† Criminal InJustice is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. Criminal Injustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm.
Breathing Room
by nancy a heitzeg
This week, as every, there is plenty to report in Criminal InJustice.
Devastating new accounts of California Solitary Confinement — including new updates in the Prisoner Hunger Strike and an interview with Tessa Murphy from Angola 3 News.
The opening of the Black/Inside exhibit created by our comrades in Chicago, Prison Culture.
A new update from Prisoners of the Census on model legislation to eliminate prison-based gerry-mandering.
We will get back to all that soon.
Today we are distracted by Election 2012.
Since the very first post of 2012 — The Year of the Vote — to last week’s piece by Kay Whitlock, Criminalizing the Vote, CI has had an eye on November 6.
Certainly, we have been concerned about the plethora of voter suppression efforts — legal and otherwise, but today CI is asking, simply, for breathing room..
Larger political climates create or constrict possibilities for social movements. Will there be space to push forward or will the only possibilities be survival mode??
Certainly this is true around any number of issues, but the challenges of confronting the prison industrial complex make it especially so. Both Democrats and Republicans are caught up in “law and order” rhetoric, but the one offers only darkness, the other some daylight.
Remember The National Criminal Justice Commission Act, S. 714 of 2009??
The bill would establish the National Criminal Justice Commission to undertake a comprehensive review of all areas of the criminal justice system, including federal, state, local, and tribal governments’ criminal justice costs, practices, and policies. The National Criminal Justice Commission Act directs the Commission to:
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Remember the the Democracy Restoration Act??
Both bills represented — for the first time in decades — some meaningful chance to address the impact of mass incarceration.
So where are they??
Lost in a tempest of white Tea Party rage and obstruction.
More of this mess and we will be forced to face escalating efforts at privatization/profiteering from criminal injustice.. More ALEC.
We will be criminalized and re-criminalized in ways we have not yet imagined.
We will be forced to re-fight the Civil War — with horses and bayonets — re-litigate voting rights, reproductive rights, civil rights, basic human rights.
Of course, We will Never Stop Fighting. The people are too resilient and in the end, we will win. But these victories have been won already — too many have given their lives to just go back.
So GOTV — and I’m not too proud to beg either – Vote a straight Democratic ticket.
Give us some breathing room.
We need to move Forward again.
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