Check it out… the U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration!

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Nation’s Inmate Population Increased 2.3 Percent Last Year
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: April 25, 2005

WASHINGTON, April 24 (AP) – The nation’s prisons and jails held 2.1 million people in mid-2004, 2.3 percent more than the year before, the government reported on Sunday.

The inmate population increased by slightly more than 48,000 from mid-2003 to mid-2004, a growth of about 900 inmates each week, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The total inmate population has hovered around two million for the last few years: It was 2.1 million on June 30, 2002, and just below that mark a year later.

While the crime rate has fallen over the last decade, the number of people going to prison and jail is outpacing the number of inmates released, said an author of the report, Paige M. Harrison.

Ms. Harrison said the increase could be largely attributed to get-tough policies enacted in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Among them are mandatory sentences for drug crimes, “three strikes and you’re out” laws for repeat offenders and “truth in sentencing” laws that restrict early releases.

“As a whole, most of these policies remain in place,” Ms. Harrison said. “These policies were a reaction to the rise in crime in the 80’s and early 90’s.”

Malcolm Young, executive director of the Sentencing Project, which promotes alternatives to prison, said, “We’re working under the burden of laws and practices that have developed over 30 years that have focused on punishment and prison as our primary response to crime.”

Mr. Young said many of those incarcerated were not serious or violent offenders, but low-level drug offenders. He said ways to help lower that number included introducing drug treatment programs that offer effective ways of changing behavior and providing appropriate assistance for the mentally ill.

The Justice Policy Institute, which advocates a more lenient system of punishment than incarceration, said the United States had the highest rate of incarceration in the world, followed by Britain, China, France, Japan and Nigeria.

According to the government’s report, there were 726 inmates for every 100,000 United States residents on June 30, 2004, compared with 716 a year earlier. Put another way, in 2004, one in every 138 residents was in prison or jail; the previous year it was one in every 140.

In 2004, nearly 60 percent of prison and jail inmates were racial or ethnic minorities, the report said. An estimated 12.6 percent of all black men age 25 to 29 were in jails or prisons, compared with 3.6 percent of Hispanic men and 1.7 percent of white men in that age group, the report said.

I can’t believe that a group of volunteers is patrolling U.S. borders… why are people so scared of immigrants?

Click here for Yahoo News article

Minuteman Project Website

-Jean Chen

As Passover approaches, I become aware of a holiday, a celebration, a ritual highlighted by cultural awareness. I also received this article in the most modern convention, via cyber space, to remind me to look deeper than the media coverage of the Pope’s death. As you read on, perhaps some ray of hope will emerge that people in power and those revered within their faith have done some good for those who they did not bless directly.

 4/08/2005
POPE JOHN PAUL II AND THE JEWISH PEOPLE
by Rabbi Marvin Hier

In terms of reconciliation with the Jews, I believe that Pope John Paul II was the greatest Pope in the history of theVaticanwith respect to his relationship to the Jewish people.
- Rabbi Marvin Hier, CNN’s Larry King Live Show,Tuesday, April 4, 2005

As you read this, the funeral of Pope John Paul II is taking place.  For twenty centuries, the Catholic Church has had a turbulent relationship with the Jewish people. Jews were persecuted and held responsible for the death of Jesus, and were often the victims of Church-instigated pogroms and antisemitic attacks.

 
1983                                                        2003

With the passing of Pope John Paul II, we have lost the strongest advocate for reconciliation for the Jewish people in the history of theVatican. This Pope was determined to embark on a new course and leave that shameful period behind. From the very beginning of his papacy, when he first visited his native Poland, there were hints that this Pope was going to break with tradition and not follow the centuries-old script with respect to the Jews.

On his 1979 visit toAuschwitz, when he approached the inscriptions bearing the names of the countries whose citizens had been murdered there, he said, “I kneel before all the inscriptions bearing the memory of the victims in their languages. In particular, I pause before the inscription in Hebrew. This inscription awakens the memory of the people whose sons and daughters were intended for total extermination. It is not permissible for anyone to pass by this inscription with indifference.”

The first time I met the Pope was in 1983 when I led aWiesenthalCentermission toEastern Europe. There, at a private audience at theVatican, I expressed my concerns about antisemitism and said, “We come here today hoping to hear from you, the beloved spiritual leader of 700 million Christians, a clear and unequivocal message to all that this scourge in all its manifestations violates the basic creed to which all men of faith must aspire.”

Obviously, John Paul II understood that very well, but it is important to place in proper context the considerable obstacles that he had to overcome.

