By Mark | January 20, 2013 Activist, educator and author Angela Davis will be in Ann Arbor on Monday, delivering a lecture titled “Impediments to the Dream: The Prison Industrial Complex and the Dream.” Davis, as I suspect many of you know, before going on to have a successful career as an academic in the History of Consciousness Department as U-C [...]
Posted in Civil Liberties, Uncategorized | Also tagged 1970, Angela Davis, Bob Sloan, Communism, Corrections Corporation of America, Elliott Currie, for-profit prisons, History of Consciousness Department, Impediments to the Dream: The Prison Industrial Complex and the Dream, Judge Harold Haley, kidnapping, Martin Luther King Day, murder, Natalie Holbrook, prison industrial complex, prison industry, prison labor, prison reform, prisoner rights, private prisons, Pure Michigan, racism, Soledad Brothers, Students Organizing Against Prisons, University of California Santa Cruz | When I flew into Providence a few weeks ago, to attend the Netroots Nation conference, I caught a taxi from the airport to the hotel with a fellow by the name of Bob Sloan. Bob, like me, had won one of the Democracy for America scholarships, and we talked about our work as we made [...]
Posted in Civil Liberties, Corporate Crime, Politics, Uncategorized | Also tagged ALEC, American Bail Coalition, Bill McCollum, Bob Sloan, Boeing, Bureau of Justice Assistance, CAD, Charlie Crist, Clearwater, company towns, computer drafting, corporatocracy, corrections, cubicles, Dell, Democracy for America, Department of Correction, early release bond, Escod Industries, factory, factory work, Florida, Floyd Glisson, GEO Group, HP, IBM, Indiana, Indianapolis, Jack Eckerd, James Crosby, James McDonough, Janet Reno, Jeb Bush, job training, jobs, Keefe Commissary, Koch brothers, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, minimum wage, National Correctional Industries Association, NCIA, Netroots Nation, Newt Gingrich, Nordstrom, OnShore Resources, Pam Davis, Pat Nolan, PIE Program, PIECP, pride, Prison Fellowship Ministries, prison industrial complex, Prison Industries, Prison Industries Act, prison industry, prison labor, prison reform, Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises, prison sentences, prisoner advocate, prisoner rights, Private Correctional Facilities Act, private prisons, privatization, Ray Allen, recidivism, restitution, Right on Crime, slave labor, stand your ground, tethers, Texas, the cost of incarceration, tough on crime, UNICOR, unions, US Technologies, Wackenhut Corrections Corp, workers rights | Among those who presented at the 2012 BALLE conference a few days ago, in Grand Rapids, was performance artist Rha Goddess, who shared a number of pieces from her “Opportunity Now!” series. Here’s the piece that she began with, in which she takes on the character of a recently paroled individual looking for a job. [...]
Posted in Art and Culture, entrepreneurism, Uncategorized | Also tagged BALLE, Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, consulting, Move The Crowd, Opportunity Now!, performance art, public transportation, Rha Goddess, The Opportunity Agenda | By Mark | January 4, 2010 From an editorial in today’s New York Times: The United States, which has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, has about one-quarter of its prisoners. But the relentless rise in the nation’s prison population has suddenly slowed as many states discover that it is simply too expensive to overincarcerate. Between 1987 and 2007 [...]
Posted in Other | Also tagged ACLU, American Friends Service Committee, Bureau of Justice Statistics, mandatory prison terms, National Prison Project, overincarceration, Pew Center on the States, prison industrial complex, prison industry, prisoner advocate, the cost of incarceration, things going well in Michigan, three strikes and you’re out | Last night, at the request of a reader, I started a thread on Ypsi churches. Among the comments which followed the post, was one from a woman identifying herself as an Ypsilanti minister. In it, she mentioned two ambitious endeavors being undertaken by Ypsi churches. I’ve asked for more information, but, here, in the meantime, [...]
