The Miseducation Of Prison Rehabilitation
Revolutionary Greetings,
I went over the sista's thesis on "Rehabilitation." It never fails to frighten me how easily our own could be misled via- the conduit of miseducation. Notice she was given an A-. However look deeper and you will see she proved or disproved nothing. So, the A- was not given for facts she put on paper, but for the line of thought she offered which appeased the teacher Carson.
In psychology that is known as reinforsive conditioning, (a study first done by a psychologist named Pavlov concerning dogs.)
In schools in the Amerikkkas, they teach you false history, test you and give you high scores when you show "you think like them". Just like when an elementary school student gets a star and an apple for "mimicking" his/her teacher. For example being taught that "Christopher Columbus discovered America", when we all know damn well he didn't. It's not her fault though. The problem derives from lack of real materials for her to study, to see the apparent truths in the Prison Industrial Complex and all related tools of oppression found in "all" capitalist countries. For example, like military control and occupation of smaller lands for their resources, and or economic strangulation as in Mexico. Lend them a billion, get back 5 billion, (which they don't have) or take more land and resources from them, just to make them even more poor and dependent. But, we'll get to all that in a minute. Let's go over her paper.
She starts off giving the impression that all or most prisoners need rehabilitation. I disagree. What they need is proper education, a goal, and the means to make that goal become a reality which unfortunately most Blacks and Latinos don't have upon coming out of the womb into a land controlled by White settlers who will not give up their place freely, nor share it with those colonized nations within the U$. Those colonized nations being Blacks, Latinos, and the first nation peoples (Indians). Notice, nowhere does she mention the appalling truth, that there are now over 2 million prisoners in the United Snakes. That is more prisoners then any country in the world. This so-called "land of the free" has more prisoners than Communist China who has a billion more people than the United States. Most of our prisoners are Blacks and Latinos. We have more Black prisoners in this country than the racist ex-south African apartheid before Mandela. What does this say about our country? That there is little concern or regard for people of color, except to lock them up and throw away the key. What do they care?
Perhaps she did not mean on purpose to sound cold toward the prison issue. But, if she had mentioned race as an issue, the teacher would have gone from an A- to a B-. The reason is because she would have touched a sensitive nerve! One that they loathe to admit. You see, rehabilitation was never a problem. It wasn't a problem in our days of slavery, and it was not the case now. It's all about power, control, and money ,not rehabilitation.
Ms Cortez mentions the book by Reiman, "The Rich Get Richer, The Poor Get Prison." Yet, she only chose that which fits her line of thought. In that same book, Reiman hits on a truth. "There are 3 aspects of failure in criminal justice system, which are its pyrrhic defeat. First, things that might actually decrease crime are not done. Drugs are not decriminalized. Poverty is not ameliorated. Education is not provided, and so on. This results in a high rate of crime. Second, crimes of the rich are not identified (I will describe later) as crimes. This crimanalizes the poor. Third, the bias in all levels of criminal justice system of nation and classes not addressed. This assures that only certain groups are arrested and imprisoned. In short, the effect of current criminal justice policy is at once to narrow the public's conception of what is dangerous to acts of the poor and to present a convincing embodiment of danger."
Yet Ms. Cortez says, "most of them belong in prison." What Reiman said is "that is exactly what they want her to believe." What I say is that unless she studies, she will not really see things as they really are… only as they appear. A poor Black man is more likely to get arrested for standing on a corner, or a Latino wearing baggy jeans under mis-identity. If they are arrested, they are more likely to be charged. If they are charged, they are more likely to get convicted. If they are convicted, they are more likely to do a longer prison bid. Yet, "most of them belong here"? Not! The opposite is true for young whites.
See brother, the reason why a lot of people really don't care about prison is because it benefits them. People get jobs when prisons are built. Criminals are made from out of "our youth." Whites benefit most, but so do the individualistic Blacks and Latinos who are not concerned with what's happening in the larger picture. Divide and conquer. They want to become kounselors, c.o.'s , kops learn law and kriminology which all is used against poor people of color and poor whites. The same happens in the world scale. We attack country after country. Bogarting their resources, feeding the ignorant masses lies to do so, and they buy these lies willingly because people are happy with this systematic exploitation as long as they can have a share of the profit or goods. Making money off other people's misery. Look at us, walking around with NIKE sneakers, not caring that little 10 year old girls are being forced to make them under slave labor in a 3rd world country.
