The Incarcerated Person Who Knows How Bad It Could Get

This interview by Justine van der Leun first appeared on Medium. Given our attempts to bridge the prison walls in Louisiana at this difficult time, it is being re-printed here. I believe I know who and where this incarcerated person is, but it could be anywhere and should raise demands that incarcerated people must be released, when possible, and cared for with dignity and respect in every case.

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A couple of months ago about 300 of us got sick. They took everybody 50 years old and over and moved them permanently to their own dorm. Whatever that sickness was—maybe a brutal flu—ripped through the rest of the prison. I had a high fever, hot and cold sweats, dizziness, coughing for hours and hours, nonstop. The treatment was nothing. I said, “I need medicine.” They said, “No medicine for you. Drink some water.” Everything in prison is: “Drink water.” My stomach hurts: “Drink water.” My head hurts: “Drink water.” I’m burning up: “Drink water.”

There were guys worse than me. They put them up on a floor that they previously closed down years ago because it didn’t meet living standards, even in here: peeling paint, no running water, pure filth. Then they locked the prison down with no notice. They didn’t tell us anything—just had everybody locked in their cells. Every three days, we came out for 20 minutes to line up and take a shower. It lasted two weeks. That sickness, whatever it was, cleared. But now we’re on lockdown again. No visits, not from family or lawyers. No planned medical treatments. There’s a new virus, they said.

Dear Warden

This has been a complicated week. I somehow wound up at the center of just the kind of situation I long ago learned to avoid like the plague. Nevertheless, as is not always but sometimes the case, I think it has all turned out (so far) fairly well. The end result (I hope against hope -- I have other urgent business to attend to) is the following letter, which I just drafted to send to a warden I spoke with at some length this afternoon. I don't typically talk a great deal to wardens at all, but on occasion have felt it necessary and have always used the opportunity to accomplish as much as possible, under the circumstances. One never knows when a little dropped knowledge can ultimately bear fruit.

I have decided to publish the letter for several reasons, which I am not going to discuss, and I am publishing very nearly all of it, except for details that would specifically identify any of those involved. So I do not call names, but I think the points I made during my conversation and then repeated in my letter were important and general enough to apply to what is building in prisons from coast to coast in the United States. Please feel free to share it as appropriate. 

What's Behind the Immigration "Crisis"?

Apparently, some folks don't know the back story on Mexico. Here it is: When Clinton pushed through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993, U.S. corporations were put in a position to gut the Mexican economy, which they have done. Those corporations (and even individual rich Americans) have bought up land in Mexico, displacing Mexicans who have been living on that land and growing the food for their families on it for thousands of years.

This forced poorer Mexicans to work for the corporations for pennies a day while we buy the products made by them for the same price we would be paying if they were made by U.S. workers (tens of thousands of which lost their jobs when NAFTA was signed -- see below). The corporations make out like bandits (literally) and the Mexicans starve.

The rampant poverty NAFTA produced in Mexico is what gave birth to the drug cartels (which were originally formed with the assistance of the CIA, by the way, as outlined in the movie "American Made"). And this is why Mexicans (and other Central Americans) come here like they do. Some leave their families behind. Some can't bear to do that. Besides it's dangerous. And so-called "legal" migration takes decades and costs a lot of money.

The real reason Trump is locking up immigrants is because millions of dollars (our money) is going into the pockets of those who created private prisons expressly for this purpose while U.S. farmers are going belly up because their crops are rotting on the ground and we're going to pay $5 a pound for imported food immigrants used to pick right here in our country.

Then, while we're all utterly focused on babies in cages, the present Administration is using Congress to push through legislation that will leave us without health care, without higher education, without workplace and environmental regulations necessary to the common good, and without protection from a run-amok criminal injustice system. Now you know.

What Racism Has To Do With The Cost of College

A few days ago, I posted a video of a young Black woman expressing her frustration with how Black college students are often viewed, even by each other. Today, I'm posting another video about race and higher education. It explains how White Supremacy as an ideology has paired up with public policy in the United States to gut everything public and most especially public universities.

Be careful not to misunderstand what they say at the end of the video, though. When they explain that racism in the public sphere hurts everybody, they don't mean Black students and White students are equally affected. In fact, they say quite clearly at one point that Black students are more negatively impacted by racist public policies than White students are. But when the Powers-That-Be use racism to send tuition and student loans sky-rocketing, everybody gets sucker-punched.

