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Democracy is Not a Spectator Sport
Democracy is Not a Spectator Sport
Date: 12/7/2010 5:31:37 AM ( 14 y ) ... viewed 30985 times
WHO ORIGINATED THIS QUOTE?
DEMOCRACY IS NOT A SPECATOR SPORT?
I found this:
In most cities, injustice in the courts, denial of many constitutional rights, selective enforcement and cronyism became accepted practices. The press stood by quietly until 1996 when the Pelican Bay information was exploded by Arax. Finally, a few other journalists jumped in and after courageous reporting on Pelican Bay, the State banned the journalists from the prisons. After all, the "truth" was ruining Wilson and Lungren's political chances for higher offices.
Lungren claims the journalists aren't banned, but they can no longer interview the inmate of their choice in response to a plea for help. Only those journalists who don't speak out too loudly are allowed to attend executions and other events Lungren stages thinking he is impressing the public. Real investigative reporters rarely get a press pass from the State. The State-issued press pass is required to attend even public meetings at the Capital. The news in Sacramento has been blocked for years. Still today citizens do not make the connection between Lungren and the prison dysfunction that is directly his fault. Lungren, a man who should be arrested for crimes against the Constitution is running for Governor of California.
People watched all this transpire, ignoring the history books where despots such as Hitler disengaged the journalists as the first step in his takeover. Even the journalists themselves accepted their censure rather meekly. Prison atrocities raged on and few cared what happened behind the walls.
This year a group of brave senators finally decided to take a stand against the corrupt California Department of Corrections and brutality at Corcoran Prison. Senator John Vasconcellos (D) Santa Clara has spent a lifetime battling for methods to fight crime which focused more on an ounce of prevention rather than one hundred pounds of cure which doesn't cure. He was a lone voice for many years.
Vasconcellos planned to make a bid for the governorship but his constituents are mostly poor, and the least likely to fight back for all the oppression they suffer. After all, things could not have degenerated to this state if the poor had been voting and demonstrating. There wasn't enough money, involvement or support from the very people hurt, so he did not run for office.
Astute reformers were anguished at the news, knowing Vasconcellos was the only light of hope in the legislature. Then, Senators Barbara Lee and John Vasconcellos ignited the fires which spread to Senators Ayala, Polanco, Hayden and others to expose the monstrous mismanagement of the criminal justice system. They sponsored a bill, SB2048 which was passed by the Assembly and the Senate. A study could be commissioned of the impact of the Three Strikes Law. The public would be able to see the cost of nearly one million per inmate sentenced for life for non-violent crimes. Wilson vetoed the bill fearing what the public would learn with such a study. Besides lying about crime statistics, they also greatly understated true costs per prisoner. Billions of dollars in costs are purposefully left out.
Hundreds of prisoner families wrote letters to Amnesty International who then launched a major Human Rights campaign against the entire US. Violent conditions never ceased even during the hearings and have increased tenfold after eight of the guards indicted around Corcoran were returned to their jobs with back pay.
Judge Cecily Bond found a "technicality" in the Corcoran trials which has outraged the world. That decision validated the known condition of two sets of laws enforced selectively by those "cronies" who feed off the system, protected by "the code of silence". To protest Bond's decision and all prisoner abuse statewide, a rally was held Oct 17 in Corcoran and at many other prisons primarily hosted by California Prison Focus.
There are really two Coalitions. One is made up of activists who have been fighting for prison reform for years but don't make much progress because they are not united as a voting block. There are many parties represented in that group of about 3,000 activists - Green, Socialist, Libertarian, Communist, Peace and Freedom, etc. They have great unity of thought, but almost no unity of action with their voting habits. They did unite for the Critical Resistance Conference at Berkeley in September (3,000 in attendance) and the Corcoran protest which drew 400 demonstrators, an accomplishment for such a diverse group.
2006,
uses the words
"not a spectator sport."
Mentions John Vasconcellos
http://www.1union1.com/advice8.htm
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