THE STATE OF THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
–CHICAGO–
With approximately two million people incarcerated in the United States of America, the result is that the prison industrial complex has become so bloated and corpulent that it is akin to a malignant tumor growing on the conscience, spirit, and politics of the country. America’s prisons, long ago, stopped being about the original mission of meting out justice while rehabilitating prisoners. Prisons ace now about commerce, votes, and racial oppression.
No where is this more apparent than in the Illinois prison system. Cook County and the city of Chicago are turning urban black and brown youth into commodities for the purpose of supporting rural Illinois communities. Communities made of mostly whites whose culture, beliefs, and ideals are different from the men and women transported to their towns to fill the prisons built there. Competition from the huge corporate farms have squeezed the traditional small farms of rural Illinois out of financial viability, and the manufacturing jobs that once operated there have fled overseas to Asia or south of the border. Now prisons are the very foundation of these communities’ economics, sort of like the plantations of the days of slavery.
Chicago’s legacy of being the most segregated city in America is still true today. Its very layout, planned and designed by Mayor Richard J. Daley, was done to suppress and contain any black political progress or social unrest. Daley built the nation’s first high-rise housing projects (with federal money), a trend that was followed by other urban mayors. He buttressed them with elevated railroad tracks to serve as a wall; he rerouted the Dan Ryan expressway from its original course along the lake to serve as a moat. He did this to protect his beloved Bridgeport community from the hundreds of thousands of blacks just a stone throw away. This wall and moat were effective physical barriers. Daley then ringed the area with police stations, at 35th and State, 51st and Wentworth, 29th and Michigan, and 34th and Wallace. They could serve as command posts in case the captives tried to break free.
Imagine living stacked in together like that while owning little and with so little green space (probably about two feet per family) ,while just a short distance away there are nice, neat bungalows with yards and quaint shops, exceptional schools, taverns, and clubs. And you know what would happen to you if you walked over there; plus you had to make sure the youngsters knew not to venture as well. Living in this reality day in and day out is very similar to living in a prison. Opportunity to change your own circumstances were as minuscule as the green space in the projects.
After Daley’s death, his son and eventual successor, Richard Daley, was the Cook County States Attorney before he became Mayor. In the 1980’s, under his stewardship, his prosecutor’s office motto was “Niggers By The Pound.” This was a bold reference to the commodification of the black people of Chicago. It was during young Daley’s time as chief prosecutor that the urban terrorist/ police captain, John Burge, and his midnight crew, did some of their most nefarious work. Burge’s torture techniques and Daley’s foul prosecutor’s office led to a lot of bogus convictions some of which in recent years have been overturned.
Richard M. Daley went on to become mayor after he was able to co-opt a fractured black political establishment split in the aftermath of Mayor Harold Washington’s death, who was Chicago’s first black mayor. Young Daley reigned as mayor for two decades. When he left office, the city was almost bankrupt. He borrowed money from his banker cronies at ridiculously high interest rates. He sold profitable city services and properties to friends and private companies that cost the city billions of dollars in lost revenues; he enriched his family and friends with city contracts and appointments that will last into the next generation. The Daley administrations, both father and son, will be looked upon as a third world kleptocracy time by historians.
The Daley’s pitted blacks against blacks, blacks against hispanics, church against church, and community against community in their attempts to compete for a fair share of city jobs. They presided over a steady decline of the quality of education in Chicago’s public schools. Richard M. Daley aided Chicago’s sports teams to build new stadiums while the unemployment rate for black men has consistently been over 50% in Chicago’s most disadvantaged communities. To be fair to the Daley’s, for them black lives did matter… as commodities to trade to downstate politicians to cement their control over O’ Hare airport along with many other Cook County enterprises, usually controlled by the governor of the state.
As for the Chicago Police (CPD), the Daley’s merry band of saxons- you know, like the story Robin Hood, only they are robbing the hood- its inception, its number one directive was to keep any black who wasn’t a servant from crossing the line into white neighborhoods. They were also the hammer to quell any racial unrest, like the riots that took place in the early to mid-1900’s, up until t he 1970’s CPD was over 98% white men. After a long civil rights struggle, blacks fought their way on the force. However, they were confronted with a systemic culture that, though being black, they had to act and react blue in order to sustain their positions. To this day that culture exists, and too many have remained deaf and silent to the agony their community feels in its interactions with the CPD.
Richard J. Daley had the CPD beat college kids during the 1968 Democratic convention on national T . V. He gave the order “Shoot to kill” from his helicopter while black kids rioted, looted, and burned buildings to vent their grief at the murder of MLK. He was mayor when Fred Hampton and Mark Clack were assassinated by the CPD. I already described what the culture of the CPD was like under Richard M. Daley and his prosecutor’s office. Camera-phones came too late to uncover decades of systematic abuse and murder of black men by CPD under his administration. Consider his handling of the projects his father built. In the 1990’s he routinely had the projects “Shook down” and on “Lock-down” like prisons. Men had to display I.D. ‘s to enter project buildings which is also a prison procedure. When the national media st acted comparing projects to urban penitentiaries Daley decided they had to come down because they tainted the Daley legacy.
Unfortunately it was too late; so much damage had already been done. Fifty plus years of damaging negative conditioning, negative socialization, reinforcing hyper-aggressive attitudes and behavior, little economic development and education. Sounds like prison doesn’t it?
Richard M. Daley had the buildings torn down and the residents dispersed to Chicago’s already struggling black neighborhoods. Again, with housing vouchers paid for with federal money. No wonder Chicago’s black neighborhoods identify with war-torn Iraq. Chirac is the result of years of systemic foot-on-neck pressure from city hall, years of neglect, oppression, and generations of deliberate indifference to a group of people by city, state, and national government.
Despite the overwhelming display of power used to disadvantage Chicago’s black communities, we have been our own worst enemy for being duped, bamboozled or just plain ignorant. We are past the time of not owning up to our personal failings. We are in a time where the sistas are taking to the streets and crashing the political rallies shouting “Black lives matter!” Should we continue to say with our actions that our lives don’t matter? I just explained how our lives matter to the Illinois prison system and the rural Illinois communities we sustain and to the officer’s union who nobody gives more support to than we do. My life matters to me, your life matters to you. Our lives matter to the ones who love us despite what we did and what we do.
Prisoner X
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