#Youth incarceration

[fosteringinsc]

Support Programs for Teens in Foster Care in the USA: Navigating the Journey to Independence

The teenage years are a crucial phase, marking the transition from childhood to adulthood. This period can be particularly challenging for teens in foster care in the USA, who often face unique hurdles in their journey to independence. The good news is, there are several support programs and initiatives designed specifically to aid these young individuals, offering them the resources and guidance…

[shinramyune]

Some of the most formative years are the most important in a child, and they’re spent learning in school. Considering these schools are quite literally raising the next generation of the Country, it would make sense that the United States holds the utmost care to the system, right?

What we can see, though, is the care certainly reflects in the country’s youth incarceration. This is, of course to say, there really isn’t much care being upheld in what is known as the “School-to-Prison” Pipeline.

[skelkankaos]

"blue skinned beast was the first political madness song" does land of hope and glory mean nothing to you

[itmbookawards]

Top Social Justice Title

[luulapants]

We talk about prison "abolition" and not prison "reform" not because we believe it's possible to create a system where no incarceration is necessary. We say "abolition" because we want to create systems that allow the establishment of a new reparative justice structure, which uses incarceration as little as possible, and which is not a reform of the current incarceration structure, which does not repair or do justice. We do not believe the current structure can be reformed.

Reforming our current incarceration system into a justice system would be like reforming a dog fighting structure into a dog training structure. (And before anyone accuses me of comparing people in prison to dogs - no, I'm not, but I am saying that people who run prisons treat people like dogs.) Dog fighting structures were never designed to train dogs. The people that run them aren't qualified to train dogs for anything but violence (and are incentivized to continue training violence). The incarceration system creates violence and antisocial behavior. It is incentivized to continue doing so. It was never meant to repair social harm.

Prison abolition means, piece by piece, cutting off the supply of bodies to the incarceration structure.

When drug users get medical care instead of being criminalized, prisons are no longer needed to house drug users. When the mentally ill are given medical care instead of being criminalized, prisons are no longer needed to house the mentally ill. When homeless people are given housing instead of being criminalized, prisons are no longer needed to house the homeless. When impoverished people are given welfare and food benefits instead of being criminalized, prisons are no longer needed to house the poor. When youth are given opportunities outside of gangs, prisons have fewer gang members to house. We shrink the system, and we keep shrinking it. Next we create systems to reduce the population of domestic abusers. Next we tackle sexual assault. Every time it shrinks, we look at the remaining population and figure out what population we can tackle next.

That's how prison abolition works.

[dandelionsresilience]

Good News - June 15-21

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $Kaybarr1735! And if you tip me and give me a way to contact you, at the end of the month I'll send you a link to all of the articles I found but didn't use each week!

1. Victory for Same-Sex Marriage in Thailand

“Thailand’s Senate voted 130-4 today to pass a same-sex marriage bill that the lower house had approved by an overwhelming majority in March. This makes Thailand the first country in Southeast Asia, and the second in Asia, to recognize same-sex relationships. […] The Thai Marriage Equality Act […] will come into force 120 days after publication in the Royal Gazette. It will stand as an example of LGBT rights progress across the Asia-Pacific region and the world.”

2. One of world’s rarest cats no longer endangered

“[The Iberian lynx’s] population grew from 62 mature individuals in 2001 to 648 in 2022. While young and mature lynx combined now have an estimated population of more than 2,000, the IUCN reports. The increase is largely thanks to conservation efforts that have focused on increasing the abundance of its main food source - the also endangered wild rabbit, known as European rabbit. Programmes to free hundreds of captive lynxes and restoring scrublands and forests have also played an important role in ensuring the lynx is no longer endangered.”

3. Planning parenthood for incarcerated men

“[M]any incarcerated young men missed [sex-ed] classroom lessons due to truancy or incarceration. Their lack of knowledge about sexual health puts them at a lifelong disadvantage. De La Cruz [a health educator] will guide [incarcerated youths] in lessons about anatomy and pregnancy, birth control and sexually transmitted infections. He also explores healthy relationships and the pitfalls of toxic masculinity. […] Workshops cover healthy relationships, gender and sexuality, and sex trafficking.”

4. Peru puts endemic fog oasis under protection

“Lomas are unique ecosystems relying on marine fog that host rare and endemic plants and animal species. […] The Peruvian government has formally granted conservation status to the 6,449-hectare (16,000-acre) desert oasis site[….] The site, the first of its kind to become protected after more than 15 years of scientific and advocacy efforts, will help scientists understand climatic and marine cycles in the area[, … and] will be protected for future research and exploration for at least three decades.”

