Acknowledgments
Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
Martin Luther King Jr.
August 28th, 1963
Washington DC
FREEDOM & JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS:
- Worth Rises
- Equal Justice Initiative
- The Last Prisoner Project
- The Sentencing Project
- Vera Justice Institute
- Prison Policy Initiative
- Families Against Mandatory Minimums
- American Civil Liberties Union
- Drug Policy Alliance
- The Marshall Project
- The Innocence Project
- Brennan Center For Justice
- Offender Aid Restoration
- Abolish Slavery National Network
- Southern Poverty Law Center
- End The Exception
- NAACP
HISTORY RESOURCES:
- "The Half That Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism" by Edward E. Baptist
- "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" by Michelle Alexander
- Netflix 13th Documentary: "From Slave to Criminal with One Amendment"
- "Just Mercy: A True Story of The Fight for Justice" by Bryan Stevenson
- "Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to America Diaspora" by Stephanie E. Smallwood
- "I Have a Dream" Writings and Speeches That Changed the World by Martin Luther King Jr.
- "March For Freedom and Don't You Grow Weary Children" by Elizabeth Partridge
The Evil 13th Amendment Slavery loophole must be abolished. Congress has a moral responsibility to end American Slavery for real this time and also a clear constitutional legal obligation to uphold "Due Process" and "Equal Protection of the Laws" for all citizens who currently remain wrongfully incarcerated and Enslaved in violent prisons because of the unconstitutional, fraudulent, racist, corrupt "War On Drugs" marijuana prohibition, and because of cruel inhumane "Mandatory Minimums" that continue to violate basic human rights. Freedom and Justice must be served now by Congress. No Slavery. No exceptions. Sign the petition.
CITATIONS
"NO SLAVERY. NO EXCEPTIONS." Abolish Slavery National Network. #EndTheException, Worth Rises, https://www.endtheexception.com/
"Passed in 1865, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is celebrated for abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude. However, to the surprise of many, the 13th Amendment includes an exception clause that has been understood throughout history to allow slavery and involuntary servitude to be used as punishment for crime. During Reconstruction, this understanding encouraged the criminalization, incarceration, and re-enslavement of Black people."
“African Americans and the Railroad.” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 28 Nov. 2022, www.nps.gov/grsm/learn/historyculture/african-americans-and-the-railroad.htm
"The South found itself in a poor economic status after the Civil War and worked to rebuild itself financially during the Reconstruction Era. Consequently, the state’s prisons needed employment for its inmates and the Western North Carolina railroad became bankrupt. Some of its previous tracks and tunnels were damaged due to lack of use, inconsistent management, and little available labor during the Civil War. Given the major travel, tourism, and industry that the expansion and completion of the Western North Carolina Railroad would bring, the state found it vital to connect it with rails that led to other southern regions with profitable markets such as the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys... Accustomed to the free labor forces that Slavery brought to the South, the Railroad used cheap convict labor [Slavery] to build the railroads. Seven-eighths of the convicts in North Carolina were predominantly Black men and some women, many were imprisoned due to petty crimes and exaggerated charges. Some Black people were even randomly collected off of the street and charged with made up crimes to increase the railroad labor force, as prosecutors were instructed to bring more people into the prison system.... Laying railroad tracks, digging tunnels by hand, and working with harmful chemicals were dangerous tasks that resulted in death and permanent injury for many convict laborers. The living conditions provided for these men and some women were dangerous, as they were underfed, improperly clothed, and made to sleep in box cars resulting in disease and starvation."
“Alison Siegler Argues for the End of Mandatory Minimums." University of Chicago Law School, Brennan Center for Justice, 18 Oct. 2021, www.law.uchicago.edu/news/alison-siegler-argues-end-mandatory-minimums
"To dismantle the America’s dehumanizing and racially skewed human caging system, we must eliminate mandatory minimums. Forget swinging the pendulum from tough-on-crime to leniency; it always swings back. Instead, we need a paradigm shift. A paradigm shift occurs in three phases: it starts with a dominant paradigm, moves through a crisis phase, and ends with 'a revolutionary change in world-view' that constitutes a new dominant paradigm."
“American History.” Sign The Petition to Congress. American Slavery Must End., Talk Listen Change, 2024, www.talklistenchange.net/american-history.html
"Speak and remember history truthfully so that Freedom and Justice can be served today by Congress."
André Douglas Pond Cummings, and Steven A. Ramirez. “The Racist Roots of the War On Drugs and the Myth of Equal Protection for People of Color.” University Of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review Repository, University Of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review [Volume 44 | Issue 4 | Article 1], 2022, lawrepository.ualr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2106&context=lawreview
"Ending the War on Drugs and repairing the communities that it has destroyed must become top priority for any concerned citizen, legislator, public official and judge ... [Page 453] --- The War on Drugs produces massive suffering, pain and misery on an almost unimaginable scale—suffering that, as intended, falls disproportionately upon people of color. The Supreme Court has staked its claim: 'Your Injuries, Though Intentionally Inflicted by the Government, Shall Not Be Resolved Here'... The War on Drugs produces massive suffering, pain and misery on an almost unimaginable scale—suffering that, as intended, falls disproportionately upon people of color. The animus motivating the WOD continues today, making a mockery of equal protection under law for Americans of color. Indeed, rarely has any public policy initiative been marked by such brazen political and racial animus, as demonstrated above, and yet like a bone-crushing bulldozer it simply continues grinding up human lives, particularly devastating communities of color. The Supreme Court of the United States as presently constituted simply can no longer maintain any veneer of legitimacy if it continues to silently allow the WOD to destroy the lives of millions of our people. The Supreme Court acts with naked political partisanship and the continuation of the WOD proves its divorce from reality and political accountability. The Court cluelessly hobbles us economically and compromises our national security by failing to even consider building national cohesion, unity, and human development. It instead foments division and mass incarceration, alienating an ever-growing proportion of our population from its government. The Court must end the self-destructive and Evil War on Drugs—or it must be institutionally overhauled and restructured. As presently structured, the Court transmogrifies the Constitution into a national suicide pact... [Page 490]"
Ashley Nellis, Ph.D. “How Mandatory Minimums Perpetuate Mass Incarceration and What to Do about It.” The Sentencing Project, 15 Feb. 2024, www.sentencingproject.org/fact-sheet/how-mandatory-minimums-perpetuate-mass-incarceration-and-what-to-do-about-it/
"Eliminating mandatory minimum sentencing laws is essential to creating a more just and equitable criminal justice system. Widespread evidence shows that mandatory minimum sentences produce substantial harm with no overall benefit to crime control. Determined by lawmakers rather than judges, these sentences represent a uniquely American approach to sentencing that has accelerated prison growth. They constrain judicial discretion, deepen racial disparities in the criminal legal system, and cause far-reaching harm to individuals, families, and communities."
Balkin, Jack M, and Sanford Levinson. “The Dangerous Thirteenth Amendment.” Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository, Columbia Law Review [Vol. 112:1459], 22 July 2012, openyls.law.yale.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.13051/4116/The_Dangerous_Thirteenth_Balkin.pdf?sequence=2
"One of the ironies of the U.S. Constitution is that although it was clearly designed to accommodate the interests of slaveholding states, the word 'Slavery' first appears in the Constitution in the Thirteenth Amendment, which claims to abolish Slavery forever. Given its text—and the background context of 250 years of American history—the Thirteenth Amendment seems to portend a major transformation in both law and society: 'Neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.' ... One might also compare the Nineteenth Amendment, which, like the Thirteenth, was the product of sustained social movements [Page 1460] --- American revolutionaries had a name for a system in which distant governments made arbitrary decisions that were unresponsive and unconcerned with the interests of the governed: They called it Slavery. And, as this Essay has shown, social movements in the nineteenth century were sometimes more honest than Americans today in recognizing unfreedom in bedrock institutions of market and family and daring to call this unfreedom Slavery.... An alternate tradition of constitutional interpretation might have made—and might still make—the Thirteenth Amendment a truly vital part of the Constitution instead of relegating it to the dustbin of history. Chattel Slavery may be gone in the United States, but the problems of Slavery and republicanism that moved American colonists to revolution are still very much alive...[Page 1499]"
Bomey, Nathan. “Legal Marijuana Market Now Worth $64 Billion.” Axios, Axios, 5 Oct. 2022, www.axios.com/2022/10/05/legalized-marijuana-pot-coresight-research
Carrillo, Karen Juanita. “How Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’ Confronted an Ugly Era of Lynchings.” History.Com, A&E Television Networks, 1 Mar. 2021, www.history.com/news/billie-holiday-strange-fruit-lynchings
“The haunting lyrics of 'Strange Fruit' paint a picture of rural America where political and psychological terror reigns over African American communities. 'Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze,' blues legend Billie Holiday sang in her powerful 1939 recording of the song, 'Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.' The song’s lyrics portray the everyday violence that was being inflicted on Black people. And Holiday dared to perform it—in front of Black and white audiences, alike."
“Check Voter Registration Deadlines and Laws in Your State.” Register To Vote, Federal Government, vote.gov
Clarke, Matthew. “Study Shows Private Prison Companies Use Influence to Increase Incarceration.” Prison Legal News, 22 Aug. 2016, www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2016/aug/22/study-shows-private-prison-companies-use-influence-increase-incarceration/
"The report shows how the entire concept of private prisons is a bad idea from a public policy perspective. Not only do prisoners suffer when PPCs cut medical and other services to fatten the bottom line, the overall influence on government is one of corruption. The most egregious case of such direct corruption by PPCs occurred in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, where two judges sentenced thousands of juveniles who were not represented by an attorney and had not committed any criminal offense to incarceration in private prisons owned by a PPC that was giving kickbacks to the judges. Although the media and government officials claim outrage at this direct corruption of the criminal justice system, few say anything about the influence buying via donations, lobbyists and organizations described in the report."
“The Clear Connection between Slavery and American Capitalism.” HBS Working Knowledge: Business Research for Business Leaders, Harvard Business School, 3 May 2017, hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-clear-connection-between-Slavery-and-American-capitalism
"The Slave economy of the southern states had ripple effects throughout the entire US economy, with plenty of merchants in New York City, Boston, and elsewhere helping to organize the trade of slave-grown agricultural commodities—and enjoying plenty of riches as a result."
