The DISH
Unbossed and unbought
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Volume 10 Issue 20…Dedicated to the
Dialogue on Race…May 18, 2007
Intuit's
Vibe
I Love My People! (For Kory)
By Yohannes Sharriff
What it is, K?
I'm still not clear on the details.
But, every since you got fitted for a
cell,
Life’s been on some get your
lesson.
To tell the truth,
I'm handcuffed by the sentiment.
Struggling with words on paper
Writing is a labor of love
But, sometimes I don't love the labor.
Thoughts got my mind so weighted
Swollen with what the day is doing to
me.
How my dreams the realist to me
K, whatever it takes to be free
Even my dreams have dreams of the key to
unlock the best of me.
No matter what, this life gets the best
of me.
Destiny shapes of us dandelion divine
rugged enough to crack concrete
the weight of my piece
a mental musket shooting centrifugal
subject.
Let it bloom or cut it for medicinal
purposes.
What I'm trying to say is,
the day your pop gave me the message,
I guess, I questioned my ability to
write a poem
To hold you over till you get home.
Life sentences to bend bars and guards
Till the DA drops the charges.
Something profound
Verbs and noun
To feed the fertile ground of your dome
A poem of spring and new beginnings
How the world is just waiting for your
return.
Like the Jedi, superb hand and eye
coordination
Your mind a light saber
So slice thru these haters straight to
the heart.
K, believe you got love
'cause I can see the pain in your pop's
eyes
as I stand next to mine.
Not because he's jealous of us.
He just misses you that much.
Got him so nauseous
He's ready to throw up
Houses, cars, guns and bombs to free
his son.
I write a piece to break silence like
sirens
Naw, this ain't 911.
This is the spider web spun on the life
of one
young black man trapped in the criminal
just-us system
No pretense
Death or new age slavery
In the black like big business,
this is big business, exploiting black
citizens.
Slave decadents fenced in a situation
we’ve been facing since dragged
to this plantation.
Basically guerilla warfare takes the
scraps
And papier-mâché the pieces
back together
Whether whatever comes
Til we snapping digital pics on the
front lawn.
Can't wait to see the one of your moms
Praising God 'cause you back in her
arms
Surrounded by warmth
Fresh kicks, clothes and a meal from
home
wrapped in this poem.
A piece of mine to bring you peace of
mind
Praying for words to move us forward.
Four words change the paradigm
I LOVE MY PEOPLE!
Powerful enough break walls
Change laws
And give you back to the arms of the
ones you love.
From the 13th Amendment to
Abu Ghraib
By John Burl Smith
"Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall
exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate
legislation." The 13th Amendment (1865) did not abolish slavery; it
specified the conditions under which it was legal. Prisoners are slaves.
During the 1980s, Ronald Reagan laid the foundation for the modern
prison-industrial-complex, and large scale prison, public and private,
construction in isolated small communities began. This was Reagan's jobs
program for poor white rural communities without any industry. Young urban
blacks became the product of this industry.
This "tough on crime" job creation policy put slave descendants back
where they were following Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, ratification of
the 13 Amendment and Reconstruction after the Civil War in the 1890s. During
this period, slave descendants without money or jobs were declared vagrants and
legally imprisoned until they worked off their fines. Prisoners, slave
descendants, were forced to work for some former slave masters for free.
In 2007, the situation remains unchanged for slave descendants. Case in point,
the West Texas State School in Pyote was to be closed because of its record of
Abu Ghraib-like abuse. The 240-bed facility in the far-flung system of the
Texas Youth Commission provides 228 jobs for poor whites in the little town of
Monahans. Following protests, the Pyote school is no longer scheduled to be
closed.
Most of the incarcerated youths in US prisons are slave descendants from urban
areas. Not only is it a hardship for family and friends to visit, the isolation
increases the likelihood of abuse.
Hendry Guards Charged with Abusing
Inmates
Astounded by what happened at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, most Americans looked
on in disbelief. Quick to dismiss US soldiers' behavior as an apparition, it
showed their total ignorance of what really goes on inside US prisons.
Accordingly, The DISH
presents this very limited exposé of two states where compassionate
conservatives Jeb and George W. Bush were governors. In these states, prisoner
abuse is commonplace.
On Tuesday (5-1-07), prosecutors in Tallahassee, Florida issued arrest warrants
for eight former prison employees at the Hendry Correctional Institution in the
Everglades. Guards at the medium to minimum security 605-bed prison for men are
charged with criminal abuse of inmates, battery and failure to report inmate
abuse.
