Some Transformative Justice Links
In the wake of recent conversations, I’ve been looking around for further resources on transformative justice. I haven’t been able to do a lot of intense follow-up on the topic lately, because in mid-January I had major spinal surgery (after breaking my neck in an accident back in 2011); this obviously has involved many painkillers and a lot of sleep and not-working as much as possible. However, I have been able to do some reading, and I want to share some of what I’ve found most compelling.
...read moreLocked Up
This article on mass incarceration is a must-read:
...read moreFor most privileged, professional people, the experience of confinement is a mere brush, encountered after a kid’s arrest, say. For a great many poor people in America, particularly poor black men, prison is a destination that braids through an ordinary life, much as high school and college do for rich white ones. More than half of all black men without a high-school diploma go to prison at some time in their lives. Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today—perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850. In truth, there are more black men in the grip of the criminal-justice system—in prison, on probation, or on parole—than were in slavery then. Over all, there are now more people under “correctional supervision” in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height. That city of the confined and the controlled, Lockuptown, is now the second largest in the United States.
Virginia Prisons Will Strengthen Policy Against Shackling Pregnant Inmates
This is a guest post by Katherine Greenier.
The DOC will now strengthen regulations that protect a pregnant inmate’s dignity and health, and the health and safety of her pregnancy. Ankle restraints or restraints that in any other way restrict the woman’s movement will not be used during transportation outside the prison, or during labor, delivery and post-partum recovery.
Zine: “The Prison-Industrial Complex Is …”
New zine available for download: “The Prison-Industrial Complex Is …” This struck me as especially relevant to the recent thread on rape culture that talked extensively about how to deal with aggressors while avoiding the prison-industrial complex. Some really amazing comments on that thread — thank you everyone. Snip from the zine site: This publication [...]
...read moreA disability services funding wishlist
Here in the state of New South Wales, Australia, we have an election coming up on 26 March, so help us all. The head of the state government, Premier Kristina Keneally of the Australian Labor Party, has pledged $30 million in disability services funding. She’s not going to be re-elected – I’ve never known an [...]
...read moreAllowing death row inmates to donate organs.
1. The death penalty is immoral, barbaric, cruel and unusual, and has no place in any civilized society. It’s shameful that we use it in the United States, and it should be shocking to anyone with a conscience and a moral center. 2. The United States has an ugly history of abusing inmates. We imprison [...]
...read moreFollow-Up: Donate to Legal Aid for Protesters of Police Violence
Hey everyone, Appreciating the conversation on Friday’s guest thread about the Mehserle sentencing. Just wanted to follow up with an invitation for solidarity. Saturday, after about 20 hours in custody, I got out of jail in Oakland, having been mass arrested along with more than 150 others for “unlawful assembly”: marching in the streets to [...]
...read moreWrong bra gets lawyer barred from visiting her client
Also, no bra: Attorney Brittney Horstman was not packing heat. She was wearing an underwire bra. And when the metal detector went off on a visit to the Miami Federal Detention Center, security guards wouldn’t let Horstman in to see her client. The attorney reminded guards of a detention center “memo” allowing female attorneys wearing [...]
...read morea force more powerful
“We may not currently have the might of the Israeli army and the power of traditions confine us in certain roles, however, we know that one woman standing behind another in a line of solidarity is a force more powerful than both.” –kefah, speaking in at-tuwani village, west bank, palestine i am going to start [...]
...read moreOscar Grant, Audre Lorde, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and the question of loving our enemies.
[Trigger Warning: discussions of sexual assault and deadly State force.] Love your enemies. For feminists, is there any phrase more terrifyingly reactionary? Love your enemies. Even the one who assaults you in private and reaps accolades as a brilliant community organizer in public. (One of my mom’s former boyfriends.) Love your enemies. Even the ones [...]
...read moreThe Media v. Black Women: The Peculiar Case of the Media’s Obsession with Unmarried Black Women
This is a guest-post by Diane Lucas. Diane is an attorney in New York. By now, everyone in the country with access to a television, the internet or a book store has gotten the memo that black women marry at a dismally low rate compared to women of other races. We’ve seen and read it [...]
...read morePrison Rape: Assault Shouldn’t Be a Part of the Sentence
This guest post is a part of the Feministe series on Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Liliana Segura is a senior editor at AlterNet.org and a board member of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. Trigger Warning “I’ve been raped, physically beaten, extorted, pimped out/sold, intimidated, manipulated, threatened, humiliated, [and] harassed by both officers and [...]
...read more
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