Cohen, Michael. “How For-Profit Prisons Have Become the Biggest Lobby No One Is Talking About.” Washington Post, Washington Post, 28 Apr. 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/how-for-profit-prisons-have-become-the-biggest-lobby-no-one-is-talking-about/
“Contacting U.S. Senators.” U.S. Senate: Contacting U.S. Senators, United States Senate, https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm
"All questions and comments regarding public policy issues, legislation, or requests for personal assistance should be directed to the senators from your state."
“Declaration of Independence: A Transcription.” National Archives and Records Administration, United States Federal Government, 4 July 1776, www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
“Democracy behind Bars.” CommonCause.org, Common Cause, 18 June 2020, democracybehindbars.org/
"Racism, profiteering, and overreach in our criminal justice system hurt our democracy’s ability to serve us and cost billions in tax dollars. Unless decisive action is taken, this injustice will continue to mushroom."
Downs, Caleb. “Report: 116 Texas Prisoners Are Serving Life Sentences for Drug Possession.” Dallas News, The Dallas Morning News, 12 Oct. 2016, www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2016/10/12/report-116-texas-prisoners-are-serving-life-sentences-for-drug-possession/.
"In 2015, more than 78 percent of people sentenced to incarceration for felony drug possession in Texas had under a gram at the time of their arrest. In Dallas County, that number jumps to 90 percent."
Downs, David. “The Science behind the DEA’s Long War on Marijuana.” Scientific American, Springer Nature, 19 Apr. 2016, www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-science-behind-the-dea-s-long-war-on-marijuana/
“You want to know what this was really all about?” Nixon aid [White House Counsel and Chief Domestic Policy Chief] John Ehrlichman told journalist Dan Baum in 1994, according to an article published in Harper’s Magazine in 2016. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
“The Past Is Never Dead: Drug War Confessional.” Vera Institute of Justice, Vera Institute of Justice, www.vera.org/reimagining-prison-webumentary/the-past-is-never-dead/drug-war-confessional
“The Drug War, Mass Incarceration and Race.” We Are the Drug Policy Alliance, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, June 2015, www.unodc.org/documents/ungass2016/Contributions/Civil/DrugPolicyAlliance/DPA_Fact_Sheet_Drug_War_Mass_Incarceration_and_Race_June2015.pdf
DuVernay, Ava, and Spencer Averick. “13th | FULL FEATURE | NETFLIX.” YouTube, YouTube, 17 Apr. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=krfcq5pF8u8&t=206s
"The 13th Amendment loophole was immediately exploited."
Equal Justice Initiative, “Slavery in America: The Montgomery Slave Trade” (2018)., eji.org/report/slavery-in-America/
"In learning more about Slavery, we can learn more about ourselves, our past, and hopefully, our future. By strengthening our understanding of racial history, we can create a different, healthier discourse about race in America that can lead to new and more effective solutions. We hope that you will join us in exploring racial history and recognizing the significance this history presents in achieving equal justice in America. In overcoming the legacy of racial inequality, our moments of greatest progress have come when we have committed ourselves to acknowledging our mistakes and deepening our understanding of one another. We believe a more just and equitable future can be achieved, but difficult and important work must be done."
“The Facts on DC Marijuana Laws.” MPDC, Metropolitan Police Washington D.C.
"In November 2014, District voters approved the Legalization of Possession of Minimal Amounts of Marijuana for Personal Use Initiative (commonly known as Initiative 71). The new law becomes effective on February 26, 2015. As a result, it is legal for a person who is at least 21 years old to: Possess two ounces or less of marijuana; Transfer one ounce or less of marijuana to another person who is at least 21 years old, so long as there is no payment made or any other type of exchange of goods or services; Cultivate within their residence up to six marijuana plants, no more than three of which are mature; Possess marijuana-related drug paraphernalia – such as bongs, cigarette rolling papers, and cigar wrappers – that is associated with one ounce or less of marijuana; or Use marijuana on private property."
“Families Against Mandatory Minimums.” Families Against Mandatory Minimums Foundation, FAMM, famm.org/
“Find Your Representative.” United States House of Representatives, Federal Government, www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
"Not sure of your congressional district or who your member is? This service will assist you by matching your ZIP code to your congressional district, with links to your member's website and contact page."
Germano, Maggie. “How the United States Has Criminalized Poverty and How to Change That Now.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 4 Aug. 2020, www.forbes.com/sites/maggiegermano/2020/08/04/how-the-united-states-has-criminalized-poverty-and-how-to-change-that-now/?sh=68d8f6d43281
Gershon, Livia. "Race, Prison, and the Thirteenth Amendment - Jstor Daily: Critiques of the Thirteenth Amendment Have Roots in a Long History of Activists Who Understood the Imprisonment of Black People as a Type of Slavery." JSTOR, nonprofit library for the intellectually curious, 21 Sept. 2023, daily.jstor.org/race-prison-and-the-thirteenth-amendment/
Ghandnoosh, Ph.D., Nazgol. “Ending 50 Years of Mass Incarceration: Urgent Reform Needed to Protect Future Generations.” The Sentencing Project, The Sentencing Project, 8 Feb. 2023, www.sentencingproject.org/policy-brief/ending-50-years-of-mass-incarceration-urgent-reform-needed-to-protect-future-generations/
"It is unacceptable to wait more than seven decades to substantively alter a system that violates human rights and is out of step with the world, is racially biased, and diverts resources from effective public safety investments. To achieve meaningful decarceration, policymakers must reduce prison admissions and scale back sentence lengths—both for those entering prisons and those already there. The growing movement to take a “second look” at unjust and excessive prison terms is a necessary first step. As the country grapples with an uptick in certain crimes, ending mass incarceration requires accelerating recent reforms and making effective investments in public safety."
Gill, Molly M. “Let’s Abolish Mandatory Minimums: The Punishment Must Fit The Crime.” American Bar Association, 1 Apr. 2009, www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/human_rights_vol36_2009/spring2009/lets_abolish_mandatory_minimums_the_punishment_must_fit_the_crime/
"The use of mandatory minimum sentences is an ongoing human rights violation in America. These one-size-fits-all sentencing statutes that were intended to deter crime and punish big-time criminals often backfire, giving drug addicts and small-time offenders enormous sentences. Mandatory sentences usually apply to drug and gun offenses. Examples include a five-year sentence for possessing five grams of crack cocaine or a ten-year sentence for firing a gun in connection with a drug trafficking offense. But the “three strikes” laws are the most notorious cases in point. When Leandro Andrade stole $153 worth of videotapes, he received a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole for fifty years because the crime was his third felony conviction. The judge could not adjust the sentence to reflect the minor nature of the crime or Andrade’s unique circumstances. (He was an Army veteran, a father of three, a drug addict, and his previous convictions were for nonviolent property crimes.) The Supreme Court later rejected Andrade’s claims that his sentence violated the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment in Lockyer v. Andrade, 538 U.S. 63 (2003)."
Goodwin, Michele. “The Thirteenth Amendment: Modern Slavery, Capitalism, and Mass Incarceration.” Cornell University Law Library, Cornell Law Review, 20 Sept. 2019, scholarship.law.cornell.edu/clr/vol104/iss4/4/
"Prison labor generates a robust economy-not far different from convict leasing [Slavery] of the past. Moreover, private industries, including the major private prison companies, promote and protect their interests through astronomic spending on robust lobbying efforts. The result is a racialized system rife with human rights abuses, which has been more difficult to dismantle than South African apartheid... [Page 980] ... Slavery's preservation in the United State can-in part-be explained by its fluid transformations, which continuously exacted economic gains, preserved southern social order, and inured benefits to private parties as well as the state. These transformations did not outpace law. Rather, the rule of law in the south and lawlessness among local law enforcement frequently accommodated these transformations and innovations. Historically, efforts to stamp out the myriad forms of Slavery-convict leasing, peonage, contract transfers, so-called "apprenticeships," and chain gangs-frequently fell short because of local collusion and complicity, weak federal interventions and protections, and violence. The specter of lynching, which included the hanging women and children, bombings of churches and homes, and arrests, succeeded in instilling a crippling fear among even the most courageous southern Blacks. Local and state laws aggravated these injustices and provided little or no relief for Black men, women, and children subjected to them. These historic conditions matter today. With the ratification of the Punishment Clause, states lacked any disincentive to do otherwise. Effectively, there were no consequences for continuing slavery within the means articulated by the Thirteenth Amendment. If anything, the Thirteenth Amendment's Punishment Clause may have exacerbated slavery's spread into states that had previously abolished the practice. Substantively, freedom shall not and truly cannot exist without a fundamental change in the criminal justice system, including the abolishment of the Punishment Clause... [Page 990]."
Hannah-Jones, Nikole. “The 1619 Project.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 14 Aug. 2019, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html
"In August of 1619, a ship appeared on this horizon, near Point Comfort, a coastal port in the English colony of Virginia. It carried more than 20 enslaved Africans, who were sold to the colonists. No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the years of slavery that followed. On the 400th anniversary of this fateful moment, it is finally time to tell our story truthfully."
“Image 13 of Federal Writers’ Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 2, Arkansas, Part 1, Abbott-Byrd.” Library Of Congress, Library Of Congress, Nov. 1938, www.loc.gov/resource/mesn.021/?sp=13&st=image&r=-0.503,-0.276,2.006,1.488,0
"My mama was named Eloise Rogers. She was born in Missouri. She was sold and brought to three or four miles from Brownsville, Tennessee. Alex Rogers bought her and my papa. She had been a house girl and well cared for. She never got in contact [with] her folks no more after she was sold... Pa say they strop [him] down at the carriage house and give [him] five hundred lashes. He say they have salt and black pepper mixed up in [their] old bucket and put it all on flesh cut up with a rag tied on a stick (mop)."
Kelley, Erin, et al. “Disenfranchisement Laws.” Brennan Center for Justice, Brennan Center for Justice, 9 May 2017, www.brennancenter.org/issues/ensure-every-american-can-vote/voting-rights-restoration/disenfranchisement-laws
“Last Prisoner Project #FreeKevinAllen.” #FreeKevinAllen, Last Prisoner Project, www.lastprisonerproject.org/freekevinallen
"On December 27, 2012, and March 13, 2013, the Bossier Sheriff’s Narcotics Task Force paid a confidential informant to approach Allen and solicit marijuana. Mr. Allen provided the CI with a grand total of $20 worth of weed.... Kevin was found guilty by a split jury on March 18, 2014. Initially sentenced to 10 years imprisonment of hard labor for each count, the state filed for an enhancement of punishment under the state’s habitual offender statutes. Because he had previous drug charges, Kevin was then resentenced to life imprisonment without the benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence, even though he had never been convicted of any violent crimes."
