Green Party Watch

(Distributed by the Green Party of the United States)

Georgia Green Party

http://georgiagreenparty.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

For further information, contact:
Bruce Dixon, 678-298-9463 x3
bdixon@GeorgiaGreenParty.org
Press Secretary, Georgia Green Party

Greens Demand Real Reductions in Incarceration Costs Reject Deal Reforms which Fail to Challenge Racist Impact

After last week praising Governor Deal’s expressed concern for the wasted lives, drained treasury and depleted workforce left in the wake of the nation’s war on drugs, Georgia Green Party leaders today rejected Deal’s specific proposals.

“None of this will meaningfully impact the budget, end the state’s social control of non-violent and victimless behaviors, nor undermine the racial caste system created by our current policy,” said Hugh Esco, Secretary of the Georgia Green Party. “The state’s disparate enforcement and prosecution of the drug use of working people while ignoring that of wealthy people costs our communities in ways far beyond those mentioned by the Governor the other day. The impacts are as venal as Jim Crow.”

Governor Deal is quoted as saying: “For violent and repeat offenders, we will make you pay for your crimes. For other offenders who want to change their lives, we will provide the opportunity to do so with Day Reporting Centers, Drug, DUI and Mental Health Courts and expanded probation and treatment options. As a State, we cannot afford to have so many of our citizens waste their lives because of addictions. It is draining our State Treasury and depleting our workforce.”

Greens have criticized Georgia’s policy of mass incarceration, which rises to the level of recreating a racial caste system. As so well documented in a recent book on the subject by Michelle Alexander, it is legal to discriminate in matters of housing, public assistance, education, employment, participation on a jury and voting for those labeled criminal. And a series of Supreme Court decisions have made it impossible to effectively challenge the disparate enforcement, prosecution and sentencing which leads to the disproportionate
incarceration of black men and the immigrant community.

“The cost savings proposed by the Governor are a fraction of what we might enjoy were we to actually address the real harm caused by our rush to lock up our neighbors,” said Bruce Dixon, Press Secretary of the Georgia Green Party. “Most of the costs of this misguided policy are born by the families and children and communities of those we lock up. Deal has not even offered much here for the taxpayers. We had hoped for more.”

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Background:

Georgia Green Party
Georgia Green Party/Challenging Mass Incarceration

Bruce Dixon of Black Agenda Report has written a blog post on Open Left entitled “Moving the conversation forward – our plan in Georgia”, which describes a plan for building the Georgia Green Party from the ground up. See also the discussion in the comments section.

From Bruce Dixon at Black Agenda Report:

Can a black president be guilty of environmental racism? President Obama’s new proposed nukes are in one of the poorest areas east of the Mississippi. Burke County Georgia is majority black, the home of existing commercial nuclear reactors and directly across the river from the Savannah River nuclear weapons facility. Its river is the 4^th most polluted in the nation, and its residents are suffering a veritable epidemic of unexplained cancers, with no local, federal, public or private funds available to test their air, soil, water or environment for its causes.  But Burke County’s residents are neither silent nor powerless. read more »

Bruce Dixon of Black Agenda Report has an intriguing article about the future plans of the Georgia Green Party to address the issue of the high rate of incarceration among African-Americans. The article is entitled “Why Democrats and Republicans won’t confront the issue of black mass incarceration, and why the Green Party will”. Some excerpts:

With less than 5% of the world’s population, the US accounts for a quarter of the world’s prisoners. While African Americans are only an eighth the population, we account for almost half the locked down… An astounding three percent of all black Americans are in prisons and jails, the majority for drug charges, although black and white rates of drug use have been virtually identical for decades…

Georgia’s Green Party, BAR has learned, will announce tomorrow that its major focus for the coming two years, including the 2010 election cycle, will be making a political issue out of black mass incarceration. The Green Party of GA intends to do this by running candidates for the state legislature and for district attorney and sheriff, not just in metro Atlanta, but in Augusta, Macon, Columbus, Savannah and elsewhere. read more »