Check this out.
Right here at Daily Kos, there is a diary series by Angola 3 News which gets essentially ignored.
Criminal Injustice Kos gets a bit more attention, but not much. Lots more comments but never the type of attention I've seen here around the issues I mentioned above.
Bob Sloan has been writing and writing about the prison-industrial complex and finally got one diary on the rec list.
This is not about Democrats or Republicans. Our elected officials, federal, state and local endorse these policies. And so it seems do the voters. We see an entire weekend devoted to trivializing prison on MSNBC. Not one liberal pundit there has said - I won't work here if you don't get rid of this crap. But they all denounce torture - elsewhere.
I read Solitary Watch
Maybe all of you should too.
There was an interesting piece there about Bradley Manning earlier this month.
On Bradley Manning, Solitary Confinement, and Selective Outrage by Jean Casella and James Ridgeway.
All of you who would like to see him "not tortured" should perhaps take 10 minutes out to read it.
Here are some excerpts.
For the past few weeks, progressive online media sources have been burning with outrage over the conditions in which accused Wikileaker Bradley Manning is being held. Manning (as we first noted on Solitary Watch back in July) is in 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement at a Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia, denied sunlight, exercise, possessions, and all but the most limited contact with family and friends. He has now been in isolation for more than seven months. The cruel and inhuman conditions of his detention, first widely publicized by Glenn Greenwald on Salon and expanded upon by others, are now being discussed, lamented, and protested throughout the progressive blogosphere (ourselves included). Few of those taking part in the conversation hesitate to describe Manning’s situation as torture.
Meanwhile, here at Solitary Watch, we’ve been receiving calls and emails from our modest band of readers, all of them saying more or less the same thing: We’re glad Bradley Manning’s treatment is getting some attention, but what about the tens of thousands of others who are languishing in solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails? According to available data, there are some 25,000 inmates in long-term isolation in the nation’s supermax prisons, and as many as 80,000 more in solitary in other facilities. Where is the outrage–even among progressives–for these forgotten souls? Where, for that matter, is some acknowledgment of their existence?
The authors point out that many of the people who are outraged have made him an exception - for a whole host of reasons.
Exceptions like "he is a hero" or "He has only been accused - not convicted".
Frequently, writers and readers make the point that Manning is being subjected to these condition while he is merely accused , rather than convicted, of a crime. Perhaps they need to be introduced to the 15-year-old boy who, along with several dozen other juveniles, is being held is solitary in a jail in Harris County, Texas, while he awaits trial on a robbery charge. He is one of hundreds–if not thousands–of prisoners being held in pre-trial solitary confinement, for one reason or another, on any given day in America. Most of them lack decent legal representation, or are simply too poor to make bail.
We have also seen articles suggesting that the treatment Manning is receiving is worse than the standard for solitary confinement, since he is deprived even of a pillow or sheets for his bed. Their authors should review the case of the prisoners held in the St. Tammany Parish Jail in rural Louisiana. According to a brief by the Louisiana ACLU, "After the jail determines a prisoner is suicidal, the prisoner is stripped half-naked and placed in a 3′ x 3′ metal cage with no shoes, bed, blanket or toilet...Prisoners report they must curl up on the floor to sleep because the cages are too small to let them lie down. Guards frequently ignore repeated requests to use the bathroom, forcing some desperate people to urinate in discarded containers." The cells are one-fourth the size mandated by local law for caged dogs.
Go read the whole thing - and the discussion in comments.
They end with this:
Moreover, if solitary confinement is torture–or at the very least, cruel and inhuman punishment–then it shouldn’t matter what a prisoner has done to end up there. As Lynn Parramore writes, "The placement of human beings in solitary confinement is not a measure of their depravity. It is a measure of our own."
The treatment of Bradley Manning, which has introduced many on the left to the torment of solitary confinement, may present an opportunity for them to measure their own humanity. They might begin by asking themselves whether prison torture is wrong, and worthy of their attention and outrage, only when it is committed against people whose actions they admire.
Torture - no matter who it is done to is wrong.
Maybe most of you don't have family, friends or loved ones who have been to jail or prison in America. I do. Maybe you don't know anyone who has ever been in solitary. I do. I know one person who is currently in solitary for life - and can only see his lawyers.
I knew others who were in the "Adjustment Center" at San Quentin - tortured and then killed. There was a time when the left shouted out in rage about these issues. There was a time we marched and protested.
Now - those brothers and sisters sit in solitary. If they are lucky they may get a newspaper. If so - they must wonder why they are different from Bradley Manning.
Why do you ignore them?
I'd like to know that too.
Solitary is Cruel and Inhuman Treatment.
If you don't fight against it for all - you condone it.
Comments are closed on this story.