Lee, Juhohn. “America Has Spent over a Trillion Dollars Fighting the War on Drugs. 50 Years Later, Drug Use in the U.S. Is Climbing Again.” CNBC, CNBC, 17 June 2021, www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/the-us-has-spent-over-a-trillion-dollars-fighting-war-on-drugs.html
Li, Weihua. “What Can FBI Data Say about Crime in 2021? It’s Too Unreliable to Tell.” The Marshall Project, The Marshall Project, 14 June 2022, www.themarshallproject.org/2022/06/14/what-did-fbi-data-say-about-crime-in-2021-it-s-too-unreliable-to-tell
"Nearly 40% of law enforcement agencies around the country did not submit any data in 2021 to a newly revised FBI crime statistics collection program, leaving a massive gap in information."
“Lockup Quotas.” In the Public Interest, ITPI: In the Public Interest, 19 Sept. 2013, inthepublicinterest.org/lockup-quotas/
"We are living in boom times for the private prison industry. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest owner of private prisons, has seen its revenue climb by more than 500 percent in the last two decades. And CCA wants to get much, much bigger: Last year, the company made an offer to 48 governors to buy and operate their state-funded prisons. But what made CCA’s pitch to those governors so audacious and shocking was that it included a so-called occupancy requirement, a clause demanding the state keep those newly privatized prisons at least 90 percent full at all times, regardless of whether crime was rising or falling."
Lopez, German. “This Man Is Sentenced to Die in Prison over Marijuana.” Vox, Vox, 20 Apr. 2016, www.vox.com/2016/4/20/11467558/marijuana-life-sentence
"Lee Carroll Brooker, a 75-year-old disabled veteran, is sentenced to die in prison thanks to a mandatory sentence involving marijuana."
“Lynching in America.” LYNCHING IN AMERICA Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror Third Edition, Equal Justice Initiative, 2017, eji.org/wp-content/uploads/2005/11/lynching-in-america-3d-ed-110121.pdf
"Lynching profoundly impacted race relations in this country and shaped the geographic, political, social, and economic conditions of African Americans in ways that are still evident today. Terror lynchings fueled the mass migration of millions of Black people from the South into urban ghettos in the North and West throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Lynching created a fearful environment where racial subordination and segregation was maintained with limited resistance for decades. Most critically, lynching reinforced a legacy of racial inequality that has never been adequately addressed in America. The administration of criminal justice in particular is tangled with the history of lynching in profound and important ways that continue to contaminate the integrity and fairness of the justice system. This report begins a necessary conversation to confront the injustice, inequality, anguish, and suffering that racial terror and violence created. The history of terror lynching complicates contemporary issues of race, punishment, crime, and justice. Mass incarceration, excessive penal punishment, disproportionate sentencing of racial minorities, and police abuse of people of color reveal problems in American society that were framed in the terror era. The narrative of racial difference that lynching dramatized continues to haunt us. Avoiding honest conversation about this history has undermined our ability to build a nation where racial justice can be achieved."
Mcdowell, Robin, and Margie Mason. “Prisoners in the US Are Part of a Hidden Workforce Linked to Hundreds of Popular Food Brands.” AP News, AP News, 29 Jan. 2024, apnews.com/article/prison-to-plate-inmate-labor-investigation-c6f0eb4747963283316e494eadf08c4e
"A hidden path to America’s dinner tables begins here, at an unlikely source – a former Southern slave plantation that is now the country’s largest maximum-security prison.... Some prisoners work on the same plantation soil where slaves harvested cotton, tobacco and sugarcane more than 150 years ago.... They are among America’s most vulnerable laborers. If they refuse to work, some can jeopardize their chances of parole or face punishment like being sent to solitary confinement. They also are often excluded from protections guaranteed to almost all other full-time workers, even when they are seriously injured or killed on the job...."
“More About Legalizing and Regulating Marijuana.” Drug Policy Alliance, 7 June 2023, drugpolicy.org/more-about-legalizing-and-regulating-marijuana-the-right-way/
Morrison, Aaron. “50-Year War on Drugs Imprisoned Millions of Black Americans.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 26 July 2021, www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/50-year-war-on-drugs-imprisoned-millions-of-black-americans
Moser, Ryan. “Slavery and the Modern-Day Prison Plantation - Jstor Daily: ‘Except as Punishment for a Crime,’ Reads the Constitutional Exception to Abolition. In Prison Plantations across the United States, Slavery Thrives.” Politics & History, from JSTOR, nonprofit library for the intellectually curious, 8 Nov. 2023, daily.jstor.org/slavery-and-the-modern-day-prison-plantation/
"In prison plantations across the United States, Slavery thrives."
“Nixon Adviser Admits War on Drugs Was Designed to Criminalize Black People.” Equal Justice Initiative, 25 Mar. 2016, eji.org/news/Nixon-war-on-drugs-designed-to-criminalize-black-people/
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Nkechi, Taifa “Race, Mass Incarceration, and the Disastrous War on Drugs.” Brennan Center for Justice, Brennan Center for Justice, 10 May 2021, www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/race-mass-incarceration-and-disastrous-war-drugs."
"Indeed, rather than steps, it is time for leaps and bounds. End all mandatory minimum sentences and invest in a health-centered approach to substance use disorders. Demand a second-look process with the presumption of release for those serving life-without-parole drug sentences. Make sentences retroactive where laws have changed. Support categorical clemencies to rectify past injustices. It is time for bold action. We must not be satisfied with the norm, but work toward institutionalizing the demand for a standard of decency that values transformative change."
NMAAHC. “A Punishing System.” A Punishing System | National Museum of African American History & Culture., www.searchablemuseum.com/a-punishing-system
"The labor of enslaved Americans fueled the rapid growth of the national economy. Forced by the whip to work faster, better, and harder, African Americans, often malnourished and sleep-deprived, used extraordinary skill to catapult the United States into the global economy. In 1800 enslaved African Americans produced 1.4 million pounds of cotton. By 1860 they cultivated almost two billion. Sparked by higher quotas and the terror of the whip, individual productivity increased 400 percent."
Ntirugelegwa , Genoveva. “Convict Leasing and Racial Capitalism.” The Prison in the Western World, Duke University, 6 Aug. 2020, sites.duke.edu/history190s_02_ss22020/2020/08/06/convict-leasing-and-racial-capitalism/
Pasley, James. “15 American Landmarks That Were Built by Enslaved People.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 6 Sept. 2019, www.businessinsider.com/american-landmarks-that-were-built-by-slaves-2019-9
Pecorara, Michael. “Time’s up for Mandatory Minimums.” Harvard Undergraduate Law Review, Harvard Undergraduate Law Review, 27 Apr. 2022, hulr.org/spring-2022/times-up-mandatory-minimums.
“Plessy v. Ferguson: Separate but Equal Doctrine.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 29 Oct. 2009, www.history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson
"Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. The case stemmed from an 1892 incident in which African American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a car for Black people. Rejecting Plessy’s argument that his constitutional rights were violated, the Supreme Court ruled that a law that “implies merely a legal distinction” between white people and Black people was not unconstitutional. As a result, restrictive Jim Crow legislation and separate public accommodations based on race became commonplace."
“Poverty and Opportunity Profile: Americans with Criminal Records.” The Sentencing Project, The Sentencing Project, www.sentencingproject.org/app/uploads/2022/08/Americans-with-Criminal-Records-Poverty-and-Opportunity-Profile.pdf
"Between 70 million and 100 million—or as many as one in three Americans—have some type of criminal record. Having even a minor criminal record, such as a misdemeanor or even an arrest without conviction, can create an array of lifelong barriers that stand in the way of successful re-entry. This has broad implications for individuals’ and families’ economic security, as well as for our national economy. Mass incarceration and hyper-criminalization serve as major drivers of poverty; having a criminal record can present obstacles to employment, housing, public assistance, education, family reunification, building good credit, and more."
“Prison Conditions.” Equal Justice Initiative, 10 Mar. 2021, eji.org/issues/prison-conditions/
"Millions of Americans are incarcerated in overcrowded, violent, and inhumane jails and prisons that do not provide treatment, education, or rehabilitation. Today, prisons and jails in America are in crisis. Incarcerated people are beaten, stabbed, raped, and killed in facilities run by corrupt officials who abuse their power with impunity. People who need medical care, help managing their disabilities, mental health and addiction treatment, and suicide prevention are denied care, ignored, punished, and placed in solitary confinement. And despite growing bipartisan support for criminal justice reform, the private prison industry continues to block meaningful proposals."
“The Prison Industry: Mapping Private Sector Players.” WorthRises, WorthRises, 2020, worthrises.org/theprisonindustry2020
"The data provided in this report should serve as a launching pad for further exploration. Readers should engage and analyze the data but follow up with their own investigations before making decisions about what approach to take in challenging each corporation’s involvement in the prison industry."
“Report: The War on Marijuana in Black and White.” American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU, June 2013, www.aclu.org/publications/report-war-marijuana-black-and-white
"Over-Policing: Between 2001 and 2010, there were over 8 million pot arrests in the U.S. That’s one bust every 37 seconds and hundreds of thousands ensnared in the criminal justice system.... Staggering Racial Bias: Marijuana use is roughly equal among Blacks and whites, yet Blacks are 3.73 times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession."
Rubinkam, Michael. “Kids-for-Cash Judges Ordered to Pay More than $200m.” Fox Business, Fox Business, 18 Aug. 2022, www.foxbusiness.com/money/kids-cash-judges-ordered-pay-200m
"Two former Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200 million to hundreds of people they victimized in one of the worst judicial scandals in U.S. history."
Sawyer, Wendy Sawyer and Peter, and Peter Wagner. “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2023.” Prison Policy Initiative, Prison Policy Initiative, 14 Mar. 2024, www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html
"Further complicating matters is the fact that the U.S. doesn’t have one criminal legal system; instead, we have thousands of federal, state, local, and tribal systems."
Schmidlin, Kyle. “Column: ‘War On Drugs’ Merely Fights the Symptoms of a Faulty System.” CBS News Politics, CBS, 13 Sept. 2008, www.cbsnews.com/news/column-war-on-drugs-merely-fights-the-symptoms-of-a-faulty-system/
"I feel compelled to address an issue which is entirely ignored in major press publications. The "war on drugs" has been waged in various forms and capacities since the prohibition of alcohol, and the only thing it has accomplished is to put non-violent, non-criminal offenders behind bars."
