Newsletter Arctic drilling, Carbon, Drought, Environmental racism, Fight for 15, Finance and the Economy, Fracking, Gas, Guaranteed basic income, Hurrican Katrina, Iran, Japan, Jeju Island, Korea, Living Wage, Minimum Wage, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Oil, Okinawa, Peace, Political Prisoner, Prison, Prison Labor, Private Prisons, Racism, Solar Energy, Sustainable energy, TISA, TPP, TTIP, Wars and Militarism, Wind, Worker Cooperative, Youth imprisonment By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.PopularResistance.org
August 30th, 2015
By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese for Popular Resistance – Black August is coming to an end as we commemorate the ten year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. As many head back to school, a full season of actions are being planned for the fall to stop the corporate takeover of our communities and world and the push toward neo-slavery. There is a lot of resistance going on. We hope that you have an opportunity this summer to relax and build up your energy for the many actions that are being planned for the fall. If you go to a park, there is one more thing you can do: take a moment to think about the people who inhabited the land before it became a park.
By Noelle Hanrahan for Prison Radio – Mumia Abu-Jamal remains weak, ill, and in the prison infirmary. Five months after being admitted to the hospital with lethal blood sugar levels and in renal failure, he continues to have a debilitating skin rashes, open wounds and swelling across his lower extremities. Because of our relentless demands for medical testing and treatment, we finally know the likely cause of his severe ailments: Hepatitis C. But what is news to us is not news to his jailers. Prison officials have known that Mumia was Hep. C positive since 2012– and have done nothing. Even now that prison doctors know that Mumia’s Hep. C is active -from testing they performed solely because we demanded it-they are refusing to provide treatment. Today, we are going back to court to demand justice for our brother.
By E. Tammy Kim in Al Jazeera – In Washington, a state whose progressive reputation masks a tough-on-crime undercurrent, defendants and prisoners are charged “user fees” that fund the state and local systems designed to put them away. Those who do not or cannot pay are at risk of arrest and reimprisonment. It’s a national trend: In nearly every state, offenders pay for court costs, representation by a public defender, jail and probation, and fees are on the rise. The county clerk’s offices that depend most on these sums routinely refer to defendants as “customers”. Since 2003, Spokane County, home to about half a million people, has more than doubled what it collects in these legal financial obligations, or LFOs, from criminal defendants.
By Sarah Cascone in Artnet – “Escaping Time: Art From U.S. Prisons,” an exhibition opening this weekend on Governor’s Island, looks to highlight the power of rehabilitation. Featuring 200 artworks including pieces by noted prisoner-turned-painter Anthony Papa as well as condemned killer Charles Manson (but not by recently-killed escapee Richard W. Matt), the show also serves as a reminder of the island’s historic past. Today, Governors Island is New York’s summer playground, a picturesque island full of art, bike trails, and shaded picnic spots, but not that long ago, its 19th-century fort, Castle Williams, was actually used as a prison, first during the Civil War, and later for offenders within the US Army. “Art offers prisoners a new conviction that, although their circumstances may seem inescapable, their memories, experiences, and hopeful dispositions are preserved,” explained curator Anastasia Voron, director of exhibitions at New York’s Wallplay, in a statement.
By Thalif Deen in IPS News – When U.S. President Barack Obama visited the El Reno Correctional Facility in Oklahoma last week to check on living conditions of prisoners incarcerated there, no one in authority could prevent him from visiting the prison. Obama, the first sitting president to visit a federal penitentiary, said “in too many places, black boys and black men, and Latino boys and Latino men experience being treated different under the law.” The visit itself was described as “unprecedented” and “historic.” But the United Nations has not been as lucky as the U.S. president was. Several U.N. officials, armed with mandates from the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, have been barred from U.S. penitentiaries which are routinely accused of being steeped in a culture of violence.
By Victoria Law in TruthDig – Two years have passed since people confined in California’s Pelican Bay State Prison initiated a 60-day hunger strike to protest the conditions associated with the prison’s “security housing unit,” or SHU. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) continues to claim that “there is no ‘solitary confinement’ in California’s prisons and the SHU is not ‘solitary confinement,’” but people inside the Pelican Bay State Prison’s security housing unit say they remain locked in for at least 23 hours per day. Meanwhile, in June 2015, the CDCR released proposed new regulations around its use of the security housing unit and administrative segregation – regulations that may, in part, curb participation in future strikes and other prison protests.
By Rick Riley in Atlanta Black Star – According to the Left Business Observer, “the federal prison industry produces 100 percent of all military helmets, war supplies and other equipment. The workers supply 98 percent of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93 percent of paints and paintbrushes; 92 percent of stove assembly; 46 percent of body armor; 36 percent of home appliances; 30 percent of headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21 percent of office furniture. Airplane parts, medical supplies and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people.” With all of that productivity, the inmates make about 90 cents to $4 a day. Here are some of the biggest corporations to use such practices, but there are hundreds more. . .
By Shelly Banjo in QZ – Columbia University, which manages a $9.2 billion endowment, has decided to pull its money from companies that run private prisons, citing the “larger, ongoing discussion of the issue of mass incarceration that concerns citizens from across the ideological spectrum.” The move, announced by the school’s trustees, comes in response to student-led protests that drew attention to the economics of fast-growing private prisons. Unlike crammed and underfunded state and federally run prisons that benefit when there are fewer inmates, private prisons are incentivized to take in more people to their facilities. The industry also has been criticized for targeting immigrants and minorities.
