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   From: DEMI_GOD_@SHAW.CA   
      
   The U.S. incarceration industry is the vicious, ever-growing, domestic   
   component of imperialist globalization. Simply put, the Prison-Industrial   
   Complex (PIC) is the fusion of prison construction, prison labor, the   
   profits both of them create and their impact on society.   
   Since 1991, the rate of violent acts has decreased by 20 percent. But the   
   number of people in prison has increased by 50 percent. The incarceration of   
   such a huge sector of the U.S. population is rooted within the laws of   
   capitalist economics -- that is, the insatiable drive to make profits at the   
   expense of human development.   
   The U.S. has the largest prison population in the industrialized world -- 2   
   million people -- and it is growing by leaps and bounds in the current   
   period of so-called economic prosperity. The destructive role of the PIC in   
   the lives of poor people in the U.S. mirrors what the IMF is doing to   
   destroy poor people throughout the world, especially in the developing   
   countries.   
   The expansion of private prisons is considered by many experts to be the   
   most profitable industry in the U.S. today. The Corrections Corporations of   
   America, the country's largest private-prison conglomerate, generates huge   
   profits by operating 46 penal institutions in 11 states, including seven   
   juvenile facilities. Many of the most influential Wall Street firms and   
   investment banks, from American Express to Smith Barney pour an estimated   
   $35 billion annually into supporting prison bond issues, construction and   
   the privatization of prisons.   
   How do the prisons create profit? Many prisoners are paid only pennies an   
   hour to build houses for the elderly and the disabled, wire schools for   
   computers, fight forest fires, and so on. Between 1980 and 1994 the value of   
   goods produced by prisoners rose from $392 million to $1.1 billion. The PIC   
   is the second-largest employer in the U.S. Corporations, such as American   
   Express and Microsoft, profit off prison sweatshops. This slave labor takes   
   the jobs of unionized workers who could be doing the same tasks. Unions   
   should make it their business to organize these prisoners into unions so   
   that they aren't used as scab labor.   
   The unpaid labor derived from African slavery for nearly three centuries   
   provided the platform for the accumulation of capital by a tiny segment of   
   the U.S. population. U.S.-style apartheid continued legally for another 100   
   years after the abolition of slavery in 1863-65. Today the prison system is   
   the institutional legacy for extreme racist repression.   
   One in every four Black men is likely to be caught up in the vicious web of   
   the criminal IN-justice system at some point during his lifetime. One out of   
   14 Black men is currently incarcerated. The number of women   
   prisoners--80,000 of them--has grown 12-fold since 1970. Seventy-five   
   percent of these women are mothers.   
   The prison-industrial complex cannot be separated from the epidemic of   
   racist police brutality sweeping the country. Nor can it be separated from   
   the killing machine called death row. Almost 4,000 people will be executed   
   in the coming years. There are no rich people on death row. Just as police   
   brutality and police murder never effect affluent communities, the death   
   penalty is an instrument of terror inflicted by those who hold power against   
   working class and poor people.   
   Our demonstrations against the IMF and World Bank this week are an act of   
   solidarity with the 1.2 billion people who go to bed hungry in the   
   developing world because of austerity programs imposed by the IMF. This same   
   struggle is raging inside the borders of the United States, most   
   dramatically by the use of state repression and prisons against poor people   
   at home. We will march to shut down the IMF and World Bank, and on Saturday,   
   April 15, we will march to shut down the prison-industrial complex.   
   International Action Center 39 West 14th Street, Room 206 New York, NY 10011   
   email: iacenter@iacenter.org web: www.iacenter.org phone: 212 633-6646 fax:   
   212 633-2889   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)