Subjects Archives: Incarceration

Incarceration is a manifestation and continuation of chronic and interwoven structures of oppression

The Black movement will be asphyxiated by the ubiquitous fingers of the Democratic Party if it does not build independent nexuses of people’s power.

THE ADIRONDACK CORRECTIONAL Facility is tucked away in the mountainous North Country of New York State, less than a two-hour drive from the Canadian border. Three years ago, it was converted to incarcerate teens aged 16 to 17, automatically prosecuted as adults under pernicious state law. As of this May, in response to the coronavirus pandemic, all of the young people were transferred out of the facility: It will now serve as a nursing home prison.

In many states, legal regimes sanction the predictable murder of innocent black men. Justice will not be served until the law changes.

Jackson was the seventh president of the United States and a slave owner, in 1830, he signed into law the Indian Removal Act, leading to the deadly expulsion of Native Americans.

In the wake of the current uprising in support of Black Lives Matter, there has been increasing interest in the use of mainstream empirical methods in economics–like randomized control trials (RCTs) and administrative data evaluation–to address issues of racism and violence in the institution of policing.

Since protests have spread to all 50 states in response to the police murders of George Floyd and countless other Black people, law enforcement has responded with a violent show of force against protestors as well as journalists, street medics, and legal support.

We cannot allow the capitalist ruling class to turn a blind eye to the plight of the incarcerated population — not in general, nor in the particular circumstance of the global pandemic of Covid-19. In the U.S., there are 2.3 million human beings in state, federal, and county jails and more than 52,000 in immigrant detainment camps.

A made-up rape allegation and fabricated evidence in Sweden, pressure from the UK not to drop the case, a biased judge, detention in a maximum security prison, psychological torture–and soon extradition to the U.S., where he could face up to 175 years in prison for exposing war crimes. For the first time, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, speaks in detail about the explosive findings of his investigation into the case of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, says the U.S. is living up to its reputation as an international assassin with its hit on an Iranian general on Iraqi soil. “America is more hated today than ever,” said Abu Jamal, co-author of the multi-volume book, “Murder, Incorporated.”

PETE BUTTIGIEG wasn’t much of a pot smoker in college. But coming home from a party one evening, he bumped into a friend of a friend smoking a joint. Buttigieg later recalled that he acted out of curiosity.

Join all of us. It is time to move this forward towards justice and freedom and bring Mumia home.

Facing a total ban on their protest in London, the activists are now embroiled in a struggle for their right to assemble.

The U.S. government is detaining thousands of migrants, in what can only be described as a system of 21st century concentration camps. Justin Akers Chacón—professor of U.S. History and Chicano Studies in San Diego and author, with Mike Davis, of No One is Illegal—examines the background to this horrific story, suggesting that Trump’s detention centres are just the latest in a long line of racist systems of incarceration in the U.S.

This outrageous explosion of watchlisting — of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them ‘baseball cards,’ assigning them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield — it was, from the very first instance, wrong.

The government issued an arrest warrant request for the ex-security chief of the Guri Complex, who allegedly fled to the US following the March blackouts.

I’ve been to see Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy several times, mainly when Rafael Correa was President and the Embassy felt like a liberated space. A few weeks ago I met him again. By now Correa’s successor, Lenín Moreno, had capitulated on every level to the American Empire.

Lula will likely eat what he ate on his first day in prison: bread and butter with his coffee. He will know that across the planet there will be demonstrations in his name. ‘Lula Livre’ (Free Lula) the people will cry out. You’re not alone, they will say, você não está sozinho. It will give him hope.

Julian Assange, a hero in the struggle against imperial wars and the lies that states tell to justify them, is in mortal danger.

The rise of Donald Trump has brought talk of fascism to the forefront. While comparing U.S. Presidents to Hitler is certainly nothing new–both Obama and W. Bush were regularly characterized as such by their haters–Trump’s emergence on the national political scene comes at a very peculiar moment in U.S. history.