Qaraqe’ said Adnan, held in solitary in the Ramla Israeli Prison Clinic, is refusing even vitamins or any sort of treatment, and that he is only drinking water. He suffered a serious weight loss, severe headache, and sharp pain in his joints and abdomen areas, in addition to general weakness, and fatigue. Qaraqe’ held Israel and its Prison Authority responsible for the life and well-being of the detainee, and said Adnan is demanding an end to his illegal, arbitrary Administrative Detention, without charges, in direct violations of all international, legal and humanitarian laws and treaties. He also said that many Palestinian political prisoners, held under Administrative Detention, threatened to join the strike, and even to expand it very soon, to reach all prisons and detention centers.
Wadiya Jamal Mumia’s wife at 8:50 pm last night May 12th and told her that Mumia had been moved to the hospital. This is a disturbing development and is cause for grave concern. There are reports that he had a fever, and that he has open wounds and sores on his legs. HIs attorney Bret Grote visited him on Friday. He was engaged, alert, yet he was in pain in his knees and leg. We will be working to gather more information as the day goes on. His hospital conditions will be abhorrent: he will be chained to the bed. He could, as they did before, be arbitrarily and systematically denied visitors. The last time we were in the ICU they did not let his familly or lawyers see him, or give them any information for 24hrs. Even though they were the ICU waiting room just a few feet from Mumia’s bed.. Clearly Mumia’s chronic conditions remain undiagnosed and unsuccessfully treated.
Every semester my students from Voices Behind Bars, a class I teach at Middlesex Community College in Massachusetts, go to prison. They used to visit state institutions but now that the Massachusetts state prisons do not offer tours (perhaps because it is a hassle to have outsiders trooping through them and criticizing what they see), the students take a tour of Billerica House of Correction, where they experience confinement to some degree and listen for an hour to an incarcerated man talk about his life and what it is like to be behind bars. Originally, the Middlesex House of Correction, which was built in 1929, housed 300 men. Now it has more than 1,100, after a $37 million dollar expansion which prison officials say was to accommodate the closing of the Cambridge Jail — not without objection from activists and community members who opposed more prison building (actually costing $43 million per The Lowell Sun.)
First, I wasn’t allowed to drive, so I had to take public transportation. I had to leave my house in Arlington, walk to the nearest Metro station, take the train to Eastern Market on Capitol Hill, catch a bus for Washington’s Anacostia neighborhood, get off on Alabama Avenue, then walk the rest of the way to Hope Village. This takes at least two hours each way. I’d spend an hour or two at Hope Village, and then make the two-hour trip home. This was killing six hours every day in the middle of the workday. The problem here is that I was supposed to be finding a job and working every day. Remaining unemployed at a certain point would make me “violated.” Having broken the rules of my probation, I’d be heading back to Loretto and spending more time in prison. I saw these daily visits to the halfway house as an utter waste of time.
More than 250 people have been arrested since Monday here in Baltimore. . . The small concrete booking cells were filled with hundreds of people, most with more than ten people per cell. Three of us were sent to the women’s side where there were up to 15 women per holding cell. Most of them had been there since Monday afternoon/evening. With the exception of 3 or 4 women, the women who weren’t there for Monday’s round-ups were there for freaking curfew violations. Many had not seen a doctor or received required medication. Many had not been able to reach a family member by phone. But here is the WORST thing. Not only had these women been held for two days and two nights without any sort of formal booking, BUT ALMOST NONE OF THEM HAD ACTUALLY BEEN CHARGED WITH ANYTHING. They were brought to CBIF via police wagons (most without seat belts, btw–a real shocker after all that’s happened), and taken to holding cells without ever being charged with an actual crime. No offense reports. No statements of probable cause. A few women had a vague idea what they might be charged with . . . .
Mumia Abu-Jamal was seen today by his wife and his condition has worsened. He, is gravely ill. We are asking everyone to call the prison. Right now. It may be late, but call whenever you get this. Mumia needs 24 hour care and supervision. He can not be in this condition in general population. In this state he may not be able ask for help, he may lose consciousness. He is too weak. (He was released from the infirmary two days ago). His condtiion: He is extremely swollen in his neck, chest, legs, and his skin is worse than ever, with open sores. He was not in a wheelchair, but can only take baby steps. He is very weak. He was nodding off during the visit. He was not able to eat- he was fed with a spoon. These are symptoms that could be associated with hyper glucose levels, diabetic shock, diabetic coma, and with kidney stress and failure.
37 Wesleyan students sat in on President Michael Roth’s office yesterday and today demanding divestment from fossil fuels, the Israeli occupation and the prison industrial complex. This morning, they left with Roth’s endorsement of prison divestment and commitment to further dialogue on divestment from fossil fuels and the Israeli occupation. President Roth agreed to investigate the current status of the university’s investments in private prisons, to publicly state his endorsement of prison divestment, and proceed to support divestment of any holdings Wesleyan may have. Students arrived in the president’s office at noon on Thursday, marking the anniversary of President Roth’s participation in a sit-in for divestment from South African Apartheid as a Wesleyan student in 1978.
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