She mentions over crowding as if we need more prisoners. We have the most in the world. See brother, people are taught to see things in a different angle that leaves the truth hidden in a corner. The reason why prisoners are over crowded with Blacks and Latinos is many fold. For one, no money for good attorneys, racial profiling, and guess what? 80% of the prisoners coming in are for "non violent offenses" which means, they're not really criminal.
She mentions the need of sociologist in prisons. Wrong again! We need all that and more in our streets and communities to "prevent" our kids from coming to prison in the first place. So, doesn't it make her concerned when all the cut backs are in the social areas, schools, programs, jobs, money used for the building of prisons? Not really. Because she's looking at it from a capitalist perspective unintentionally. She's been conditioned to see it like that. Sociologist in our prisons would only help the oppressors by making the prisoner believe he is a worthless criminal, when he is not even in for a violent crime, never hurting anyone in his life. Meanwhile the sociologist been to Vietnam, killed a few women and kids in the name of the flag. Who's the real criminal? Hello?
The real criminals are the military and politicians that go overseas and Latin America, taking these lands by force if they have to. Why do they think that our military is the biggest in the world, bigger than all of Europe, and Japan, combined? Why do we need such a military machine for? To continue to plunder all the weaker countries. Our iron, cars, diamonds, gold, oil, fruit etc. comes from these "poor countries". So, we benefit from the exploitation and don't really "feel" the oppression because materially, we're doing okay, enough to keep our mouths shut. As it stands, Amerika is an over bloated parasite feeding off the blood of the rest of the world. People just don't open their mind's eye. This is why all the other countries, even friendly capitalist countries don't want Amerika to put up that defense missile system. They know America will then start reaching out for their pies too. She's a greedy harlot. Nothing belongs to her. Not this land, not Vieques, not Korea, not even the wealth, since the wealth was built from free slave labor up to this date.
Proof ? Again, let's look at our prisons. The sista admits at the end not to know what the problems or solution is. There are "inmates" that can not be rehabilitated as if this is a psychiatric ward. The problem is the government does not want rehabilitation. See, if the poor stopped filling up prisons, millions of White settlers, and Blacks and Latinos would be out of jobs and there would be no slave labor and no money to make. Or, does Ms. Cortez honestly think they will bite their own hand? Maybe she thinks they will grow a conscience all of a sudden and say, "Gee guy, I was wrong. Here's your freedom back and reparations. Let's share all this 50/50." They will never admit to a wrong. The end of slavery did not come by them admitting the error of their ways. People had to die to end slavery. They had to fight nail and tooth. Nor, was the Civil War fought to end slavery as some people are "wrongly" taught in schools. The Civil War was fought because the South wanted to start it's own government. Due to capitalist disagreement, blacks on both North and south sides were offered their freedom if they fought on whatever side they happened to be on to "buy their freedom". After the Emancipation Proclamation, there was still slavery and even worse abuse! All these years later, and there's still slavery, a legal slavery. It is more discreet. But it exists and it's a striving business - Economic slavery. Social servitude and mental oppression, "Legal bondage".
Amendment 13: Section 1 (what a number) from our constitution ratified December 6, 1865 neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted shall exist in the United snakes or anyplace subject to their "jurisdiction". This country still allows slavery!
The Maoist International Movement sensibly wrote, "The American Prison system is a tool of oppression, especially national oppression. It is a system that perniciously incarcerates people based on their nationality and class." Amerika not only lets the most guilty free, it lets them run society and the prison system itself. Amerika incarcerates people of property "crimes" that actually bring society closer to equality rather than hurting people. Meaning the capitalists thrive on getting richer, the poor get poorer and are forced to steal. In those instances when Amerika does incarcerate people who have committed real crimes against the people, it seeks to destroy their lives and their families without trying to help them make appropriate rectification and meaningful self-criticism.
"In such a system where the labor of prisoners is a part of their oppression and a part of the profit making system that dehumanizes them and everyone else, where they have no control over their labor or its products and where they are instruments of production to be used at the whim of their masters, then we must call their prison labor what it is - "SLAVERY". We'd need not use this term in a rhetorical sense of "real bad exploitation" but in the specific sense of forced labor by captive workers for the profit of others."
