Louisiana Dungeons are anti-American, anti-Humanity.

... Southern man when will you pay them back?

Half Ounce of Pot Gets Louisiana Man 20 Years in Prison
While Colorado and Washington have de-criminalized recreational use of marijuana and twenty states allow use for medical purposes, a Louisiana man was sentenced to twenty years in prison in New Orleans criminal court for possessing 15 grams, .529 of an ounce, of marijuana.

27-Year-Old Man Gets "20 Years Hard Labor" for Half an Ounce of Pot
Arrests and harsh jail sentences continue even though public opinion has moved against the war on drugs.

The Eighth Amendment (Amendment VIII) to the United States Constitution is the part of the United States Bill of Rights (ratified December 15, 1791[1]) prohibiting the federal government from imposing excessive bail, excessive fines or cruel and unusual punishments, including torture. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that this amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause applies to the states. The phrases employed originated in the English Bill of Rights of 1689.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PAu9ZKWeRA"]Angela Davis on the Prison Abolishment Movement

Louisiana State Penitentiary
The Louisiana State Penitentiary (LSP, also known as Angola, and nicknamed the "Alcatraz of the South" and "The Farm" is a prison farm in Louisiana operated by the Louisiana Department of Public Safety & Corrections. It is the largest maximum security prison in the United States

Louisiana refuses to release former Black Panther despite court order

Louisiana Must Release Dying Prisoner After Judge Overturns 1974 Conviction

After 4 Decades in Solitary, Dying Angola 3 Prisoner Herman Wallace Freed, Conviction Overturned
A dying prisoner has been released in Louisiana after serving nearly 42 years in solitary confinement, longer than any other person in the United States. Herman Wallace and two others, known as the Angola Three, were placed in solitary in 1972 following the murder of a prison guard. The Angola Three and their supporters say they were framed for the murder over their political activism as members of one of the first prison chapters of the Black Panthers. In a surprise development on Tuesday, Wallace was released from prison after a federal judge overturned his conviction, saying he did not receive a fair trial. Wallace, who is near death from advanced liver cancer, was taken directly to a New Orleans hospital where supporters greeted his arrival. We are joined by three guests: Robert King, who until Tuesday night was the only freed member of the Angola Three and helped deliver to Wallace the news of his release; Wallace’s defense attorney, George Kendall; and Jackie Sumell, an artist and Wallace supporter who is with him at the Louisiana State University Medical Center in New Orleans. "This is a tremendous victory and a miracle that Herman Wallace will die a free man," Sumell says. "He’s had 42 years of maintaining his innocence in solitary confinement, and if his last few breaths are as a free man, we’ve won." Transcript


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How Louisiana Became The World's 'Prison Capital'
The state imprisons more people per capita than any other state or country in the world, with one out of every 86 adults behind bars. Its rate of incarceration is three times higher than Iran's and 10 times higher than Germany's.

Angola Three google

The Angola Three are three prison inmates -- Robert Hillary King (born Robert King Wilkerson), Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace -- who were put in solitary confinement in Louisiana State Penitentiary, a.k.a. Angola Prison, after the 1972 killing of a prison guard. Robert King spent 29 years in solitary confinement before his conviction was overturned and he was released. Wallace, before being released October 1, 2013, and Woodfox spent 40 years of solitary confinement as of 2013. The prisoners have been the subject of two documentary films[1] and international attention. In July 2013 Amnesty International called for the release of 71-year-old Herman Wallace who has advanced liver cancer.[2] He was released October 1, 2013.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVQ4pbJ9tF0"](Part 2)

Louisiana_State_Penitentiary

History_of_Angola

NRA Military & Prison Industrial Complex', Are the Police State
U.S. prison population largest in world
Women in Prison

Profit Driven Prison Industrial Complex:
The Economics of Incarceration in the USA
For every 100,000 Americans, 743 citizens sit behind bars

For anyone paying attention, there is no shortage of issues that fundamentally challenge the underpinning moral infrastructure of American society and the values it claims to uphold. Under the conceptual illusion of liberty, few things are more sobering than the amount of Americans who will spend the rest of their lives in an isolated correctional facility – ostensibly, being corrected. The United States of America has long held the highest incarceration rate in the world, far surpassing any other nation. For every 100,000 Americans, 743 citizens sit behind bars. Presently, the prison population in America consists of more than six million people, a number exceeding the amount of prisoners held in the gulags of the former Soviet Union at any point in its history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmhC3-ztCOk"](Part 3)

Prison Industrial Complex

Wading Into the Morass of a Broken Criminal Justice System

Teaching in Prison's Shadow
"School-to-prison pipeline" is a phrase that describes a set of policies and practices that push young people out of public schools and into the criminal justice system. It is a kind of shorthand that activists use to refer to places where schools are linked to the merciless tendrils of the prison system.

