incarceration

(ANTIMEDIA) Though the U.S. population accounts for only 4.4 percent of the world’s population, its prisons held 22 percent of the world’s prisoners at the end of October 2013, making America’s incarceration rate the highest in the world.

A castaway in the sea was going down for the third time when he caught sight of a passing ship. Gathering his last strength, he waved frantically and called for help. Someone on board peered at him scornfully and shouted back, ‘Get a boat!’ ―Daniel Quinn, Beyond Civilization: Humanity’s Next Great Adventure
It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity.”

So, 40 years later, we come back to commemorate this struggle against the historical backdrop of a people who have been so terrorized and traumatized and stigmatized that we have been taught to be scared, intimidated, always afraid, distrustful of one another, and disrespectful of one another. But the Attica’s rebellion was a countermove in that direction. I call it the niggerization of a people, not just black people, because America been niggerized since 9/11. When you’re niggerized, you’re unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence, hated for who you are.

Their sons ignore you; a fire warms them and sheds light around them, and you have not lit it.
— Jean-Paul Sartre

September 9th is fast approaching- a day that stands out in the celebrated history of domestic resistance against official State terror and institutional slavery in this country. On that day in 1971 thousands of prisoners entombed in an upstate prison in rural New York, perhaps the worst in the United States at the time, said enough as they seized Attica. They said no to slave wages, no to physical abuse and no to psychological torture; they demanded improved living conditions, medical treatment, religious freedom and educational and training opportunities.

In this sedition we bring you an exclusive interview with prison inmate Melvin Ray, secretly filmed inside Holman Prison in Alabama. Melvin is a member of the Free Alabama Movement, a national organization against mass Incarceration and prison slavery. They have teamed up with the IWW’s Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, to organize the largest prison strike in history, set to kick off on September 9th.

(ANTIMEDIA) Data provided by PrisonStudies.org is helping shed light on America’s incarceration problem, demonstrating that only the small archipelago of Seychelles, located in the Indian Ocean off East Africa, has a higher incarceration rate than the U.S.

Workers World Party vice presidential candidate, Lamont Lilly gave the following speech at the Black Resistance March on the Democratic National Convention on July 26 in Philadelphia. This march was organized by the Philly Coalition for REAL Justice.
WWP Vice Presidential Candidate Lamont Lilly Addressing Crowd at DNC Via phillyvoicedotcom

When analyzing the issues of police brutality in America and the Black Lives Matter movement, a lot the most important aspects of the situation are rarely talked about.

Somewhere, maybe on the other side of the world from you right now, countless people are sitting locked in small rooms because of things they wrote. It’s a strange idea. How could the written word be so dangerous that the person responsible for it should be placed in a box, locked away from society along with arsonists and murderers? So many of these journalists and artists are unknown. They do not have hashtags. But one of them, Ashraf Fayadh, has become a rallying call around the world.