Indeed prisoners are slaves. The warden is the slave master. The guards are the overseers, the jobs are the product we slave over. The prison has contracts with big corporations. They make sofas, chairs, desks, nightstands, clothing, beds, linen, lockers, and tables. AT&T has a contract with cheap prison labor as telemarketers. Starbucks, Microsoft, Victoria's Secrets, Best Western, and Boeing are just a few examples of Amerikan corporations taking advantage of the super profits to be made of slave labor in prisons. Prisoners are "forced" to work. If they don't work, they get written up with misbehavior reports, which will make them go to the hole and lose good time. They are forced to make car parts, computer components, shoes, golf balls, soap, data entry, print shop operations and furniture.
What Ms. Cortez correctly state was that "when prisoners are released, they can't get any jobs because employers refuse to hire ex prisoners, even if the prisoner worked for the same company in prison. Now, how fair is that? It's all about money. Prison as it stands today is not for "rehabilitation". It's just for money. Prisoners have nothing before they go to prison and nothing when they get out. If they can't get a job, then what are they suppose to do? Lay down, starve and die? Picture that!
The basic reality is all prisoners are political prisoners because the criminal justice system targets oppressed nationals, arresting them at a higher rate and giving them much harsher sentences than their White youth counter parts. No oppressed national (Black and Latinos) can be given a fair trial in the United Snakes Court System. Every faucet of law enforcement, from the pigs, to the sentencing guidelines, is about protecting the capitalist moneymakers. W.T.O. in Washington State is an example . The people in this country, who according to our own democratic right have a say, but were repressed and beat down when they went against the plans of the money makers, and then those who upon oath, swore to serve and protect the public, the kops, were then turned against the people with brutal force. That is also proof how fast this so -called democratic government can turn into straight up terrorist fascist as soon as you threaten their money or stability. Waco is another example. So is the neighborhood bombing of the MOVE family in Philadelphia 1985. (When the government dropped bombs from a plane on a Black neighborhood) Their crime? Practicing their right to freedom of speech. Who are the real criminals?
I'm getting open and running off. Let's get back to Ms. Cortez's paper "Rehabilitation". In this system, the only rehabilitation a man, woman, or child will get once they enter prison is "Go in young and come out old or dead." That's rehabilitated. The cold truth.
Another thing she mentioned was the fact that prisoners refuse help and are uncooperative for change for the better. If she lived in the sub-environment known as the penal colonies, even for a week, she would take back those words. The majority of these men want to change their lives. They are dying men in a scorching desert, who if offered water would certainly not deny it. The problem is there is no "genuine" offer of help. She said it herself. Once their record is tainted, people won't hire them. These prisoners are not stupid. They know what's hypocritical and what's genuine. In here we have a bunch of redneck racist guards and psychiatrist, ex military men who engaged in killing men, women and children in plundering third world countries (people of color). You expect them to rehabilitate a man of color who never needed rehabilitation? You expect them to accept this so called rehabilitation from the real criminals who have continuously engaged in crimes against humanity? Ms. Cortez says perhaps they need more staff. That's ridiculous! We are already in a police state, where the color of your skin alone can get you shot 41 times. Let's start keeping it real my friend. It's our people flooding the prisons, getting shot in the streets, not theirs. Ms. Cortez blames the prisoners. I don't.
If Ms. Cortez has a cat in the house and fails to put the cat litter and the cat shits in her room, I'm sure she'll angrily kick the cat. However, we all know even she, that it was not the cat's fault. It was hers for not supplying the cat litter. The same goes for our ghettos. The lack of jobs, opportunities, training, community services will leave our men of color no choice but to shit in their own hoods, then we punish them for doing what they have to do. One or two will be able to climb out the hole in the ghetto. The majority will be trapped off by a system that does not care where you shit. They catch you shitting, you get lynched.
"Free Mumia" is a perfect example of legal lynching. Shaka Sankofa.