During the height of the Holocaust, when millions of Jews were being gassed, theVaticanfound the time to write letters opposing the creation of a Jewish State. OnMay 4, 1943,VaticanSecretary of State, Cardinal Magaloni, informed the British government of theVatican’s opposition to a Jewish homeland inPalestine. One day later, theVaticanwas informed that of the four million Jews residing in pre-warPoland, only about 100,000 were still alive. Six weeks later, on June 22, 1943, the Vatican’s apostolic delegate, Archbishop Cicognani wrote to then U.S. Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, again detailing its opposition to a Jewish homeland in Palestine and warning him that Catholics the world over would be aroused and saying, in part: “It is true that at one time Palestine was inhabited by the Hebrew race, but there is no axiom in history to substantiate the necessity of a people returning to a country they left nineteen centuries before…If a Hebrew home is desired, it would not be too difficult to find a more fitting territory than Palestine.” To imagine then that 62 years later a Polish Pope would have redefinedVaticanthinking regarding the Jewish people is astounding.

Twenty years after our first meeting, onDecember 3, 2003, together with a small delegation of Center trustees, I returned to theVaticanfor another private audience, this time to present the Pope with theWiesenthalCenter’s highest honor, our Humanitarian Award. On that occasion, I recapped his remarkable accomplishments, “As a youngster, you played goalie on the Jewish soccer team in Wadowice…in 1937, concerned about the safety of Ginka Beer, a Jewish student on her way to Palestine, you personally escorted her to the railroad station…in 1963, you were one of the major supporters of Nostra Aetate, the historic Vatican document which rejected the collective responsibility of the Jewish people for the crucifixion…in 1986, you were the first Pope to ever visit a synagogue…the first to recognize the State of Israel…the first to issue a document that seeks forgiveness for members of the Church for wrongdoing committed against the Jewish people throughout history and to apologize for Catholics who failed to help Jews during the Nazi period…the first to visit a concentration camp and to institute an official observance of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Vatican.”

I did not always agree with the Pope, especially when he nominated Pius XII for sainthood or when he met with then Austrian President Kurt Waldheim. But one thing is clear – in the two thousand year history of the papacy, no previous occupant of the throne of St. Peter has had such an interest in seeking reconciliation with the Jewish people.

With his passing, the world has lost a great moral leader and a righteous man and the Jewish people have lost its staunchest advocate in the history of the Church.

A photographic exhibit, “In Recognition of Goodness,” a tribute to Pope John Paul II’s lifelong friendship to the Jewish people, is currently on display at the Center’sMuseumofToleranceinLos Angeles.  For more information on the exhibit, phone 310 553-8403. 

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We should all be very afraid right now. As you sit here reading this, another government agency is being turned over to the private sector. Privatization is occuring rapidly and haphazardly, so that potentiallt, before the end of the first decade of the 20th century, about eighty-five percent of government programs and services will be tainted with private sector management or distribution or both. Some people think privatization is making government services more efficient or serving people better than the government can, but that is not the case. Privatization is economically more attractive to the government and business, but it has nothing to do with making services or programs better for Americans. Privatizing government means our tax dollars are laundered into the private sector, while the government is able to take less responsiblity for the legislation congressmen and senators push through Congress to appease voters. Social services have been a basic component of the United States’ way of doing things for a long time. Not always, but for a long time. We have a tradition of social service that isn’t going to be reversed. voters don’t demand the increase in service so that the government can pass along the work and responsibility and the private sector can make money. It shouldn’t work like that. There is a new, artificial fine line between goernment and business, but it can easily be fixed and put back as thick as it has been in the past and should be today. The only way to stop the plague of privatization is to hold policymakers accountable for the programs we vote for and they pass the buck on. It takes more than a few people, it will take lots of people to accomplish. But think of it this way; At some point inyour life, now or fifty years from now, you will need the government for something. Do you want that government to treat you like an Enron employee?

Check this out, it’s from Jeff Chang’s blog:

It’s been another one of those weekends for The Source and people around it. Allegations of sexual, corporate, and rap violence have been flying.

On Friday, Benzino announced he was stepping down from The Source. It’s Monday. Guess who’s bizzack?

In the meantime, former Editor-In-Chief Kim Osorio appeared at the University of Chicago’s Hip-Hop and Feminism conference on Saturday and gave a revealing, moving speech that stunned the crowd.

This morning, it was announced that she and a former vice president had filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against their former magazine of employment. This comes against the backdrop of a massive exodus of staffers over the last several months.

To read about the latest chaos at The Source, go to:

www.cantstopwontstop.com/blog