Worse than slavery
Based on a recommendation from Chris Floyd's blog, I've started reading Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice, by David Oshinsky, which chronicles how the South, Mississippi in particular, responded to the emancipation of slaves by instituting convict leasing--while finding ways to turn every black in sight into a "convict." As Oshinsky points out, it is bad when human beings treat other human beings as their property--but even worse when they treat them as disposable. A plantation owner who worked a slave to death lost something of value to him, whereas a plantation owner or railroad builder who worked a convict laborer to death just requested another from the state.
As Floyd points out, this system, which has never fully gone away in this country, has made a dramatic resurgence in recent years. And it's not just in the South. Take a look at the blog of Reverend Edward Pinkney, who has been fighting the system in Michigan's very own Mississippi--Benton Harbor. Here are selections from a couple of recent posts there:
As Floyd points out, this system, which has never fully gone away in this country, has made a dramatic resurgence in recent years. And it's not just in the South. Take a look at the blog of Reverend Edward Pinkney, who has been fighting the system in Michigan's very own Mississippi--Benton Harbor. Here are selections from a couple of recent posts there:
How the Government Manipulated the War on Drugs to Create a Slave Prison Marketmore
By Rev. Edward Pinkney
Beware, poor Blacks, Hispanics, whites -- and all the have-nots. Each of you out there better start keeping your mind on your freedom and your freedom on your mind. UNICOR is the proud symbol of a government owned corporation for the prison industry with 100 or more factories operating inside Federal prisons. The CEO of UNICOR and Congress get cheap labor from 23 cents to $1.15 per hour from factory working inmates. Are they from South Africa? No! from Cuba? No! from Mexico? No! The inmates come from poor communities scattered across this nation. When translated, this means that a whole lot of poor Blacks, Hispanics, and whites, the have-nots, are in serious trouble, in life-threatening danger.
Court Appointed Attys: Anybody Can Do Their Jobmore
If you are still using court appointed attorneys, I will be happy to provide you with those same services for nothing. This will include all of the following: ignoring all your phone calls and letters, not defending you against family members badgering you to plead quilty to a crime you never commited, working to collaborate with prosecutors and judges against your best interest and, if you are in jail, postponing your court date over and over again until you plead quilty.
The Berrien county court appointed attorneys should be independent from political influence. However, in Berrien county the court appointed attorneys, prosecutors and judges are on the same team with the very same goal: convicting innocent poor people.
Over and over again we have seen the court appointed attorney not interviewing the client until the actual court appearance and then while actually in the courtroom! They seldom call or supeona witnsses for trial.
...
Berrien County, MI is in constitutional chaos as the police, prosecutors, politicians and judges are using the machinery of government to execorably grind away at the those rights and liberties gauranteed to all Americans under the constitution and the Bill of Rights. In Berrien County agencies of the state will often arrest without warrant, spy without legal authority, imprison without charge and even kill without just cause or reason.
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