The United States incarcerates ~25% of the world’s prison population despite only having ~5% of the world’s population. In the 35 years between 1972 and 2007, the rate of incarceration has ballooned from 161 to 767 per 100,000.
The historical circumstances which have led to these frightening figures are wide and varied. From increases in the number of for-profit prisons, to the excesses of our military-industrial complex fueling local police departments, we have seen how the profit motive, just as in healthcare, has eroded institutional barriers previously aimed at securing the public interest. Compounding this further is the simple fact that the United States still reserves the right to enslave those convicted of a crime under the 13th amendment to our constitution. The result is not merely an increase in the number of incarcerated individuals, but an increase in the brutality employed by the system that aims to incarcerate them.
As prison populations increase, the physical constraints both in terms of living conditions and protocols increase alongside it. Solitary confinement, though always a means of punishment and torture becomes mere economics. The shackling of pregnant women while giving birth becomes a savings in the cost of labor for a system with fewer guards dispersed across larger inmate populations. And the use of violence as a means to suppress any behavior which does not exactly correspond to the daily regiments of transport, feeding, and labor is little more than an application of the age-old techniques of the assembly line.
All of these facts, whether admitted to or not, attest not merely to the social crises which are endemic to capitalist systems, but also the economic ones. In a system which requires some portion of the population to constitute a reserve army of the unemployed, lest the worker demand for even the most meager wages were to disappear, some number of that population is forced to turn towards different forms of employment. Enter the war on drugs, the continuing criminalization of sex workers, and, of course, undocumented immigrant labor.
In periods of prolonged economic stagnation, however, it becomes increasingly difficult to rely on the past divides in our social fabric to justify such a system. The correlation between poverty and crime is well known. With stagnating wages, more frequent attacks on social services, and growing wealth inequality, it’s not enough that black and brown people face disproportionate numbers of arrests or such wide disparities in sentencing. Instead, society must also assure a larger and larger percentage of the population that they are not like “the other.”
We must dehumanize.
Whether it’s a first lady referring to black youths as “super predators” or the commander-in-chief telling a nation that it’s “OK to take away the hand,” the need to portray those most heavily targeted by our legal system as something not human or not deserving of fundamental human rights is essential to the maintenance of a prison system at the scale and scope of the United States’. Only by continuing to remind those outside of the system that those inside the system “deserve it,” can it continue to go unchecked. As soon as we recognize our common humanity, it becomes possible to see “the other” as us. It becomes possible to demand change.
For this reason as well as for all the detailed criminal justice reforms supported in the Green Party platform, members of the Santa Clara County Green Party will be joining California Prison Focus and Rise Up for Justice on Saturday, August 19th to join in the Millions for Prisoners Human Rights March. For more information, see: https://www.facebook.com/events/441574739560568/
It’s the most familiar tactic in the history of manipulation-divide and conquer. The corporatized political parties that have been trading the football of the US Government back and forth for decades have successfully engaged the entire republic in a non-debate about something that has no divisive features. Their strategy of pitting sides against one another is about as sophisticated as a teenager angling for the car by getting Mom and Dad to fight about who caused the scratch on the door. Embarrassingly, far too many of us keep falling for it.
The Environment is Not An “ISM”
Our planet, the water, the air, the animal and plant life, is not an institution, a theory, a political invention, or any other “ism.” It is a very concrete, finite location and resources. It is the context in which all human activity, good, bad, and neutral, must take place. Living consumes and makes waste. Modern, human life has added a layer of consumption and waste production that can’t be automatically re-incorporated into Earth’s natural cycles. We continually convert a certain amount of the Earth’s matter, into permanently unusable, sometimes even dangerous, waste. That waste is accurately called pollution, a now-old-fashioned word, too clear and useful to be in favor today.
We all know what pollution is and why we don’t want it. It makes living on Earth a bad experience. When it builds up in the air or water or soil we get sick. Everybody knows it’s bad. No one is confused or undecided. No one would rather live in pollution. No one prefers a river with raw sewage spilling into it to one without. But guess what! By changing the language to “climate change” and framing the debate around whether or not it’s caused by human activity, the corporate interests that would pollute freely for profit, distracted us all. Worse, we’re not even debating climate change, or even its causes any more. We’ve devolved into a useless non‑dialogue about climate change DENIAL! Denial is not an issue. It’s a pretense that something doesn’t exist. Talk about talking about nothing!
