Today’s prison system should be abolished because it is a system predesigned and constructed to warehouse the people of undeveloped and lower economical communities. Under the existing social order men and women are sent to prison for labor and further economical gain by the state. Where else can you get a full day’s work for two to sixteen cents an hour, and these hours become and indeterminate period of years. This is slave labor in 20th century America… Our only hope lies in the people’s endeavor to hear our protest and support our cause. Building more and better prisons is not the solution— build a thousand prisons, arrest and lock up tens of thousands of people; all will be to no avail. This will not arrest poverty, oppression, and the other ills of this unjust social order…. We need people who will stand up and speak out when it is a matter of right and wrong, of justice or injustice, of struggling or not struggling to help correct and remove conditions affecting the people, all I ask is that the people support us, I will break my back in helping bring peace and justice upon the face of the earth. I’ve seen too much injustice to remain mute or still. The struggle against injustice cannot be muffled by prison walls. A letter from prison by John Cluchette, printed in Angela Davis, If They Come in the Morning (New York, Signet, 1971)
Posted on: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 19:59:55 +0000
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