MOOREHEAD/LA RIVA CAMPAIGN
Socialist hits prisons for profit
By Tom
Scahill
Buffalo, N.Y.
Monica Moorehead, the 2000 presidential candidate for
Workers World Party, talked to a Feb. 26 Workers World public
forum here about the need to organize against the
prison-industrial complex and the racist use of the death
penalty.
Moorehead noted that by the end of the year 2000, an
estimated 2.07 million people will be in jail in the United
States. She detailed who makes up that huge population. Sixty
percent of federal prisoners are in jail for drug use, she
said. And 84 percent of women in federal prisons are mothers.
More and more youth, mentally disabled people, women and those
from nationally oppressed communities are going to jail.
Moorehead explained that the labor of this prisoner
population is super-exploited.
The prison-industrial complex is the second-largest employer
in the U.S. Prison labor is a $41-billion industry, producing
goods and services for such companies as Victoria's Secret,
Microsoft and Best Western. The Federal Prison Corp. pays
inmates 23 cents to $1.15 per hour.
She said that as the movement grows against corporate
globalization, the demand to stop slave labor in U.S. prisons
must be heard loud and clear.
Racism is the tool used by the capitalists that enables them
to imprison people from the nationally oppressed communities,
to super-exploit their labor and to put them to death.
Moorehead talked about the struggle to end the death
penalty. She said that the state of Texas alone sometimes
executes three to four people a week.
The death penalty is a terror tactic to suppress and
terrorize nationally oppressed communities. And it is in the
interests of poor and working people everywhere to fight the
racist death penalty and to eventually tear down the prison
walls.
Moorehead stressed the urgency of building the struggle to
free death-row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Abu-Jamal is a revolutionary whose solidarity with the fight
of all those battling injustice and inequality has won him
support from diverse sectors of the progressive movement.
Moorehead concluded that the struggle to stop the execution
of Abu-Jamal and win him a new trial is one of the most
important battles facing the movement today.
The efforts to save Abu-Jamal's life also advance the
movement on behalf of all prisoners because Abu-Jamal is a
leader who has spoken out and explained how the
prison-industrial complex works in the interests of
capitalism.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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