5. Religious groups are protecting Pride events — upending the LGBTQ+ vs. faith narrative

“In some cases, de-escalation teams stand as a physical barrier between protesters and event attendees. In other instances, they try to talk with protesters. The goal is generally to keep everyone safe. Leigh was learning that sometimes this didn’t mean acting as security, but doing actual outreach. That might mean making time and space to listen to hate speech. It might mean offering food or water. […] After undergoing Zoom trainings this spring, the members of some 120 faith organizations will fan out across more than 50 Pride events in 16 states to de-escalate the actions of extremist anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups.”

6. 25 years of research shows how to restore damaged rainforest

“For the first time, results from 25 years of work to rehabilitate fire-damaged and heavily logged rainforest are now being presented. The study fills a knowledge gap about the long-term effects of restoration and may become an important guide for future efforts to restore damaged ecosystems.”

7. Audubon and Grassroots Carbon Announce First-of-its-Kind Partnership to Reward Landowners for Improving Habitats for Birds while Building Healthy Soils

“Participating landowners can profit from additional soil carbon storage created through their regenerative land management practices. These practices restore grasslands, improve bird habits, build soil health and drive nature-based soil organic carbon drawdown through the healthy soils of farms and ranches. […] Additionally, regenerative land management practices improve habitats for birds. […] This partnership exemplifies how sustainable practices can drive positive environmental change while providing tangible economic benefits for landowners.”

8. Circular food systems found to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, require much less agricultural land

“Redesigning the European food system will reduce agricultural land by 44% while dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture by 70%. This reduction is possible with the current consumption of animal protein. “Moreover, animals are recyclers in the system. They can recycle nutrients from human-inedible parts of the organic waste and by-products in the food system and convert them to valuable animal products," Simon says.”

9. Could Treating Injured Raptors Help Lift a Population? Researchers found the work of rehabbers can have long-lasting benefits

“[“Wildlife professionals”] tend to have a dismissive attitude toward addressing individual animal welfare,” [… but f]or most raptor species, they found, birds released after rehabilitation were about as likely to survive as wild birds. Those released birds can have even broader impacts on the population. Back in the wild, the birds mate and breed, raising hatchlings that grow up to mate and breed, too. When the researchers modeled the effects, they found most species would see at least some population-level benefits from returning raptors to the wild.”

10. Indigenous people in the Amazon are helping to build bridges & save primates

“Working together, the Reconecta Project and the Waimiri-Atroari Indigenous people build bridges that connect the forest canopy over the BR-174 road[….] In the first 10 months of monitoring, eight different species were documented — not only monkeys such as the golden-handed tamarin and the common squirrel monkey (Saimiri sciureus), but also kinkajous (Potos flavus), mouse opossums (Marmosops sp.), and opossums (Didelphis sp.).”

Bonus: A rare maneless zebra was born in the UK

June 8-14 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Blames Penitentiary For Views of Her Son,” Kingston Whig-Standard. November 16, 1932. Page 7. ---- HAMILTON, Nov. 16 — Blaming his confinement in Saskatchewan Penitentiary for two years when only thirteen years of age for his anti-capitalistic views, Mrs. A. O. Wilkins appealed to Magistrate Burbridge in police court yesterday to give her son, William, 17 years, another chance. The accused was convicted of obstructing police and forming a parade. 

Magistrate Burbridge pointed out that, as the accused had already served a term in a penitentiary, he had no alternative but to sentence him to a reformatory. "However, I will remand the case for another week and see if there is someway out of the trouble,” he said.

[headspace-hotel]

Going through the bills proposed in the kentucky 2024 legislative session and some of the things being proposed are

make a PFAS Working Group

require homeless shelters to provide free menstrual products (it's actually disturbing that they didn't already)

require schools to provide free menstrual products

create harm reduction centers and lower penalties for possessing controlled substances

require insurance to pay for cancer screenings (okay. low bar but okay)

abolish the death penalty (actually has a couple republican sponsors)

decriminalize cannabis

make fluoridation of water in districts optional (?????)

make coal the "state rock" of Kentucky

Prohibit children from being interrogated in a "deceptive manner" (?)

Make weight discrimination illegal

pay schools to food grown at kentucky farms to provide for school meals at low income schools (hey that's rad)

Lower the age of carrying a concealed deadly weapon from 21 to 18 (?????????????)