Ms. Cortez says we need to get to the root of the problem. If she sat the cat down, and if the cat would talk, the cat would break it down in simple terms. "If you give me the resources I would not shit in the room." The problem is that the capitalist dictate who gets jobs and education and who does not. If you have "money" you can get jobs and schools. If you're poor, you're fucked. Sure a few poor will get handed grants and a lucky break. What’s that one percent? The rest of the 99% have to do what they got to do. The rich will enjoy all the resources and wealth stolen from the third world nations, while the oppressed nations inside the borders of the U.S. hungrily watch this wealth get distributed among the upper class.
There is something quite noticeable about Ms. Cortez's paper that is apparent in a great many poor people. They are trying to fit in to a system that does not really want them, but only puts up with them grudgingly, so as to appear democratic and equal. These poor people are disillusioned of the "material realities". Her paper weaves in and out of the truth, the real reality –" Prisons are not the answer, the false reality-We need rehabilitation." Our prisons and people don't need to be rehabilitated. They need jobs, programs, education and opportunities. The problem is that "we are oppressed." We are bunched up in the slums and ghettos. In a classless society, when capitalism is replaced with socialism, this will not occur because there would be jobs. Education would be free and all wealth would be distributed equally, (including food) as needed per household.
Look at the disparity. 80% of Blacks and Latinos never killed another human being, never picked up any weapons, yet they are in prison for long amounts of time for non-violent offenses. Meanwhile, the guards that watch them have killed men, women, and children in wars, carry weapons, do drugs, and do as they please. They run red lights while drinking and driving. Our kids go to jail for loitering and their record is forever ruined. Now they can't get jobs. The oppressors get a slap on the wrist. We're the only civilized country that executes men and women. We treat children like they are adults. Something that even the Geneva conventions have banned. This country does not want to find a solution. They don't want people to understand the social causes of behavior and seek to alter those social factors in order to create a better behavior. See friend, all human beings have a basic right to food, shelter, clothing, education and health care. These things are not negotiable. But capitalist say "Sorry friend. If you don't have money, you can't eat, get medication, learn, or live under a roof." What a sin. None of it was theirs to begin with. All this military, capitalism, prisons, miseducation are all interrelated. As a whole, it spells out imperialism and massive oppression. The Sista needs to focus on the bigger picture.
The U.S. has the tiny Puerto Rican Island of Vieques hostage. They forced military bases on many small countries. For what? To apply force whenever they wish. Look at Yugoslavia. The truth is only now starting to trickle out. The US made up those genocide stories. Why? Because Yugoslavia had control of the main oil pipeline. They used the KLA thugs for hire and drug dealers who they once hated to help them accuse Yugoslavia. Vietnam was started over a similar lie.
We invaded Guatemala in 1954, Cuba in 1961, Santo Domingo in 1965, Chile in 1973, Grenada in 1983, and Panama in 1989. El Salvador, Nicaragua and Vietnam has been targets for the past few years. We've been bombing Iraq killing women and children, not soldiers. Putting embargoes on them that has caused millions of deaths of children and women. These are real crimes against humanity that goes ignored. Even now we're preparing to attack Columbia's southern parts over lies. For each case above, the U.$. always manufactured a scenario for an excuse to go in. But, what they really wanted was the resources and wealth that could be made.
Notice the similarity to those oppressed people outside of the border and those oppressed nationals inside. 1. They are all "poor" people of color. 2. The poor people are always portrayed as the aggressive bad guy. 3. When the U.S. go in and bomb them killing men, women and children, they get away with it. Just as Waco, MOVE, Diallo, Baez Rosario, and Tyisha Miller. All killed by cops having done nothing wrong and the kops went free. See, the same you see happening within our borders is in fact occurring in a larger scale. This is all interrelated with prisoners. Prisons are part of that tool for social control for the ruling class. In an imperialist society as we exist in today, prison implement the reality of national oppression. Prisons have two main purposes. First they take dissenting groups of individual dissenters, potential revolutionaries and comrades willing to fight back and put them out of circulation, away from the masses. Secondly, prisons serve to break up existing structures, be they communities, families, and organizations causing more confusion.
It's a proven fact that kids raised by single parents, because their mother or father is in prison, is more likely to find his/herself quitting school and being in prison as well.
