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politicians

Another Election Year

January 11, 2018 by Marissa Wells

Another Election Year

 

“We used to say that ours is not the struggle of one day, one week, or one year. Ours is not the struggle of one judicial appointment or presidential term. Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in every generation must do our part. And if we believe in the change we seek, then it is easy to commit to doing all we can, because the responsibility is ours alone to build a better society and a more peaceful world.” 

-John Lewis, “Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America”

Congressman John Lewis is one of the young men that led the Selma to Montgomery marches of 1965, contributing to the passage of the Voting Rights Act which would enable African American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote without discrimination.

The series of marches consisted of thousands of civil rights activists and religious leaders who were fighting the discrimination and voter suppression tactics taking place in the segregated South. These brave men and women mobilized to reach their goal of ensuring that we all would be able to make our voices heard in elections.

Unfortunately, the U.S. system of mass incarceration has significantly undermined those very same voting rights.

Today, the population of incarcerated African Americans is grossly disproportionate to their overall population in the country. Because of the removal of most civil rights, including voting rights in many states, there are about 6.1 million people who cannot vote, with 1 in every 13 adult African Americans permanently banned from voting. This fact has made room for the dominant group in society to once again cripple African American voices and political input in this country.

This year A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project (ANWOL) is expanding their voter registration efforts to include those who are newly eligible to vote. The passage of Assembly Bill 2466 in 2016 has made it possible for men and women serving time for a felony conviction in county jails to now make their voices heard through voting.

The passage of this bill comes decades after men and women serving time in jail were denied the opportunity to exercise their right to vote and it’s a great start at tackling the laws that disenfranchise far too many citizens of this country.

With impending elections in June and November, the Voter In-Reach project of ANWOL will begin soon where we will visit county jails to conduct voter registration for those who are eligible.

ANWOL staff and All of Us or None (AOUON) members have submitted applications to the Sheriff’s Department to go inside of the jails for the purpose of registering voters. Once clearance is obtained, we will begin sending staff and volunteers inside to register people to vote and to conduct voter education.

Ingrid Archie with Prop. 64 canvassers. (Photo by Ed Crisostomo, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Staff members of ANWOL are looking forward to spreading awareness to the men and women in jails about their right to vote.

“It’s very important. There are tens of thousands of people in the state of California who are disenfranchised simply because they do not know that they have the right to vote even when they are incarcerated,” explains Rev. Larry Foy, ANWOL Policy & Advocacy Director. “The only thing that should legally prevent people with convictions from voting in California is if they are on parole or serving time in state or federal prison.”

The goal of the project is not only to let incarcerated individuals understand that they can vote, but to also let them know that their vote is important. The volunteers will educate the men and women on the policies and politicians on the ballots so that people serving time in jail or awaiting trial will have a deeper understanding on the key issues that may affect their lives.

“Politicians travel to areas where people have a higher propensity to vote. They go to those areas and speak to their needs. There’s a whole constituency of people who are incarcerated that are eligible to vote,” said Ingrid Archie, ANWOL Civic Engagement Coordinator. “We want to maximize the number of incarcerated people who are voting so people will recognize that

incarcerated men and women do vote. Their votes have the potential to turn a whole vote or even flip a seat and once people see the power of the votes of incarcerated men and women they will realize that they need to visit jails to solicit those votes as well.”

Some people of color do not feel that their votes matter in elections or that the outcome of policies will affect them directly. That was the case for Ed Garrett, ANWOL’s technology consultant. “I didn’t think about my vote being important because my life was in the streets,” said Ed. “But you find out when you get into an institutional environment that all of the things that happen, happen because somebody voted and made a decision.”

Community organizations working on civil rights must continue the movement to mobilize for changes to voting laws that have continuously chipped away at that great victory in 1965.

Susan Burton & AOUON members marching in the 50th anniversary of the Selma Montgomery marches of 1965.

Throughout the next few months, voter registration training will take place for the specific purpose of training those who will be registering men and women in jails. If you are interested in participating please contact Ingrid Archie at 323.563.3575.

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Filed Under: No Wrong Answers - Blog Tagged With: All of Us of None, ANWOL, California, disenfranchise, education, Marissa Wells, politicians, support, training, Vote

PRISONS FOR PROFIT

October 10, 2017 by JULIETTE LETT

PRISONS FOR PROFIT

 

As I sit listening to the radio and ponder on my thoughts about today’s political climate, I can’t help but remember what my political science professor stated to the class on our first day. “If at the end of this course you haven’t come to the conclusion that politics is all about money, I haven’t done my job,” He said.

