[Sosfbay-discuss] Black Agenda Report: Bruce Dixon on Georgia Greens

[alexcathy at aol.com]

Dear Green Friends, 

See below a link to an article by the distinguished journalist, Bruce A. Dixon, about the Georgia Green Party's strategic decision to take on the world's worst criminal justice system in the 2010 elections.  Mr. Dixon's commentary is one of the most unapologetic, downright partisan statements I've ever read about why the Green Party is important to inner-city African-Americans.  

By the way, you know me, I don't necessarily agree with everything Dixon write here.  For one thing, like most "Lefties" who write about this issue, he has no interest whatsoever in the objective reality that African-American neighborhoods have also been the ones most devastated by mindless violence and general ugliness by criminal gangs.  His article is clearly open to attack for "not giving a damn" about the victims of criminals.  I agree 100% that in this area, as in so many others, we need a progressive alternative to what the Democratic Party Machines have done in the cities, but in the final analysis, what is needed is an *ALTERNATIVE* program to the current regime.  I don't see that here, but this is a start. 

Alex Walker
Los Angeles Greens

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 Posted on Black Agenda Report, November 18, 2009.
Why Democrats and Republicans Won't Confront Black Mass Incarceration, and Why The Green Party Will 
by Bruce A. Dixon, BAR Managing Editor  

With less than 5% of the world's population, the US accounts for aquarter of the world's prisoners. While African Americans are only aneighth the population, we account for almost half the locked down.America's widely acknowledged but rarely discussed social policy ofblack mass incarceration has been a decisive fact of African Americanfamily and community life for a generation. Four years ago in BlackCommentator, this reporter wrote that:
 
...Right now, the shadow of prison squats at the cornersof, and often at the center of nearly every black family’s life in thisnation.
 The number of persons in prisons, jails, on probation, bail,parole, pre-trial and post-conviction supervision continues to rise andaccording to a March 2009 Pew Center report is now one in 31nationally, including one in eleven African Americans. An astoundingthree percent of all black Americans are in prisons and jails, themajority for drug charges, although black and white rates of drug usehave been virtually identical for decades. While politicians in blackconstituencies are regularly obliged to wag their fingers at it, theirmisleading analyses often point to educational outcomes, and jobmarkets as if these were causes of explosive growth of the carceralstate rather than its outcomes. In fact, the policy of mass blackimprisonment has functioned as a kind of reparations in reverse,curtailing the economic vitality of entire black communities, stressingand destroying the cohesion of millions of families and thousands ofneighborhoods, worsening black health outcomes and more.

The pretense that black mass incarceration is the murkyoutcome of other social policies rather than a plainly failed andmalevolent social policy by itself misdirects public attention andeffectively takes the issue off the political table. If blackjoblessness, lack of family cohesion and health disparities are somehowsupposed to cause black mass incarceration, there is no reason toexamine the growth of the carceral state itself. Thus the social policyof black mass incarceration never has to justify itself, its costs orits outcomes, never needs to be publicly acknowledged, and can neverbecome a political issue in and of itself. But this may be about tochange.

The ninth largest US state, Georgia leads the rest with one inevery thirteen adults in its prisons, jails, on parole and probation,and various kinds of pre-trial and post-conviction court orcorrectional supervision. A generation of white and black politiciansfrom both major parties have built their careers on stoking the fear ofcrime and the expansion and justification of the state's vast crimecontrol industries. The state's current Republican governor, as well asthe top two Democratic contenders who want to succeed him all had ahand in passing the state's three-strikes mandatory sentencinglegislation under former Democratic governor Zell Miller. One of thoseDemocrats is the state's African American attorney general, ThurbertBaker. The last Democratic governor Roy Barnes wanted to put a"two-strikes" provision into the state constitution.

But Georgia's Green Party, BAR has learned, will announcetomorrow that its major focus for the coming two years, including the2010 election cycle, will be making a political issue out of black massincarceration. The Green Party of GA intends to do this by runningcandidates for the state legislature and for district attorney andsheriff, not just in metro Atlanta, but in Augusta, Macon, Columbus,Savannah and elsewhere. Georgia's Green party will expect itscandidates to put the fact of black mass incarceration squarely on thepolitical table 

. . . 

READ MORE AND COMMENT AT:
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/why-democrats-and-republicans-wont-confront-black-mass-incarceration-and-why-green-party-wil 


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