The Dangers of Feinstein’s Gang Abatement and Prevention Act – Represent Our Resistance

I believe the sponsors and supporters of the Youth PROMISE Act want to see solutions to the imprisonment of our children. But I have to ask: Is there an advantage for law enforcement and juvenile courts to work to save the lives of our children? That is, why would the police and courts want to see an end to the arrest of Black and Latino/a children? Homeland Security is handing out millions of dollars in contracts for domestic detention camps.

The real beginnings of change would have to involve the education of all participants, in an understanding of how crime in the U.S. is profitable for the prison industrial complex; how “illegal” drugs fuels the U.S. economy; how weapons sales and weapons possession by average white citizens contributes to fear of violence and violence itself in this nation; and how white supremacy assures the criminalization of Black youth. With the knowledge we gain from this discussion of American reality, we can have the beginnings of an education that is meaningful to all participants and one that is long overdue. Otherwise, I can’t see how councils of law enforcers and other social services will really solve the problem of shipping our children off to domestic prison “Black” sites. I can’t see law enforcement personnel or the juvenile court workers recognizing their role in the devastation that is taking place in the Black community throughout this country. I can’t see them recognize that these children, gang bangers or not, juvenile delinquents or not, have a right to struggle, as Malcolm would tell us, for their human rights.

Gang abatement, no! Our children’s lives are being manipulated so that Black Americans can be used as scapegoats for a country steeped in internal and global criminal activities that it does not want its citizens to protest! Shop or sleep or work several jobs but don’t object.

The Associate Press reports that the city authorities in Long Beach, California, have banned the Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace, and Military Families Speak Out from marching in the Veterans Day Parade this year. These groups are too “political,” according to the city organizers, and, as a result, they “do not fit the spirit of the parade.” They do not express the spirit of “gratitude.”