Require companies to give their employees earned paid sick leave

Impose restrictions on the collection of biometric data by private entities

Allow poultry to be sold at farmers' markets and at farms

pay for cancer screenings for firefighters

let pregnant incarcerated people have midwives or doula services

require that public high school curriculum include instruction on the history of racism

Remove Robert E. Lee Day, Confederate Memorial Day, and Jefferson Davis Day from the list of public holidays (WE HAVE THOSE?!!?!?!)

Retroactively expunge some cannabis convictions

"Prohibit public school districts from expanding any resources or funds on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging or political or social activism; prohibit public school districts from engaging in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging" (HUH?????)

require schools to give kids a lunch period of at least 30 minutes (the bar is in hell)

provide scholarships for teachers to help the teacher shortage and give teachers compensation for planning time

require schools to have defibrillators

make it so a homeless person doesn't have to pay to get a copy of their birth certificate

require a working smoke detector to be present in any house sold (...did we not already have this?)

create the Kentucky Urban Farming Youth Initiative

Require local governments to lower minimum square footage requirements for housing, and facilitate multifamily housing, manufactured housing, and "tiny homes," and require that zoning laws have a "substantial connection to protection of public safety, health, and usage of property" (This could be a good thing??)

require hiring and licensing authorities to allow people convicted of a crime an opportunity to get a job

Propose a new section of the Kentucky Constitution that guarantees the right of an individual to buy, sell, or use a certain amount of cannabis and to grow a small amount of cannabis plants, and put this on the ballot (LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOO LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE please this would be so funny)

Now let's watch how many of the good and basic common sense laws get left to die by Republicans because Republicans are ghouls

this is why it's important to vote in local elections, this is the kind of stuff that's being decided upon

[fosteringinsc]

10 Key Strategies for Successful Foster System Transition to Independence

Introduction 10 Key Strategies for Successful Foster System Transition to Independence: Empower Foster Youth for a Brighter Future. Transitioning out of the foster system marks a crucial turning point in the lives of many young adults. It’s a period filled with both challenges and opportunities. In this blog post, we will explore effective strategies to help foster youth navigate this transition…

[fatehbaz]

The government of Australia’s northeastern state of Queensland has stunned rights experts by suspending its Human Rights Act for a second time this year to be able to lock up more children.

The ruling Labor Party last month [August 2023] pushed through a suite of legislation to allow under-18s – including children as young as 10 – to be detained indefinitely in police watch houses, because changes to youth justice laws – including jail for young people who breach bail conditions – mean there are no longer enough spaces in designated youth detention centres to house all those being put behind bars. The amended bail laws, introduced earlier this year [2023], also required the Human Rights Act to be suspended.

The moves have shocked Queensland Human Rights Commissioner Scott McDougall, who described human rights protections in Australia as “very fragile”, with no laws that apply nationwide.

“We don’t have a National Human Rights Act. Some of our states and territories have human rights protections [...]. But they’re not constitutionally entrenched so they can be overridden by the parliament,” he told Al Jazeera. The Queensland Human Rights Act – introduced in 2019 – protects children from being detained in adult prison so it had to be suspended for the government to be able to pass its legislation.

---

Earlier this year, Australia’s Productivity Commission reported that Queensland had the highest number of children in detention of any Australian state. Between 2021-2022, the so-called “Sunshine State” recorded a daily average of 287 people in youth detention, compared with 190 in Australia’s most populous state New South Wales, the second highest. [...]

[M]ore than half the jailed Queensland children are resentenced for new offences within 12 months of their release.

Another report released by the Justice Reform Initiative in November 2022 showed that Queensland’s youth detention numbers had increased by more than 27 percent in seven years.

---

The push to hold children in police watch houses is viewed by the Queensland government as a means to house these growing numbers. Attached to police stations and courts, a watch house contains small, concrete cells with no windows and is normally used only as a “last resort” for adults awaiting court appearances or required to be locked up by police overnight. [...]

However, McDougall said he has “real concerns about irreversible harm being caused to children” detained in police watch houses, which he described as a “concrete box”. “[A watch house] often has other children in it. There’ll be a toilet that is visible to pretty much anyone,” he said. “Children do not have access to fresh air or sunlight. And there’s been reported cases of a child who was held for 32 days in a watch house whose hair was falling out. [...]"

