WE WANT AMERICA FIRST: June 2016

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

The Supreme Court Legally Re-instituted The New Slavery

On the 20th of June the Supreme Court took away everyone's 4th amendment right and those sacred cows should be removed from the bench. Personally, I felt something in the pit of my stomach that made me look at why is this happening at this time. This is my gut feeling, something is about to happen in this country. This is happening because these justices felt that Trump will be elected and go along with these injustices. They who would try to take people of color back to their place on the food chain. Either they are making money from their investment in the private prison system or they have friends or relatives who have invested in this system either way their decision has taken us back to the 1800's and the Black Congressional Caucus is having at sit in over assault weapons, really! The Supreme Court Justices have found a way to help keep the "Black Codes" alive and well.

"Black Codes, according to Gloria J. Brown-Marshall,were criminal laws enacted by states to maintain the socio-racial hierarchy of slavery. These laws were enacted" to make Negroes slaves in everything but name." Slavery was abolished except for punishment for a crime. In the words of political compromise found in the Thirteenth Amendment, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." This clause invoked freedom and revoked it simultaneously. The legacy of the criminal component to the Thirteenth Amendment is evident in modern prison population.....As in slavery, Blacks were forced to produce documents, when requested by whites, to prove that they were viably employed or had a home or they were charged with vagrancy or trespassing and jailed. Unable to pay the fine, Blacks became prisoners of a convict labor system. For many Blacks , the criminal justice system was simply a mechanism for enslavement. "Jim Crow" laws and prejudice meant Blacks were susceptible to imprisonment. Black Codes subjected Blacks to harsher punishments and longer sentences for similar offenses."
Fast forward to 2000, According to Barry Yeoman, Corrections Corporation of America is trying to turn Youngstown, Ohio, into the private-prison capital of the world. "Not Since Slavery has an entire American industry derived its profits exclusively from depriving human beings of their freedom—not, at least, until a handful of corporations and Wall Street investors realized they could make millions from what some critics call “dungeons for dollars.” Since the 1980s, when privatization became the rage for many government services, companies like CCA and its rival, Wackenhut Corporation, have been luring elected officials with a worry-free solution to prison overcrowding. Claiming they can lock people up cheaper than government can, the companies build cells on speculation, then peddle the beds to whatever local or state government needs a quick fix for its growing criminal population. “It’s a heady cocktail for politicians who are trying to show they’re tough on crime and fiscally conservative at the same time,” says Judith Greene, a senior justice fellow at the Open Society Institute, a foundation chaired by philanthropist George Soros."Over the past decade, private prisons have boomed. Corporations now control 122,900 beds for U.S. inmates, up at least eightfold since 1990. The reason is simple: With anti-drug laws and stiffer mandatory sentences pushing the prison population above two million, and governments strapped for capital to build new cells, for-profit prisons seem to offer plenty of cells at below-market prices. “If it could not be done cheaper than the government does it, then we wouldn’t be in business now,” says Brian Gardner, warden of the CCA prison in Youngstown. “We believe in giving the taxpayer the best deal.” (Steel-Town Lockdown Barry Yeoman article May 1, 2000)

We are here in 2016 where private prisons are complaining that they are not getting enough Black bodies and they are losing money and they had contracts to fill up beds to capacity. They make $50,000. off of each inmate! So what did the justices do circumvent the 4th Amendment and just flat out said you people of color have no constitutional rights, you are not real citizens of this country and we are going to have to put you in your place. Justice Sotomayor said "This case allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your identification, and check it for outstanding traffic warrants-even if you are doing nothing wrong. If the officer discovers a warrant for a fine you forgot to pay, courts will now excuse his illegal stop and will admit into evidence anything he happens to find by searching you after arresting you on that warrant. Because the Fourth Amendment should prohibit, not permit, such misconduct, I dissent. In Section B, Justice Sotomayor says, "Most striking about the Court's opinion is its insistence that the event here was "isolated," with no indication that this unlawful stop was part of any systemic or recurrent police misconduct," Ante, at 8-9. Respectfully, nothing about this case is isolated".

"Outstanding warrants are surprisingly common. When a person with a traffic ticket misses a fine payment or court appearance, a court will issue a warrant. See, e.g. Brennan Center for Justice Debt 23 (2010), online at http