revolution of values," as King called for almost 50 years ago. Only few today relish this current mode that has made life intolerably burdensome and even tyrannous to most. Many would rather do away with it and restore some semblance of sanity. There is, of course, the danger of hearkening to the cries of insincere pariahs like Glenn Beck who order a return to "simpler times"; but such commands nonetheless resonate high amongst crowds - boundless by ideology or political alliance - who find little substance in the world today.

Neoliberalism has run amok; extreme materialism has broken its countless promises; jingoism is losing grip fast. Only a real movement against any abuse of public life can restore hope in such dark times as this. The Civil Rights Movement did it. The Women's Rights Movement did it. The Labor Rights Movement did it. And this generation has no other choice. But the powers-that-be will only surrender when citizens work and struggle like the devil for a world deserving of their daily sacrifice.

Not in Utopia, subterranean fields, Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where! But in the very world, which is the world Of all of us,-the place where in the end We find our happiness, or not at all!

Glass society: have sledgehammer, will shatter.