---

He also pointed out that 90 percent of imprisoned children and young people were awaiting trial.

“Queensland has extremely high rates of children in detention being held on remand. So these are children who have not been convicted of an offence,” he told Al Jazeera.

Despite Indigenous people making up only 4.6 percent of Queensland’s population, Indigenous children make up nearly 63 percent of those in detention. The rate of incarceration for Indigenous children in Queensland is 33 times the rate of non-Indigenous children. Maggie Munn, a Gunggari person and National Director of First Nations justice advocacy group Change the Record, told Al Jazeera the move to hold children as young as 10 in adult watch houses was “fundamentally cruel and wrong”. [...]

---

[Critics] also told Al Jazeera that the government needed to stop funding “cops and cages” and expressed concern over what [they] described as the “systemic racism, misogyny, and sexism” of the Queensland Police Service.

In 2019, police officers and other staff were recorded joking about beating and burying Black people and making racist comments about African and Muslim people. The recordings also captured sexist remarks [...]. The conversations were recorded in a police watch house, the same detention facilities where Indigenous children can now be held indefinitely.

Australia has repeatedly come under fire at an international level regarding its treatment of children and young people in the criminal justice system. The United Nations has called repeatedly for Australia to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to the international standard of 14 years old [...].

[MR], Queensland’s minister for police and corrective services, [...] – who introduced the legislation, which is due to expire in 2026 – is unrepentant, defending his decision last month [August 2023].

“This government makes no apology for our tough stance on youth crime,” he was quoted as saying in a number of Australian media outlets.

---

Text by: Ali MC. "Australian state suspends human rights law to lock up more children". Al Jazeera. 18 September 2023. At: aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/18/australian-state-suspends-human-rights-law-to-lock-up-more-children [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[pumpacti0n]

We should always be aware that it isn't some innocent mistake that authoritarian "leftists" have constantly failed to acknowledge systems of power other than a vulgar "anti-capitalism" or "anti-imperialism", like they've carelessly left out an ingredient in a cake recipe.

"Whoops, we've acknowledged one abusive hierarchy, but the other ones slipped through our fingers, silly us!" Nope. The reason this analysis of power isn't included in their ideology and praxis is because they consider these hierarchies useful to their projects.

This is why they'll mock or ignore discourse related to youth liberation, disability justice, gender self-determination or anti-patriarchal struggle, for example, or engage in apologetics for capitalist regimes in other countries -- they want to "have their cake, and eat it too".

A key reason why "the left", as some might call it, is not as powerful as it could be isn't because of some lack of discipline (or "degeneracy"), but rather a lack of intersectionality, a criticism that many of those within the black radical tradition, (black feminists and transfeminists more specifically,) have been highlighting in one way or another for at least 50 years.

Authoritarian "leftists" don't want to sacrifice the power that these hierarchies afford them, which explains why they're largely not opposed to prisons, borders, police, the enforcement of gender roles and even capitalism itself, if it's under the purview of the "socialist" ("workers") state and its bureaucrats.

And this is why I keep putting "leftist" in quotes...We're not free until we're all free, so the implication that we should settle for addressing one or two systems of domination while allowing all the others to flourish until we address them in some vague point in the far future is a distortion of what truly radical liberatory politics should entail.

It's simply a myth that we can address capitalism while leaving racism, ableism and misogyny etc. intact, as if they aren't mutually reinforced by one another, as if fascists and reactionaries will forget that they exist once capital is abolished. This is a fantasy, a delusion.

Authcoms love to pose questions like "without a state to enforce class rule, how will the proletariat defend itself?" but a better question would be: "if we fail to acknowledge the hierarchies that atomize and disempower the masses, how could we ever be a threat to capitalists in the first place? how would abandoning the most vulnerable populations serve the interests of the "working class" and "anti-imperial" struggle?

For example, (cis) women make up approximately 50% of the world's population -- so if women are still subjugated by patriarchal rule and the gendered division of labor, how will we have the numbers to fight?

Similarly, a significant portion of the world's population are currently incarcerated. If we don't abolish prisons, allowing the State to continue extracting labor from prisoners and destabilizing untold millions of social relations in the process, how can we hope to match or exceed their powers?

If we do not challenge the capitalist, productivist logic of endless resource accumulation, with its constant pollution of the environment and the displacement and erasure of indigenous peoples and non-human animals, there will be no habitable planet left for us during this "revolution", because we will have destroyed all of it in the name of profit...so what would be the point?

