April 2003

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Why I Will be Protesting Prisons

Aaron Tanaka, a junior at Harvard College, is an intern in the AFSC Justice program in the Cambridge, MA office.

In the coming weeks, my childhood best friend will invade the streets of Baghdad under the command of President Bush. He will inflict destruction and pain upon hundreds of Iraqi youth. Many will be younger than ourselves. My friend too, will stare fate in the face. Without many options at home, he joined the army as it offered a decent economic alternative to his otherwise ugly future. He will be fighting in the front lines. Though I haven't spoken to him in years, I will be desperately awaiting his safe return.

If President Bush holds to his recent declaration for invasion, the United States will begin its myopic march on Iraq at 8 pm, March 19th.

At that time, I will be protesting prisons. At 4:30 pm, March 19th, I will help coordinate a teach-in on solitary confinement on the steps of the Massachusetts State House. Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner, Civil Rights Leaders Mel King and Reverend Ed Rodman, among other powerful and passionate speakers, will stand in solidarity against our state's unabashed employment of solitary confinement units. Thousands of prisoners spend years in solitary for 23 hours a day in a 6 by 8 foot cell. The perverse psychological effects of isolation regularly drive prisoners to self-mutilate and attempt suicide. Just last month, a prisoner in Walpole Prison lit himself on fire. Two weeks later, a prisoner hanged himself in Dartmouth County Prison.

Prison conditions are profoundly disturbing to anyone who can break through their invisibility and muster an ounce of human empathy. But given the cataclysmic invasion that looms over our heads, why prisons now?

The world has witnessed unprecedented resistance in the face of this war. Yet somehow, the US government tenaciously clings to a policy of unilateral violence. Though I am young, I feel the historic weight of this moment. I feel my consciousness being assaulted on all sides. I will be protesting prisons, then, not because I am interested in co-opting anti-war power. Nor because I am oblivious to the context in which we live. My hope is to unite the passions and strength of local and global movements to create a unified front against the hopelessness all too common among the most disempowered populations of our world.

The connections between this nation's prison system and its military industry are intimate and real. The billions of dollars that will go to fight this war ultimately deplete already scarce funding for state block grants. Massachusetts is undergoing massive "structural adjustments" that will sacrifice money for schools, health care, affordable housing, decent paying jobs, and prisoners' education (though not for the prison system itself). Meanwhile, as we saw after September 11th, anti-Muslim patriotic fervor will justify malicious internal policing that will jeopardize the civil liberties of our residents in a serious way. The criminal justice system will play a central role in that process.

Whatever analysis one arrives at about the relationships between war abroad and neglect at home, it is undeniable that our movements can only benefit from more people, more passion, and more power. To this end, I will be protesting prisons as we drop bombs on Iraqis because my hope for effective resistance rests on intensifying and broadening the breadth of our movements. This can only happen when we make an effort amongst ourselves to draw the simple connections between our seemingly disparate issues. Only then will we be effective in making our causes worth fighting for, for more people.

The passion of other activists abroad and at home moves me to action every day. It is my hope that in building a unified movement, we will see a newfound strength in our resistance to both massive devastation abroad and perverse isolation at home.

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