The Militant - January 6, 2014 -- Greetings to workers behind bars

Vol. 78/No. 1 January 6, 2014

Greetings to workers behind bars
(editorial)

The Militant sends New Year’s greetings to the almost 2.3 million workers behind bars in U.S. prisons, jails, immigration detention centers, juvenile facilities, Bureau of Indian Affairs jails and military lockup.

The conditions imposed on workers behind bars, including tens of thousands in solitary confinement, has won more attention as a result of political action by prisoners over the past year, especially the hunger strike by some 30,000 inmates in California.

With only 5 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. is home to 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. With 2.3 million incarcerated, no other nation comes anywhere close in relative or absolute terms. The total number caught up in the U.S. criminal “justice” system, which includes those on probation or parole, stands at 7 million.

The number of prisoners has grown fivefold over the past three decades. Driven in large part by plea-bargain frame-ups, some 95 percent of all those behind bars never had a trial. The vast majority are working-class and disproportionately African-American. The number of workers serving life sentences has exploded from 34,000 in 1984 to 159,000 today, 47 percent of whom are Black.

Upon release, millions are branded as “felons,” putting them at the back of the line for jobs and often denying them rights of other citizens: voting, getting food stamps, eligibility for student loans, etc. Far from rehabilitation, the U.S. prison system is organized to demoralize and degrade working people who get caught in its web. It’s not a blight on American democracy, but its true face — a microcosm of social relations under the dictatorship of capital and the callous dog-eat-dog values at its rotten core.

A large proportion of working people today have a relative, a co-worker or a friend who is or has been behind bars. One of every 18 men is either in jail, probation or parole.

That is one reason why communists taking the Militant door to door in working-class neighborhoods find interest and support for the Cuban Five — Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, René González and Fernando González — five exemplary working-class revolutionaries framed up and imprisoned by the U.S. government for their defense of the Cuban Revolution. (See “Free the Cuban Five!” box on page 7.)

We extend our solidarity to all political prisoners, including Puerto Rican independence fighter Oscar López Rivera, held 32 years, 12 in solitary; Native American activist Leonard Peltier; Mumia Abu-Jamal; the Omaha Two, Mondo we Langa and Ed Poindexter, who were railroaded to prison 43 years ago as young members of the Black Panther Party; and Lynne Stewart, framed up for providing legal service to many facing government attack, who is ill with cancer and seeking compassionate release.

We celebrate the release of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, two members of the punk protest band Pussy Riot in Russia.

Over the past few months, the Militant has fought and won a series of battles against prison censorship of the paper for reporting on the California hunger strike against solitary confinement and other abuses. We are proud of the paper’s record, speaking up for the rights of fellow workers behind bars. We extend solidarity to fellow papers like the San Francisco Bay View, Prison Legal News and Prison Focus that give a voice to prisoners organizing to fight the barbaric conditions they face daily.

The number of readers of the paper behind bars continues to rise. Many make sure each issue gets around to scores of others. Some use it as the basis for study groups on politics today.

The Militant is proud to offer complimentary or reduced-rate subscriptions to prisoners. Contribute to the Militant Prisoners’ Fund to help us continue this working-class tradition.