What they're trying to get across is that White students shouldn't let the public policy decision-makers fool them into believing that attacks on the public sphere only hurt Black people. If teachers -- and students -- form a solid front, we can stop the neo-liberal bulldozer in its tracks.

A Former Baltimore Police Officer Tells It All

If you haven't seen this video of Joe Rogan interviewing ex-Baltimore cop Michael Wood, who got famous last year hitting Twitter with stories he'd already been telling for years about what the police actually do, you're not going to believe it. I'm still stunned and I've now watched it multiple times.

In another interview, Wood says simply, "The only person that was surprised by what I said was everybody who doesn't live in the 'hood. Everybody that lives in the 'hood just said, 'Oh look, a cop just admitted it.' But everybody else said, 'Oh my gosh! That stuff really happens?' Of course, it happens. Did you think the Black community was lying for the last one hundred years?"

In other news about Michael Wood, word has it that he's thrown his hat in the ring to be Police Chief of Chicago. This idea will be much more meaningful once you listen to the interview.

It is imperative to clearly acknowledge the fact that the prisons are full because of the way law "enforcement" is carried out and precisely who it is carried out upon. This post and the next few are to make that point. We often treat what the police do and the so-called "correctional" system as if they were separate issues. They are not. It is the police that march people to jail. And when they make what they do so obviously brutal and White Supremacist in nature, the result is that we have more people locked up than any other country in the world with a disproportionate number of the prisoners being Black, Latino, and Native American. Rogan and Wood can laugh. But nothing about this is funny.

John Oliver on the Nazi-fication of the Police in the United States

I am so furious and horrified about what is happening in Ferguson, Missouri, that I can no longer bear to follow the news. But John Oliver got me to watch this 15-minute clip by reminding me that one can tell the truth, make the power visible, and speak the truth to that power, all while making those in power look just as insane as they really are.

Speaking Truth To Power

Melissa Harris-Perry presented a segment on her television program recently featuring Tianna Gaines-Turner, a young Black woman who testified before a Congressional Committee on the struggle of living in poverty. Folks like Harris-Perry and Congresswoman Barbara Lee -- who are Black women, y'all, in case you still think it can't be done -- use their position and voices to empower others. Here's to speaking truth to power, no matter who you are. And here's to Tianna Gaines-Turner for proving yet again that ordinary humans, given the opportunity to step into the limelight, can shine like stars.

Using Public Schools To Make Sure White Supremacy Continues

One of the things I pay a lot of attention to in the parish where I live is the fifty-year long process of refusing to racially integrate the public schools so that every student will get the same quality of education. By this I mean adequate books, libraries, equipment, fully trained culturally competent teachers and administrators representing all ethnic groups in the region, and school disciplinary policies that reflect a commitment to embracing all children to maximize their potential as future citizens. This is not currently happening and has at no point ever happened here, as 5th Circuit Judge Ivan Lemell will attest.

It's not reassuring to discover that we're not the only ones. And, unfortunately, it's not encouraging that we're hearing more about what is being called the "re-segregation" of the public school system nationally. I have long since realized that the public being aware of stupid, mean-spirited, classist, sexist, and White Supremacist practices and policies will do exactly nothing to fix social problems until that same public understands that these practices and policies are causing and will continue to cause problems for all of us in several ways.

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva on Racism Without Racists

Just before the last Presidential election in 2012, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva -- Chair of the Sociology Department at Duke University and author of Racism Without Racists: Color-blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America -- was interviewed by Mark Anthony Neal on his show "Left of Black." What Dr. Bonilla-Silva has to say is probably even more important now than it was then.

Stop And Frisk Isn't A Program; It's A Pogram

Yesterday's video demonstrated that Black boys are presumed guilty until proven innocent (ass-backwards to the way the U.S. Constitution reads) and the part about being proven innocent is often given short shrift, if anyone bothers to consider the possibility at all. So a Black youth messing with a bicycle (or a world famous Black Harvard professor in his 70's like Henry Louis Gates trying to loosen his own front door when it's stuck) is likely to be arrested when a White youth wouldn't get a second look.