Simard, Justin. “Citing Slavery.” Stanford Law Review, Stanford Law Review [Volume 72], Jan. 2020, review.law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/01/Simard-72-Stan.-L.-Rev.-79.pdf
"The legal profession must confront its role in Slavery. At a time when other American groups and institutions from businesses to universities are coming to grips with the legacy of Slavery, the legal profession must do the same."
Simba, Malik. “The Three-Fifths Clause of the United States Constitution (1787).” BlackPast, BlackPast, 3 Oct. 2014, www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/events-african-american-history/three-fifths-clause-united-states-constitution-1787/
"Often misinterpreted to mean that African Americans as individuals are considered three-fifths of a person or that they are three-fifths of a citizen of the U.S., the three-fifths clause (Article I, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution of 1787) in fact declared that for purposes of representation in Congress, enslaved blacks in a state would be counted as three-fifths of the number of white inhabitants of that state."
Slater, Eric. “Pizza Thief Receives Sentence of 25 Years to Life in Prison: Crime: Judge Cites Five Prior Felony Convictions in Sentencing Jerry Dewayne Williams under ‘three Strikes’ Law.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 3 Mar. 1995, www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-03-03-me-38444-story.html
"Jerry Dewayne Williams was sentenced to prison for 25 years to life Thursday under the state’s “three strikes” law for stealing a slice of pepperoni pizza."
“SLAVERY IN AMERICA: The Montgomery Slave Trade.” Equal Justice Initiative, Equal Justice Initiative, 2018, eji.org/report/slavery-in-America/
"An estimated 10.7 million Black men, women, and children were transported from West Africa and sold into slavery in South America, Central America, or North America. Nearly two million more are estimated to have perished during the brutal voyage... Beginning in the 16th century, millions of African people were kidnapped, enslaved, and shipped across the Atlantic to the Americas under horrific conditions that frequently resulted in starvation and death. Nearly two million people died at sea during the agonizing journey. Over two centuries, the enslavement of Black people in the United States created wealth, opportunity, and prosperity for millions of Americans. As American slavery evolved, an elaborate and enduring mythology about the inferiority of Black people was created to legitimate, perpetuate, and defend slavery. This mythology survived slavery’s formal abolition following the Civil War. In the South, where the enslavement of Black people was widely embraced, resistance to ending slavery persisted for another century following the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Today, more than 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, very little has been done to address the legacy of slavery and its meaning in contemporary life. In many communities like Montgomery, Alabama—which had a prominent role in the slave trade and was a primary site for human trafficking and facilitating slavery—there is little understanding of the slave trade, enslavement, or the longstanding effort to sustain the racial hierarchy that slavery created."
“Slavery Is Still Legal for Two Million People in the U.S.” Vera Institute of Justice, Vera Institute of Justice, 15 June 2022, www.vera.org/news/slavery-is-still-legal-for-two-million-people-in-the-u-s
"The 13th Amendment outlawed slavery except for as punishment for crime. This exception created a financial incentive to criminalize people and steal their labor, and it was exploited almost immediately. Not a year had passed after its ratification when Southern states and localities began to institute Black Codes that criminalized things like “vagrancy” and “walking without purpose.” Under Mississippi’s Black Codes, Black people who did not present proof of employment became “criminals” who could be imprisoned and “leased” to private companies for harsh forced labor. In the 20th century, the War on Drugs ushered in an era of harsh sentences for non-violent drug crimes that filled prisons with people who could be forced to work for little or no pay. Mass incarceration, and the criminalization of poverty, has created a modern-day abomination—nearly two million incarcerated people in the United States have no protection from legal slavery. A disproportionate percentage of them are Black and people of color... We must end slavery in the United States, for everyone, once and for all."
“Slavery: Cause and Catalyst of the Civil War.” U.S. Department of the Interior National Park Service, www.nps.gov/cuga/learn/historyculture/upload/SLAVERY-BROCHURE.pdf
"The roots of the crisis over Slavery that gripped the nation in 1860-1861 go back well before the nation’s founding. In 1619, slavery was introduced to Virginia, when a Dutch ship traded African slaves for food. Unable to find cheap labor from other sources, white settlers increasingly turned to slaves imported from Africa. By the early 1700s, in British North America, slavery generally meant African slavery. Southern plantations using slave labor produced the great export crops—tobacco, rice, forest products, and indigo—that made the American colonies prosperous. Many Northern merchants made their fortunes either in the slave trade or by exporting the products of slave labor. African Slavery was central to the development of British North America."
“The State of Cannabis Justice Report.” Last Prisoner Project - Cannabis Reform Nonprofit, 2023, www.lastprisonerproject.org/state-of-cannabis-justice-report
“Steven Bell, the Bicycle Thief: 60 Archives.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 7 Apr. 2019, www.cbsnews.com/news/60-archives-steven-bell-the-bicycle-thief/
"Nearly 20 years ago, 60 Minutes broadcast a report called 'The Bicycle Thief.' It told the story of Steven Bell, a tree trimmer from Citrus Heights, California, who was facing 35-years-to-life in prison for stealing a bicycle. Back in the year 2000, correspondent Steve Kroft was coming face-to-face with 'the toughest law in America,' California's Three Strikes law. Bell was 36 then, facing a by-the-book prosecutor at a time when voters punished any politician they deemed "soft" on crime. Shortly after our story aired, Bell was sentenced to 35-years-to-life."
Swarns, Christina. “‘Tough-on-Crime’ Policies Are at Odds with the Presumption of Innocence.” Innocence Project, Innocence Project, 26 June 2023, innocenceproject.org/tough-on-crime-policies-are-at-odds-with-the-presumption-of-innocence/
"For all of these reasons, policymakers must learn from history and avoid rolling back progress — as this country has so often done — in the fight for a more equitable society."
“A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform.” American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU, 16 Apr. 2020, www.aclu.org/publications/tale-two-countries-racially-targeted-arrests-era-marijuana-reform
"This ACLU research report, A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform, details marijuana arrests from 2010 to 2018 and examines racial disparities at the national, state, and county levels. Updating our previous report, The War on Marijuana in Black and White, that examined arrests from 2000 to 2010 [showing over 8 million arrests], this report reveals that the racist war on marijuana is far from over. More than six million arrests occurred between 2010 and 2018, and Black people are still more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people in every state, including those that have legalized marijuana. With detailed recommendations for governments and law enforcement agencies, this report provides a detailed road map for ending the War on Marijuana and ensuring legalization efforts center racial justice."
Thomas, Zoe. “The Hidden Links between Slavery and Wall Street.” BBC News, BBC, 28 Aug. 2019, www.bbc.com/news/business-49476247
"Later in the 19th Century, US banks and southern states would sell securities that helped fund the expansion of slave run plantations... By the mid 19th Century, exports of raw cotton accounted for more than half of US oversees shipments. What wasn't sold abroad was sent to mills in northern states including Massachusetts and Rhode Island to be turned into fabric. The money southern plantation owners earned couldn't be kept under mattresses or behind loose floorboards. American banks accepted their deposits and counted enslaved people as assets when assessing a person's wealth... JP Morgan was not alone. The predecessors that made up Citibank, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are among a list of well-known US financial firms that benefited from the slave trade."
“The Transatlantic Slave Trade.” Equal Justice Initiative, Equal Justice Initiative, 2022, eji.org/report/transatlantic-slave-trade/
"The abduction, abuse, and enslavement of Africans by Europeans for nearly five centuries dramatically altered the global landscape and created a legacy of suffering and bigotry that can still be seen today. After discovering lands that had been occupied by Indigenous people for centuries, European powers sent ships and armed militia to exploit these new lands for wealth and profit starting in the 1400s. In territories we now call “the Americas,” gold, sugar, tobacco, and extraordinary natural resources were viewed as opportunities to gain power and influence for Portugal, Spain, Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Scandinavian nations. Europeans first sought to enslave the Indigenous people who occupied these lands to create wealth for foreign powers, resulting in a catastrophic genocide. Disease, famine, and conflict killed millions of Native people within a relatively short period of time. Determined to extract wealth from these distant lands, European powers sought labor from Africa, launching a tragic era of kidnapping, abduction, and trafficking that resulted in the enslavement of millions of African people."
Travis, Jeremy, et al. “Punitive Excess.” Brennan Center for Justice, Brennan Center for Justice, 2021, www.brennancenter.org/series/punitive-excess
“U.S. Constitution - Eighth Amendment | Resources | Constitution ...” United States Constitution, American Government Congress, constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-8/
"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
“U.S. Constitution - Eighth Amendment | Resources | Constitution ...” United States Constitution, American Government Congress, constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-14/
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
“U.S. Constitution - The Preamble | Resources | Constitution Annotated ...” United States Constitution, American Government Congress, constitution.congress.gov/constitution/preamble/
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
“Unconstitutional Mandatory Minimums.” Sign The Petition To Congress. American Slavery Must End., Talk Listen Change, 2024, www.talklistenchange.net/unconstitutional-mandatory-minimums.html
"This is the painfully grim truth about the corrupt American legal system. Too many people have received cruel unjust punishments and remain wrongfully incarcerated, exploited, disenfranchised, and Enslaved in violent prison because of the unconstitutional "War On Drugs" and cruel inhumane "Mandatory Minimums" that blatantly violate human rights. Immediate reform from Congress and the Federal Government is necessary now to protect future American generations and to reunite families with their loved ones. Justice is long overdue."
Vallas, Rebecca, et al. “A Criminal Record Shouldn’t Be a Life Sentence to Poverty.” Center for American Progress, Center for American Progress, 28 Mar. 2023, www.americanprogress.org/article/criminal-record-shouldnt-life-sentence-poverty-2/
"The War on Drugs Is Designed to Discriminate | The War on Drugs." YouTube, VICE News, 4 Nov. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf5qFlpJ2sk&t=308s
Willingham, Leah. “Mississippi Court Upholds Life Sentence for Pot Possession.” AP News, AP News, 12 May 2021, apnews.com/article/mississippi-0e463c390bedc7f6b25fb7e54b955b74
"JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi Court of Appeals on Tuesday upheld a life sentence for a man convicted of a marijuana possession charge because he had previous convictions and those made him a habitual offender. Allen Russell, 38, was sentenced to life in Forrest County in 2019 after a jury found him guilty of possession of more than 30 grams (1.05 ounces) of marijuana."
