April 17 marks Palestinian Prisoner’s Day, established by the Palestinian National Council in 1974 as a day to honor the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli occupation prisons and to support their legitimate right to freedom. The date was chosen because it commemorates the release of prisoner Mahmoud Bakr Hijazi in the first prisoner exchange between the Palestinians and Israel. Accordingly, Palestinian Prisoner’s Day considers all those who have served time in prison as “icons of resistance,” thereby representing all Palestinians who have been under brutal occupation for the past 76 years.

In an interview with the New Arab, Charlotte Kates, Samidoun’s coordinator, confirmed that “Palestinians deeply value and honour the tremendous sacrifices that political prisoners have made for the liberation of their land. Each of their lives is precious to them.” She added that Palestinian prisoners are leaders of the resistance who have been detained because Israel understands that they are a threat to the settler colonial system and therefore wants to isolate them away from the world.

“From the earliest days of the Palestinian national liberation movement, imprisonment has always been a weapon used by the colonizer,” Kates confirmed, “and it has always been an inspiration for Palestinian resistance.” More than just the colonizer’s victims, she explained that prisoners are also “leaders, organizers and fighters. They organize behind bars and turn prisons into ‘revolutionary schools’ of the oppressed.” Because they are “central to the liberation movement,” their right to freedom must be part of the liberation struggle along with the isolation of Israel.

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Incarcerated people are literally paid pennies per hour. This is slavery

Is this kind of disaster unique to the United States?

I guess it's time for me to track down the John Howard Society to see what's happening in Canada.

Crossposted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/13937769

Across the United States, hundreds of jails have eliminated in-person family visits over the last decade. Why has this happened? The answer highlights a profound flaw in how decisions too often get made in our legal system: for-profit jail telecom companies realized that they could earn more profit from phone and video calls if jails eliminated free in-person visits for families. So the companies offered sheriffs and county jails across the country a deal: if you eliminate family visits, we'll give you a cut of the increased profits from the larger number of calls. This led to a wave across the country, as local jails sought to supplement their budgets with hundreds of millions of dollars in cash from some of the poorest families in our society.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13384872

This painting of the Statue of Liberty with Prisoners in the Crown is by Sierra Smart, @sierralynnart on instagram

A very special thanks to LiberalJane, Sierra Smart and Timsplosion. You all do incredible work and everyone here wishes you the very best.

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The Healing Project via makingcontact

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If you would like to submit art for future compilations, I encourage you to do so. I am available via direct message on this platform. Its perfectly fine as well to make a post here. Art is important, its powerful, and we as a community should put a priority on encouraging artists.

The new citizen cop weapon ‘AI image search’

It has come to our attention from information passed on to us by comrades in Germany that the former member of Red Army Faction, Daniele Klette, was possibly identified using a new repressive weapon of ‘Artifical Intelligence image search’. The program in question is named as ‘PimEyes’, which was used apparently by an ‘investigative’ citizen cop journalist from the snitch ‘investigative’ website Bellingcat, who put the police wanted notice of Klette from the 1990s through the AI image search. PimEyes is a facial recognition search website that allows users to identify all images on the internet of a person given a sample image. It is comparable to the facial recognition company Clearview which is a notorious for providing software to law enforcement and government agencies and other organizations. The company’s algorithm matches faces to a database of more than 20 billion images collected from the Internet, including social media applications. Several Twitter users claim to have used it in an effort to identify US Capitol rioters, for example.

For several years she was involved in a Brazilian culture centre in the Kreuzberg district, where she practised capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art that combines dance and fighting. It is thought that the discovery of photographs of her with her capoeira group at Berlin’s annual carnival led to her identification and arrest. The cops have yet to confirm the link between the arrest and a podcast from 2023.

The use of Artificial Intelligence and Facial Recognition software is not only dangerous in the hands of the authorities but also in its widespread use by the have a go heroes and citizen cops. With the increase of surveillance technologies permeating through all society, from the smart phone camera to the doorbell camera. All of these are presented as for personal safety and security but in actual fact are leading to the self-surveillance of our entire environment. In the past computer technology was brought forward in Germany in response to the Red Army Faction’s attacks. Computerisation of taxes, rental agreements, wages, etc were able to be used to narrow down what the German security forces named as ‘sympathisers’, a minimal group of people they could place under surveillance that did not buy into their electronic system, who they deemed as avoiding it especially if they paid using cash.

The same tactics that were learnt during the 70’s and 80’s are now being upgraded not only by using the advanced technologies but asking even more for the ‘responsible citizen’ to be their extra pair of eyes in the corners of the society they cannot reach. The expansion of crime fighting ‘private eye’ style entities on the internet and social media such as blogs and podcasts that have already been mentioned fuel even further the active participation of growing online private security industry, by not only private companies but by any citizen who feels the need to fill the void in their life by becoming a Dick Tracey or Inspector Gadget for the day.