One of the areas that has become politicized is prisons. In my opinion, politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, have sold American people to the highest bidder. They have allowed tax dollars to be used and misused for political gain, backed by privatization of prisons by millionaire and billionaire campaign donors.

Blacks and other minorities have suffered significantly worse than our Caucasian brothers and sisters. Studies and statistics prove this fact.

The United States was built on racism, violence, and greed at the expense of my ancestors, Africans stolen from the Motherland and brought here to “make America great.” And those principles are just as prevalent today as it was before the Civil War.

Jails and prisons before and during the Jim Crow era were predominantly for Black men. Today’s sheriff’s badge bears a striking resemblance to the slave patrol badges that were given to KKK members and other racist bounty hunters that wanted to make a profit on capturing runaway slaves.

That old saying “the rich get richer and poor get poorer” is not just a cliché. We see it happening as a global phenomenon. However America is the only country that has a prison population of 2.2 million adults. Add to this the estimated 4.7 million adults are on parole. That is staggering for a country that is 4.4% of the world’s population yet, 22% of the world’s prisoners. Five states, all in the South, have the highest prisoners per capita: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma and Texas.

The states with the highest female prisoners: Oklahoma, Louisiana, Texas, Idaho, Georgia and Wyoming.

I imagine Ronald Regan issued the call to his billionaire buddies to brainstorm at their country clubs and golf resorts on how they could increase their profits. Their logical solution was the “war on drugs” and “law and order” politics. Enter the 1980’s crack epidemic in predominantly Black neighborhoods and it was no coincidence that the “tough on crime” politics sounded the dog whistle to “lock them niggers up.”

Blacks and Latinos suffered most, and it’s no coincidence that the private prison industry began building new prisons and locked in a monopoly on other prison services. This was the start of a domino effect for the wealthy seeking to profit from others’ pain.

Prisons for profit has affected my family. In the 1980’s several of my family members were caught up in the judicial system and were convicted and sentenced to terms in the California Department of Corrections. At that time you were able to call home if your family had a landline. If your family chose to, they could accept or decline a collect call. You would be charged on your monthly phone bill. You could also send quarterly packages to your loved ones by buying clothes, tennis shoes, dress shoes, personal hygiene items, food, TVs and music through special purchase slips. You could go to the local post office, buy a one-pound box and the contents could weigh up to 27 pounds. Usually our loved one would send a list of the items they wished to receive. They could receive these “care packages” four times a year. That is no longer the case.  Now, other billionaires have received contracts from city, county, state, and federal prisons to be solely responsible for supplying these services.

Gone are the choices for the people trying to support loved ones behind those walls. It has been granted to the greedy politicians and their big money campaign donors.

GTL (Global Tel Link) is a Texas based phone company that is the ONLY company you can use to accept calls from inmates in county jails and state prisons. There are seven companies that supply care packages to inmates to inmates throughout this country. The three largest are Walkenhorst,  Access SecurePak, and Union Supply Direct.    The four smaller ones are JustRight Packages,    Golden State Packages, Inmate Care packages, and get this, LASD.org inmate packages, which is owned and operated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department union.

Many of these company stockholders are politicians and campaign contributors, both Democrats and Republicans. There are profits to be made for locking people up and as long as these are the same individuals that are shaping our laws by “bribing” our Members of Congress and state senators, they will continue to profit from our pain.

This is why it is so difficult to get legislation passed to prevent so many of these big corporate mergers. Not only are our loved ones who are incarcerated being punished for crimes they may (or may not) have committed, but family members are also being subject to punishment as well.

Many family members can’t afford the cost of phone calls or have the ability to pay the extremely high prices of those care packages. This only deepens the wounds of separation that are felt when a loved one is locked up.

It tears at the very heart of your soul. It is a comfort when you can speak to your family or receive a care package. This luxury has been taken away for too many individuals. There is nothing about this system of justice we have in America that says rehabilitation. It is more about punishment for some and wealth for the others.

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Juliette Lett, 55, is a certified addiction specialist, mental health social worker for citizens on parole, social media enthusiast and advocate of interventions to help women find the path to recovery and sobriety through treatment.

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Filed Under: No Wrong Answers - Blog, PRISONS FOR PROFIT Tagged With: follow the money, greed, politicians, Private prisons, profiteering, profiting from pain

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