“World Population Review.” Incarceration Rates by Country 2024, World Population Review, worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarceration-rates-by-country
“THE PETITION TO END SLAVERY IN AMERICA.” Change.org, Talk Listen Change, 11 Aug. 2023, https://chng.it/ZmBs54dr4G
"The Evil 13th Amendment Slavery loophole must be abolished. Congress has a moral responsibility to end American Slavery for real this time and also a clear constitutional legal obligation to uphold 'Due Process' and 'Equal Protection of the Laws' for all citizens who currently remain wrongfully incarcerated and Enslaved in violent prisons because of the unconstitutional, fraudulent, racist, corrupt 'War On Drugs' marijuana prohibition, and because of cruel inhumane 'Mandatory Minimums' that continue to violate basic human rights. Freedom and Justice must be served now by Congress. No Slavery. No exceptions. Sign the petition."
"Passed in 1865, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is celebrated for abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude. However, to the surprise of many, the 13th Amendment includes an exception clause that has been understood throughout history to allow slavery and involuntary servitude to be used as punishment for crime. During Reconstruction, this understanding encouraged the criminalization, incarceration, and re-enslavement of Black people."
“African Americans and the Railroad.” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 28 Nov. 2022, www.nps.gov/grsm/learn/historyculture/african-americans-and-the-railroad.htm
"The South found itself in a poor economic status after the Civil War and worked to rebuild itself financially during the Reconstruction Era. Consequently, the state’s prisons needed employment for its inmates and the Western North Carolina railroad became bankrupt. Some of its previous tracks and tunnels were damaged due to lack of use, inconsistent management, and little available labor during the Civil War. Given the major travel, tourism, and industry that the expansion and completion of the Western North Carolina Railroad would bring, the state found it vital to connect it with rails that led to other southern regions with profitable markets such as the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys... Accustomed to the free labor forces that Slavery brought to the South, the Railroad used cheap convict labor [Slavery] to build the railroads. Seven-eighths of the convicts in North Carolina were predominantly Black men and some women, many were imprisoned due to petty crimes and exaggerated charges. Some Black people were even randomly collected off of the street and charged with made up crimes to increase the railroad labor force, as prosecutors were instructed to bring more people into the prison system.... Laying railroad tracks, digging tunnels by hand, and working with harmful chemicals were dangerous tasks that resulted in death and permanent injury for many convict laborers. The living conditions provided for these men and some women were dangerous, as they were underfed, improperly clothed, and made to sleep in box cars resulting in disease and starvation."
“Alison Siegler Argues for the End of Mandatory Minimums." University of Chicago Law School, Brennan Center for Justice, 18 Oct. 2021, www.law.uchicago.edu/news/alison-siegler-argues-end-mandatory-minimums
"To dismantle the America’s dehumanizing and racially skewed human caging system, we must eliminate mandatory minimums. Forget swinging the pendulum from tough-on-crime to leniency; it always swings back. Instead, we need a paradigm shift. A paradigm shift occurs in three phases: it starts with a dominant paradigm, moves through a crisis phase, and ends with 'a revolutionary change in world-view' that constitutes a new dominant paradigm."
“American History.” Sign The Petition to Congress. American Slavery Must End., Talk Listen Change, 2024, www.talklistenchange.net/american-history.html
"Speak and remember history truthfully so that Freedom and Justice can be served today by Congress."
André Douglas Pond Cummings, and Steven A. Ramirez. “The Racist Roots of the War On Drugs and the Myth of Equal Protection for People of Color.” University Of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review Repository, University Of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review [Volume 44 | Issue 4 | Article 1], 2022, lawrepository.ualr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2106&context=lawreview
"Ending the War on Drugs and repairing the communities that it has destroyed must become top priority for any concerned citizen, legislator, public official and judge ... [Page 453] --- The War on Drugs produces massive suffering, pain and misery on an almost unimaginable scale—suffering that, as intended, falls disproportionately upon people of color. The Supreme Court has staked its claim: 'Your Injuries, Though Intentionally Inflicted by the Government, Shall Not Be Resolved Here'... The War on Drugs produces massive suffering, pain and misery on an almost unimaginable scale—suffering that, as intended, falls disproportionately upon people of color. The animus motivating the WOD continues today, making a mockery of equal protection under law for Americans of color. Indeed, rarely has any public policy initiative been marked by such brazen political and racial animus, as demonstrated above, and yet like a bone-crushing bulldozer it simply continues grinding up human lives, particularly devastating communities of color. The Supreme Court of the United States as presently constituted simply can no longer maintain any veneer of legitimacy if it continues to silently allow the WOD to destroy the lives of millions of our people. The Supreme Court acts with naked political partisanship and the continuation of the WOD proves its divorce from reality and political accountability. The Court cluelessly hobbles us economically and compromises our national security by failing to even consider building national cohesion, unity, and human development. It instead foments division and mass incarceration, alienating an ever-growing proportion of our population from its government. The Court must end the self-destructive and Evil War on Drugs—or it must be institutionally overhauled and restructured. As presently structured, the Court transmogrifies the Constitution into a national suicide pact... [Page 490]"
Ashley Nellis, Ph.D. “How Mandatory Minimums Perpetuate Mass Incarceration and What to Do about It.” The Sentencing Project, 15 Feb. 2024, www.sentencingproject.org/fact-sheet/how-mandatory-minimums-perpetuate-mass-incarceration-and-what-to-do-about-it/
"Eliminating mandatory minimum sentencing laws is essential to creating a more just and equitable criminal justice system. Widespread evidence shows that mandatory minimum sentences produce substantial harm with no overall benefit to crime control. Determined by lawmakers rather than judges, these sentences represent a uniquely American approach to sentencing that has accelerated prison growth. They constrain judicial discretion, deepen racial disparities in the criminal legal system, and cause far-reaching harm to individuals, families, and communities."
Balkin, Jack M, and Sanford Levinson. “The Dangerous Thirteenth Amendment.” Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository, Columbia Law Review [Vol. 112:1459], 22 July 2012, openyls.law.yale.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.13051/4116/The_Dangerous_Thirteenth_Balkin.pdf?sequence=2
"One of the ironies of the U.S. Constitution is that although it was clearly designed to accommodate the interests of slaveholding states, the word 'Slavery' first appears in the Constitution in the Thirteenth Amendment, which claims to abolish Slavery forever. Given its text—and the background context of 250 years of American history—the Thirteenth Amendment seems to portend a major transformation in both law and society: 'Neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.' ... One might also compare the Nineteenth Amendment, which, like the Thirteenth, was the product of sustained social movements [Page 1460] --- American revolutionaries had a name for a system in which distant governments made arbitrary decisions that were unresponsive and unconcerned with the interests of the governed: They called it Slavery. And, as this Essay has shown, social movements in the nineteenth century were sometimes more honest than Americans today in recognizing unfreedom in bedrock institutions of market and family and daring to call this unfreedom Slavery.... An alternate tradition of constitutional interpretation might have made—and might still make—the Thirteenth Amendment a truly vital part of the Constitution instead of relegating it to the dustbin of history. Chattel Slavery may be gone in the United States, but the problems of Slavery and republicanism that moved American colonists to revolution are still very much alive...[Page 1499]"
Bomey, Nathan. “Legal Marijuana Market Now Worth $64 Billion.” Axios, Axios, 5 Oct. 2022, www.axios.com/2022/10/05/legalized-marijuana-pot-coresight-research
Carrillo, Karen Juanita. “How Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’ Confronted an Ugly Era of Lynchings.” History.Com, A&E Television Networks, 1 Mar. 2021, www.history.com/news/billie-holiday-strange-fruit-lynchings
“The haunting lyrics of 'Strange Fruit' paint a picture of rural America where political and psychological terror reigns over African American communities. 'Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze,' blues legend Billie Holiday sang in her powerful 1939 recording of the song, 'Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.' The song’s lyrics portray the everyday violence that was being inflicted on Black people. And Holiday dared to perform it—in front of Black and white audiences, alike."
“Check Voter Registration Deadlines and Laws in Your State.” Register To Vote, Federal Government, vote.gov
Clarke, Matthew. “Study Shows Private Prison Companies Use Influence to Increase Incarceration.” Prison Legal News, 22 Aug. 2016, www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2016/aug/22/study-shows-private-prison-companies-use-influence-increase-incarceration/
"The report shows how the entire concept of private prisons is a bad idea from a public policy perspective. Not only do prisoners suffer when PPCs cut medical and other services to fatten the bottom line, the overall influence on government is one of corruption. The most egregious case of such direct corruption by PPCs occurred in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, where two judges sentenced thousands of juveniles who were not represented by an attorney and had not committed any criminal offense to incarceration in private prisons owned by a PPC that was giving kickbacks to the judges. Although the media and government officials claim outrage at this direct corruption of the criminal justice system, few say anything about the influence buying via donations, lobbyists and organizations described in the report."
“The Clear Connection between Slavery and American Capitalism.” HBS Working Knowledge: Business Research for Business Leaders, Harvard Business School, 3 May 2017, hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-clear-connection-between-Slavery-and-American-capitalism
"The Slave economy of the southern states had ripple effects throughout the entire US economy, with plenty of merchants in New York City, Boston, and elsewhere helping to organize the trade of slave-grown agricultural commodities—and enjoying plenty of riches as a result."
Cohen, Michael. “How For-Profit Prisons Have Become the Biggest Lobby No One Is Talking About.” Washington Post, Washington Post, 28 Apr. 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/28/how-for-profit-prisons-have-become-the-biggest-lobby-no-one-is-talking-about/
“Contacting U.S. Senators.” U.S. Senate: Contacting U.S. Senators, United States Senate, https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm
"All questions and comments regarding public policy issues, legislation, or requests for personal assistance should be directed to the senators from your state."
“Declaration of Independence: A Transcription.” National Archives and Records Administration, United States Federal Government, 4 July 1776, www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
“Democracy behind Bars.” CommonCause.org, Common Cause, 18 June 2020, democracybehindbars.org/
"Racism, profiteering, and overreach in our criminal justice system hurt our democracy’s ability to serve us and cost billions in tax dollars. Unless decisive action is taken, this injustice will continue to mushroom."
Downs, Caleb. “Report: 116 Texas Prisoners Are Serving Life Sentences for Drug Possession.” Dallas News, The Dallas Morning News, 12 Oct. 2016, www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2016/10/12/report-116-texas-prisoners-are-serving-life-sentences-for-drug-possession/.
