By Any Other Name...

¡Hola! Everybody...
Sometimes I look around and I’m stunned at what 30 years of neoconservativism has done to our society... Someone suggested I might need a vacation. LOL You can find my response to that at the end of this post.

This one is hard to articulate and I have to be somewhere...

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-=[ From the Plantation to the Rock ]=-

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

As a nation we imprison more people than any other in the world. China, Russia, and oppressive regimes all over the world pale in comparison. The vast majority of those languishing in prisons are young men of color. One of the consequences of this historically unprecedented mass incarceration movement is that millions of people of color have become disenfranchised -- they have lost forever their right to vote. An added consequence of this over-reliance on incarceration has been that we have created a class of individuals that are, for all intents, three-fifths human...

Our national response to education, poverty, addiction, inequality, and other social ills can be summed up in one word: incarceration. I will pass a Brooklyn block later today. On that block stands an elementary school in disrepair filled with demoralized educators and bright, hopeful children of color. The state of New York spends upwards of a million dollars to incarcerate young men and women who come from that block -- sent to upstate exclusively white communities where the sole employer is often the state department of corrections.

One one level, incarceration in New York is a demented jobs creation program for rural whites.

The city of New York, loathe to spend money on education in the inner city, will spend about $70,000 annually to incarcerate a minor child. About 90% of these children are children of color.

In fact, the vast majority of those incarcerated are young people of color. A conservative response, often offered by bigots and their black and brown enablers, is that black and brown people are more criminally inclined.

Of course, this sentiment has no relationship to reality, but it doesn’t stop the onslaught. The fact of the matter is that studies show race is the determining factor in who goes to prison. Everything else being equal -- criminal history and nature of crime -- a black person is five times more likely to be sentenced than his white peer. Additionally, enforcement is applied differently to different communities. The neighborhoods of the middle to upper class, where there is more drug usage, are not subjected to the same policing strategies as in poorer sections. I doubt we would lead the world in incarceration if the majority of those incarcerated were the white children of well-to-do and politically influential parents.

The fastest growing segment of the prison population has been women. Again, the majority of those being incarcerated are women of color. Accompanying this rise are new more puntive laws meant to take away the parental rights of women. So, along with a new generation of imprisoned women, there are the children of these women, who become wards of the state -- little more than a de facto prison for kids. Children -- mostly children of color.

Some of you know I was involved in a women’s prison on Rikers Island -- the Rock, or the Island, as it is called by those who live there. Rikers Island is the largest penal colony in the world. It is also the largest mental health facility in the world. Well, officially it’s not meant to be a mental facility, but that’s where we send those afflicted with mental illness.

My relationship with Rikers Island involved bringing a cognitive/ behavioral life-skills workshop into the women’s facility. That’s where I first heard of the practice of shackling incarcerated women while in labor. I first heard about this (oddly enough) from a female corrections officer. Several of the women at Rikers mentioned it on the grounds I wouldn’t disclose their identities. At first I couldn’t believe this was possible. A part of me refused to believe we have stooped so low. It was reprehensible to me. I couldn’t even entertain the image of a caged black woman giving birth to a child while shackled to a bed.

But it was and is true. This form of torture is allowed in these United States and there are some reading this that gladly endorse this behavior. I met a young lady who claimed she had been shackled while giving birth. She was a beautiful African American girl maybe 19-20 years-old, but she looked like 16. She became pregnant while incarcerated. As she recounted her story, of having to give birth to a beautiful Black child while shackled to a bed, I became so angry, tears welled in my eyes. She made me promise I wouldn’t say anything because she was scared...

Can you imagine this? Can you begin to imagine the psychological trauma? Or perhaps you think this child deserves whatever she has coming to her... Is this the society you want?

If so, then we have become animals.

Today, I’m joining with a coalition of many different groups to bring light to this issue and to pressure our governor to sign an anti-shackling bill recently past by both house of the state.

Evil doesn’t rest...

Eddie