Vol. 71/No. 29      August 6, 2007

Wilson, a 21-year-old Black man, has spent nearly three years of his life in prison. He was convicted of “aggravated child molestation”—a felony with a 10 year minimum sentence—after police found a videotape of him and five other 17-year-olds having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old classmate in 2003.

The convictions brand all six as “sex offenders.” Under reactionary laws they will be forced to register publicly as such wherever they live. There is no better example of why working people should demand the abolition of all such laws.

“Cruel and unusual,” is what a county court judge called Wilson’s sentencing. Cruel it is. But for young Black workers, more than any other section of society, draconian prison sentences for petty offenses are far from unusual.

Black men are more than twice as likely to be unemployed and more than seven times more likely to be imprisoned as whites. Since 1980 the U.S. prison population has more than quadrupled to 2.2 million—60 percent of whom are Black or Hispanic. Through mandatory drug sentencing and other measures the “democratic” rulers of the United States—a country with about 5 percent of the world’s population—lock up 24 percent of the world’s prisoners.

The Wilson case is exactly how the criminal “justice” system is intended to function. He is being punished for his refusal to plead guilty and be branded a child molester. And he continues to fight for justice from behind prison walls.

His sentence has nothing at all to do with the so-called crime with which he was charged. It is aimed at reminding him and anyone like him of their place in society, and of who they are in the eyes of the capitalist rulers.

The cops and courts of the capitalist system offer no justice for working people. They are a weapon of class domination—pure and simple—used by the wealthy minority against the vast toiling majority to undermine solidarity and break people.

Actions like the march in Douglasville should be emulated. This is the road towards winning freedom for Wilson and the hundreds of thousands of young men and women like him trying to defend their humanity from behind the bars that unjustly cage them.
 
 
Related articles:
Georgia march demands:‘Free Genarlow Wilson!’
Many call for release of other unjustly imprisoned Black youth  
 
 
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