Alex Jacobs: Native people treated like prisoners on our own land


Trailer: 13th by Ava DuVernay

Mohawk artist and poet Alex Jacobs looks at the prison system in the United States:
Prisons were built for political reasons based on economics and states ended up needing to keep them filled, as in savings for the state and profits for the corporations. Just like DAPL and ETP needs those pipelines filled to the max. Mass incarceration has become heavily monetized to the tune of billions of dollars in profits with the biggest companies publicly trading their stocks on Wall Street.

All this happened 150 years ago, enabled Jim Crow, led to the coded language of Law and Order, accelerating under Presidents Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Clinton. Under a President Trump or Clinton, we need to look at prisons since many of us could conceivably have our lifestyles re-arranged. Just ask the #NoDAPL water protectors. Make no mistake a large sector of the energy and law enforcement communities have been preparing for this environmental movement vs lawful order showdown for years. You could say, the missing funding in social cutbacks that creates social problems instead goes to oil and gas military misadventures overseas and domestically to the training of warrior cops patrolling urban and rural insurrections supplied with military gear. Call it “Homeland Security”, but it is a merger of business and politics, law and order, which is usually called Fascism. The environmental movement is scary to the establishment because it means white people, who vote, pay taxes and will pay more for renewable energy.

In a way, Native people are treated as Prisoners (of War), our land and resources are collateral for second-class citizen treatment or invested in capitalist ventures (#NoDAPL) from which our profit is more suffering. Until we stand up and disturb the profit-making and only then do the powers that be take notice, except in the corporate media.

Read More:
Alex Jacobs: Prison Labor Corporate Profits, Prison Strike and ‘13th’ Amendment Documentary (Indian Country Today 11/2)

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