Sincere Language
But what happens when we call things by reasonably accurate terms, instead of manipulative spin yammer? Replace “climate change” with “planet-wide heating.” Now, instead of a vague, meaningless phrase, we have a fair description of what is actually happening. Instead of arguing about whether society should manage and restrain things that may be turning up the heat, let’s focus on the fact that those same activities simply pollute. Heating up or not, we’ve spent four decades proving that we can choose whether or not to make our planet a filthy, dirty one, or try and clean up after ourselves. Why would we turn back and choose pollution now? We wouldn’t. That’s why the profiteering exploiters prefer we never pose the question that way.
Their argument was, ‘People don’t cause global warming, so forget about protecting the environment and let’s exploit without limits, because money.’ By this logic, if you are making breakfast and you drop the two eggs you were going to scramble, you should throw the other ten eggs on the floor too. Rational adults rejected this idiotic argument so the profiteers now respond with denial, like a three-year-old having a pout.
Planet-wide heating is not good news, but whether our actions can avert it or not, we still have to live here for the foreseeable future. And since we do, why would any sincere, rational person agree to end the limits on pollution, or abandon recycling? We wouldn’t and we don’t.
Money is strange. It’s a portable, transferrable storage symbol for our energy, effort and expertize. It can indicate our rank, our cleverness at “playing the game,” or become a shackle to a life we no longer enjoy. Lack of it can impose profound misery and its distribution can create injustice, corruption and war; or peace and plenty. Every philosophy comments on money; warning us against it, or lauding its correct application. Outside the context of a socially created market it has no intrinsic worth. Within that context it can be everything.
Our money is also our politics, and is as much a tool of intelligent stewardship as our vote. It acts beyond our independent spending. The banks we trust to secure our futures use our savings and our debt payments to fund both good and evil. We are responsible to know, and choose, the paths our money travels, and the influence it buys.
With the Citizens United decision reinforcing corporate personhood, the Supreme Court also made money free speech, effectively making money the only speech. While the heart of avarice now holds the loudest megaphone in the republic, it can’t yet forcibly silence us. We can be a chorus and collectively take back the wheel from greed and corruption. We have to clean and green our money.
It’s going to be inconvenient, time consuming and may require sacrifices. If these things deter us, we become “good people doing nothing,” giving evil a clear path. Compared to the costs dirty money will force on our children, the sacrifice is insignificant.
Move your money to a credit union. Checking, savings, credit cards, loans, even mortgages; move them all over to a credit union. CU’s are non-profits that lend locally and support the small businesses and local companies that are the true engine of the American ideal.
Take a good look at your 401K and other retirement savings strategies. Are you funding banks and other corporations that continue to destroy the natural world? Is your money underwriting fracking, dirty energy, deforestation, irresponsible real estate development? Redistribute your investments to reflect your politics.
Buy from local chains and stores instead of multi-national corporations. Quit the online shopping habit and look for independent grocery stores , bookstores, coffee shops, material suppliers. Yes, independents may be more expensive, but if the large scale corporations were actually charging you what it’s going to cost to repair the damage they are doing to the world, their prices would be astronomical. Do you want your grandchildren to inherit an unlivable world, or the story of our victory over greed and waste? Open a map application and type in a search for whatever you need to buy. Not only will you find the independents in your area but you’ll use less energy getting there.
When you make donations, investigate. Did you know that Savers thrift shops in San Jose are for-profit? They only “share” their profits with charities. Why provide them with free inventory when other donations go to actual non-profits?
Support the maker community in your neighborhood. Look for independent craftspeople and artisans to support when you buy gifts, seek entertainment, or need durable goods.
Talk to your relations, friends and neighbors about bringing their money back home, regardless of political stripe. Supporting businesses in your home town and keeping money local is not a partisan issue. Conservative or progressive, the benefits are a no-brainer.
Keep thinking, asking, loving, doing, giving, trying. The world is better for your efforts.
