Your Jobs Went to Prison with 2.3m Americans

"Good Enuff" is one of my 21st century slave songs, first published in MaryLovesJustice blog in April 2011. Most ex-offenders are not perceived as being "good enough" to work for the government or major corporations until they are back in prison. A million inmates work up to 72 hours a week on jobs that were removed from "free" workers. People who champion "tough on crime" bills and candidates do not seem to recognize that prison labor projects compete for jobs that are removed from the private sector. Prisons actually advertise for companies to use inmate labor rather than companies that pay minimum wage and union scale wages. Prison slavery is a thriving business, and inmates who refuse to work are punished. Thousands of Georgia inmates staged a labor strike in December 2010 to protest human rights abuses. Their nonviolent protest was met with brutality. Thirty-seven inmates perceived to be organizers of the Georgia labor strike are still "missing," and probably being held in solitary confinement. See the poem "Good Enuff" below. 

GOOD ENUFF

I work for the U.S. Government

Worked five years for the state

Now I make military uniforms

Sho miss my good friend, Jake

His idea sounded real fine to me

Worker strike for human rights

Most of us agreed to stay in our cells

Got real cold in there at night

They turned off the heat ya know

And no food came at all

Guards said “Freeze Nigga or go to work!

Oughta hang you by yo balls”

But all of us stuck together

Thousands of black men, Latinos and whites

Put aside all our rivalry

Gonna make ‘em treat us right

We expected opposition

But nothin’ like what went down

Guards went crazy beatin’ on folks

And Jake, he can’t be found

I tried to get on with the government

Back before I started gettin’ high

They said there was a hiring freeze

And now I sho see why

I applied with the State, too

But didn’t nothin’ came of that

I guess I just wasn’t good enuff

‘Til they caught me with that crack

Finally got me a government job

Problem is, I don’t get no pay

A big company got my first five years

After laying off a thousand in one day

Our labor strike changed nothin’ ‘round here

Still can’t afford phone calls

Now they expect plenty mo black workers

Heard they outlawing menthol*

We had high hopes for the labor strike

But things didn’t turn out great

All day I work ‘til my back is sore

All night I worry ‘bout Jake
(Published 4/4/11 by Mary Neal - all rights reserved)  http://marylovesjustice.blogspot.com/2011/04/good-enuff-by-mary-neal.html

If you don't care about prisoners, consider this: YOUR JOBS WENT TO PRISON along with 2.3 million people http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/business/private-businesses-fight-federal-prisons-for-contracts.html?pagewanted=all . Roughly one million prison laborers work in customer service, manufacturing, and perform many former union jobs. Private industries in America cannot compete with prisons and overseas corporations for providing cheap production costs. End mass incarceration (excerpt from "2012 Human Rights from Prisoners (relay) March" at http://freespeakblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/2012-human-rights-for-prisoners-march.html ). The Georgia prisoners' labor strike lasted from December 9 -15, 2010, but numerous inmates are now in week five of a dangerous hunger strike.

Inmates' labor strike of December 2010 was largely censored in mainstream news although it was an Internet sensation. Therefore, a day before the strike started, eleven hundred of my tweets for human rights for prisoners were unpublished at Twitter. They were reinstated months later, after people stopped browsing online as much for "human rights for prisoners." I am America's most censored writer to continue the cover-up re the secret arrest and murder of my mentally, physically disabled brother and my family's victimization for daring to ask the USDOJ for records and accountability for his death. Inmate abuse is rampant in America, just as slaves were abused or killed without censure for centuries. For instance, the Georgia inmates' nonviolent protest was met with violence and solitary confinement. Inmates count on 'free people' to care about their living conditions, just as God does (Hebrews 13:3). Georgia inmates on a hunger strike are close to death as I publish this report. See the video about the starving inmates at this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTeSTRiKC6Q 

 

Some promising changes are underway regarding Georgia's high incarceration rate under Governor Deal:  "As reported in this Atlanta Journal-Constitution article, headlined 'Governor to sign sweeping justice reform bill,' the 'way Georgia punishes thousands of nonviolent offenders will forever change when Gov. Nathan Deal signs landmark legislation Wednesday.  Here is more: Deal told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution he will also sign an executive order continuing the work of a special council that studied the state's prison system and recommended sweeping changes to control unimpeded growth in prison spending. The reforms in House Bill 1176, to be signed at a ceremony at the Capitol, are projected to save taxpayers $264 million over the next five years....'"  http://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2012/05/georgia-joins-ever-growing-red-states-enacting-sweeping-sentencing-reforms.html   

More information about the Georgia prisoners' hunger strike is available at this link to the "Black Agenda Report" http://blackagendareport.com/content/ga-prison-hunger-strike-enters-5th-week

 *The NAACP requested the U.S. Congress to outlaw menthol cigarettes, the kind that 85% of black smokers use. That would be a discriminatory law targeting blacks like powder v. crack cocaine, and it is disgusting that prison investors got the NAACP to suggest it.

Mary Neal, director of Assistance to the Incarcerated Mentally Ill and the Human Rights for Prisoners March. Blessings!