These aren't minor concerns that we can put off indefinitely, and it isn't some innocent mistake that they are left out of the discourse, but are instead deliberate attempts to co-opt liberation struggle for the sake of advancing counter-revolution and authoritarian projects.

It's no wonder then, that they are eager to dismiss any criticism of their projects the result of "western propaganda", as if these same critiques aren't leveraged by very people belonging to populations they constantly tokenize whenever it suits their agenda.

They'd much rather treat every marginalized community as some monolith or as primitive victims in need of saving and representation by a vanguard. This chauvinist, colonial, assimilationist, antisocial attitude is endemic in (often white,) authoritarian circles, because it forms the basis of their position towards racial and gender hierarchies, that they are a natural and inevitable factor of organization itself. They are wrong.

In this sense, they aren't meaningfully different from the capitalists they pretend to hate so much. In truth, they are just jealous and greedy for more cake.

[theflashjaygarrick]

It's a missed opportunity that despite Roy Harper and Jason Todd hanging out now there's been never any tension between about them or exploration of their differing approaches and perspectives on the drug crisis. Particularly because for both of them it is deeply personal.

Roy Harper.

Roy became addicted to drugs in the 1971 comic Snowbirds Don't Fly which was Neil Adam’s and Dennis O'neill's attempt to tackle the "youth's greatest problem!" drug use and addiction. I feel like all most people know is that Speedy took drugs and Ollie took it badly, but that honestly ignores the whole point of the story. The story challenged contextual stigma around addiction and drug use as a personal failing or something that only happened to weak people. It explored how it could happen to anyone, even a hero like Speedy. It focused on the social factors such as racism and poverty and how they push people into substance abuse as a way to cope. It even turns the trope of the evil foreign drug cartel on its head by making the guy behind the drug supply a wealthy white American man in who runs a Pharmaceutical company, doesn't do drugs, and actively mocks the people he profits off the suffering of.

The point therefore is twofold. Firstly, drug users are people just like you and me and it is vital to be compassionate to people struggling with addiction. Ollie who yells at and hits Roy and leaves him due to anger and fear is clearly in the wrong. Hal and Dinah who look after Roy and stand beside him at his friend's funeral and as he confronts Ollie are clearly in the right. Secondly, the solution is not to focus on the drugs but instead to deal with the systemic problems of inequality, oppression, trauma and disenfranchised youth.

Despite parts of it ageing bad (the use of slurs was to demonstrate the damage of racism, but I feel uncomfortable having slurs uncensored in a comic book written by white authors) it is a surprisingly progressive take on addiction for a mainstream 70s DC comic. It also clearly demonstrates Roy's opinion on the drug problem and how to deal with it. He sees anger and going after dealers/manufacturers (like Ollie did) to not be enough. Instead the real change comes from helping the people in that situation by improving their lives and compassionately helping them at their worst.

Enter Jason Todd.

For context Jason Todd has had almost his entire life shaped by trauma of substance abuse. His (adoptive) mother Catherine struggled with addiction and overdosed just months before he met Batman, effectively orphaning him. Soon after he was found by Batman who essentially drafted him into his crusade on crime, not considering that being a vigilante may be potentially damaging for an already traumatised child.

But when he came back in UTRH he decided he could best help Gotham if he killed (largely non-costumed) criminals and controlled the city's criminal underworld himself. After violently assuming control of the drug trade, Jason imposed his own rules for dealers, most famously that he would kill anyone who sold drugs to children or near schools. Later while incarcerated Jason Todd killed 82 Blackgate inmates (and harmed over a hundred) by poisoning the prison food. This mass murder was intrinsically indiscriminate and due to the US prison system it is reasonable to assume people charged with drug offences were included in the death count.

Jason does have deep childhood trauma associated with addiction and drug use and wants to help prevent suffering. That being said, his approach treats drugs as a criminal problem to be eradicated or controlled, not just a symptom of deeper social issues. He kills people who sell drugs to kids, rather than helping building a support system so kids aren't pushed into abusing substances to cope and people don't have to deal to survive.

What does this mean?

Scott Lobdell got details of Roy's addiction wrong and distorted him into a reckless idiot who has been ostracised from the community. But if it was done right their interaction and opposing perspectives/experiences could be really interesting. Both hate drugs and the drug trade, but the way they conceptualise this hatred differs significantly.

Roy focuses on helping the individual and addressing deeper social problems, seeing drugs as a devastating but ultimately symptomatic. Jason sees drug use as first and foremost a criminal issue, with true benefits being achieved through controlling the criminal underworld.