In 2016 the United States dropped bombs on seven, what are commonly described as “Muslim Countries”: Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan. These military operations were justified by the Obama Administration as a war on terrorism or ISIS. Was “Terrorism” the true motive of these operations?
Retired General Wesley Clark, West Point Valedictorian, Vietnam Veteran and Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO during the Kosovo War, published a book in 2003, Winning Modern Wars. In this book he recited a conversation he had with an unidentified Military Officer in the Pentagon who, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, revealed a script to attack seven Middle Eastern countries: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finally Iran. With this revelation we now know there was a premeditated plan by the United States to attack seven additional countries to Afghanistan with the passing of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force. Which intentionally used vague language to describe the scope of the authorization in order to open the door for the expansion and use of military operations.
The motive of fighting “Terrorism” has been invalidated as well. After a trip to Syria, Republican US Senator Richard Black gives a description of the country unlike anything else you will see on Corporate American media. In an interview with Executive Intelligence Review Magazine’s Jeffrey Steinberg, Senator Black says (3:00), “Syria is one of the most incredibly wonderful nations on Earth,” and goes on to say, “The fact that America set out to topple the Government and destroy it, long before there was the faintest hint of civil unrest,… is really one of the great stains on American honor.” He describes Syria as having religious freedom greater than in the United States. Later in the interview he he gives two devastating revelations. He says (9:28), “One of my questions, is why is there war in Syria?..We know this was not a popular uprising. This was a calculated decision by CIA, MI6, French Intelligence, working with the Muslim Brotherhood, Turks, Saudis…an organized plan to topple the Government and of course, you know, we were familiar that there were competing plans for oil and gas pipelines.” Even more disturbing he says( 35:54), “…we have gone full circle from opposing Al-Qaeda, which sent three thousand Americans to a faming death on 9-11, complete circle to where we now supply them, we arm them, we finance them and it’s all coming with the approval of the highest authorities in the United States Government.” Yes, that is a current United States Senator who said these things.
Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006 may have been the decision maker behind these wars and certainly a major influence to invade Iraq. He stated in his book, The Age of Turbulence, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” He seems to suggest it was his idea to invade Iraq in a quote from a Washington Post article, Greenspan: Ouster of Hussein Crucial for Oil Security, September 17, 2007, “Greenspan said he had backed Hussein’s ouster, either through war or covert action. “I wasn’t arguing for war per se,” he said. But “to take [Hussein] out, in my judgment, it was something important for the West to do and essential, but I never saw Plan B” — an alternative to war.” We can now certainly conclude that the wars in the middle east are for oil and not a war against “Terrorism.”
The violence for oil has landed on our homeland as well. In North Dakota, Energy Transfer Partners LLC, is able to impose its will with the support of local and out of State Police Departments and Local, State and Federal Governments, against the best interest of Indigenous Nations and the American public. They are constructing an oil pipeline, known as The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), under the Missouri River, which will eventually contaminate the river. According to the US Department of the Interior Bureau of Reclamation, Basin Report: Missouri River, “The Missouri is the longest river in the United States. It has a watershed of more than 500,000 square miles, includes portions of 10 states and one Canadian province, and encompasses approximately one-sixth of the United States. The Missouri drains the largest watershed within the United States and produces annual yields of 40 million acre-feet.” The report goes on to say, “Adequate and safe water supplies are fundamental to the health, economy, and ecology of the United States, and global climate change poses a significant challenge to the protection of these resources.” Protecting this resource from oil spills and climate change is critical to the health of the people of the United States, Indigenous and otherwise.
Water Protectors in North Dakota, the Standing Rock Sioux and other Indigenous Tribes, stood peacefully against the construction of the pipeline. Armed private security were brought in and used dogs to attack the Water Protectors. Luckily this action was captured by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. This inspired people from all over the United States to support the effort against the DAPL bringing supplies, Money and People Power. Activists converged on Standing Rock in solidarity with the Water Protectors, they were met however with more violence. The Morton County Sheriff’s Department and outside Police Departments sprayed Water Protectors with water, from water cannons, in the frigid cold of North Dakota’s winter, they used tear gas, concussion grenades and shot the Water Protectors with rubber bullets. Sophia Wilansky, 21, nearly lost her arm to one of these grenades. Vanessa Dundon, was hit in the eye with a tear gas canister and nearly lost her eye and Marcus Mitchell, 21, shot in the eye with some kind of pellet rounds, also nearly losing and eye.
