\n\n<\/a>\nAfter forty years of the war on drugs, America continues to have laws\nthat stratify society based on race and class and continues to ignore\nDr. King\u2019s lessons on justice, compassion and love.\n
\nMy favorite quote from Dr. King speaks to the heart of the problem with\nAmerica\u2019s criminal justice system. “Power without love is reckless\nand abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power\nat its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at\nits best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”\n
\nAmerica\u2019s criminal justice system is reckless and discriminate. America\nhas five percent of the world\u2019s population but 25 percent of the\nworld\u2019s prisoners. Blacks are incarcerated at four to five times the\nrate of whites for drug crimes, even though the majority of those who\nuse and sell drugs are white. The majority of those incarcerated are\npeople who have a history with mental health and substance abuse.\n
\nNot only does incarceration impact individuals but it undermines families,\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n
\ncommunities and civil rights. As Michelle Alexander articulates in\n\n\u201cThe New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness\u201d<\/a>,\nmass incarceration has created a caste-like system that locks millions\nof people into the bottom rungs of society based on their status as\nex-prisoners. Families of those incarcerated suffer an average 30 percent\nless income; and in Chicago, 1.46 million black men have lost their\nright to vote due to felony convictions. Alexander argues correctly in\nher book by saying, because of mass incarceration and the war on drugs,\nold forms of discrimination against voting, employment, housing, access\nto education, and public benefits have become legal again.\n<\/blockquote>\nDoes that seem right to you?\n\nIf not, what can you do?\n
\nAs long as the war on drugs leads to mass incarceration, racial\nstratification and the erosion of our civil rights and liberties, we must\ndo as Dr. King would do, fight for its defeat and create a new dialogue\nrooted in \u201clove implementing the demands justice\u2026 and power correcting\neverything that stands against love.\u201d At its core, this would mean\nsubstance abuse and mental health treatment for all those who need it,\nnot incarceration for nonviolent drug felons.\n<\/blockquote>\nThat may take a while.\n\nMeanwhile, we can at least refuse to buy further into that corrupt system\nby refusing to have a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia.\nSpend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education instead.\n
\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I hate to repeat a preacher, but it’s Sunday, and Robert Rooks wrote for NAACP 24 August 2011 U.S. Approach to War on Drugs Ignores Dr. King\u2019s Lessons on Justice, Compassion. After forty years of the war on drugs, America continues to have laws that stratify society based on race and class and continues to […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,1113,40,15,19,72,1867,2951,178],"tags":[8817,8705,8709,8730,1899,3873,8845,8863,2712,8749],"class_list":["post-1587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-cca","category-community","category-education","category-history","category-incarceration","category-mlk","category-naacp","category-vlcia","tag-cca","tag-education","tag-history","tag-incarceration","tag-jim-crow","tag-michelle-alexander","tag-mlk","tag-naacp","tag-rehabilitation","tag-vlcia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-pB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}