Youth Incarceration and Social Awareness (30 & Under)

I would really appreciate your time taking this survey to better understand the needs of individual cities in NJ.  All US States & Territories welcome to participate.  (Pennsylvania residents: We can connect you with Decarcerate in you state)

Tour de Decarcerate: Camden Edition

Tour de Decarcarate: Camden Edition Press Release

For Immediate Release

January 1, 2015

Tour de Decarcarate: Camden Edition

Ferry Avenue Library:  852 Ferry Ave, Camden, NJ

January 24, 2015 3:00-5:00 pm

The Camden Comeback welcomes Decarcerate the Garden State to Ferry Avenue Library in Camden, New Jersey for a panel discussion. “The goal of this event is to begin the process of linking Camden with Trenton, Jersey City, Patterson and Newark so that we may be able to educate OUR residents on mass incarceration and to submit a holistic plan of action as a grassroots movement with Decarcerate the Garden State,” Gary C Frazier Jr (Founder of The Camden Comeback).

The keynote speaker of the event will be Dequi Kioni-Sadiki of the National Jericho Movement. Dequi has been active in the struggles against police violence, criminal justice, tuition hikes and women’s reproductive rights. She is a former member of the Black Panther Collective. She served as national co-chair of the People of African Descent Caucus for the Washington, DC-based United States Student Association, and currently works with the NYC Jericho Movement in the campaign to free United States political prisoners and prisoners of war. 

National Jericho Movement locates political prisoners, compiling records on them and building the case for amnesty; as well as, providing supportive services such as to legal defense.

We will hear from a representative of Decarcerate the Garden State who will speak about the proposed bill they are promoting: NJ Decarceration Act and their ongoing efforts to organize community wide discussions on mass incarceration in at least 30 cities across NJ.

In addition to Decarcerate the Garden State, some of Camden’s most dedicated community activists including but not limited to Faheem Lea, Gary C. Frazier Jr, Founder & Operator of The Camden Comeback, who educate, raise awareness and express a need for CHANGE. The Camden Comeback is a Political Action Committee that was established to address ALL Local and State Affairs that directly and indirectly effect the Political, Social, Educational, Economic and Social development of the citizens of Camden, NJ.

Please direct all calls or correspondences to:

The Camden Comeback: Gary Frazier at (856) 408-4409 email: geehovas@yahoo.com

Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes

I took these pictures of this mural walking down Ferry Avenue in Camden, New Jersey today. I immediately took notice and admired it,  I walked to see if it took up the entire underpass, it almost does.  It is a Langston Hughes poem.  I added the poem as well.

 

Photos: 'Die-In' at King of Prussia Mall

Photos: 'Die-In' at King of Prussia Mall

King of Prussia Die In

This event was organized by Marie Lambert. I am just so enthused and excited to keep moving America forward in the right direction.  This is event is only one of many events that will be hosted.

King of Prussia Mall Die-In

This die-in took place today, December 20, 2014 in King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania.  That is one of the biggest malls in the Delaware Valley. 

Tour de Camden Decarcerate Garden State Style

America After Ferguson : Young African American Man Gives A Great Response

Ronald Davis-Homeless Chicago Man, Tells Heartbreaking Story.

It's a damn shame that we have so many people in America who are homeless and in poverty.  Very rich and resourceful, yet we have not made an effort to help all. I noticed some people in America will only help their "people" (People who can do for themselves)

Tweet

The best part about me being me, is... I'm not trying to be you.
— Queneke King (@mzqueneke) May 10, 2014

Alaska Cannabis Club

Fact Sheet: How Bad Is the School-to-Prison Pipeline?

“In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunities of an education.  Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right that must be made available on equal terms.”
-  Chief Justice Earl Warren, Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

The school-to-prison pipeline: an epidemic that is plaguing schools across the nation. Far too often, students are suspended, expelled or even arrested for minor offenses that leave visits to the principal’s office a thing of the past. Statistics reflect that these policies disproportionately target students of color and those with a history of abuse, neglect, poverty or learning disabilities.

Students who are forced out of school for disruptive behavior are usually sent back to the origin of their angst and unhappiness—their home environments or their neighborhoods, which are filled with negative influence. Those who are forced out for smaller offenses become hardened, confused, embittered. Those who are unnecessarily forced out of school become stigmatized and fall behind in their studies; many eventually decide to drop out of school altogether, and many others commit crimes in their communities.

It is difficult to pinpoint the exact reason for the school-to-prison pipeline. Many attribute it to the zero tolerance policies that took form after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. Others blame educators, accusing them of pushing out students who score lower on standardized tests in order to improve the school’s overall test scores. And some blame overzealous policing efforts. The reasons are many, but the solutions are not as plentiful.

So how bad is the school-to-prison pipeline? See the stats for yourself, leave suggestions, find programs in your local community, take a stance.

This infographic from SuspensionStories.com demonstrates a general overview:

Facts and Statistics:

-  A 2007 study by the Advancement Project and the Power U Center for Social Change says that for every 100 students who were suspended, 15 were Black, 7.9 were American Indian, 6.8 were Latino and 4.8 were white.

