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A jury awarded a New Mexico man $22 million dollars earlier this year as compensation for the suffering he endured during nearly 2 years of solitary confinement. Stephen Slevin was arrested for driving while intoxicated in 2005 and was locked away in solitary confinement based on the judgment of deputies, who thought he might be suicidal. Slevin’s lawyer says his client was then effectively forgotten for 22 months. Slevin literally wasted away in his cell without regular access to clean water to bathe in and without medical care. He became severely depressed and delusional. He lost a significant amount of weight, developed bed sores, and his foot became infected with a fungus. At one point, after prison officials ignored his requests for dental care, Slevin pulled out his own tooth.

In the summer of 2011 a group of prisoners in solitary confinement at the Pelican Bay facility in California went on hunger strike to protest the inhumane conditions they suffer through, bringing national attention to this issue of solitary confinement as well as the general inhumane conditions in California prisons. In the US an estimated 25,000 inmates are held in solitary confinement where they are restricted to a tiny living space without natural light for 22 hours a day, and they are often denied reading material and any human contact. The conditions have been shown to cause severe psychological stress and are likened to torture. On Monday, continuing the momentum started by the summer hunger strikes, the California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement is holding a protest in Los Angeles as part of a National Day of Occupation to in support of prisoners.

GUEST: Daletha Hayden, spokesperson for California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement (CFASC )

Protest details:

Join CFASC in LA for the National Day of Occupation in Support of Prisoners
When: Monday February 20th at 3:00pm
Where: Outside of the LA County Jail , 441 Bauchet Street, ot the corner of Vignes and Bauchet in downtown Los Angeles
Contact CFASC by email at cfasc12@yahoo.com, or call 714-290-9077

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Obama

The rate of imprisonment in the United States is staggering. As a percentage of the population we imprison more people than Russia, and more than Denmark, Italy, France and Germany, combined. About 2.3 million adults are behind bars in the US, and a disproportionate percentage of black men, and increasingly black women, make up the inmate population. While only about 12% of the US population is African American, 39% of male prisoners, and 28% of female prisoners, are black.

In her groundbreaking book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander argues that the racial oppression of the Jim Crow era has not been lost to a more racially enlightened age. Alexander finds that the institutional racism exemplified by poll taxes and housing discrimination is exercised as the more socially acceptable practice today of the mass incarceration of black Americans, especially black men. This is not a new idea, as Michelle Alexander points out herself, but she fleshes it out and makes a solid, compelling case that mass incarceration undermines the well-being of entire communities and weakens the very foundation of US democracy. Alexander brought her book to life earlier this year during a talk at the historic Abyssinian Baptist church in Harlem, on January 12, 2012.

KPFK FUND DRIVE THANK YOU GIFTS:

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness — $100

DVD of Michelle Alexander giving a talk at the Abyssinian Baptist church in Harlem, on January 12, 2012 — $100

Book and DVD — $150

Call 818-985-5735 (KPFK) or visit www.kpfk.org to make a pledge.