JESSE JACKSON: Invest in hope, America, not despair

[Sapphire Blue]

Invest in hope, America, not despair
April 3, 2007
BY JESSE JACKSON

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is a pretty good working definition of insanity. But that is the state of America's failed policy for poor children. For the last 25 years, we've basically been following the punitive ideas coming from the right side of our politics. We've chosen to invest in punishment on the back side rather than hope on the front side.

And the results are now in: Poverty is up; prison populations are up; costs are up. It doesn't work. Consider Alabama, four decades after the march from Selma to Montgomery. Legal segregation is no more. African Americans have the right to vote. But equal opportunity is a dream yet deferred. In Alabama, poverty is still pervasive. One in four children is raised in poverty; 44 percent of all blacks and Latinos live in poverty. Nearly one-third of the jobs in Alabama pay a poverty wage. Alabama ranks near the bottom of every public-health category. It is 47th in infant mortality. It does badly in families headed by a single parent, in percent of children living in poverty.

The state does little to invest in the front side of life: prenatal care, child nutrition, preschool, child care, small classes in the early grades, good teachers. It even passed on using millions of dollars available for children's health care under the federal child health care, or CHIP, program.

But the state does invest in punishing despair. The state prison population is more than 27,000 -- more than twice the capacity of Alabama prisons. About two-thirds of all prisoners are African American, with blacks incarcerated at five times the rate of whites. Nearly one in four African-American males will spend some time in prison. This is not for crimes of violence. Eighty-four percent of prisoners committed nonviolent crimes, predominantly drug related.

(snip)

Why don't we invest in hope? Politicians are wary at best. Too many voters are cynical and don't believe it works. Others are angry. They don't want their money wasted on "those" people. They wouldn't say punish the child for the sins of the mother, but that is the effect. The prison-industrial complex is now a powerful lobby, quite willing to rouse fears about crime to justify expanding budgets.

In the end, the only way this will change is if people of conscience join with working and poor people to demand a new course. That won't be easy. But it sure beats doing more of what has failed and expecting a different result.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/jackson/323890,CST-EDT-jesse03.article

Invest in hope, America...

Transformational Change For America And The World - JOHN EDWARDS 08

"I'm proposing we set a national goal of eliminating poverty in the next 30 years." - JOHN EDWARDS 08

[calimary]

1. Just wanted to kick this.

So, HERE!

KICK!

[hfojvt]

2. Kick fpr Jesse and the PIC

Although he misses a key point - the social and economic costs not of investing in despair, but of our misguided war on drug users. In 1980 our incarceration rate was 139 per 100,000 by 1999 it was 476. That meant a million more prisoners in 20 years. The total goes from 1.8 million in 1980 to 6.3 million in 1999 if you count parole and probation. In 1999, there were 3.77 million people on probation, 596,485 in jail, 1.28 million in prison, and 712,713 on parole. In 1980 it was 1.18 million for probation, 182,000 in jail, 320,000 in prison, and 220,438. Telling that crime rates went up and down in the 1980s and 1990s. One stat I find is that arrest rates for marijuana possession went from 104.9 per 100,000 in 1990 to 234.5 per 100,000 in 1999.
In 1996, states spent a total of $20.7 billion to operate their prisons, an average of $20,142 per inmate per year, ranging from Alabama at $7,987 per prisoner to Minnesota at $37,825 per prisoner.

[hfojvt]

3. this fell pretty fast

I thought hope would float.