-  The same study reports that the U.S. spends almost $70 billion annually on incarceration, probation and parole. This number lends itself to a 127% funding increase for incarceration between 1987-2007. Compare that to a 21% increase in funding for higher education in the same 20-year span.

-  Based on statistics from the Civil Rights Data Collection (see sources below), in 2009, the Los Angeles Unified School District reported the following numbers for out-of-school suspensions: 62% Hispanic students, 33% Black students, 3% white and 2% Asian. LAUSD also reported that of their expulsions, 67% of Hispanic students and 5% of Black students were not offered educational services. Lastly, 77% Hispanics and 8% of Asian, Black and white students were expelled under zero tolerance policies.

-  The CRDC also shows that in 2009, the West Valley School District in Spokane, WA expelled 20% Black students and 60% white students and offered no educational services. Of those who were expelled, 10% Black students and 60% white students were done so under zero tolerance policies. Those who were referred to law enforcement included 10% Black students and 80% white students. However, Spokane school districts reported a higher number of enrolled white students. West Valley School district consisted of 86% white students and 4% Black students.

-  In St. Louis, MO schools, the Normandy School District’s 98% Black student population drew in the following: 100% of all students who received more than one out-of-school suspension, 100% of those who were expelled without educational services and 100% of those who were referred to law enforcement. In Missouri’s Ritenour School District, 67% of Black students vs. 33% white students were referred to law enforcement.

-  New Orleans, LA has numbers equally as staggering. The Orleans Parish School Board’s expulsions under zero tolerance policies were 100% Black, with 67% of their school-related arrests being Black students. The RSD-Algiers Charter School Association had 75% of their expelled students without educational services black. Furthermore, 100% of their expulsions under zero tolerance policies and 100% of their school-related arrests were all Black students.

Below are expanded statistics pulled from the Civil Rights Data Collection, with latest results from 2009.

Remember: While it’s easy to think the school-to-prison pipeline only impacts particular students and their respective families, we must remember that our whole society will feel the consequences. Today’s youth are tomorrow’s leaders. And we must remember that we cannot teach a student who is not in school.

PBS

School to Prison Pipeline

The term "school-to-prison pipeline" is a phrase that is used by education reform activists and organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Justice Policy Center, Advancement Project, and the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) to describe what they view as a widespread pattern in the United States of pushing students, especially those who are already at a disadvantage, out of school and into the American criminal justice system. They argue that this "pipeline" is the result of public institutions being neglectful or derelict in properly addressing students as individuals who might need extra educational or social assistance, or being unable to do so because of staffing shortages or statutory mandates. The resulting miseducation and mass incarceration are said to create a vicious circle for individuals and communities.The school-to-prison pipeline is understood to operate at all levels of US government (federal, state, county, city and school district), and both directly and indirectly.

Critiques of the school-to-prison pipeline attempt to show how it falls into larger systems of domination such as racism, ableism, and capitalism. An unfair distribution of educational resources make students less likely to learn, less likely to find good jobs, and more likely to end up in prison. The more people in disadvantaged communities that go to prison, the more alienated and economically disadvantaged these communities become.The pipeline can also be critiqued in terms of neoliberalism, the idea that market forces can organize every facet of society. Because prisons can be privatized and run for profit, and traditional public schools cannot, the market favors sending people to prisons rather than schools--particularly if they are not destined to become part of the high-skilled workforce. (As prisoners, people can be compelled to perform labor anyway.) In keeping with this system, school budgets have shrunk while prison budgets have expanded massively, while even within schools more funding goes to police and less to teachers and children.^[15] The feedback loop between standardized testing and school funding is seen by some as another facet of neoliberalism, creating competition between students and teachers who need good test scores to keep their jobs.

Because neoliberalism does leave out a large and arguably expanding section of the global population, it creates disenfranchised people that it needs to control.According to an article from Black Agenda Report, the criminal justice system dedicated to controlling and arresting members of poorer populations is a necessary counterpart to the "free market" policies that constitute neoliberalism's public face.

Wikipedia

The School to Prison Pipeline by Advancement Project

Campaign to End the New Jim Crow Trenton/Princeton Chapter

About

We educate and organize to end mass incarceration and discriminatory practices in our criminal justice system, by increasing awareness of our broken system

Who We Are

We are a grass roots coalition of Princeton area leaders and concerned individuals and organizations, who have come together to help to end mass i

ncarceration. We have been inspired by Michelle Alexander’s book: The New Jim Crow – Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness, and her many predecessors and allies, who have worked to alert government and the public to the antecedents, problematic nature and societal impacts of our "criminal justice" system. 

Our Mission

We educate and organize to end mass incarceration and discriminatory practices in our criminal justice system, by increasing awareness of our broken system, supporting advocacy groups, families of the incarcerated and influencing legislation.

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420 Event Trenton NJ

"Make the most you can of the Indian Hemp seed and sow it 

 everywhere."


- George Washington, U.S. President



"Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth & protection of the 

 country."  - Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President 

NJ Cannabis Conference Rally

Legalize Marijuana Rally

Come out on Saturday, October 18, to the NJ State House for a parade and rally to support the legalization of marijuana in NJ. 