The sista, Ms. Cortez is noticeably a very bright woman. Her mind is receptive, willing, capable and even wanting to learn the truth. Like many other Latinos y Latinas, they just need to be taught correctly. They need the proper resources. They can't get that in a society that suppresses the truth. My sister, for example works in a court. She's a college graduate. All that brains, yet she has no real understanding of the social worldly ramifications her ignorance in imperialism is having all around her. Countries of color are being subjugated economically. Others don't care. Why? Because they put their kids through school, pay their mortgage, and make a living off human misery. Be it correction’s court, criminology, military etc. they justify and mollify serving the beast by saying, "Oh he made a choice. He made the mistake. He put himself in prison." The judge put him away not me. But, they are part and take part in the process that imprisons their people. They want to serve two masters, God and Government.
A good example, if a person was caught stealing and the judge said, "I'll pay every one a day’s wage to kick this man in the head in mid Manhattan." You'd take the money and kick the fella in the head. Then you would say, "Well it's not my fault. He did it to himself." Or another example; look at the mousetrap. Which part of the machine is guilty for killing the mouse? The wood? The spring?, The metal ?, The bait?, The clasp? Or, the person who put it there or the mouse for being hungry and going for the bait?
Of course the whole machine plays a part. Without the tinniest part of the machine. Say the spring, the entire mechanism would no longer function. So it is with the Industrial Prison Complex. The judge, attorneys, guards all play a part. None are innocent. Many of our own family and friends are just as guilty by either their silence or ignorance of this alarming growth of colored people in prison.
Martin Luther King Jr. said, "We will not only have to repent for the actions of the bad people, but also for the appalling silence of the good." Indeed they just stand by and watch as our kids get numbered by the beast, criminalized and systematically put away as Ms. Cortez labeled her paper "Rehabilitated." Or "Come Out When You're Old or Dead." You're no more of value to a people any more. "Rehabilitated."
Someone else once said. "the surest way for evil to triumph is for the good people to do nothing." That is what is happening. People have been callous and indifferent to the suffering and poverty of mankind. This is brought about by an uncontrolled capitalist system where 10% of the world population owns 90% of the world's wealth. They seek to get more of this wealth off the backs of the poor. They don't care about the sick or the hungry. Profit is all they care about. They won't give any medication unless it’s paid. No food unless it's paid for. They won't pay for the sick unless money can be made of it. How pathetic. It's like Marx stated in the Communist Manifesto 1848. A book outlawed in most capitalist countries out of fear of its power. "Modern bourgeois society with its relations of exchange and of property… production… a society that has conjured up such a gigantic means of production and exchange, is like a sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the netherworld whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade, past the history of industry and commerce, is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions. Of production against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule… the weapons with which the bourgeois felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeois itself. But not only has the bourgeois forged the weapons that bring death to itself, it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons- the modern working class. The proletarians, those who are oppressed now."
What Marx is talking about you need to study. In short, there are 5 social standards of human Societal Development (evolution of society). The world has already seen four social developments. We are now headed into the 5th. 1. Primitive communalism (cave man tribes etc.) 2. Slave holding. 3 feudalism (Kings owned all the land and homes you lived work and belonged to them) 4. Capitalism. 5 Socialism
The Feudalist were brought out of power, when those with capital bought off the people and workers. Thus their feudal lords no longer owned the people. They were free. But only to a sense. The Feudal lords had to feed their subjects. The Capitalist didn't. Now you were free to work for a capitalist or free to starve if you didn't work.
The means of production created by capitalist has now outlived its usefulness. The people are now turning against them because capitalist keep growing and instead of "sharing" its mass production with the people who work it, it is hoarding away all the food and wealth. Eventually, what will take place and is taking place is massive strikes, riots, poverty, etc. and socialism will come into place which is the means of production being distributed by the people and for the people. This needs to be studied. I will not dwell into it here. Guess who the world chose as the top thinker of the millennium? MARX! That's right.
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She deserved that A- , She deserved an A+. I hope she continues to do well and study. She's the pride of all the Latino race. All our Latinas are. They are Queens of the Earth!
Your Comrade in Solidarity,
By
Blaze 187BX
P.S.
An excerpt by Prince Zakia
"We allowed the European's mindset provide and confront, If attacked you conquer and die. We failed this test from day 1. Because, we never viewed slavery as a state of war. And by accepting this circumscribed definition and trying to live up to it, a lot of anger developed and cause a process of self hatred so subtle we don't even recognize it, even as it consumes our very being."
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