Discrimination

Currently Reading:
"The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" by Michaelle Alexander

Things I've learned in the Introduction: 

- In 1972, fewer than 350,000 people were being held in prisons and jails nationwide, compared with more than 2 million people today. This magnum rate increase is directly correlated with the "War on Drugs".

- The War on Drugs began at a time when illegal drug use was on the decline.

-A few years after the drug war was declared, crack began to spread rapidly in the poor black neighborhoods of Los Angeles and later emerged in cities across the country.

- The CIA admitted in 1998 that guerrilla armies it actively supported in Nicaragua were smuggling illegal drugs into the US; they also admitted to blocking law enforcement efforts to investigate illegal drug networks that were helping to fund its covert war in Nicaragua. 

- The National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals issued a recommendation in 1973, that "no new institutions for adults should be build and existing institutions for juveniles should be closed" because they found that "the prison, the reformatory and the jail have achieved only a shocking recored of failure. There is overwhelming evidence that these institutions create crime rather than prevent it." 

- Once you're labeled a felon--employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity,denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and excision from jury service are legal.


My Conclusions so far: 
1.) Wow. Who made these policies? Obviously our mindsets and policies need a dramatic change. And if the policies don't change, the representatives need to. 
2.) I need to start involving myself in politics, going to town meetings, voting and such…….(ek!)
3.) The substances and activities our towns, states, and country legalizes and taboos is baffling…