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LEGISLATORS APPROVE MORE FUNDS FOR JAILS:
KEEP THE PRESSURE ON
7/10/2006
Dear Community,
We must again ask you to call your elected
officials to continue to say NO and NO and NO to jail expansion!
Nearly
$13 million has been approved in the 2007 House and Senate "Conference Committee Budget" for "costs related to the opening and operation of [..]
new facilit[ies]" for Hampden, Middlesex and Franklin
Counties, line items 8910-0102,
8910-0107, and 8910-0108.
See:
http://www.mass.gov/legis/bills/house/ht05pdf/ht05000.pdf.
These funds may be to give Sheriff Ashe of
Hampden County 53 more Chicopee jail cells with which to violate the human
rights of women; or to help Sheriff DiPaola grease the palms of Middlesex
County policy movers and run his public relations campaign. DiPaola is
seeking a quarter of a billion dollars for jail expansion in Middlesex
County with up to 300 beds/cells in Somerville with possibly others
in Lowell and Billerica.
LEGISLATORS
MUST BE CHALLENGED ON THE EXPENDITURE OF THESE FUNDS.
Tell them:
Until the basic human needs
of all citizens are met we must not fund more jail cells. Offenses
that have their root in poverty and racism are not maliciously harmful to
society. Rather it is the policies themselves that are offensive and
harmful. Incarcerating mostly poor people and people of color violates
multiple human rights principles contained in international treaties to
which the U.S. Is signatory, such as the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights.
See:
http://www.massdecarcerate.org/download/HumanRights.doc.
Adequate funding for
basic human needs is the FIRST step in crime control, NOT construction
of new jails. Even Sheriff DiPaola of Middlesex County agrees
that building more prisons will not solve any crime problems (Somerville
News, June 21, 2006).
Community solutions are
less expensive and more effective. Incarceration causes harm and leaves
people less able to reintegrate. See:
http://www.massdecarcerate.org/PICS.html)
As legislators they are
empowered by the people to allocate funds for programs to ensure
"liberty and justice for ALL". Conversely, when policies do not create
"liberty and justice for all", they must strike such rights
violating laws and policies and revoke all funds allocated.
Incarceration before funding for basic human needs is just one such
violation.
With 2% of the worlds
population, and 25% of the worlds imprisoned, WE MUST STOP INCARCERATING
PEOPLE. IN FACT, WE NEED TO START DECREASING THE NUMBERS OF
PEOPLE LOCKED AWAY IN U.S. PRISONS AND JAILS.
Look
up your legislators:
http://www.wheredoivotema.com/bal/myelectioninfo.php
On another note, we are near victory
with the anti-immigrant amendments. In a communique from Elizabeth Toulan
of the Family Economic Initiative, Deborah
Harris of the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute notes that "the
conference budget does NOT adopt the anti-immigrant provisions but there
is still a risk that they could be enacted in a separate bill."
Elizabeth recommends that folks "stay tuned for further alerts on the
immigrant issues. Your help may be needed to defeat a harmful bill."
See the SHaRC Call for Action for background information:
http://www.massdecarcerate.org/immigrants.html.
Please Act Now!
For Peace and Justice,
SHaRC
For more information contact SHaRC representative Holly
Richardson at 413.348.8234 or by e-mail at
outnow@comcast.net.
Endnotes:
Overcrowding and manipulated hysteria over
dangerous criminals are rationales used over and over again to sell jail
and prison expansion. The 1863 abolition of slavery and subsequent
passage of civil rights legislation did not abolish racism, merely forced
it underground. Discriminatory laws and policies which target people based
on country of origin, race, class, gender etc. are packaged inside more
complex issues solutions for which are then positioned as beneficial to
public safety.
"[President
Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is
really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this
while not appearing to." From the diary of President Nixon’s
Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman.
In 1971, Richard Nixon declared the War on Drugs. That
failed war continues to have a grossly disproportionate
impact on people of color.
U.S.
Jails and prisons steal money from poor, working class, indigenous and
people of color, on whose backs the wealth of this country was and
continues to be built; whose land, resources and labor continue to
be stolen (for example the 2004 abrogation of the Ruby Valley Treaty of
1863 and forced payment of 15 cents an acre to the Western Shoshone for
lands rich in gold, geothermal energy and other resources; in the gap
between minimum wage and living, or family, wage.) This 'principle' is
true as well for immigrants driven from their own countries due to
economic hardships imposed by the 'free-trade' agreements imposed by
neo-liberal economic policies.
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TM
Last Updated on
Wednesday July 25, 2007.