"In 2015, more than 78 percent of people sentenced to incarceration for felony drug possession in Texas had under a gram at the time of their arrest. In Dallas County, that number jumps to 90 percent."
Downs, David. “The Science behind the DEA’s Long War on Marijuana.” Scientific American, Springer Nature, 19 Apr. 2016, www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-science-behind-the-dea-s-long-war-on-marijuana/
“You want to know what this was really all about?” Nixon aid [White House Counsel and Chief Domestic Policy Chief] John Ehrlichman told journalist Dan Baum in 1994, according to an article published in Harper’s Magazine in 2016. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
“The Past Is Never Dead: Drug War Confessional.” Vera Institute of Justice, Vera Institute of Justice, www.vera.org/reimagining-prison-webumentary/the-past-is-never-dead/drug-war-confessional
“The Drug War, Mass Incarceration and Race.” We Are the Drug Policy Alliance, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, June 2015, www.unodc.org/documents/ungass2016/Contributions/Civil/DrugPolicyAlliance/DPA_Fact_Sheet_Drug_War_Mass_Incarceration_and_Race_June2015.pdf
DuVernay, Ava, and Spencer Averick. “13th | FULL FEATURE | NETFLIX.” YouTube, YouTube, 17 Apr. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=krfcq5pF8u8&t=206s
"The 13th Amendment loophole was immediately exploited."
Equal Justice Initiative, “Slavery in America: The Montgomery Slave Trade” (2018)., eji.org/report/slavery-in-America/
"In learning more about Slavery, we can learn more about ourselves, our past, and hopefully, our future. By strengthening our understanding of racial history, we can create a different, healthier discourse about race in America that can lead to new and more effective solutions. We hope that you will join us in exploring racial history and recognizing the significance this history presents in achieving equal justice in America. In overcoming the legacy of racial inequality, our moments of greatest progress have come when we have committed ourselves to acknowledging our mistakes and deepening our understanding of one another. We believe a more just and equitable future can be achieved, but difficult and important work must be done."
“The Facts on DC Marijuana Laws.” MPDC, Metropolitan Police Washington D.C.
"In November 2014, District voters approved the Legalization of Possession of Minimal Amounts of Marijuana for Personal Use Initiative (commonly known as Initiative 71). The new law becomes effective on February 26, 2015. As a result, it is legal for a person who is at least 21 years old to: Possess two ounces or less of marijuana; Transfer one ounce or less of marijuana to another person who is at least 21 years old, so long as there is no payment made or any other type of exchange of goods or services; Cultivate within their residence up to six marijuana plants, no more than three of which are mature; Possess marijuana-related drug paraphernalia – such as bongs, cigarette rolling papers, and cigar wrappers – that is associated with one ounce or less of marijuana; or Use marijuana on private property."
“Families Against Mandatory Minimums.” Families Against Mandatory Minimums Foundation, FAMM, famm.org/
“Find Your Representative.” United States House of Representatives, Federal Government, www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
"Not sure of your congressional district or who your member is? This service will assist you by matching your ZIP code to your congressional district, with links to your member's website and contact page."
Germano, Maggie. “How the United States Has Criminalized Poverty and How to Change That Now.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 4 Aug. 2020, www.forbes.com/sites/maggiegermano/2020/08/04/how-the-united-states-has-criminalized-poverty-and-how-to-change-that-now/?sh=68d8f6d43281
Gershon, Livia. "Race, Prison, and the Thirteenth Amendment - Jstor Daily: Critiques of the Thirteenth Amendment Have Roots in a Long History of Activists Who Understood the Imprisonment of Black People as a Type of Slavery." JSTOR, nonprofit library for the intellectually curious, 21 Sept. 2023, daily.jstor.org/race-prison-and-the-thirteenth-amendment/
Ghandnoosh, Ph.D., Nazgol. “Ending 50 Years of Mass Incarceration: Urgent Reform Needed to Protect Future Generations.” The Sentencing Project, The Sentencing Project, 8 Feb. 2023, www.sentencingproject.org/policy-brief/ending-50-years-of-mass-incarceration-urgent-reform-needed-to-protect-future-generations/
"It is unacceptable to wait more than seven decades to substantively alter a system that violates human rights and is out of step with the world, is racially biased, and diverts resources from effective public safety investments. To achieve meaningful decarceration, policymakers must reduce prison admissions and scale back sentence lengths—both for those entering prisons and those already there. The growing movement to take a “second look” at unjust and excessive prison terms is a necessary first step. As the country grapples with an uptick in certain crimes, ending mass incarceration requires accelerating recent reforms and making effective investments in public safety."
Gill, Molly M. “Let’s Abolish Mandatory Minimums: The Punishment Must Fit The Crime.” American Bar Association, 1 Apr. 2009, www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/human_rights_vol36_2009/spring2009/lets_abolish_mandatory_minimums_the_punishment_must_fit_the_crime/
"The use of mandatory minimum sentences is an ongoing human rights violation in America. These one-size-fits-all sentencing statutes that were intended to deter crime and punish big-time criminals often backfire, giving drug addicts and small-time offenders enormous sentences. Mandatory sentences usually apply to drug and gun offenses. Examples include a five-year sentence for possessing five grams of crack cocaine or a ten-year sentence for firing a gun in connection with a drug trafficking offense. But the “three strikes” laws are the most notorious cases in point. When Leandro Andrade stole $153 worth of videotapes, he received a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole for fifty years because the crime was his third felony conviction. The judge could not adjust the sentence to reflect the minor nature of the crime or Andrade’s unique circumstances. (He was an Army veteran, a father of three, a drug addict, and his previous convictions were for nonviolent property crimes.) The Supreme Court later rejected Andrade’s claims that his sentence violated the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment in Lockyer v. Andrade, 538 U.S. 63 (2003)."
Goodwin, Michele. “The Thirteenth Amendment: Modern Slavery, Capitalism, and Mass Incarceration.” Cornell University Law Library, Cornell Law Review, 20 Sept. 2019, scholarship.law.cornell.edu/clr/vol104/iss4/4/
"Prison labor generates a robust economy-not far different from convict leasing [Slavery] of the past. Moreover, private industries, including the major private prison companies, promote and protect their interests through astronomic spending on robust lobbying efforts. The result is a racialized system rife with human rights abuses, which has been more difficult to dismantle than South African apartheid... [Page 980] ... Slavery's preservation in the United State can-in part-be explained by its fluid transformations, which continuously exacted economic gains, preserved southern social order, and inured benefits to private parties as well as the state. These transformations did not outpace law. Rather, the rule of law in the south and lawlessness among local law enforcement frequently accommodated these transformations and innovations. Historically, efforts to stamp out the myriad forms of Slavery-convict leasing, peonage, contract transfers, so-called "apprenticeships," and chain gangs-frequently fell short because of local collusion and complicity, weak federal interventions and protections, and violence. The specter of lynching, which included the hanging women and children, bombings of churches and homes, and arrests, succeeded in instilling a crippling fear among even the most courageous southern Blacks. Local and state laws aggravated these injustices and provided little or no relief for Black men, women, and children subjected to them. These historic conditions matter today. With the ratification of the Punishment Clause, states lacked any disincentive to do otherwise. Effectively, there were no consequences for continuing slavery within the means articulated by the Thirteenth Amendment. If anything, the Thirteenth Amendment's Punishment Clause may have exacerbated slavery's spread into states that had previously abolished the practice. Substantively, freedom shall not and truly cannot exist without a fundamental change in the criminal justice system, including the abolishment of the Punishment Clause... [Page 990]."
Hannah-Jones, Nikole. “The 1619 Project.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 14 Aug. 2019, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html
"In August of 1619, a ship appeared on this horizon, near Point Comfort, a coastal port in the English colony of Virginia. It carried more than 20 enslaved Africans, who were sold to the colonists. No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the years of slavery that followed. On the 400th anniversary of this fateful moment, it is finally time to tell our story truthfully."
“Image 13 of Federal Writers’ Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 2, Arkansas, Part 1, Abbott-Byrd.” Library Of Congress, Library Of Congress, Nov. 1938, www.loc.gov/resource/mesn.021/?sp=13&st=image&r=-0.503,-0.276,2.006,1.488,0
"My mama was named Eloise Rogers. She was born in Missouri. She was sold and brought to three or four miles from Brownsville, Tennessee. Alex Rogers bought her and my papa. She had been a house girl and well cared for. She never got in contact [with] her folks no more after she was sold... Pa say they strop [him] down at the carriage house and give [him] five hundred lashes. He say they have salt and black pepper mixed up in [their] old bucket and put it all on flesh cut up with a rag tied on a stick (mop)."
Kelley, Erin, et al. “Disenfranchisement Laws.” Brennan Center for Justice, Brennan Center for Justice, 9 May 2017, www.brennancenter.org/issues/ensure-every-american-can-vote/voting-rights-restoration/disenfranchisement-laws
“Last Prisoner Project #FreeKevinAllen.” #FreeKevinAllen, Last Prisoner Project, www.lastprisonerproject.org/freekevinallen
"On December 27, 2012, and March 13, 2013, the Bossier Sheriff’s Narcotics Task Force paid a confidential informant to approach Allen and solicit marijuana. Mr. Allen provided the CI with a grand total of $20 worth of weed.... Kevin was found guilty by a split jury on March 18, 2014. Initially sentenced to 10 years imprisonment of hard labor for each count, the state filed for an enhancement of punishment under the state’s habitual offender statutes. Because he had previous drug charges, Kevin was then resentenced to life imprisonment without the benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence, even though he had never been convicted of any violent crimes."
Lee, Juhohn. “America Has Spent over a Trillion Dollars Fighting the War on Drugs. 50 Years Later, Drug Use in the U.S. Is Climbing Again.” CNBC, CNBC, 17 June 2021, www.cnbc.com/2021/06/17/the-us-has-spent-over-a-trillion-dollars-fighting-war-on-drugs.html
Li, Weihua. “What Can FBI Data Say about Crime in 2021? It’s Too Unreliable to Tell.” The Marshall Project, The Marshall Project, 14 June 2022, www.themarshallproject.org/2022/06/14/what-did-fbi-data-say-about-crime-in-2021-it-s-too-unreliable-to-tell
"Nearly 40% of law enforcement agencies around the country did not submit any data in 2021 to a newly revised FBI crime statistics collection program, leaving a massive gap in information."