Roy's priority is therefore supporting people struggling with addiction and showing compassion for their situation. Jason doesn't really focus on ways to help the individuals suffering from addiction, as much as mitigating the overall harm and fitting the drug trade into parameters he views as acceptable.

I think it would add needed complexity to their relationship (and to Jason's redemption if we're going that route) as well as dealing with the more 'war-on-drug' elements of UTRH. Also it would help Roy stand on his own as a strong, articulate leader with a dark past rather than being (at least for a while) reduced to essentially Jason's sidekick.

[endcant]

save a bastion for queer culture in a famously hateful city

i’ll try to write a shorter and sweeter post about this later, but for now i will just beg at length.

there is a town near me called Murfreesboro where at various points they have banned or attempted to ban public homosexuality, drag, and pride flags. for a time their county’s youth incarceration rate was 48% (contrasted with the rest of the state at 5%) due to corruption in their local courts system. every juvenile case that made it to the wrong judge resulted in the child being sent to jail, because the county commissioner thought it’d be “cool” if the jail was a “profit center” (yes these are his actual words). these are just a few examples but suffice it to say, this is a very difficult place to grow up, especially for LGBT kids.

despite all of this difficulty, the area has a remarkable alternative music scene with a few small venues where queer people and young people who don’t fit in elsewhere can genuinely have fun and feel safe for the night. despite the city’s reputation, queer people in the broader area flock to the town for raves and DIY shows. in this area, music culture is intertwined with queer culture and leftist efforts to a much greater degree than i’m used to as somebody from the middle of california.

i really admire the venues and event organizers that cultivate a safe spaces like this in a place where it is decidedly unsafe for queer people, and where the youth are constantly in danger of having their lives ruined for totally arbitrary reasons.

this is why it breaks my heart that murfreesboro is trying to shut down a venue called The Graveyard Gallery. the graveyard gallery is a place where a ton of events are constantly held for lgbt, furry, and alternative communities. it is one of very few alternative places in the broader nashville area where i have felt really, truly safe and welcome as a person of color.

most recently, The Graveyard Gallery has come under attack for attempting to hold a Trans Day of Visibility punk show, with the apt title “Trans Day of Vengeance”. Conservative media, both local and national, directed the attention of their audiences towards this event, calling it “tone deaf” to have it on easter, and to have it sort-of-kind-of-close-to-but-not-quite-on the anniversary of the shooting in nashville. All of this, of course, ignoring that the date for TDoV was set in 2009, and that this was a small DIY punk show that really bore no threat to anybody. the show had to be canceled because of credible death threats, so it didn’t even happen, but that hasn’t appeased anybody.

in the wake of this, murfreesboro’s fire marshal has suddenly decided that the building is not acceptable for occupancy and it has to close immediately and for the forseeable future. people can claim it’s unrelated, but i’ve known people to have their businesses suddenly declined by fire marshals due to sheer bigotry before, and shitty towns will just use their fire marshal to bankrupt small business owners that they don’t like. i do not speak for the owners of the gallery on this front, but i personally believe that these things are related.

all this is to say, the graveyard gallery needs to raise money for their legal fees over this matter. this venue is very important to a lot of people, and may be even more important now that the city’s music scene is in the crosshairs of massive conservative media companies.

if you can donate please do, and if you can share this, please do that as well.

thank you for taking the time to read my post. i know there’s a lot going on in the world, but music venues are where people here gather, and music venues are often also a place where people organize to make meaningful change and promote causes that i know most of you would approve of. music is at the heart of this community, and the venues are where the music lives.

[fiercynn]

let's talk about the palestinians in israeli prisons

content warning for discussion of police and military violence, torture, and murder of palestinians, including of children, though not in graphic detail

in just the past two weeks, israel’s genocidal ramp-up in violence and surveillance towards palestinian has led to the doubling of the population of palestinians incarcerated in israeli prisons. prior to october 7, 2023, there were approximately 5,200 palestinians incarcerated by israel; by october 21, that number had increased to over 10,000. around 4,000 are gazans who were working in israel with temporary labor permits, and another 1,070 are palestinians arrested in overnight army raids in the occupied west bank and east jerusalem.