This article is only to highlight once again the danger of technology to be used as a weapon to surveil those who dare to resist as the Red Army Faction did, which becomes a weapon easily used by the society to surveil itself in the aid of the authorities and cops.

For the urban guerrilla, against the new surveillance technologies and all the citizen cops

The Uncivilized

Black authors who were/are incarcerated for pro-Black/anti-colonial/anti-neocolonial activities. (The list includes people who would be considered Black only in places that practice hypodescent.)

• Imari Obadele ( 1930 - 2010 )

• Mumia Abu-Jamal

• Dhoruba bin Wahad

• Albert John Luthuli ( 1898 - 21 July 1967 )

• Robert Hillary King ( 1942 )

• Kwame Ture ( 29 June 1941 - 15 November 1998 )

• S. E. M. Pheko

• Dwayne Staats

• Aaron Dixon ( 1949 )

• Muhammad Ahmad ( 1941 )

• Kwame Nkrumah ( 1909 - 1972 )

• Queen Mother Moore ( 1898 )

• Huey P. Newton ( 17 February 1942 - 22 August 1989 )

• Bobby Seale ( 1936-10-22 )

• Sundiata Acoli

• Sibongile Mkhabela

• Agostinho Neto ( 1922-09-17 - 1979-09-10 )

• George L. Jackson ( 1941 - 1971 )

• Sekou Odinga ( - - 2023 )

• Ruchell Cinque Magee ( - - 2023 )

• Joshua Nkomo ( 1917 - 1999 )

• Hybachi LeMar

• Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʼo ( 1938 )

• Patrice Lumumba ( 1925 - 1961 )

• Luc Reinette

• Mwandawiro Mghanga

• Uanhenga Xitu ( 1924 - 2014 )

• Keshii Pelao Nathanael ( 1949 )

• C. L. R. James ( 1901 - 1989 )

• Barbara Beese

• Robert Gabriel Mugabe ( 1924 - 2019 )

• Ellen Kuzwayo ( 1914 - 2006 )

• Déwé Gorodey ( 1949 - 2022 )

• A. de Kom ( 1898 - 1945 )

• Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin

• Inácio Soares de Carvalho ( 1916 - 1994 )

• Matias Mboa ( 1942 )

• Raúl Bernardo Manuel Honwana ( 1905 )

• Walter Rodney ( - - 1980 )

• Ramona Africa

• Eusi Kwayana

• Marcus Garvey ( 1887 - 1940 )

• Obi Benue Egbuna ( - - 2014 )

• Jamil Al-Amin ( 1943 )

• Dikobé wa Mogale

• Ashanti Alston

• Nelson Mandela ( 1918 - 2013 )

• Pam Africa

• Josiah Mwangi Kariuki ( 1929 - 1975 )

• Jalil Muntaqim ( 1951 )

• Majhemout Diop ( 1922 - 2007 )

• Steve Biko ( 1946 - 1977 )

• Martin Sostre ( 1923 - 2015 )

• Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe ( - - 1978 )

• James Yaki Sayles ( - - 28 March 2008 )

• Abdul Rahman Mohamed Babu ( - - 1996 )

• Dedan Kimathi ( - - 1957 )

• Safiya Asya Bukhari ( 1950 - 2003 )

• Russell Maroon Shoatz ( - - 2021 )

• Elany

• Deolinda Rodrígues de Almeida ( 1939 - 1967 )

• N. Barney Pityana

• Thenjiwe Mtintso

• Mxolisi Mgxashe ( 1944 - 2013 )

• Zolo Agona Azania

• Molefe Pheto

• Ndabaningi Sithole ( 1920 - 2000 )

• Toussaint Louverture ( 1743? - 1803 )

• Djibo Bakary ( - - 1998 )

• Angela Y. Davis ( 26 Jan 1944 )

• Maina wa Kĩnyattĩ

• Claudia Jones ( 1915 - 1964 )

• Abdoulaye Mamani ( 1932 - 1993 )

• Assata Shakur ( 1947 )

• CeCe McDonald

• Winnie Madikizela-Mandela ( - - 2018 )

• Abdul Olugbala Shakur

• Kuwasi Balagoon ( - - 1986 )

• Kevin 'Rashid' Johnson

• Vera Chirwa

• Fred Hampton ( 1948 - 1969 )

• Nuh Washington

• Albino Magaia ( 1947 - 2010 )

• Clements Kadalie ( 1896 - 1951 )

• Luís Bernardo Honwana ( 1942 )

• Nito Alves ( 1945 - 1977 )

• Geronimo Pratt ( - - 2011 )

• Darcus Howe ( - - 2017 )

• Mosibudi Mangena

• Naboth Mokgatle ( 1911 - 1985 )

• Kenneth D. Kaunda ( 1924 - 2021 )

• Govan Mbeki ( 1910 - 2001 )

• Herman Ferguson ( - - 2014 )

• Albert Woodfox

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