Department of Corrections Secretary James McDonough said "a cabal" of
officers sadistically tormented prisoners with "dehumanizing, improper,
illegal, heinous and despicable acts. Using the threat of force - beating and
choking - prison employees, including the warden and assistant warden,
compelled inmates to clean toilets with their tongues. Done apparently in an
organized and conspiratorial fashion, inmates were forced to choose between
eating their food off of floors or providing sexual favors to guards." The
abusers face a combined 23 state criminal charges. The FBI and U.S. Attorney
are reportedly looking into civil rights violations connected to these cases.
Charges Filed in Florida Boot Camp Death
Seven former juvenile boot camp guards and a nurse were charged with aggravated
manslaughter in the death of 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson, who collapsed in
the exercise yard at the Bay County sheriff's boot camp in Panama City, Florida
on January 5, 2005. Anderson was beaten by guards who said he was uncooperative
and refused to continue participating in boot camp intake exercises. Anderson's
death was captured on videotape.
Initially, the medical examiner's autopsy claimed Anderson died of
complications from sickle cell, a usually benign blood disorder in blacks. However,
a second autopsy ruled Anderson suffocated due to the guards' actions.
Anderson's death caused the state's top law enforcement officer to resign and
the military-style boot camp's elimination.
The Associated Press.
Deadly Restraint
Officers said Paul Choy, a 5' 4", fifteen-year-old, refused to comply with
punishment for failing to finish a five-mile run (2-4-92). Choy was restrained
by two staff members with a choke hold for ten minutes. When the officers
released their hold, Choy was no longer breathing.
A nurse trained to identify signs of sexual assault observed injuries
consistent with anal rape. "His was the first such case to come to my
attention. Now, I've lost count of the number of children killed by suffocation
in custodial settings. Yes, I said 'suffocation.' I know the preferred
euphemism here is 'accidental restraint-related death.' But out of respect for
the victims and for the English language, I opt to use the other word."
Blaming the victim, officials said, "Paul was too frail a boy for boot
camp. He didn't have the 'athletic ability.' He should have been sent somewhere
else. His 'accident' was the result of an unfortunate bureaucratic oversight.
They miscalculated, sending a puny, little Asian kid to a camp designed for
tough young thugs (niggers), who are inured to being knocked around--ones who
would benefit from being marched and exercised to exhaustion and could safely
bounce back from almost 'any amount of brutal treatment.'
Paul's demise was part of 'the window of loss,' similar to an egg in a large
shipment to market. One must expect some breakage, particularly among the ones
with prior defects. It's the price of doing business." Whenever the
subject of young people dying violently in custodial settings make the news,
which is becoming more frequent as larger numbers of them are funneled into
that industry, there is a call for better trained staff, rather than examining
the efficacy of the whole notion of punishment, particularly in isolated
settings. See www.nospank.net/camps for
more.
By John Burl Smith
Morales v. Turman (1977), a federal lawsuit to reform Texas' juvenile detention
system, as well as end the physical abuse of incarcerated youths, required
observation monitors. According to monitor Steve Bercu, "Within days after
we arrived, the culture inside the institutions reverted to what it was before.
They were beating kids up, and doing bad things just like before. Texas'
ingrained, entrenched, institutional culture, simply took over again."
On Tuesday (5-1-07), police went to 22 Texas Youth Commission (TYC) facilities
and its headquarters in Austin to investigate claims that young inmates were
sexually abused and that TYC officials covered it up. TYC houses about 2,700
youth ages 10 to 21. A 2005 investigation unearthed evidence that high-ranking
officials at its West Texas State School in Pyote had repeated sexual contact
with some of the 250 youth housed there.
Charged with abuses dating from October 2004, the former assistant
superintendent at TYC's West Texas State School was indicted on two counts of
improper relationship with students and two counts of improper sexual activity
with a person in custody. The former principal was indicted on one count of
sexual assault, nine counts of improper sexual activity with a person in
custody and nine counts of improper relationship between a student and an
educator.
Amidst headlines of a crackdown on illegal sexual encounters between agency
employees and their charges, a halfway house employee in Fort Worth, Texas was
arrested (4-25-07) and accused of trying to entice a girl to perform oral sex.
On April 30, health services auditors disclosed that a rape at a state youth
lockup was not reported or followed up, along with myriads of other problems
ranging from delayed treatment to lack of psychiatric care.
Then came this bomb shell, superintendent of the high-security juvenile prison,
Evins Regional Juvenile Center in Edinburg, Texas was fired (4-29-07) amid
allegations of inmate abuse. Texas continues to be a "hellhole of
abuse" for youth even after Morales. State officials have opened 27
investigations into inmate complaints of abuse at Evins.