“Lockup Quotas.” In the Public Interest, ITPI: In the Public Interest, 19 Sept. 2013, inthepublicinterest.org/lockup-quotas/
"We are living in boom times for the private prison industry. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest owner of private prisons, has seen its revenue climb by more than 500 percent in the last two decades. And CCA wants to get much, much bigger: Last year, the company made an offer to 48 governors to buy and operate their state-funded prisons. But what made CCA’s pitch to those governors so audacious and shocking was that it included a so-called occupancy requirement, a clause demanding the state keep those newly privatized prisons at least 90 percent full at all times, regardless of whether crime was rising or falling."
Lopez, German. “This Man Is Sentenced to Die in Prison over Marijuana.” Vox, Vox, 20 Apr. 2016, www.vox.com/2016/4/20/11467558/marijuana-life-sentence
"Lee Carroll Brooker, a 75-year-old disabled veteran, is sentenced to die in prison thanks to a mandatory sentence involving marijuana."
“Lynching in America.” LYNCHING IN AMERICA Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror Third Edition, Equal Justice Initiative, 2017, eji.org/wp-content/uploads/2005/11/lynching-in-america-3d-ed-110121.pdf
"Lynching profoundly impacted race relations in this country and shaped the geographic, political, social, and economic conditions of African Americans in ways that are still evident today. Terror lynchings fueled the mass migration of millions of Black people from the South into urban ghettos in the North and West throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Lynching created a fearful environment where racial subordination and segregation was maintained with limited resistance for decades. Most critically, lynching reinforced a legacy of racial inequality that has never been adequately addressed in America. The administration of criminal justice in particular is tangled with the history of lynching in profound and important ways that continue to contaminate the integrity and fairness of the justice system. This report begins a necessary conversation to confront the injustice, inequality, anguish, and suffering that racial terror and violence created. The history of terror lynching complicates contemporary issues of race, punishment, crime, and justice. Mass incarceration, excessive penal punishment, disproportionate sentencing of racial minorities, and police abuse of people of color reveal problems in American society that were framed in the terror era. The narrative of racial difference that lynching dramatized continues to haunt us. Avoiding honest conversation about this history has undermined our ability to build a nation where racial justice can be achieved."
Mcdowell, Robin, and Margie Mason. “Prisoners in the US Are Part of a Hidden Workforce Linked to Hundreds of Popular Food Brands.” AP News, AP News, 29 Jan. 2024, apnews.com/article/prison-to-plate-inmate-labor-investigation-c6f0eb4747963283316e494eadf08c4e
"A hidden path to America’s dinner tables begins here, at an unlikely source – a former Southern slave plantation that is now the country’s largest maximum-security prison.... Some prisoners work on the same plantation soil where slaves harvested cotton, tobacco and sugarcane more than 150 years ago.... They are among America’s most vulnerable laborers. If they refuse to work, some can jeopardize their chances of parole or face punishment like being sent to solitary confinement. They also are often excluded from protections guaranteed to almost all other full-time workers, even when they are seriously injured or killed on the job...."
“More About Legalizing and Regulating Marijuana.” Drug Policy Alliance, 7 June 2023, drugpolicy.org/more-about-legalizing-and-regulating-marijuana-the-right-way/
Morrison, Aaron. “50-Year War on Drugs Imprisoned Millions of Black Americans.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 26 July 2021, www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/50-year-war-on-drugs-imprisoned-millions-of-black-americans
Moser, Ryan. “Slavery and the Modern-Day Prison Plantation - Jstor Daily: ‘Except as Punishment for a Crime,’ Reads the Constitutional Exception to Abolition. In Prison Plantations across the United States, Slavery Thrives.” Politics & History, from JSTOR, nonprofit library for the intellectually curious, 8 Nov. 2023, daily.jstor.org/slavery-and-the-modern-day-prison-plantation/
"In prison plantations across the United States, Slavery thrives."
“Nixon Adviser Admits War on Drugs Was Designed to Criminalize Black People.” Equal Justice Initiative, 25 Mar. 2016, eji.org/news/Nixon-war-on-drugs-designed-to-criminalize-black-people/
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Nkechi, Taifa “Race, Mass Incarceration, and the Disastrous War on Drugs.” Brennan Center for Justice, Brennan Center for Justice, 10 May 2021, www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/race-mass-incarceration-and-disastrous-war-drugs."
"Indeed, rather than steps, it is time for leaps and bounds. End all mandatory minimum sentences and invest in a health-centered approach to substance use disorders. Demand a second-look process with the presumption of release for those serving life-without-parole drug sentences. Make sentences retroactive where laws have changed. Support categorical clemencies to rectify past injustices. It is time for bold action. We must not be satisfied with the norm, but work toward institutionalizing the demand for a standard of decency that values transformative change."
NMAAHC. “A Punishing System.” A Punishing System | National Museum of African American History & Culture., www.searchablemuseum.com/a-punishing-system
"The labor of enslaved Americans fueled the rapid growth of the national economy. Forced by the whip to work faster, better, and harder, African Americans, often malnourished and sleep-deprived, used extraordinary skill to catapult the United States into the global economy. In 1800 enslaved African Americans produced 1.4 million pounds of cotton. By 1860 they cultivated almost two billion. Sparked by higher quotas and the terror of the whip, individual productivity increased 400 percent."
Ntirugelegwa , Genoveva. “Convict Leasing and Racial Capitalism.” The Prison in the Western World, Duke University, 6 Aug. 2020, sites.duke.edu/history190s_02_ss22020/2020/08/06/convict-leasing-and-racial-capitalism/
Pasley, James. “15 American Landmarks That Were Built by Enslaved People.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 6 Sept. 2019, www.businessinsider.com/american-landmarks-that-were-built-by-slaves-2019-9
Pecorara, Michael. “Time’s up for Mandatory Minimums.” Harvard Undergraduate Law Review, Harvard Undergraduate Law Review, 27 Apr. 2022, hulr.org/spring-2022/times-up-mandatory-minimums.
“Plessy v. Ferguson: Separate but Equal Doctrine.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 29 Oct. 2009, www.history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson
"Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. The case stemmed from an 1892 incident in which African American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a car for Black people. Rejecting Plessy’s argument that his constitutional rights were violated, the Supreme Court ruled that a law that “implies merely a legal distinction” between white people and Black people was not unconstitutional. As a result, restrictive Jim Crow legislation and separate public accommodations based on race became commonplace."
“Poverty and Opportunity Profile: Americans with Criminal Records.” The Sentencing Project, The Sentencing Project, www.sentencingproject.org/app/uploads/2022/08/Americans-with-Criminal-Records-Poverty-and-Opportunity-Profile.pdf
"Between 70 million and 100 million—or as many as one in three Americans—have some type of criminal record. Having even a minor criminal record, such as a misdemeanor or even an arrest without conviction, can create an array of lifelong barriers that stand in the way of successful re-entry. This has broad implications for individuals’ and families’ economic security, as well as for our national economy. Mass incarceration and hyper-criminalization serve as major drivers of poverty; having a criminal record can present obstacles to employment, housing, public assistance, education, family reunification, building good credit, and more."
“Prison Conditions.” Equal Justice Initiative, 10 Mar. 2021, eji.org/issues/prison-conditions/
"Millions of Americans are incarcerated in overcrowded, violent, and inhumane jails and prisons that do not provide treatment, education, or rehabilitation. Today, prisons and jails in America are in crisis. Incarcerated people are beaten, stabbed, raped, and killed in facilities run by corrupt officials who abuse their power with impunity. People who need medical care, help managing their disabilities, mental health and addiction treatment, and suicide prevention are denied care, ignored, punished, and placed in solitary confinement. And despite growing bipartisan support for criminal justice reform, the private prison industry continues to block meaningful proposals."
“The Prison Industry: Mapping Private Sector Players.” WorthRises, WorthRises, 2020, worthrises.org/theprisonindustry2020
"The data provided in this report should serve as a launching pad for further exploration. Readers should engage and analyze the data but follow up with their own investigations before making decisions about what approach to take in challenging each corporation’s involvement in the prison industry."
“Report: The War on Marijuana in Black and White.” American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU, June 2013, www.aclu.org/publications/report-war-marijuana-black-and-white
"Over-Policing: Between 2001 and 2010, there were over 8 million pot arrests in the U.S. That’s one bust every 37 seconds and hundreds of thousands ensnared in the criminal justice system.... Staggering Racial Bias: Marijuana use is roughly equal among Blacks and whites, yet Blacks are 3.73 times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession."
Rubinkam, Michael. “Kids-for-Cash Judges Ordered to Pay More than $200m.” Fox Business, Fox Business, 18 Aug. 2022, www.foxbusiness.com/money/kids-cash-judges-ordered-pay-200m
"Two former Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200 million to hundreds of people they victimized in one of the worst judicial scandals in U.S. history."
Sawyer, Wendy Sawyer and Peter, and Peter Wagner. “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2023.” Prison Policy Initiative, Prison Policy Initiative, 14 Mar. 2024, www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2024.html
"Further complicating matters is the fact that the U.S. doesn’t have one criminal legal system; instead, we have thousands of federal, state, local, and tribal systems."
Schmidlin, Kyle. “Column: ‘War On Drugs’ Merely Fights the Symptoms of a Faulty System.” CBS News Politics, CBS, 13 Sept. 2008, www.cbsnews.com/news/column-war-on-drugs-merely-fights-the-symptoms-of-a-faulty-system/
"I feel compelled to address an issue which is entirely ignored in major press publications. The "war on drugs" has been waged in various forms and capacities since the prohibition of alcohol, and the only thing it has accomplished is to put non-violent, non-criminal offenders behind bars."
Simard, Justin. “Citing Slavery.” Stanford Law Review, Stanford Law Review [Volume 72], Jan. 2020, review.law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/01/Simard-72-Stan.-L.-Rev.-79.pdf
"The legal profession must confront its role in Slavery. At a time when other American groups and institutions from businesses to universities are coming to grips with the legacy of Slavery, the legal profession must do the same."
Simba, Malik. “The Three-Fifths Clause of the United States Constitution (1787).” BlackPast, BlackPast, 3 Oct. 2014, www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/events-african-american-history/three-fifths-clause-united-states-constitution-1787/
"Often misinterpreted to mean that African Americans as individuals are considered three-fifths of a person or that they are three-fifths of a citizen of the U.S., the three-fifths clause (Article I, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution of 1787) in fact declared that for purposes of representation in Congress, enslaved blacks in a state would be counted as three-fifths of the number of white inhabitants of that state."
