PA Prison Report - November 28, 2011

 

Across Pennsylvania

 

 

From State Pens to Penn State – by Mumia Abu-Jaml, ©’11 Mumia Abu-Jamal

The shocking child sex scandal rocking Penn State University in State College, PA is an explosion of almost nuclear proportions.

 

It has all the elements designed to produce a media firestorm: fame, money, illicit sex, deception—and yes, betrayal. But the core of it is betrayal: of the country’s deepest religion—sports; and of those whom we claim to adore and revere the most—children.

 

The scandal has shown how great wealth, fame and the business of college sports corrupted everything and everyone, to keep the gravy train rolling; and the Penn State football program was (and is) an extremely lucrative gravy train, bringing in tens of millions of dollars in fees from TV, advertising and sports paraphernalia sales.

 

Penn State University itself is the biggest employer in State College, and is one of the biggest ten colleges in the U.S., with over 45,000 students.

 

The gravy here flowed thick and heavy.

 

And like other great, wealth-making and powerful institutions, its sins were covered, so as not to rock the money-making boat.

 

It reminds us of the great scandals that shook the foundations of the Catholic Church in the ’90s, the ripples of which are still with us.

 

They remind us that rape is about power—and sex is but a tool of domination of the weak by the powerful.

 

That same dynamic is at work whether it’s a man and a woman; a priest and a child; or a coach and a boy.

 

But is it the same when it’s two men? How about when one man is a prison guard, and another is a prisoner?

 

When news leaked out several months ago that rapes were widespread in the blocks of the state prison in Pittsburgh, PA, the reaction was largely local, mostly concentrated in Western Pennsylvania.

 

Here it has all the dynamics of the rape culture we’ve discussed; powerful against powerless.

 

Indeed, in some respects it’s more pronounced, for systems are in place to protect women and children (whether they’re followed or not is another question), which necessitates hiding these things.

 

But in prison, the indicted guard, Harry Nicoletti, allegedly used his power as a state prison official to threaten men he raped and abused with being sent to the ‘hole’ – and death if they told.

 

He reportedly ordered prisoners to contaminate food with spit, urine and feces. He punched, slapped and spat on prisoners. He used racist language with abandon.

 

And these things happened for years.

 

Schools, churches and prisons—institutions of immense social power, exploiting, abusing and hurting the powerless—in the places, which seemingly attracts rapeholics.

 

 

Abolition in Action: Milk Not Jails Campaign Builds Momentum: Milk Not Jails, a consumer campaign to build a sustainable New York State rural economy that does not rely on building and maintaining prisons, recently raised $22,000 to launch a new political brand of dairy products with the self titled “Milk Not Jails” label. A collaboration between farmers, formerly incarcerated people, activists and policy makers, the Milk Not Jails initiative is about building relationships between rural producers and urban consumers. It aims to create a local food economy and change the landscape of rural employment. The campaign was founded in 2010 as a reaction to two economic crises facing New York State:

 

1. Dairy farmers are being forced to sell off their herds and shut down their businesses, because federal agricultural policy is putting farmers in a situation where they are losing money to produce milk.

 

2. Prison employees are fighting to keep empty prisons open amidst a major state budget crisis. Located in depressed, rural areas, these prisons often provide the most stable, best paying jobs in town.

 

The economic depression of rural areas over the past 50 years, caused in part by federal regulations on agricultural production, and the corporate takeover of the supply and distribution of food, has made small scale dairy farming extremely challenging. As a result, more people have been forced into working public sector jobs, as their best option, including working at prisons. 75% of prison beds in New York State are in rural areas, despite 75% of New York’s incarcerated population coming from 7 neighborhoods in New York City. The Department of Corrections is New York State’s largest state agency, employing 31,000 people, and the jobs pay well. Because many rural residents now hold stake in maintaining their prison based economies, there are significant barriers to rural populations supporting much needed changes toward productive and effective criminal justice.

 

In many ways, small towns have become dependent on exploiting the prison game. In 2010, New York State outlawed the practice of political gerrymandering, a practice that counted prisoners as part of the town population where they are incarcerated, instead of where they call home. There are currently senators in New York working to reinstate the practice. People in prison are denied basic civil rights, including the right to vote in New York State, yet they are body counted in rural areas to increase political representation and acquire more resources and funding for those areas. In converse, the urban areas where most people who are incarcerated are coming from, receive less resources and funding based on their decreased population count.

 

New York State’s crime rate has decreased over the past ten years by 28% and requires 15,000 fewer prison beds since then. However, the Department of Corrections maintains the same number of prisons, despite there being just cause to reduce the number of operating facilities.

 

In addition to closing prisons, the Milk Not Jails campaign supports legislative initiatives to further reduce the total population of incarcerated people and decarcerate New York state. A new policy, if passed, would change the sentencing structures for crimes committed by survivors of domestic violence- people who are charged with crimes for fighting back or fighting off their attackers. The policy advocates for sentencing survivors to alternative facilities or decreased jail time, which would result in a decrease in the total incarcerated population.