imprisoned palestinians are being treated worse than ever; israeli forces and guards are assaulting them, starving them, preventing them from accessing healthcare, cutting off of their water and electricity, and prohibiting them from any contact from their families. the knesset (israeli parliament) even voted this past week to allow prisons to reduce the minimum living space allotted to each detainee because of the rising crush of prisoners, and to allow detainees to be imprisoned without a bed.

but this recent ramp-up in detention and increase in the dehumanization of palestinians should not overshadow the long history of oppression, torture, and murder of palestinians by israeli forces through the criminalization. for a good background and summary, rawan masri and fathi nemer’s piece imprisoning palestine: zionist colonialism through an abolitionist lens for scalawag magazine is an illuminating analysis of how israeli law, policing, and incarceration have worked together to advance zionist colonization of palestine and dispossess palestinians of their land, their rights, and their humanity.

as a result of this history, the following dynamics and outcomes have long existed in israeli policing and incarceration of palestinians:

prior to october 7, one in every five palestinians had been arrested and charged under israeli military occupation; that percentage has only gone up now. while the absolute numbers on incarceration are nowhere near a country like the u.s., the rates of incarceration for palestinians are massively higher even than those of black americans (which is not to downplay the latter; the rates of incarceration for black americans is also fucking ridiculous and horrifying.) for palestinian men, that incarceration rate was as high as 40%. the united nations estimates that approximately one million palestinians have been imprisoned since israel occupied the west bank and gaza in 1967, including tens of thousands of children.

the israeli criminal legal system is anti-black as well, particularly towards afro-palestinians, who are tireless in their fight for palestinian liberation. even black jewish people are impacted by carceral anti-blackness: 40% of minors in the israeli correction system are ethiopian israeli jewish people, although ethiopian israelis make up less than 2% of population. but the racism is even clearer for the tiny community of 350-400 afro-palestinians, who live in a neighborhood in jerusalem that is blockaded at both entrances by israeli police, where they are highly surveilled and face constant police harassment. the majority of their community has been arrested at one point or another, and those who are incarcerated, including youth, are subject to constant rearrests for flimsy reasons. for example, mohammed firawi, an afro-palestinian youth who had been arrested when he was in twelfth grade because he was accused of throwing stones at israeli police, was shuttled around nine israeli prisons before being released five years later. however, he was rearrested two days after his homecoming because he “defied Israeli orders to refrain from celebrating [his release].”

palestinians live under a different (and harsher) system of law than israelis – an inequality so profoundly unjust that it didn’t even exist in south africa’s apartheid system. in the occupied west bank, palestinians are tried under military law for the same crimes that israelis are tried under civilian law. teenagers and adults alike are tried in military courts, where simultaneous arabic interpretation is not provided, so palestinian defendants are only provided summaries at the end of proceedings that can leave out important details. virtually all military cases in the west bank end in convictions – 99.74%, to be exact.

the separate systems of law also mean that palestinians can be held without trial or even being charged. “administrative detention” allows the israeli military to hold prisoners indefinitely on secret information, and is applied almost exclusively to palestinians in the occupied west bank, east jerusalem, and gaza. prior to october 7, there were 1,264 administrative detainees out of the total 5,200 palestinian people incarcerated in israeli jails – almost 25%!

palestinian children detained by the israeli military are subject to physical and psychological torture. since the second intifada in 2000, more than 12,000 palestinian children have been detained by the israeli military, and between 500 and 1000 children are held every year. a save the children report from july 2023 found that 86% of palestinian children report being beaten in israeli military detention. 42% are injured at the point of arrest, and 69% report being strip-searched. they are often interrogated without the presence of a parent or lawyer, and potentially even in a language not understood to them. they are also charged according to their age at the time of sentencing instead of at the time of their alleged offense, allowing for higher charges simply because their trials take a long time.

palestinians are often murdered in prison by security forces, and the bodies of palestinians who die in detention can be kept by israeli forces for the remainder of their sentence. since 1967, approximately 237 palestinian detainees have reportedly been murdered with torture, medical negligence, or execution during arrest or an escape attempt. in late 2022 and early 2023, the united nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied palestinian territories learned that israeli authorities were holding 125 palestinian bodies, including 13 bodies of palestinians who had died in prison, “allegedly as they need to terminate the execution of the sentence”. the bodies of palestinians are even lost or visibly damaged by israeli authorities when they are returned to families.

