Rally launches prisoner rights campaign

Prison-rights activists, many of them families and friends of men and women behind bars, rallied on the Michigan State Capitol steps in Lansing on June 18. The action, sponsored by the March for Corrections and Judicial Reform Committee and the National Lifers of America, launched a campaign to fight the U.S. prison and judicial system’s profound injustice and racism.

Big-business prisons are the crime.

Kevin Carey, initiator and coordinator of the MCJRC, chaired the rally that brought people from Detroit, Battle Creek, Holland and other cities and towns across Michigan. The keynote speaker, though, came all the way from Houston. Njeri Shakur, from the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, described how prisons took the place of the dying agricultural economy in Texas in the same way the prison “industry” is replacing the closed factories of Michigan.

The state of Michigan pays more than $43,000 per year in tax dollars to house and maintain each prisoner. At the same time, Michigan has eliminated education and other rehabilitation programs for prisoners, and has begun charging them for medical care. Rally speakers pointed out that one-fifth of the Michigan budget is spent on the state’s Department of Corrections, equal to its funding for public education.

Michigan cities are going bankrupt while the Bush administration siphons tax dollars to pay for the war on Iraq. According to information from the Michigan Emergency Committee Against War and Injustice: “In 2004, $429 million of Detroit’s taxes went for the Iraq war. That’s twice the city’s ‘budget deficit.’” (http://www.mecawi.org)

The resulting cuts in social services mean more oppressed women, men and teenagers will be driven to crimes of survival, and into prison.

Thousands of petition signatures supporting the campaign are already in hand as prison-rights organizers continue to mobilize. The petition demands include:

* Pardon the falsely convicted, especially those who have exhausted court remedies to obtain justice, and battered women incarcerated for killing their abusers.

* Parole prisoners serving life sentences whose record shows their rehabilitation.

* Medically parole chronically ill, terminally ill and elderly prisoners who pose no risk to public safety.

* Exempt juveniles from life sentences.

* Reinstate funding for the Legislative Corrections Ombudsman’s Office.

* Reduce state spending to any county that fails to racially diversify its court jury pools.

* End mandatory minimum sentences with restoration of sentencing discretion to judges.

* Halt the exploitation, racketeering and overcharging of the for-profit telephone contracts prisoners are forced to use in Michigan prisons.

One militant solidarity statement came from Workers World Party, from Monica Moorehead and Larry Holmes. It read in part: “Under capitalism, big business will invest in any sector of the economy to make profits, including repression of the masses.

“Prison construction equals profits. Slave labor in private prisons equals profits. The victims are the disenfranchised youths, Black, Latino, Native and poor whites, who can’t find decent-paying jobs. The victims are those who are suffering from mental disabilities and drug addiction. These sectors of society make up the vast majority of the 2-million-plus U.S. prison population.

“Instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars a day on the brutal occupation of Iraq, instead of spending half a billion dollars a day on the institutions of repression, we say take that money and spend it on good-paying jobs. Take that money and spend it on schools with small class sizes, up-to-date equipment, teachers. Take that money and make sure that every human being has housing, health care, heat, lights and water. Our brothers and sisters behind bars are a vital part of the fight to reclaim our cities and communities.

“Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, free Leonard Peltier, free the Five Cuban Heroes, free the Angola Two and all political prisoners. Tear down the walls.”

For more information, contact the March for Corrections and Judicial Reform Committee, c/o 5920 Second Ave., Detroit, MI 48202. Phone: (313) 831-0750.