 

The SAFE parole act would get more people paroled and out of prison by changing parole processes in New York State. The act mandates video taped, documented parole hearings, as an attempt to create some oversight of the parole process. It increases prisoners’ and victims’ access to information about the parolee’s process, and demands that people who are denied parole be given paperwork outlining concrete steps they can take to realize parole. This act would cut down on administrative retaliation or arbitrary parole denial which keeps the overall prison population high.

 

Marijuana laws, rewritten in the 1970’s in New York, made it legal to carry up to 25 grams of the substance, as long as it is not smoked in public view. The charge for possessing up to 25 grams is a ticket and a fine, but the existing charge for smoking in public is a misdemeanor that could warrant jail time. This distinction between possession and smoking, creates wiggle room for people to be charged with misdemeanor offenses and increase the jail population. Because of an increase in stop and frisk policing practices, numbering 500,000 stops in New York City in 2010, people are being arrested and falsely charged with misdemeanors for possession of marijuana, instead of being issued tickets. A new bill is being proposed to standardize the charge of possession and smoking in public to the same charge of a ticket, and would reduce the number of people being put in jail on trumped up misdemeanor offenses.

 

The Milk Not Jails group is constructing a grassroots, social change agenda based on educating and organizing people, building business for small farms, and working on state policies that support local agriculture and decarceration. The policy agenda of the Milk Not Jails campaign focuses on the intersectionality of agricultural and prison justice issues. By examining their relationship, the campaign is organized to chip away at aspects of the flawed prison economy and work towards reinforcing a sustainable agricultural economy. This includes changing laws that affect milk distribution and reducing other barriers to the success of small farms.

 

According to the campaign, every three and a half days New York State loses a farm to developers. A Farmland Protection Act was passed in 1992 to preserve quality farmland and keep it in the hands of small farm owners by storing a large amount of money to be allocated to support small farm owners over time. Many existing grant applications are caught up in the government application bureaucracy, and as time passes the total amount of money reserved for farming becomes smaller due to budget cuts.

 

Dean Foods corporation controls most of milk production in New York State. The Federal Milk Marketing Order sets a minimum price for the sale of the supply of milk, which is decreasing and pushing dairy farmers out of business. The minimum supply price has not decreased because the consumer shelf price of milk has gone down, but rather because corporations like Dean Foods and their marketing partner Dairy Foods of America, are set up to gain profits, while small farms collapse. These corporations impose marketing on independent farmers in exchange for access to bottling plants, and buy up small farms to eliminate regional competition.

 

The Milk Not Jails campaign supports legalizing the sale of raw milk. In the 1940s, the United States created laws demanding pasteurization of milk, which has led to the majority of milk being produced and processed on industrial dairy farms. Milk production has evolved into a high speed operation, with cows being fed on a grain diet instead of a grass diet, and cows being injected with hormones to speed up the process. Despite studies showing health benefits of raw milk, and adverse health benefits to drinking processed milk, state law prohibits the sale of raw milk unless the consumer goes to a farm to purchase it. These regulations impose barriers to the creation of a local economy by forcing small farms to process or distribute their goods through a middle man who takes most of the profits.

 

To expand New York State’s reliance on and investment in a local economy, New York farmers aim to localize sales at Hunt’s Market. Hunt’s Market is a main access point for food to enter New York City, but it is currently occupied by out of state and imported produce. Prioritizing or making more space for local food would help sustain New York dairy farms and transform the rural urban relationship.

 

The Milk not Jails campaign is organized through working groups out of the Constitutional Law Center in Manhattan. The dairy cooperative working group builds a cooperative business for dairy farmers, while the marketing and sales working group connects sellers and buyers under the Milk Not Jails brand. There is a policy-working group to work for legislative change, and an education and outreach committee to inform people of what the group is up to. The fundraising group raises money, and the chapter development group works to bring the campaign to other regions of New York and expand the scope of their abolition efforts.

 

 

 

Philly area: Wednesdays are Write On! Prison Letter Writing Night at the LAVA space at 4134 Lancaster, 6-9 pm. Come help us stay connected with the many prisoners who write to us with news from inside, learn to document crimes committed by prison staff, and help bring an end to the abuse and torture of our brothers and sisters behind bars.

 

If you’d like to know more about the Human Rights Coalition or would like to get involved, come to Write On!, to our monthly general meetings (second Monday of each month, 6pm), or call us at 215-921-3491, email: info@hrcoalition.org, or visit our website at http://www.hrcoalition.org./

 

Pittsburgh area: Write On! – Letter writing to prisoners and HRC work night every Wednesday at 5129 Penn Avenue from 7 -10pm. To get involved with HRC/Fed Up! in Pittsburgh, email: hrcfedup@gmail.com or call 412-654-9070.

 

You’ve been listening to the Human Rights Coalition’s PA Prison Report. HRC is a group of current and former prisoners, family members, and supporters, whose ultimate goal is to abolish prisons.