America’s prison-industrial-complex becomes an ever larger sector of the global economy with every passing year: it’s not going to change until we own the ability to break the vicious cycle at its deepest roots. I’m a citizen of this tiny planet who still believes “Think Global, Act Local.” It’s more than a bumper sticker.
This is also a personal invitation to anyone finding themselves near the juncture of Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky June 25 between 3 and 6 o’clock.
Update: my reaction to the teach-in that I posted on FaceBook.
This teach-in was marvelously planned and conducted. The visual aids were convincing and well documented. My thanks go to everyone who made this possible. The room was filled and I look forward to the next one scheduled for next month in Price Hill. It’s important information for an informed citizenry. Grass-root movements like this one are crucial.
My written stuff is more coherent than my vocal attempts these days, so I’m including a link here to the articles I’ve written this past year on the subject of America’s prison-industrial-complex, how it relates to being a Mensch. Again, my thanks to all and each.
Jennifer Gonnerman is the journalist I credit with introducing me to a young man trapped as thoroughly as the protagonist Kafka introduced in his uncompleted novel Der Prozess (The Trial), a recognition of injustices that compel gentle souls to scream at the every day horror of the everyday.
One year ago billziegler1947 became a vehicle for transporting readers via metaphor: the ancient and modern Greek for “transport.”
The transport stops here, I turn the wheel over to Ms. Gonnerman:
Before Browder ever attempted to take his own life, he saw another inmate in the jail try to end his.
African Voices: a Tribute to Kalief Browder by Jennifer Gonnerman
excerpt from her New Yorker article published at 10:45 this morning.
On June 6, 2015, Kalief Browder took his own life at his home, in the Bronx. He was twenty-two years old. He had been released from Rikers Island two years earlier, ending an ordeal that had begun on a spring night in 2010, when he had been arrested for robbery, at sixteen. He spent the next three years in jail trying to prove his innocence, and, for about two of those years, he was held in solitary confinement, where he attempted suicide several times. The charges against him were eventually dropped. I met him after his release and wrote a story about him in the fall of 2014.
Please remember Mr. Browder each Memorial Day, acknowledging the fallen and the falling: the failure of a society.
Hedy Epstein (née Wachenheimer) was born in the city of Freiburg in the year 1924, a nine-year old kid when Hitler took over. She was one of the fortunate few who left Germany for the United States in 1939 (Kindertransport).
Hedy reported on Israel’s behavior during the 1982 Lebanon War. That behavior brought familiar the memories of childhood in a Freiburg in the 1930’s.
Hedy ist eine Menschln presently living in St. Louis, Missouri. In 2014 she was arrested at a protest in a suburb of Ferguson on a charge of “Failure to Disperse,” a charge similar to “Failure to Communicate.” Both “failures” are euphemisms. A “communication failure” took the life of Mr. Michael Brown.
Fascism is never a good idea, but many fervently long for it every day.
Fascism is never subtle, it’s better at blurting and wallowing.
Fascism proclaims that ethnic cleanliness is next to godliness.
Fascism is proud and nasty, upfront and in your face foul.
Fascism believes that “the others” are impurities and impediments.
Fascism winks, nods and smiles at efficient and early dispatch of undesirables.
Be aware of how well Hedy Epstein is accepted in Israeli society. Beware.
“This diminutive 91-year-old icon of freedom and justice is loved and adored by everyone whose lives she has inspired or touched. As far as many Israelis are concerned, though, she can burn in hell. Some of them have actually said much, much worse about this frail, gentle, loving little Jewish lady who has put her life on the line continually for Palestine.”
Just for the record: Jesus of Nazareth was not of European descent.
Fascism always festers fulsomely under the surface of polite society.
Question the plea “We must return to our commonly shared Judeo-Christian values as established by our Christian founding fathers.” What about the other third of the triad of a monotheism rooted in the Levant?
Translations lie. Oft repeated lies lie big-time. Repeat a lie enough and it becomes the stuff of conventional wisdom. Watch out for the fallacy of affirming the consequent when presenting a logical argument.
Joseph Goebbels knew how to lie at world-class levels.
Ignore news cycles, soundbites, repeated headlines, rehashed dead horses.
Sounding out for solid solidarity in Cincinnati for Palestine. I have included a new category on billziegler1947: cincy4palestine. You can reference existing content on Palestinian independence and human rights by clicking it. CPSC recognizes the need to act locally as we join in solidarity with a purpose.
CPSC is obtaining visibility in greater Cincinnati and the greater world. It began last year with a teach in at the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library, a second at the University of Cincinnati, a third at the Clifton Mosque, a fourth at Mt. Auburn Presbyterian Church and we are working on a fifth teach-in.
We are raising our visibility and are joining other like-minded souls in supporting BDS.
At the same time we have sponsored film screenings at several locations to shine truth on a deferred dream and a half century of occupation in Gaza and the West Bank, funded by the monetary and military power of the United States.
We believe that many small voices speaking truth will bring down the Apartheid Wall and end the occupation.
The Oslo Accords of 1993 are dead. 500,000 stakes were driven through its heart by a half-million settlers. These settlers, many of them truculent and militant, live in modern super gateway communities subsidized by the United States. It’s a divide and conquer strategy.
The United States government transfers $10,000,000 per day to Israel ($0 per day for Palestine) as well as the highest tech military support systems. These preserve a lucrative status quo for Israel and for those corporations making a killing from it.
Meanwhile Palestinians’ birthright is reported throughout US media as “stones, knives and poorly guided mortar fire.” Informed readers have to go offshore for the headlines that are ignored in our corporate or corporate-sponsored media.
The Apartheid Wall looms above a complex of modern fenced highways leading to each former Palestinian village and renamed in Hebrew from the original Arabic. Fences and security stations are everywhere. The reason: humiliation and eventual ethnic cleansing for a “greater” Israel.
billziegler1947 