In 1968, the year Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, there were around 200,000 total prisoners in Amerikan prisons. Thirty-one years later, that number is almost 2 million. There are more than half a million Black men in prison today, and there will be 4.5 million Black men in prison in the year 2020 if recent trends continue. In 1996, almost 60% of men in prison were Black or Latino.(1)
That's a powerful, oppressive contrast to the civil rights movement demand for freedom. It is not a coincidence that as the oppressed won some reforms and freedoms in the legal and social arenas through that movement, the Amerikan ruling class poured money and resources into a prison system that would literally re-enslave a large part of the oppressed population behind bars. Since the 1970s, Amerika prisoner population has grown at a much faster rate than the country's population. As the "crime" rate goes up and down, the rate of imprisonment goes up and up. Black men are imprisoned at more than eight-times the rate of white men.
About 25% of the adult population in the country has completed college(2), compared to only 2% of state prisoners; 82% of all adults have finished high school, compared to 59% of state prisoners. In the year before their arrest, one-third of state prisoners were not employed, and more than half had incomes less than $10,000 per year.(6) The "post Civil Rights" state takes people who have lower education and lower income, and then imprisons them in a way that reduces rather than increases their chances of success when they get out. This isn't just devastating for the prisoners themselves. There are also 900,000 children whose parents are in state and federal prisons, children who are now more likely to end up in poverty and prison themselves. Further, in 1991 750,000 prisoners had immediate family members in prison too.(3) The injustice system increases inequality and oppression, for prisoners, their families, and their whole communities and nations.
MIM and RAIL take the opportunity of the Martin Luther King, Jr. events to remind everyone that the struggle for freedom is principally a material struggle. We cannot be content with "can't we all just get along" politics or attempts to frame the issue of racism as one of consciousness or attitude. RAIL organizes around prisons as a leading manifestation of inequality, national oppression and social control in the United $tates.
1. From http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext.
2. U.S. Census Bureau, 29 June 1998. http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/cb98-105.html.
3. Comparing State and Federal Inmates, 1991. Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. NCJ#-145864.
Under imperialism, the struggle of the oppressed nations for freedom is a struggle for self-determination.
Contact MIM by writing mim@mim.org