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Date: Mon, 26 Jun 1995 13:13:20 -0400
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From: PNEWS <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: MUMIA ARTICLE: WORKIN' ONNA CHAIN GANG
From: Brian Wright <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Column written May 11, 1995
(c) Copyright 1995 by Mumia Abu-Jamal
The vision: scores of men, wearing white prison issue,
legs shackled man to man rankles.
The return of this practice, one which has similar
symbology as slavery, is a testament to the ulterior motive of
U.S. corrections: humiliation.
Now, Alabama has stepped back into the morbid,
repressive past, to recoup the sagging political futures of some
pitiful public representatives.
For 12 grueling hours a day, men in chains, chafing,
biting leg irons, slash and chop at weeds, making Alabama
beautiful for tourists. While the highways of 'Bama are
beautified, their treatment of sentient humans are uglified. As
an act of State Power, corrections is a synonym for `humilia-
tion', a legislative echo of degradation.
Who is `corrected' by this process? Who is made
better? Who becomes more human?
Who is not made more bitter?
This national wave of repression that is at the root of
the practice, is as senseless as every other element involved in
this dark movement.
Two-foot blades attached to wooden handles are the
implements of this work. Workers, in bright white coats, their
backs emblazoned with the words ``CHAIN GANG'' -- a
temporal echo from a past thick with blood, hatred and death.
One man, quoted in an Associated Press distributed
article, decried the idea of being used as a ``political chess
piece.''
That's exactly right.
Will Alabama be a safer place after the retrograde,
reactionary re-introduction of this backwards process?
Years ago, black revolutionary theorist, George L.
Jackson, tellingly likened the prison experience to the direct
historical precedent of the slavery experience.
The spectre of black men in chains is one deep in the
`collective unconscious' of this stolen land called America.
This nation, borne in white skin privilege, genocide,
degradation of Indian and African, settled on the inviolable
principle of stolen human labor -- slavery.
Why, in this alleged Land of the Free, are there more
chains, more shackles, more repression, more death?
Alabama leads America! Backward.
--
Michael Golden
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of Biology
Grossmont College
8800 Grossmont College Drive
El Cajon, CA 92020
619-465-1700 x332