30 Ways The Prison Industry Gets Rich

Justice Scaled

African-American Males Facing Serious Challenges

Shorty Wanna Be a Thug

Prison Labor as a Business Model

Private Prison In Violation For Sub-Par Conditions

Author and Legal Scholar, Michelle Alexander,
Talks about The War on Drugs and Mass Incarceration
(Part 2)
(Part 3)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCyVXvWWnlY"](Part 4)

Justice must be served…
Angela Davis on the Prison Industrial Complex

Angela Davis on the Prison Abolishment Movement,
Frederick Douglass, the 40th Anniversary of Her Arrest
and President Obama’s First Two Years democracynow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g53nvbDJNmM"](Part 5)

Full video:

For over four decades, Angela Davis has been one of most influential activists and intellectuals in the United States. An icon of the 1970s black liberation movement, her work around issues of gender, race, class and prisons has influenced critical thought and social movements for years. She is a leading advocate for prison abolition, a position informed by her own experience as a fugitive on the FBI's Top 10 most wanted list forty years ago. Davis rose to national attention in 1969 when she was fired as a professor from UCLA as a result of her membership in the Communist party and her leading a campaign to defend three black prisoners at Soledad prison. Today she is a university professor and the founder of the group Critical Resistance, a grassroots effort to end the prison-industrial complex. This year she edited a new edition of Frederick Douglass' classic work, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. We spend the hour with Angela Davis and play rare archival footage of her.

Abolish prisons, says Angela Davis

New Rhetoric, Same Old Drug War Policies:
Drug Czar Addresses African American Community

Private Prisons Industry: Increasing Incarcerations,
Maximizing Profits and Corrupting Our Democracy

Prison Slave Labor, Victimless Crime Legislation, & the Prison-Industrial Complex
As with our military, profiteers abound in the prison industry as well. And as with our military, the prison-industrial complex and associated profiteers and lobbyists who depend upon an abundant prison population have plenty of money to advance their cause. The prison population of the United States increased from about 300,000 to over 2,000,000 between 1980 and 2000, so that the United States now has by far the highest prison rate of any nation in the world – 751 persons in prison per 100,000 population in 2008. Coincident with the burgeoning prison population in the United States, there has also been a large increase in the number of private prisons, from five in 1995 to 100 in 2005, in which year 62,000 persons were incarcerated in private prisons in the United States.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSa-rrjP_jk"]Mumia Abu-Jamal: Prison Industrial Complex

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un-4_J5oWMY&feature=player_detailpage"]U.S. Prison/Industrial Complex - u2b
The New Slavery & The Sickness In The American System

The Prison Industry in the United States: Big Business or a New Form of Slavery?
Human rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States, where they say a prison population of up to 2 million – mostly Black and Hispanic – are working for various industries for a pittance. For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don’t have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don’t like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.

The Pentagon and Slave Labor in U.S. Prisons
Prisoners earning 23 cents an hour in U.S. federal prisons are manufacturing high-tech electronic components for Patriot Advanced Capability 3 missiles, launchers for TOW (Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided) anti-tank missiles, and other guided missile systems. A March article by journalist and financial researcher Justin Rohrlich of World in Review is worth a closer look at the full implications of this ominous development. (minyanville.com) Increased profits, unhealthy workplaces

Private Prison Profits Skyrocket,
As Executives Assure Investors Of “Growing Offender Population”
May 14, 2013 by Steve McFarland
By Nicole Flatow on Thinkprogress

A major U.S. private prison operator known for inmate abuse, violations, and disregard for the truth reported a 56-percent spike in profit in the first quarter of 2013, due in part to its new strategy for drastically reducing its taxes, the Associated Press reports. During a conference call touting its success, representatives at GEO Group boasted that the company continues to have “solid occupancy rates in mid to high 90s” and that they are optimistic “regarding the outlook for the industry,” in part due to a “growing offender population.” GEO Senior Vice President John Hurley assured investors during the call:

We have a longstanding partnership with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the United States Marshal Service and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE. … We continue to see meaningful opportunities for us to partner with all three of these federal agencies, notwithstanding the various issues with the federal budget, which we believe will have no material negative impact on our business. The federal bureau of prisons continues to face capacity constraints coupled with a growing offender population.

The federal prison population has swelled 790 percent since 1980, in large part due to draconian drug and immigration laws. Private prison operators nonetheless remain enthusiastic about the prospects of high incarceration rates for business. Representatives on this call shied away from the strong language fellow prison firm Corrections Corporation of America used during its investor call in February, when CEO Damon Hininger assured a strong “continued demand for beds” even after immigration reform. GEO executives explained that they are now taking the position that “discussing our approach and strategies about any particular procurement is really not in the best interest of our company or our shareholders.”

