{"id":1881,"date":"2011-06-21T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-21T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/protests-about-trillion-dollar-incarceration-machine-crash-white-house-web-site.html"},"modified":"2011-06-21T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-21T12:00:00","slug":"protests-about-trillion-dollar-incarceration-machine-crash-white-house-web-site","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/06\/protests-about-trillion-dollar-incarceration-machine-crash-white-house-web-site.html","title":{"rendered":"Protests about &#8220;trillion dollar incarceration machine&#8221; crash White House web site"},"content":{"rendered":"W.E. Messamore wrote for caivn.org 18 June 2011,\n<a href=\"http:\/\/caivn.org\/article\/2011\/06\/18\/internet-activists-crash-white-house-phone-lines-calling-end-war-drugs\">\nInternet activists crash White House phone lines calling for an end to the War on Drugs<\/a>:\n<blockquote>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/reddit.com\/comments\/i0m4d\/its_time_we_demand_an_end_to_the_failed_40_year\/\">\n<img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right;border:none;\"   src=\"http:\/\/static.reddit.com\/reddit.com.header.png\"><\/a>\nOn Friday June 17th, exactly 40 years after President Richard Nixon\ndeclared a &#8220;War on Drugs,&#8221; Internet activists organizing from the social\nnews and activism website, Reddit.com, called the White House en masse\nto demand an end to the War on Drugs, calling it a &#8220;trillion dollar\nincarceration machine&#8221; with a measurable failure to reduce drug use,\nor harm from drug use.\n<\/blockquote>\nThe\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/reddit.com\/comments\/i0m4d\/its_time_we_demand_an_end_to_the_failed_40_year\/\">\noriginal post included this:<\/a>\n<blockquote>\nThis is also the last vestige of Nixon&#8217;s fight against the civil rights and anti-war movements: And if you look at US incarceration rates, it&#8217;s been incredibly effective. . .\n<ul>\n<li>\n4,919 Black males per 100,000 population\n<li>\n1,717 Latino males per 100,000 of population\n<li>\n717 White males per 100,000 of population.\n<li>\nSouth Africa under Apartheid (1993) &#8211; 851 Black males per 100,000\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\nThat&#8217;s right, almost six times as many black males per capita\nget locked up in the U.S. than in South Africa under apartheid.\nThe numbers are even worse for young people and especially young black males,\nleading to this summary:\n<blockquote>\nThis isn&#8217;t a War on Drugs: It&#8217;s a Race War; It&#8217;s a War on the youth,\nlikely to protest controversial policies (a war that conveniently takes\naway those groups voting rights). It&#8217;s a war on the American People,\npaid for by the American people, for the American people&#8217;s own good.\n<\/blockquote>\nYep.\nExcept a majority of the American people don&#8217;t want the &#8220;war on drugs&#8221;\nany more.\nIt&#8217;s time for the laws to change.\n<p>\nBack to the\n<a href=\"http:\/\/caivn.org\/article\/2011\/06\/18\/internet-activists-crash-white-house-phone-lines-calling-end-war-drugs\">\nmain article:<\/a>\n\n<!--more-->\n<blockquote>\nThis Friday, the Internet activists calling in to the White House were\ncounseled by their fellow users to be polite and courteous, and to stick\nto facts like America&#8217;s startling incarceration rate, the enormous\ncost of the War on Drugs, and the percentage of Americans who favor\nliberalizing drug policy. Their act of political engagement comes at a\ntime when many of the world&#8217;s leaders and former leaders are beginning\nto voice concern over the failures of the War on Drugs.\n<p>\nJust this Thursday, former President Jimmy Carter published an op ed in\nThe New York Times calling for an end to the global drug war, indicating\nthat persuading an occupant of the White House as to the harms and\nunintended consequences of the War on Drugs may not be so far-fetched.\n<\/blockquote>\nThat would be <a href=\"\/blog\/2011\/06\/call-off-the-global-drug-war-jimmy-carter.html\">this op-ed by Jimmy Carter.<\/a>\n<p>\nWe don&#8217;t need a private incarceration machine in Lowndes County, Georgia.\nSpend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education instead.\n<p>\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"W.E. Messamore wrote for caivn.org 18 June 2011, Internet activists crash White House phone lines calling for an end to the War on Drugs: On Friday June 17th, exactly 40 years after President Richard Nixon declared a &#8220;War on Drugs,&#8221; Internet activists organizing from the social news and activism website, Reddit.com, called the White House [&hellip;]","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":[97,1113,15,2,19,72,20,22,178],"tags":[1309,8817,77,8701,8730,727,7,2490,75,2489,3206,60,8749,82,4360],"class_list":["post-1881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-cca","category-education","category-government","category-history","category-incarceration","category-law","category-politics","category-vlcia","tag-apartheid","tag-cca","tag-drugs","tag-georgia","tag-incarceration","tag-jail","tag-lowndes-county","tag-parole","tag-prison","tag-probation","tag-reddit","tag-tax","tag-vlcia","tag-war-on-drugs","tag-white-house"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-ul","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1881","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=1881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}