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

Archived Version

As Americans of varying backgrounds and ages, we are required to re-evaluate: (1) our society and its relationship to those it labels “criminal;” (2) our personal values and attitudes about prisoners and the prison system; (3) our commitment to wider social change. It is important that we learn to conceptualize how a series of abolition-type reforms, partial abolitions of the system, and particular alternatives can lead toward the elimination of prisons. Abolitionists advocate maximum amounts of caring for all people (including the victims of crime) and minimum intervention in the lives of all people, including lawbreakers. In the minds of some, this may pose a paradox, but not for us, because we examine the underlying causes of crime and seek new responses to build a safer community. The abolitionist ideology is based on economic and social justice for all, concern for all victims, and reconciliation within a caring community.

I feared he would be martyred, when he returned to Russia after getting poisoned by the FSB and helping Bellingcat track down the agents who poisoned him (nobody in power did anything about them). Back then, his life was saved by a pilot deciding to make an emergency landing and a doctor suspecting a neurotoxin.

What finally took his life will be difficult to ascertain due to lack of transparency - a remote location, an extremely authoritarian system, war, politically controlled law enforcement and courts. Still, a day before death, Navalny appeared in court for another potential addition to his already 19-year sentence - in good spirits.

During Navalny's imprisonment, the regime made a sustained effort to break that spirit, issuing a constant stream of disciplinary punishments (a total of 27 times): for not placing his hands behind his back, for incorrectly introducing himself, for uttering a profanity, for failing to clear leaves in the yard, for citing the European Court of Human Rights’ demand for his release, for addressing the guard without using a patronym, and for declining to wash the fence.

They also transfered him to the far north and previously used sleep deprivement against him. I tend to assume that they also killed him, either directly or indirectly.

He was definitely not the perfect politician, but did things which a common politician never dares to do, which suggests having some principles. When they came for anarchists, he didn't forget them, but also spoke for anarchists.

While most lockdowns are intermittent (lasting from a few days to several weeks), an increasing number of state and federal prisons keep prisoners locked down for most or even all of the year. In addition, many prisons make people suffer through constant lockdown “cycles,” where prisoners get a very brief return to normal “gen pop” status before they are once again subject to several days or weeks of lockdown.

For those unfamiliar with the distinction between solitary confinement and lockdown, the latter is considered far more severe, as prisoners have no routines or any real rights whatsoever under lockdown. Solitary confinement is already rightly considered a form of torture under international law, but persons in solitary have a set routine, as stark as it is. Under lockdown, there is no such routine: There is no guarantee of exercise, showers are irregular at best, and access to phone, email or visitation are nonexistent. Education, religious activities, rehabilitative programs, psychiatric intervention to crises, access to commissary (“the store,” where somewhat healthier food and vitamins as well as soap can be bought) are typically denied or are nearly impossible to get. Meetings with attorneys come to a halt or are hard to obtain. People under lockdown are often not even given basic hygiene materials such as soap or toothpaste.

Throughout modern American carceral history, lockdowns have been reserved for major disruptive events that ostensibly threatened the lives of staff, prisoners or the surrounding community. Justifications for full lockdowns would typically only include prisoner escapes, murders of staff or prisoners, and large-scale violent prison riots, and they typically ended within days or a few weeks at most. Even then, they would almost always be contained to one unit or prison, not across an entire state or the whole nation.

Those days are gone. Lockdowns are now issued for almost any reason, according to interviews with a wide array of prisoners, attorneys, advocates and loved ones on the outside of prison walls. Barbee describes a sense of hopelessness and bewilderment on the part of those who have no way of knowing what is happening inside or if their family members in prison are even alive. Lockdowns happen so fast that prisoners rarely have the opportunity to inform anyone who cares about them.

Prison lockdowns have intensified in both duration and levels of abuse and deprivation over the years.

In addition, many other prison facilities are mimicking key facets of lockdown status even if prisoners technically remain in “gen pop.” Such examples include severe limits on access to confidential legal counsel, denial of family visitation without explanation, returned email or postal communication without justification, and many other restrictions that violate both constitutional rights and prison regulations.

The move toward lockdowns is functioning as a strategic manner of eroding an already paltry level of civil/human rights protections for prisoners within the U.S. carceral system.

Since April 2021, protesters in Atlanta, Georgia have been fighting to defend Weelaunee Forest, where politicians and profiteers are attempting to build a police training compound known as Cop City. This movement has spread around the country, identifying and attacking the roots of state and corporate support for the project; later this month, opponents of Cop City will gather in Tucson, Arizona.

Yet the proposed police militarization center in Atlanta is only one of many. All across the United States, governments are allocating hundreds of millions of dollars to build new police militarization facilities, seeking to expand the repressive capabilities of the police and pouring more money into the pockets of their allies.

The movement to Stop Cop City has given rise to one of the fiercest struggles of the past three years. Does it represent a reproducible strategy by which abolitionists can take a structural approach to stopping the expansion of the police-industrial complex?