This rally will include potheads, NJ Medical Marijuana Patients, cannabis consumers, politicians, parents of sick children who need medical marijuana, and anyone against the current NJ laws on cannabis. 

This is a legalization rally but will also support any progressive measures on marijuana, including a more compassionate medical marijuana program - But this rally is a demand for the Full Legalization of Marijuana. 

We will ride the trains and buses to Trenton to CONFRONT Governor Christie. 

The "Parade of the People" will begin at 2:00 PM at the Riverline train station. NJ Weedman will lead the march up Clinton Avenue make left at State street and march on to the NJ statehouse, where we will join those already gathered in front of the Statehouse steps at 3:30 PM with speeches, special prayers and ingesting of our sacrament at 4:20 PM!

At 4:20 PM, we will smoke in unison across the street from the NJ State Building in a defiant act of Civil Disobedience. 

Those who dont want to smoke can stand across the street in support. Over 150 people did this at the 4/20 rally on Easter in front of police officers, and no one was harassed or arrested. The philosophy of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. is that with large numbers the people have the power to successfully confront the decision-makers. We plan to implement this at the state capitol. 

COME JOIN US! 

Books Written by Gandhi

• All Men are Brothers
• Diet and Diet Reform
• The Bhagavad Gita
• The Story of my Experiments with Truth - An Autobiography
• Trusteeship
• Truth is God
• Satyagraha in South Africa
• Unto this Last - A Paraphrase

To purchase books written by Gandhi or about Gandhi please:  >>>Click Here<<<

Racial Profiling On Our Nation's Highways

This report maybe 15 years old, but here in the United States we are still facing these same issues.  Often they are just swept under the rug.  We need to stop this as a SOCIETY.  Here's the intro to the research on Driving While Black.

June 7, 1999

By David A. Harris,
University of Toledo College of Law

An American Civil Liberties Union
Special Report
June 1999

INTRODUCTION

On a hot summer afternoon in August 1998, 37-year-old U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Rossano V. Gerald and his young son Gregory drove across the Oklahoma border into a nightmare. A career soldier and a highly decorated veteran of Desert Storm and Operation United Shield in Somalia, SFC Gerald, a black man of Panamanian descent, found that he could not travel more than 30 minutes through the state without being stopped twice: first by the Roland City Police Department, and then by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.

During the second stop, which lasted two-and-half hours, the troopers terrorized SFC Gerald's 12-year-old son with a police dog, placed both father and son in a closed car with the air conditioning off and fans blowing hot air, and warned that the dog would attack if they attempted to escape. Halfway through the episode – perhaps realizing the extent of their lawlessness – the troopers shut off the patrol car's video evidence camera.

Perhaps, too, the officers understood the power of an image to stir people to action. SFC Gerald was only an infant in 1963 when a stunned nation watched on television as Birmingham Police Commissioner "Bull" Connor used powerful fire hoses and vicious police attack dogs against nonviolent black civil rights protesters. That incident, and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s stirring I Have a Dream speech at the historic march on Washington in August of that year, were the low and high points, respectively, of the great era of civil rights legislation: the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

How did it come to be, then, that 35 years later SFC Gerald found himself standing on the side of a dusty road next to a barking police dog, listening to his son weep while officers rummaged through his belongings simply because he was black?

Rossano and Gregory Gerald were victims of discriminatory racial profiling by police. There is nothing new about this problem. Police abuse against people of color is a legacy of African American enslavement, repression, and legal inequality. Indeed, during hearings of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders ("The Kerner Commission") in the fall of 1967 where more than 130 witnesses testified about the events leading up to the urban riots that had taken place in 150 cities the previous summer, one of the complaints that came up repeatedly was "the stopping of Negroes on foot or in cars without obvious basis."

Significant blame for this rampant abuse of power also can be laid at the feet of the government's "war on drugs," a fundamentally misguided crusade enthusiastically embraced by lawmakers and administrations of both parties at every level of government. From the outset, the war on drugs has in fact been a war on people and their constitutional rights, with African Americans, Latinos and other minorities bearing the brunt of the damage. It is a war that has, among other depredations, spawned racist profiles of supposed drug couriers. On our nation's highways today, police ostensibly looking for drug criminals routinely stop drivers based on the color of their skin. This practice is so common that the minority community has given it the derisive term, "driving while black or brown" – a play on the real offense of "driving while intoxicated."

One of the core principles of the Fourth Amendment is that the police cannot stop and detain an individual without some reason – probable cause, or at least reasonable suspicion – to believe that he or she is involved in criminal activity. But recent Supreme Court decisions allow the police to use traffic stops as a pretext in order to "fish" for evidence. Both anecdotal and quantitative data show that nationwide, the police exercise this discretionary power primarily against African Americans and Latinos.

No person of color is safe from this treatment anywhere, regardless of their obedience to the law, their age, the type of car they drive, or their station in life. In short, skin color has become evidence of the propensity to commit crime, and police use this "evidence" against minority drivers on the road all the time.

For the rest of this article about racial profiling; >>> Click Here!!! <<<