Today's YouTube video takes the subject one step farther, demonstrating that Black boys don't have to be doing anything except...well...being Black to get rousted repeatedly, terrorized without warning, roughed up (sometimes horrifically), or even accidentally(?) killed by officers of the law (as it were). What's a Black kid to do?
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"Stop and Frisk," for those of you who have never been on the internet before today, is a policy abused in New York City for the past decade or so and more recently castigated for its style of implementation. Duh.

Race and the Mortgage Crisis

Normally, now that I've turned in the grades for this semester (about an hour ago), I'd be blogging my head off for the next week. But what with working on a manuscript I promised a publisher over a month ago AND a statement I'm supposed to be writing for the court on the sociological disaster that school segregation has created here in this parish even AFTER the school system was ordered thirty years ago to straighten this mess out, I wouldn't have much time to blog even if I weren't running off to spend five days in New York City hanging out with my daughter and an artist friend of mine. Still, I gotta do something in this space from time to time or they're going to rescind my blogger's privileges.

So let me start by making a public service announcement: if you're on the verge (or even in the middle) of losing your house right now, check out Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America's National Save the Dream Campaign. I don't know much about it, but I heard a guy give a little spiel at a public meeting and it looks straight up. They do advising, advocacy, political organizing and more. They even pressured the notorious Countrywide Mortgage Lenders into an agreement that has radically lowered interest rates on thousands of families' mortgages (see above). So if you're in trouble, maybe they can help. The guy swore they routinely pull fat out of the fire with their bare hands, so it might be worth a call to 1-888-302-6222, huh?

What does this have to do with the socially-constructed, political notion of "race?"

"A report released today by the Applied Research Center (ARC), a racial justice think-tank, finds that an inclusive and equitable national economic recovery will require that the country address deep patterns of racial discrimination and disparities. The report, titled 'Race and Recession: How Inequity Rigged the Economy and How to Change the Rules,' found that numerous policies and institutional practices that create racial inequity are among the root causes of the subprime mortgage crisis and economic downturn.

"While several economists and analysts have focused on the 'what' and 'how' questions behind the current recession, an in-depth analysis of income, unemployment, foreclosures, and public benefits brings the largely overlooked 'who' into the analysis: Who were predatory loans targeted towards? Which Americans are losing jobs? The current crisis has brought soaring national unemployment rates, record foreclosure filings, and record lows in the stock market, with global repercussions. However, the most bruising effects have been unevenly distributed -- overwhelmingly to people of color.

"The report examines systemic patterns of racial inequality, including unemployment levels for people of color, which are consistently higher than those of whites and considerably higher during recessionary times. In March of this year, when unemployment reached 8.5% nationally, 13.3% of Black workers and 11.4% of Latinos were out of work, compared to only 7.9% of whites. In contrast, Black unemployment has dipped below 8% only once since 1973.

"Sizeable income gaps between people of color and whites also still persist. Seth Wessler, the report's author and lead investigator, explains that 'Racial disparities in income leave communities of color making about 60 cents for every dollar earned by whites. This huge difference is a direct result of institutional policies and practices that collectively block people of color from opportunity.'

"ARC's analysis of the housing crisis also demonstrates that communities of color were disproportionately saddled with subprime loans at very high rates. Wessler says 'The cumulative effects of historic and current housing discrimination -- including restrictive racial covenants, redlining and neighborhood segregation -- have left people of color with less equity and access to credit, making them prime targets for largely unregulated predatory lending practices. High-cost loans were aggressively marketed in communities of color.' Yet, Wessler says, most troubling is that 'many who could have qualified for prime loans were sold high-cost loans instead - 35 % of subprime loans were sold to people who could have qualified for a traditional, fixed rate, prime loans. And clearly, subprime loans were responsible for the crash.'

"ARC's Executive Director, Rinku Sen, says 'This study reveals that a healthy economy requires explicit attention to ensuring racial equity in our public and private institutions. Thankfully, there are many clear solutions to move us toward fair policies and shared prosperity.'

"The report recommends the use of Racial Equity Impact Assessments, modernization of the Community Reinvestment Act, a moratorium on foreclosures, a lifting of time limits in Temporary Aid for Needy Families, expunging past criminal records, protections for immigrants, passing the Employee Free Choice Act, raising the minimum wage, establishing universal healthcare and the full enforcement of anti-discrimination laws."