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Jun. 2nd, 2003 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasThere's a saying I've heard -- it's mainly used by right-wingers -- it's some variation of "our freedoms rest on four boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, the soapbox, and, when all else fails, the cartridge box."
Even if we ignore the debacle in the last Presidential election, there's an apparent effort to disenfranchise minorities: 41% of young black men have served time in prison, many of them for non-violent drug crimes. The incarceration rate of blacks and Latinos for drug crimes is much, much higher than for whites, even though the rates of use and selling are about the same in the white and the minority populations. Add that to the movement in many states to disenfranchise people who've served time in prison, and you've got, effectively, a way to remove the vote from minorities. Then look at what's going on which computerized voting systems, where governments are asking companies to not maintain any paper trail or record of how people voted, for fear that they might notice if the machine records their vote incorrectly -- they want to REMOVE the ability to audit the record, for fear that someone might CORRECT a mistake. That worries me.
The jury box? In a country which has started trying civilians in secret tribunal courts with no juries, secret evidence, and no transparency, effective oversight, or accountability? I mean, yeah, this has been being eroded for decades, with courts trying to prevent people from knowing about jury nullification, but this goes way beyond what's happened before. The existence of the FISA court system reduces the ability of the jury box to preserve freedom.
The soapbox still exists. But it's useless unless people's voices can be heard. And the removal of restrictions on media ownership diminishes people's ability to get messages out. Fewer owners means fewer voices -- and those voices are louder and can drown out everyone else. The soapbox can't be counted on to preserve freedom, not anymore.
The cartridge box?
Even if we ignore the debacle in the last Presidential election, there's an apparent effort to disenfranchise minorities: 41% of young black men have served time in prison, many of them for non-violent drug crimes. The incarceration rate of blacks and Latinos for drug crimes is much, much higher than for whites, even though the rates of use and selling are about the same in the white and the minority populations. Add that to the movement in many states to disenfranchise people who've served time in prison, and you've got, effectively, a way to remove the vote from minorities. Then look at what's going on which computerized voting systems, where governments are asking companies to not maintain any paper trail or record of how people voted, for fear that they might notice if the machine records their vote incorrectly -- they want to REMOVE the ability to audit the record, for fear that someone might CORRECT a mistake. That worries me.
The jury box? In a country which has started trying civilians in secret tribunal courts with no juries, secret evidence, and no transparency, effective oversight, or accountability? I mean, yeah, this has been being eroded for decades, with courts trying to prevent people from knowing about jury nullification, but this goes way beyond what's happened before. The existence of the FISA court system reduces the ability of the jury box to preserve freedom.
The soapbox still exists. But it's useless unless people's voices can be heard. And the removal of restrictions on media ownership diminishes people's ability to get messages out. Fewer owners means fewer voices -- and those voices are louder and can drown out everyone else. The soapbox can't be counted on to preserve freedom, not anymore.
The cartridge box?
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Re: "non-violent drug crimes"...
Date: 2003-06-02 01:41 pm (UTC)I really suggest you check out the empirical data on this one. You might start off by checking out the comparative chances of being audited if you make over $100,000 per year in income vs. if you're poor enough to qualify for and claim the earned income tax credit.
You might also check out the comparative rates of conviction and punishment for people for the same crimes depending on how rich they are or what color their skin is.
As Bill Cosby used to warn, "If you're not careful, you might learn something before its done."