Following a trend of corporations achieving dramatic tax reductions by becoming a real estate investment trust (REIT) – a mechanism historically reserved for firms holding real estate as an investment — both GEO and fellow prison operator Corrections Corporation of America successfully persuaded the Internal Revenue Service recently that they are essentially holding real estate, analogizing prisoners to renters paid for by the government. But private prison corporations charging “rent” to house prisoners make no more or less money depending on whether they achieve these goals, particularly not when immense political spending to lobby for incarceration and privatization outweighs the public pressure from widely reported abuses at private facilities.

Link to FULL article Here



Prison Slave Labor Replaces Freeworld Workers in Down Economy
by David M. Reutter
The fact that prison slave labor can cut costs and generate revenue has never been a secret. Private businesses nationwide are vying to exploit prisoner workers to reduce operating expenses and gain a competitive advantage, while government agencies are increasingly using prisoners for jobs that otherwise would go to public employees or contractors. Even farmers have turned to prison labor to harvest their crops.

Prison Slave Labor
by Margaret Kimberley
Michelle Alexander’s ground breaking book, The New Jim Crow, is an outstanding expose of the horrors of America’s criminal justice system that are perpetrated against black people. It is well documented proof of what many have long observed, that get tough policies on drug enforcement and “three strikes” laws are targeted towards the masses of often non-violent black Americans and are used to make money for private entities and for all levels of government.

The New Jim Crow

Thank you Miss Rosa
* The Racist Ganjawar
* JIM CROW 2012
* The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment & Linx
* Using the drug war to keep blacks from voting

“Corrections Corporation of America, to borrow a trope from journalism, buried the “lede” in the governors’ letter. The real head-snapping revelation appeared in the third-to-last paragraph: in exchange for buying a state’s prison, CCA required that the state prison agency ensure that the prison remained at least 90% full. Translation: We’ll buy your prisons and keep ‘em orderly and clean, so long as you keep the prisoners coming in.”
Creating a Prison-Corporate Complex


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“Chains, Chains, Chains”. A group of student activists gathered at Sproul Hall earlier today to protest and raise awareness to an upcoming ASUC legislation that will review multiple labor contracts between prison labor groups and several corporations. Jazel Flores, a 2nd year Ethnic and American Studies double major who organized this event, explains that investing in student labor with good pay is far more beneficial compared to prison labor, which pays much less than the Federal Minimum Wage requirements.

United States Fascism
Fascism is the union of government with private business against the People.
"To The States, or any one of them, or to any city of The States: Resist much, Obey little; Once unquestioning obedience, at once fully enslaved; Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city, ever afterward resumes its liberty." from "Caution" by Walt Whitman



2012-03-20 "Private prisons – the best investment in America?" from "RT.com"
If you’re looking to make a buck but gambling isn’t your cup of tea, a billion-dollar business opportunity awaits you still. The largest for-profit private prison operators in America have a sales pitch, and boy should you hear it.

2012-07-06 "How US prison labour pads corporate profits at taxpayers' expense; Thanks to rightwing lobbying, companies can use a loophole to exploit a scheme designed to give offenders work experience" by Sadhbh Walshe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWg-rLYcO7o"]2011-08-08 "Prisoners: America's New Cheap Labor (ALEC Exposed)"

2011-10-03 "Big Business Or Slave Labor? What Prisoners Make In Jail"

2011-07-21 "21st-Century Slaves: How Corporations Exploit Prison Labor; In the eyes of the corporation, inmate labor is a brilliant strategy in the eternal quest to maximize profit"

2012-05-01 "How US drug laws have created a new racial caste system Infographic" by Michelle Schusterman

2013-01-27 "The Number of People in Private Prisons Has Grown By 1,664% in the Last 19 Years" by Lisa Wade

2013-01-23 "Inmates claim private prison falsifies staff logs" by Rebecca Boone from "AP"

More stories and articles here.

Keep your money away from Koch's: "New App Lets You Boycott Koch Brothers, Monsanto And More By Scanning Your Shopping Cart"

Slave Labor -
Comes to Wisconsin to replace Union Workers -
Brought to us by Koch Money...

I just read about the new trend in Wisconsin of replacing union and public sector workers with prisoners!http://www.allvoices.com/contribute...onsin-governor-scott-walker-reacts-in-madison I know many of you who have followed my diaries and blogging, know that I predicted just such a move was on the horizon - and in fact have been posting links to other articles about prisoners being used by banks to clean and fix-up foreclosed homes, taking over care and maintenance of cemeteries and municipal buildings and grounds. This has been happening much more often in several "Red" states over the past couple of years.continued

Why Do Democrats Defend Nixon's Drug War?