A US Attorney's report said that the prison's high levels of violence,
overcrowding, and an inadequate number of guards violated inmates'
constitutional rights. Inmate-on-inmate assaults were five times the national
average for a comparable facility.
When Kids Get Life
In 1992, the US ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, which requires that juvenile imprisonment focus on rehabilitation.
However, the US reserved the right to sentence juveniles to life without parole
in extreme cases involving the most hardened of criminals.
According to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, more than 2,000
inmates are currently serving life without parole in the US for crimes
committed when they were juveniles. Worldwide, the US is one of the only
countries that allows children under 18 to be sentenced to life without parole.
Figures reported by the UN' Convention on the Rights of the Child show only 12
juveniles are serving such sentences outside the US.
In When Kids Get Life,
FRONTLINE producer Ofra Bikel (The
O.J. Verdict, Innocence
Lost) profiles five individuals sentenced to life without parole as
juveniles in Colorado, an early pioneer in juvenile justice that focused on
rehabilitation rather than punishment. According to Bikel, the focus on
rehabilitation took a sharp turn in the late 1980s and 1990s, when violent
crimes by young offenders increased and attracted enormous press coverage. In
response, legislators nationwide clamped down. The Colorado General Assembly
eliminated the possibility of parole for life sentences and expanded the power
of district attorneys to treat juveniles as adults.
For more on the young men sentenced to live without parole, their victims and
the ongoing debate on juvenile justice and the harsh punishments meted out to
youthful offenders, visit www.pbs.org, where you can
view the video When Kids Get
Life.
Disgruntled
feels: Dismayed!
The 2008 GOP presidential candidates met Tuesday at the University of South
Carolina to debate. One of the evening's highlights came when Rep. Ron Paul
rhetorically asked, "Have you ever read about the reasons they attacked
us? They attack us because we've been over there. We've been bombing Iraq for
10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan was right. We don't
understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics." In response
former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani stated, "As someone who lived through
the attack of Sept. 11, I don't think I've heard that before, and I've heard
some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11. And I would ask the congressman
to withdraw that comment and tell us that he didn't really mean that."
Giuliani received the biggest applause of the evening with that little sound
byte of ignorance. Paul is right! US foreign policy lies at the heart of Middle
East anger. If indeed the US was attacked by Middle East "terrorists"
bent on inflicting harm on this nation, their motivations extended well beyond "they
hate us for our freedom." Yet, Giuliani, like the South Carolina audience,
has learned little since 9/11 about this pivotal event in US history. I was
dismayed by such ignorance on a college campus.
Disgruntled
wants to know: I have a
problem with Barack Obama! Do not get me wrong; I like the guy. And, since I
generally hold my nose and vote the lesser of the evils presented for
president, including my past votes for Bill Clinton, I will probably vote for
Obama. He is educated, articulate, handsome and half-black. For me, Obama is
the Tiger Woods of politics; and I like watching Tiger play, especially when he
is winning. My problem with Obama and others seeking the black vote, especially
the votes of slave descendants, is their need to come to our community preaching
sermons of "tough love," which are basically laundry lists of things
blacks need to do to improve conditions in our neighborhoods or "get our
house in order." That's all good, but Obama, a trained attorney, has yet
to speak to the existence in 2007 of ongoing slavery. It's easy to attack the
weak and blame the victim, but when will Obama and others seeking black votes
speak truth to power about America's institutionalized racism and offer plans
for getting the nation's house in order?
Disgruntled
says: The US Justice
System sent my cousin James "Mookie" Williams to prison for five
years after he was caught with about $20 worth of crack cocaine. A crack
addict, Mookie was no drug dealer. Given his previous drug conviction, a
probation violation and questionable employment history, the judge sentenced
him to prison. No one died as a result of Mookie's drug purchase; he was never
violent to anyone, except himself. Thousands of prison inmates have similar
stories to tell while they rot in jail; victims of the failed "War on
Drugs." Juxtapose their sorry fate against the slap on the wrist the same
justice system meted out to Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. This drug
maker and three current and former employees received fines for misleading the
public while pushing a product that has killed and addicted thousands of
people.
Pressed to participate in a volunteer health service program for teens by his
family, the Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/ Zorro, now 14, is experiencing the
true nature of his calling. Prodded gently with the need to help the infirm
among humanity from his grandfather, the reluctant super hero wore a grim face
approaching his interview, which was held in a nurse's training unit. Seeing a
very attractive student nurse approaching, the Dark Knight-Batman/White
Ninja/Zorro exclaimed with glee, "I think I'm going to like helping the
sick!!"
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