As black activists ponder how best to build a mass movement to transform America, a mass movement that must start in but not be confined to our communities, one single low-hanging fruit of organizing opportunity is hard to miss. That opportunity lies in the manifest unfairness and hypocrisy of America’s system of racially selective policing, prosecution and mass imprisonment. These awful public policies are inviting targets for broad based electoral and other mobilizations in black communities such as we have not seen in a generation.

Workshop participants will begin with a brief review of the widespread and catastrophic consequences of racially selective mass incarceration in black communities -- in family formation and cohesion, in lifetime earnings and labor force participation, in health outcomes and community economic development prospects, and many other areas. Although African Americans are one eighth the nation's population we make up fully half its prisoners, but racially selective mass incarceration is nowhere on the horizon as a political issue.

Workshop participants will be introduced to the possibility of initiating and winning campaigns for local elected office --- particularly county sheriffs, district attorneys and state legislators --- on platforms that directly address the crisis of racially selective mass incarceration including but not limited to the following:

A moratorium on the prosecution of juveniles as adults, and the confinement of juveniles in facilities with adult inmates.

A moratorium on all privatization of prisons and jails, including piecemeal privatizations of such services as inmate feeding, medical care and probation.

Repeal or sunset of all “two-strikes”, “three strikes” and indeterminate sentencing legislation.

The imposition of mandatory ethnic and racial impact statements for all future prison construction and sentencing legislation, with a period set for mandatory review comparing the statement at outset with the results no less than four years out.

Elimination of sentencing disparities between powdered cocaine and crack cocaineEnd felony disenfranchisement in those states where it exists, perhaps with a constitutional amendment guaranteeing voting as a right.

Repeal of legislation banning Pell Grants to convicted felons and inmates, and require states to offer college credit courses to inmates who have completed their GED or the equivalent.

Refocus parole systems upon the re-entry and productive reintegration of former prisoners into society rather than re-imprisonment.

Civilian review boards with teeth to oversee police and prosecutorial practices.

Explicit commitments to reduce and eliminate disparities in prosecution and imprisonment.

Workshop participants will be reminded that despite the many differences between political campaigns and mass movements --- one is a time-limited decorous legal excercise, while the other exists outside of and occasionally in spite of the law -- and despite the fact that political campaigns have been used to subvert and bury more than one potential mass movement, the potential of electoral campaigns in black dominated constituences to put the issue on the map and mobilize broad segments of the black community behind it are unparalelled. A brief article in the June 2005 issue of Black Commentator located at
http://www.blackcommentator.com/147/147_cover_incarceration.html
by Bruce Dixon ranking the 250 most populous US counties -- the unit of local government upon which sheriffs and prosecutors are elected -- reveals dozens of nationally and regionally significant US communities where such campaigns could be conducted.

We will outline in some detail a number of challenges to this strategy, as well as its possibilities, and point to some useful resources for those with the heart and tools to take up the challenge of making black mass incarceration a public political issue first in black communities, then nationwide.

Presenters will be Bruce Dixon and Glen Ford.