Slater, Eric. “Pizza Thief Receives Sentence of 25 Years to Life in Prison: Crime: Judge Cites Five Prior Felony Convictions in Sentencing Jerry Dewayne Williams under ‘three Strikes’ Law.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 3 Mar. 1995, www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-03-03-me-38444-story.html
"Jerry Dewayne Williams was sentenced to prison for 25 years to life Thursday under the state’s “three strikes” law for stealing a slice of pepperoni pizza."
“SLAVERY IN AMERICA: The Montgomery Slave Trade.” Equal Justice Initiative, Equal Justice Initiative, 2018, eji.org/report/slavery-in-America/
"An estimated 10.7 million Black men, women, and children were transported from West Africa and sold into slavery in South America, Central America, or North America. Nearly two million more are estimated to have perished during the brutal voyage... Beginning in the 16th century, millions of African people were kidnapped, enslaved, and shipped across the Atlantic to the Americas under horrific conditions that frequently resulted in starvation and death. Nearly two million people died at sea during the agonizing journey. Over two centuries, the enslavement of Black people in the United States created wealth, opportunity, and prosperity for millions of Americans. As American slavery evolved, an elaborate and enduring mythology about the inferiority of Black people was created to legitimate, perpetuate, and defend slavery. This mythology survived slavery’s formal abolition following the Civil War. In the South, where the enslavement of Black people was widely embraced, resistance to ending slavery persisted for another century following the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Today, more than 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, very little has been done to address the legacy of slavery and its meaning in contemporary life. In many communities like Montgomery, Alabama—which had a prominent role in the slave trade and was a primary site for human trafficking and facilitating slavery—there is little understanding of the slave trade, enslavement, or the longstanding effort to sustain the racial hierarchy that slavery created."
“Slavery Is Still Legal for Two Million People in the U.S.” Vera Institute of Justice, Vera Institute of Justice, 15 June 2022, www.vera.org/news/slavery-is-still-legal-for-two-million-people-in-the-u-s
"The 13th Amendment outlawed slavery except for as punishment for crime. This exception created a financial incentive to criminalize people and steal their labor, and it was exploited almost immediately. Not a year had passed after its ratification when Southern states and localities began to institute Black Codes that criminalized things like “vagrancy” and “walking without purpose.” Under Mississippi’s Black Codes, Black people who did not present proof of employment became “criminals” who could be imprisoned and “leased” to private companies for harsh forced labor. In the 20th century, the War on Drugs ushered in an era of harsh sentences for non-violent drug crimes that filled prisons with people who could be forced to work for little or no pay. Mass incarceration, and the criminalization of poverty, has created a modern-day abomination—nearly two million incarcerated people in the United States have no protection from legal slavery. A disproportionate percentage of them are Black and people of color... We must end slavery in the United States, for everyone, once and for all."
“Slavery: Cause and Catalyst of the Civil War.” U.S. Department of the Interior National Park Service, www.nps.gov/cuga/learn/historyculture/upload/SLAVERY-BROCHURE.pdf
"The roots of the crisis over Slavery that gripped the nation in 1860-1861 go back well before the nation’s founding. In 1619, slavery was introduced to Virginia, when a Dutch ship traded African slaves for food. Unable to find cheap labor from other sources, white settlers increasingly turned to slaves imported from Africa. By the early 1700s, in British North America, slavery generally meant African slavery. Southern plantations using slave labor produced the great export crops—tobacco, rice, forest products, and indigo—that made the American colonies prosperous. Many Northern merchants made their fortunes either in the slave trade or by exporting the products of slave labor. African Slavery was central to the development of British North America."
“The State of Cannabis Justice Report.” Last Prisoner Project - Cannabis Reform Nonprofit, 2023, www.lastprisonerproject.org/state-of-cannabis-justice-report
“Steven Bell, the Bicycle Thief: 60 Archives.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 7 Apr. 2019, www.cbsnews.com/news/60-archives-steven-bell-the-bicycle-thief/
"Nearly 20 years ago, 60 Minutes broadcast a report called 'The Bicycle Thief.' It told the story of Steven Bell, a tree trimmer from Citrus Heights, California, who was facing 35-years-to-life in prison for stealing a bicycle. Back in the year 2000, correspondent Steve Kroft was coming face-to-face with 'the toughest law in America,' California's Three Strikes law. Bell was 36 then, facing a by-the-book prosecutor at a time when voters punished any politician they deemed "soft" on crime. Shortly after our story aired, Bell was sentenced to 35-years-to-life."
Swarns, Christina. “‘Tough-on-Crime’ Policies Are at Odds with the Presumption of Innocence.” Innocence Project, Innocence Project, 26 June 2023, innocenceproject.org/tough-on-crime-policies-are-at-odds-with-the-presumption-of-innocence/
"For all of these reasons, policymakers must learn from history and avoid rolling back progress — as this country has so often done — in the fight for a more equitable society."
“A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform.” American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU, 16 Apr. 2020, www.aclu.org/publications/tale-two-countries-racially-targeted-arrests-era-marijuana-reform
"This ACLU research report, A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform, details marijuana arrests from 2010 to 2018 and examines racial disparities at the national, state, and county levels. Updating our previous report, The War on Marijuana in Black and White, that examined arrests from 2000 to 2010 [showing over 8 million arrests], this report reveals that the racist war on marijuana is far from over. More than six million arrests occurred between 2010 and 2018, and Black people are still more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people in every state, including those that have legalized marijuana. With detailed recommendations for governments and law enforcement agencies, this report provides a detailed road map for ending the War on Marijuana and ensuring legalization efforts center racial justice."
Thomas, Zoe. “The Hidden Links between Slavery and Wall Street.” BBC News, BBC, 28 Aug. 2019, www.bbc.com/news/business-49476247
"Later in the 19th Century, US banks and southern states would sell securities that helped fund the expansion of slave run plantations... By the mid 19th Century, exports of raw cotton accounted for more than half of US oversees shipments. What wasn't sold abroad was sent to mills in northern states including Massachusetts and Rhode Island to be turned into fabric. The money southern plantation owners earned couldn't be kept under mattresses or behind loose floorboards. American banks accepted their deposits and counted enslaved people as assets when assessing a person's wealth... JP Morgan was not alone. The predecessors that made up Citibank, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are among a list of well-known US financial firms that benefited from the slave trade."
“The Transatlantic Slave Trade.” Equal Justice Initiative, Equal Justice Initiative, 2022, eji.org/report/transatlantic-slave-trade/
"The abduction, abuse, and enslavement of Africans by Europeans for nearly five centuries dramatically altered the global landscape and created a legacy of suffering and bigotry that can still be seen today. After discovering lands that had been occupied by Indigenous people for centuries, European powers sent ships and armed militia to exploit these new lands for wealth and profit starting in the 1400s. In territories we now call “the Americas,” gold, sugar, tobacco, and extraordinary natural resources were viewed as opportunities to gain power and influence for Portugal, Spain, Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Scandinavian nations. Europeans first sought to enslave the Indigenous people who occupied these lands to create wealth for foreign powers, resulting in a catastrophic genocide. Disease, famine, and conflict killed millions of Native people within a relatively short period of time. Determined to extract wealth from these distant lands, European powers sought labor from Africa, launching a tragic era of kidnapping, abduction, and trafficking that resulted in the enslavement of millions of African people."
Travis, Jeremy, et al. “Punitive Excess.” Brennan Center for Justice, Brennan Center for Justice, 2021, www.brennancenter.org/series/punitive-excess
“U.S. Constitution - Eighth Amendment | Resources | Constitution ...” United States Constitution, American Government Congress, constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-8/
"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
“U.S. Constitution - Eighth Amendment | Resources | Constitution ...” United States Constitution, American Government Congress, constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-14/
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
“U.S. Constitution - The Preamble | Resources | Constitution Annotated ...” United States Constitution, American Government Congress, constitution.congress.gov/constitution/preamble/
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
“Unconstitutional Mandatory Minimums.” Sign The Petition To Congress. American Slavery Must End., Talk Listen Change, 2024, www.talklistenchange.net/unconstitutional-mandatory-minimums.html
"This is the painfully grim truth about the corrupt American legal system. Too many people have received cruel unjust punishments and remain wrongfully incarcerated, exploited, disenfranchised, and Enslaved in violent prison because of the unconstitutional "War On Drugs" and cruel inhumane "Mandatory Minimums" that blatantly violate human rights. Immediate reform from Congress and the Federal Government is necessary now to protect future American generations and to reunite families with their loved ones. Justice is long overdue."
Vallas, Rebecca, et al. “A Criminal Record Shouldn’t Be a Life Sentence to Poverty.” Center for American Progress, Center for American Progress, 28 Mar. 2023, www.americanprogress.org/article/criminal-record-shouldnt-life-sentence-poverty-2/
"The War on Drugs Is Designed to Discriminate | The War on Drugs." YouTube, VICE News, 4 Nov. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf5qFlpJ2sk&t=308s
Willingham, Leah. “Mississippi Court Upholds Life Sentence for Pot Possession.” AP News, AP News, 12 May 2021, apnews.com/article/mississippi-0e463c390bedc7f6b25fb7e54b955b74
"JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi Court of Appeals on Tuesday upheld a life sentence for a man convicted of a marijuana possession charge because he had previous convictions and those made him a habitual offender. Allen Russell, 38, was sentenced to life in Forrest County in 2019 after a jury found him guilty of possession of more than 30 grams (1.05 ounces) of marijuana."
“World Population Review.” Incarceration Rates by Country 2024, World Population Review, worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarceration-rates-by-country
“THE PETITION TO END SLAVERY IN AMERICA.” Change.org, Talk Listen Change, 11 Aug. 2023, https://chng.it/ZmBs54dr4G
"The Evil 13th Amendment Slavery loophole must be abolished. Congress has a moral responsibility to end American Slavery for real this time and also a clear constitutional legal obligation to uphold 'Due Process' and 'Equal Protection of the Laws' for all citizens who currently remain wrongfully incarcerated and Enslaved in violent prisons because of the unconstitutional, fraudulent, racist, corrupt 'War On Drugs' marijuana prohibition, and because of cruel inhumane 'Mandatory Minimums' that continue to violate basic human rights. Freedom and Justice must be served now by Congress. No Slavery. No exceptions. Sign the petition."
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