Civil Rights are ignored when it comes to protecting the profits of oil and gas companies. There were several high profile arrests of Water Protectors and activists: Standing Rock Tribal Chairman David Archambault II who was charged with disorderly conduct, an arrest warrant was also issued in Morton County for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate Ajamu Baraka on misdemeanor counts of criminal trespass and criminal mischief, a warrant for journalist Amy Goodman’s arrest was issued by Morton County related to the filming of the dog attacks on Water Protectors. Protectors, Physician Sara Jumping Eagle, along with the daughter of LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, who founded Sacred Stone Camp and Actor Shailene Woodly were strip searched for misdemeanor arrests. Allard said that when her daughter was arrested and taken into custody she was “strip-searched in front of multiple male officers, then left for hours in her cell, naked and freezing.” All of this violence and violations of Civil Rights against Americans protecting one of the most important watershed in the United States showed us that the profits of oil and gas companies are more important than the American values we were raised to believe in.
Let’s stop the violence and move away from fossil fuels and towards clean renewable energy. The Green Party advocates for the Green New Deal which, includes investments for renewable energy, taxes and fees for industries that increase carbon emissions and to achieve full employment with living wages in green jobs in sustainable energy. Review the Green New Deal here: https://sccgreens.org///green-agenda/green-new-deal/
The Carbon Fee and Dividend proposal, by the Citizen’s Climate Lobby, looks to return to citizens the dividends paid by the fossil fuel industries by the amount of greenhouse gas emissions they release. You can learn more about this plan here: http://citizensclimatelobby.org/carbon-fee-and-dividend/
We must stand up to the violence in the name of oil and gas.
In the wake of the election of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States of America, one of the first executive memorandums to don the signature of The Don was the one that gave express support to the previously stalled Dakota Access and Keystone XL (TransCanada) pipelines. In any other context, any foreign power which threatened to poison the water supply of millions of people would be labeled a terrorist organization and rightly so. And even in the case of the Dallas, Texas headquartered Energy Transfer Partners, one has to ask, what power could be more foreign to working and oppressed people than the power of transnational capital?
Terrorism, indeed, goes by another name in this country—business.
Today, many of us stand strongly united in our opposition to the president, but let us not so quickly forget the crimes of the old. When water protectors from all over this country rose up in North Dakota, it was Obama who held that office. He watched and sat silent for weeks on end while police and private security forces brutalized native people and their allies in what, at times, mimicked the suppression of black activists fighting for civil rights in the south. When finally the pressure had risen to a boiling point, he did just enough to assuage the immediate concerns of those on the ground; just enough to make thousands of people believe they could break from their resistance; just enough to buy the time required for Energy Transfer Partners and the state of North Dakota to fortify their offensive.
It is time we recognize that “just enough” is no longer enough.
The system of global capital and its requisite political institutions have fallen into near complete decay. While it has always been a system of profit over planet, profit over peace, and profit over people, neither the people, nor the planet, nor the relative peace in which we live can continue to bear the weight of it. The human race is on a collision course with its own self-extermination and global capital has the wheel.
However much Trump may seek to accelerate us along that path, the tracks were laid at the very founding of this nation. We are a nation birthed in genocide and slavery. The dominance of our country on the international stage arose not from the cooperative and ingenious nature of its population, but in the crucibles of two great imperialist wars. Today, that dominance is sustained through never ending war and a political system which convinces millions of people that their only choices are between the party of wall street and the party of big oil.
These problems are not the product of the last 70 days. The last 70 days is the product of these problems. We have a system so failed and so rapidly decaying that in order for working people to feel like they were no longer handing their money to conmen, they thought they’d give the mob boss a try. It is for these reasons that although many of us stand united in opposition against Trump, we must go further. Insofar as people continue to accept that we must vote for the lesser of two evils, not only will we always get evil, but there will always be an incentive for the lesser evil to fan the flames from which the greater evil is born.
