TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA – Prisoners in Florida went on a statewide strike on Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday this week, after having issued a list of demands in December. Operation PUSH, as the action is called, is scheduled to last for one month.
ALBANY, NEW YORK – Prisons in New York state are rolling out a program that will ban most reading material and end inmate care packages from families. The program is currently being tested at three state prisons, but plans to implement the directive at all 54 of the state’s correctional facilities are aiming for a Fall 2018 start date.
A Leader should be like a father… he helps the country grow, teaches it, provides for its future. Erdogan? He is no father to Turkey.
— Turkish citizen on the streets of Istanbul
Sixteen-year-old Ahed Tamimi may not be what Israelis had in mind when, over many years, they criticised Palestinians for not producing a Mahatma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela.
Eventually, colonised peoples bring to the fore a figure best suited to challenge the rotten values at the core of the society oppressing them. Ahed is well qualified for the task.
It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.
― Nelson Mandela
The year 2017 has been another active year for people fighting on a wide range of fronts. The Trump administration has brought many issues that have existed for years out into the open where they are more difficult to deny – racism, colonialism, imperialism, capitalism and patriarchy and the crises they create. More people are activated and greater connections between the fronts of struggle are creating a movement of movements. These are positive developments, bright spots in difficult times.
Jesus is too much for us. The church’s later treatment of the gospels is one long effort to rescue Jesus from ‘extremism.’
— Gary Wills, What Jesus Meant
The Justice Department is not evaluating the performance of pretrial diversion programs, residential re-entry centers, and home confinement, according to congressional testimony from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
Under President Barack Obama administration, the Justice Department sought to reduce booming federal prison populations by providing alternatives to incarceration for people with low-level nonviolent offenses.
The family of a deceased man who was incarcerated at Kentucky’s Bourbon County Jail has filed a federal lawsuit against the county, jail officials, and the private medical contractor Advanced Correctional Healthcare. They allege “deliberate indifference” was shown to the man’s “obviously serious medical needs,” as he suffered from opioid withdrawal.
Shannon Bowles was arrested for public intoxication on March 15, 2016, at the age of 41. He died less than two weeks later in the emergency room.
