We are all in one boat - 2 million incarcerated vs. the USA

It is worth to remember the name VOCAL NY, where a group of activists raised their voice against the judicial despotism and unaccountability in New York State.

The organization will start a protest in Albany, NY, on 25 April 2023, asking the legislation changes that will remove the immunity of the Prosecutors, Judges, and Police. Everyone has to be held accountable, and to pay for the police violence, for the mass incarceration, for the unjust sentencing. And also to be accepted the legislation about the parole that could release lots of people. Parole was removed from the federal legislation and now we have to remind the legislators, not only in Albany, but also in Washington, that people are waiting for change, waiting for serious judicial reform.

The old idea Rikers Island NY prison to be closed forever is number one on the list of VOCAL NY too.

Second, stop the war on drugs as it is now. The war on drugs was that incarcerated the majority of the population of the USA and turned the country into the most incarcerated in the world per capita. That has to end.

Trump’s First step act prison reform, has to go to Second and Third prison act, and little by little to be made the biggest revolutionary step to more free and just society.

Fist step act released already 20000 people from the Federal prisons (of 190000 total in federal custody), where actually the population is not so significant in numbers like the state prisons. FSA reduced some mandatory minimums for federal drug offenses, gave federal judges more options to avoid mandatory minimums altogether in certain drug cases, retroactively expanded the “good time” credits people in federal prison can earn, provided more incentives to people in prison to take classes and other rehabilitative programs, encouraged the Bureau of Prisons to incarcerate people closer to their homes, and banned the shackling of pregnant women during labor.

Even New York Times declared that this was the most significant judicial change in generation. Even it touched only the federal prisons it gave push to some states to start their own First steps.

The Second step act was more actively pushing the legislators in the states to start their own reforms, not directly but by the financing provided by the Federal Government. That act touched the prosecutors funding, who has nearly unlimited access to state-funded prisons. The other problem was what to do with the prison guards, who are the biggest professional organization in the country. By providing funding for them to relocate in other community activities, we can make possible reducing their resistance for reforms.?Of the $50 billion we spend annually on prisons, about $35 billion goes to the wages and benefits of employees working in public prisons.?Those employees consistently resist any sort of reform that jeopardizes their jobs.?90% of the guards in the federal prisons in NY state are black, jobs they cant find anywhere elsewhere. Providing them with highly paid jobs in other public sectors is critical for any reform in the justice system.

?When started the war on drugs? We can trace it to President Nixon when the war in Vietnam became the tool to import big amount of opium from the Far East, drugs have been imported in the corpses of the dead American soldiers from Vietnam, and in any military machinery possible.

Reasonably Nixon paid attention and started to do something but that was not the mass case incarcerations that followed further. But the power institutions for oppress and fight started to form. The government tried to put all the traffic of the drugs under their control through organizations like DEA, FBI and CIA. All these organizations started to control the input in the country and even to push the products to some communities. That is how some communities, like the black community in Los Angeles started to identify themselves as most impacted.

The famous journalist Garry Webb who wrote his "Dark Alliance" series, which appeared in?The Mercury News?in 1996, followed the route of the drugs. The series examined the origins of the crack cocaine trade in Los Angeles. He claimed that members of the anticommunist Contra rebels in Nicaragua under the protection of CIA had played a major role in creating the trade, using cocaine profits to finance their fight against the government in Nicaragua. The said drugs have been distributed in the black communities in Los Angeles that provoked outrage in Los Angeles African-American community and led to four major investigations of its charges. Many politicians became his supporters and asked for investigation of the allegations.

The further mixture of politics and drugs made the problem more complicated.

The war on drugs that incarcerated the biggest amount of the American citizens was declared by the Clinton legislation in the Crime Bill of 1994 that tripled the incarcerated population and totally cut the people from any social life and benefits together with impossible time imprisonment, and together with the three strike legislation, that put people for life on the third time, what made the incarceration crisis worst, compared to modern slavery.

And around that time is when all the population of the United States became a victim, and when the society started the crack under that punishment.

The famous book “Becoming Mrs. Burton” of a California black woman experience, describes in details about any stages of the legislation that led to that terrible situation we are now in.

VOCAL NY doesn’t believe in the war on drugs, it appeared totally ineffective and made the situation worse. By banning a product, by making it more expensive, actually the authority are making room for cheaper synthetic drugs, that can be produced locally and which are much more dangerous. To come to that moment today when we have to say enough.

We are not black and white any more, we are one together in one boat against the many Presidents’ legislations that only add to the problem and have to start removing the root of the prison industrial complex. Some small steps started with the Trump administration first and second step prison reform that released many prisoners with long sentences, older and sicker prisoners, and improved the conditions by offering more programs. California made their California’s AB 109, known as “Public Safety Realignment,” altered both sentencing and post-prison supervision for the newly classified “non-serious, non-violent, non-sex” offenders, We are just at the beginning of these changes. We need radical thinking to go further than the cosmetics. Most of the politicians lack of desire to fund and to initiate reforms. How to close the jail when you have your public employees, working there and voting for you in organized mass of the biggest union.

That is where VOCAL appears and starts to raise their voice in NY State.

?The problem could not be solved with banning the product, the drug, says VOCAL. It can be solved by fighting the roots of the problem, related to the poverty, homelessness, mental health, and drug use disorders, which the criminal justice system and the community affairs are poorly equipped to address. We lack decent families, decent housing, decent education, decent healthcare. The new wave of immigration is a new open door for drugs import and we have to be ready to address the challenges in a totally new manner. The meaning of punishment has to be evaluated away from the political agenda.?