palestinian prisoners often face exile to gaza even when they are released, regardless of where they were originally from. former prisoners are often separated from their families, who may have difficulty entering gaza, and who may also lose rights simply for being related to a former prisoner. for example, formerly incarcerated palestinian shuaib abu snina was exiled to gaza, and found that his wife and children in jerusalem were raided and arrested by israeli forces using him as as reason. shuaib was forced to divorce his wife because his eldest son was told that israeli forces “will not deal with your [family] as citizens with rights in jerusalem unless your father divorces your mother”.

but even in captivity, palestinians continue to resist and fight for their liberation. incarcerated palestinians engage in mass disobedience even when faced with beatings or solitary confinement from doing so. since at least the 1960s, palestinians have undergone mass and individual hunger strikes; on may 2, 2023, khader adnan, who was being held without trial in administration detention, was martyred after 80 days of hunger strike. incarcerated palestinians also support each other and have earned concessions through their protests, such as increased visitations, better conditions, access to books and political curriculum, and more – though many of these are clearly being violated by the current israeli acceleration in imprisonment.

as rawan masri and fathi nemer conclude for scalawag magazine:

Today, more than ever, it remains crucial to center any discussion about Palestinian liberation through the lens of abolition and a complete rejection of carcerality. In this context, Incarceration is not only related to prisons and prisoners, but touches upon every aspect of our life. From the moment of birth, Palestinians must contend with being criminalized for existing. We are surveilled and censored, our oppression normalized, and our bodies corralled into various open-air and closed prisons. Such tactics have always revealed more about the jailor than the prisoner, and the logics inherent to the carceral apparatus are shared between all oppressive forces. While the goal is to project strength and power, what it divulges instead is fear, insecurity, and self-doubt. Resorting to locking away the inconvenient reminders of a crooked system betrays its weakness, a society unable to function without constructed villains onto which the world's ills can be pinned. It is an attempt to cover the sun with a sieve. [x]

organizations to follow and support:

addameer prisoner support and human rights association

samidoun palestinian prisoner solidarity network

al-haq

adalah legal center for arab minority rights in israel

adalah justice project

[hussyknee]

Libs are like, "YOU CAN'T LET TRUMP WIN JUST BECAUSE BIDEN IS COMMITTING A GENOCIDE! THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR SINGLE-ISSUE VOTERS", when the fact is that people are already really fucking angry at him for funding two wars during a severe cost of living crisis. Biden's pet dog has already gotten Israel and the US embroiled in a steadily escalating conflict with Houthis and Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon, and now Netanyahu is trying to ethnically cleanse two million Gazans by pushing them out of the country into Egypt, one of the countries the US gives billions of aid money to make nice with Israel and help them trap the Palestinians. Egypt is already mad about this (although Idk what they expected lol) and if Israel creates a border conflict with them, Iran might press their advantage and then the whole region descend into an all-out war in which the US is embroiled. At which point oil prices will jump, the US economy get even worse, more tax money funnelled into TWO wars, one of which is due to the genocide.

People might not care about Muslims living thousands of miles away, but they have some very strong opinions about putting food on the table. At this point there's a pretty significant shift in the Black community towards Trump because Biden has INCREASED funding for police, is supporting Cop City that someone DIED protesting, and hasn't made a dent in mass incarceration (the marijuana pardon was fucking hilarious in a depraved way). The right has also been weaponizing Black people's resentment against Latino "illegal aliens" and Biden's "concessions" towards them, when actually his immigration policies have barely been less draconian than Trump's all this time. The reason he's making those concessions is that he has to look more progressive than him, except he's also been slowly escalating ICE crackdowns, keeping kids in cages and building a border wall. So the Latin voters are entirely fed up with him too.

So far, he's lost the Muslim vote, the Latin vote, the Black vote, the youth vote (people of ages 18 to 35 are the most outraged at the genocide in Gaza), and they're hemorrhaging the working class votes. These are the extremely angry and betrayed people the liberals are currently working overtime screaming at about Trump "bringing the death of democracy", like democracy means anything to them compared to losing jobs, money, visas, family members, health (Biden's first and ongoing genocide is disabled people due to his COVID policies), social infrastructure and money.

Y'all said Blue Not Matter Who and elected a career racist and known incompetent who supported segregation, was an architect of mass incarceration, got Clarence Thomas elected to the Supreme Court and spewed rhetoric against Arabs so genocidal that motherfucking Menachem Begin was like "....bro." And you got exactly what you paid for. If Trump gets on the ticket next year he's going to win, and no amount of screaming at people online is going to change that. So I suggest you start organising now. The age of trying to create a revolution at the ballot box is over.