If You Think Marijuana Isn't an Important Issue

Democrats can’t afford to put it on the back burner any longer
Tea Partier Shows Up Obama on Drug Policy

Why Do You Think They Call it DOPE?
* Cannabis Hemp: The Invisible Prohibition Revealed
* The Elkhorn Manifesto
* Marijuana and Hemp: The Untold Story
* The Nation of Apathetic Puppets By John Pilger
* Maintaining Dysfunction

US Asked To Stop False Information on Medical Pot

Ganjawar on the Poor

Corporate Welfare Rats
Strong corporate profits amid weak economy?

Crimes Against Nature

Walmart & ALEC -
Exploiting Prison Labor:
Beyond Bribes to Foreign Officials & Anti-Consumer Laws

'Relax Your Muscles as Much as Possible'

"Southern man. Better keep your head. Don't forget. What your good book said. Southern change. Gonna come at last. Now your crosses. Are burning fast. Southern man. I saw cotton. And I saw black. Tall white mansions. And little shacks.. Southern man. When will you. Pay them back? I heard screamin'. And bullwhips cracking. How long? How long? Southern man. Better keep your head. Don't forget. What your good book said. Southern change. Gonna come at last. Now your crosses. Are burning fast. Southern man. Lily Belle, Your hair is golden brown. I've seen your black man. Comin' round. Swear by God. I'm gonna cut him down! I heard screamin'. And bullwhips cracking. How long? How long?"
~ N.Young

 

Angola 3 member Herman Wallace died quietly in his sleep

Herman Wallace dies at 71; ex-inmate held in solitary for 41 years
Wallace, convicted of killing a prison guard, was placed in solitary in 1972. He maintained his innocence, appealed his case and won his freedom last week.

Herman Wallace Dead: Member Of The 'Angola 3,' Dies At 71
By CHEVEL JOHNSON and MICHAEL KUNZELMAN

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A 71-year-old man who spent more than four decades in solitary confinement in Louisiana died Friday, less than a week after a judge freed him and granted him a new trial.

Herman Wallace's attorneys said he died at a supporter's home in New Orleans. Wallace had been diagnosed with terminal liver cancer and stopped receiving treatment. Wallace was held for years at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. In 2009, Wallace was moved from Angola to "closed-cell restriction" at Hunt Correctional in St. Gabriel, where he recently was taken to the prison's hospital unit.

Jackie Sumell, a longtime supporter of Wallace, said he was surrounded by friends and family when he died. Wallace at one point told them, "I love you all," according to Sumell.

"He was in and out of consciousness," she said.

U.S. District Judge Brian Jackson in Baton Rouge had ordered Wallace released from prison on Tuesday after granting him a new trial. Jackson ruled women were unconstitutionally excluded from the grand jury that indicted Wallace in the stabbing death of the 23-year-old guard, Brent Miller.

A West Feliciana Parish grand jury re-indicted Wallace on charges connected to Miller's death on Thursday. District Attorney Sam D'Aquilla told The Advocate newspaper that Jackson ordered a new trial because he "perceived a flaw in the indictment — not his murder conviction."

Wallace and two other inmates held in solitary confinement for years came to be known as the "Angola 3."

Wallace's attorneys said in a statement Friday that it was an honor to represent him.

"Herman endured what very few of us can imagine, and he did it with grace, dignity, and empathy to the end," they said. "Although his freedom was much too brief, it meant the world to Herman to spend these last three days surrounded by the love of his family and friends. One of the final things that Herman said to us was, 'I am free. I am free.'"

Wallace, of New Orleans, was serving a 50-year armed robbery sentence when Miller was stabbed to death.

Wallace and fellow "Angola 3" member Albert Woodfox denied involvement in Miller's killing, claiming they were targeted because they helped establish a prison chapter of the Black Panther Party at the Angola prison in 1971, set up demonstrations and organized strikes for better conditions.

In 2010, Woodfox was moved to the David Wade Correctional Center in Homer, where he remains in custody.


Herman Wallace (left) and Albert Woodfox as young men. In the Land of the Free

The third "Angola 3" member, Robert King, who was convicted of killing a fellow inmate in 1973, was released in 2001 after his conviction was reversed.

Louisiana Dungeons are anti-American, anti-Humanity.

Angola Three - Wiki

Angola 3's Herman Wallace, Gravely Ill, Still Held in Isolation

Angola 3's Herman Wallace Is Gravely Ill—
But Still on Permanent Lockdown

Torturous Milestone: 40 Years in Solitary
Mother Jones Jun. 26, 2013

Film Update | Herman's House | POV | PBS

Did the Wrong Man Spend 40 Years in Solitary Confinement?