"'The War on Drugs': Uncle Sam Wants YOU -- in the Dark" Speakers: Sarah Clark & Sean Luse, Students for Sensible Drug Policy
Date: Thursday, January 31 Time: 5:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. Location: 115 Stillman, OSU 1947 College Rd., Columbus, OH
Come and discuss the links between the "war on drugs" at home and U.S. counter-insurgency warfare abroad, between incarceration of people of color at home and attacks on the wretched of the earth abroad, and between the rise in incarceration and the decline of such social programs as public education!
® The current U.S. rate of incarceration (including both prison and jail) of 699 persons per 100,000 population advances the U.S. position as the world leader in imprisonment. The U.S., which has 5% of the world population, has more than a quarter of its prisoners. An estimated 60% of all incarcerations are related to drug convictions. ® African-Americans make up 12% of the nation's population and 13% of drug users but comprise 59% of drug convictions. 46% of the overall prison population is black. (In contrast, in the 1930s approximately 75% of prison admissions were white while 22% were African-American.) ® America is spending 6 times more to incarcerate 1.2 million nonviolent offenders than the federal government spent on child care for 1.25 million children. ® From 1976, the year when free higher education was eradicated, until the end of the century, on average a new prison was constructed in America every week. ® States around the country spent more on building prisons than colleges in 1995 for the first time. ® Nearly two-thirds of the country's top state and local prosecutors say they are having little to no impact in stopping the production, distribution, and consumption of illegal narcotics. ® The "war on drugs" increases corruption among law enforcement officials on the front line. For instance, in the fiscal year 1997, 79 officers were convicted for drug-related offences as a result of FBI-led law enforcement corruption investigations. Drug-related convictions amounted to 53% of all officers convicted for corruption.
(Sources: The Sentencing Project, <www.sentencingproject.org>; Jeffrey Reiman, Šand the Poor Get Prison: Economic Bias in American Criminal Justice; Human Rights Watch, "Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs," <www.hrw.org/reports/2000/usa>; The Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation, <www.lindesmith.org>; Justice Policy Institute, "The Punishing Decade," <www.cjcj.org/punishingdecade/punishing.html>; David Phinney, "Prison Funding Explodes in Growth," <abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/prisoneducaton980707.html>; H. Bruce Franklin, "The American Prison in the Culture Wars," <www.louisville.edu/journal/workplace/issue6/franklin.html>; Tony Samara, "Prisons, Punishment and Profiteers," <www.louisville.edu/journal/workplace/issue6/samara.html>; & General Accounting Office Report to Rep. Rangel, May 1998, <www.csdp.org/research/gaocrptn.pdf>)
Sponsors: the Student International Forum <www.osu.edu/students/sif> and Social Welfare Action Alliance. Co-sponsor: Students for Sensible Drug Policy. OSU Campus map: <www.osu.edu/map/linkbuildings/stillmanhall.html>. For more info, contact Yoshie Furuhashi at <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> or 614-668-6554; or Keith Kilty at <kilty.1 at osu.edu> or 614-292-7181.
The flyer for the teach-in is available at <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/warondrugs.doc>. The flyer for upcoming SIF/SWAA events is available at <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar4.doc>. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>