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Dozens of people gathered outside of a supermax prison in Illinois in April demanding that the facility be shut down. They held signs that read "I am a mom," a spin on the iconic "I am a man" signs held by striking sanitation workers in Memphis in 1968.
Dozens of people gathered outside of a supermax prison in Illinois in April demanding that the facility be shut down. They held signs that read "I am a mom," a spin on the iconic "I am a man" signs held by striking sanitation workers in Memphis in 1968.
In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer permissible to use race explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion and social contempt...Once you're labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination - employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other benefits, and exclusion from jury service - are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a Black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow.
The question of whether unionism among police and correctional officers puts a segment of the union movement at odds with the movement to dismantle the New Jim Crow is too often ignored or given short shrift within the labor movement. Unions representing prison guards and workers typically frame their public advocacy using the rhetoric of public safety, playing into the conservative trope about protecting communities from dangerous criminals. This undermines any positive role these unions might play in challenging the policies of mass incarceration.
Correctional officer unions and organized labor as a whole need to more forcefully take part in the conversation about prison reform before opportunistic union-busters succeed in steering public outrage at mass incarceration toward anti-union sentiment.
In fact, the policy interests of prison guard unions have already given way to pro-reform arguments from the right-wing that blame mass incarceration on the unions. A recent article in the Philadelphia CityPaper looks at the how one conservative foundation is "criticizing a labor union for being too tough on crime."
As Daniel Denvir writes in the article, "After decades of bipartisan support for tough-on-crime politics, it is oddly refreshing to hear conservatives attack an ostensibly left-leaning group for stoking crime paranoia."
But Denvir also notes that the right-wing is using increased public awareness and interest in prison reform "as yet another bludgeon with which to beat up on the labor movement." Also important is the fact that conservative ideas about "prison reform" rely heavily on turning penal institutions over to for-profit operations.
In an article published last year in Criminology & Public Policy, Temple University professor Heather Ann Thompson counters the idea that prison guard unions wield any real influence in preserving the status quo of mass incarceration.
"There is little correlation between the presence of guard unions, even the presence of large guard unions who have had a militantly conservative history like the CCPOA and NYSCOPBA [New York state correctional officers union], and the fate of a given state's carceral apparatus," Thompson writes.
"As it happens, only three of the six states that experienced the most substantial increase in prison populations in 2008 (Pennsylvania, Florida, Alabama, Indiana, Arizona, and Tennessee) had a serious guard union presence."
Unions like CCPOA and NYSCOPBA have taken some abhorrent positions when it comes to the policies of the New Jim Crow. But Thompson argues that most prison officer unions rarely play much of a political role. And when they do, their general opposition to prison privatization and the risks that overcrowding places on workplace safety has at times led prison guard unions to stand against the expansion of the carceral state.
In any case, right-wing political forces like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are far more powerful in their agenda to widen the oppressive reach of the prison system than any union could ever be.
Still, when the preservation of jobs is the main focus of union activism, prison guard unions are more likely to oppose efforts to reduce the prison population and shut down prisons. Like other unions, they advocate for their members at the workplace level, bargaining for better wages, benefits and working conditions. Their political activism beyond the workplace puts them in the public fray over economic and social priorities as they lobby for policies that would seem to benefit their membership.
But if there has been any impact from this advocacy, it has been the New Jim Crow that has impacted organized labor, not the other way around.
It's no coincidence that the prison boom has coincided over the last three decades with the decline in industrial manufacturing jobs. As Alexander points out in The New Jim Crow, "In the early 1980s, just as the drug war was kicking off, inner-city communities were suffering economic collapse. The blue-collar factory jobs that had been plentiful in the 1950s and 1960s had suddenly disappeared."
Since the 1970s, neoliberal outsourcing and deindustrialization has contributed to unemployment among people of color, leading to the tripling of urban poverty rates over a period of ten years. Economic deprivation has continued and worsened for the poor since the 1980s, providing the conditions for drug use and trafficking in the midst of the law-and-order hysteria of the drug war. Harsh sentencing, including mandatory minimums for non-violent drug offenses and the crack-cocaine disparity, has been a key weapon in a war on drugs that has in effect been a war on the poor and people of color.
Not surprisingly, the decline in union representation in manufacturing has happened alongside the growth of correctional workers represented by unions. While the shift is a reflection of the larger economic trends in those two sectors, it presents challenges for the labor movement from a social justice perspective.
Like the prisoners behind bars, prison guards are a part of the working class. But when their unions support prison growth, they set the interests of the working-class prison guards against the rights and dignity of the working-class prisoners. Rather than leveraging their influence to push for both better working conditions for their members and progressive reforms to beat back the New Jim Crow, prison employee unions counterpose union rights and social justice when they campaign to keep facilities like Tamms open.
By opposing the racist policies of mass incarceration and fighting to expand industrial employment, labor can win good union jobs for those who are otherwise railroaded by the criminal justice system. From the shop floor to the cell block, workers have so much more to gain from that struggle.
In fact, the very integrity of the working class depends on it.
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Dozens of people gathered outside of a supermax prison in Illinois in April demanding that the facility be shut down. They held signs that read "I am a mom," a spin on the iconic "I am a man" signs held by striking sanitation workers in Memphis in 1968.
In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer permissible to use race explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion and social contempt...Once you're labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination - employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other benefits, and exclusion from jury service - are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a Black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow.
The question of whether unionism among police and correctional officers puts a segment of the union movement at odds with the movement to dismantle the New Jim Crow is too often ignored or given short shrift within the labor movement. Unions representing prison guards and workers typically frame their public advocacy using the rhetoric of public safety, playing into the conservative trope about protecting communities from dangerous criminals. This undermines any positive role these unions might play in challenging the policies of mass incarceration.
Correctional officer unions and organized labor as a whole need to more forcefully take part in the conversation about prison reform before opportunistic union-busters succeed in steering public outrage at mass incarceration toward anti-union sentiment.
In fact, the policy interests of prison guard unions have already given way to pro-reform arguments from the right-wing that blame mass incarceration on the unions. A recent article in the Philadelphia CityPaper looks at the how one conservative foundation is "criticizing a labor union for being too tough on crime."
As Daniel Denvir writes in the article, "After decades of bipartisan support for tough-on-crime politics, it is oddly refreshing to hear conservatives attack an ostensibly left-leaning group for stoking crime paranoia."
But Denvir also notes that the right-wing is using increased public awareness and interest in prison reform "as yet another bludgeon with which to beat up on the labor movement." Also important is the fact that conservative ideas about "prison reform" rely heavily on turning penal institutions over to for-profit operations.
In an article published last year in Criminology & Public Policy, Temple University professor Heather Ann Thompson counters the idea that prison guard unions wield any real influence in preserving the status quo of mass incarceration.
"There is little correlation between the presence of guard unions, even the presence of large guard unions who have had a militantly conservative history like the CCPOA and NYSCOPBA [New York state correctional officers union], and the fate of a given state's carceral apparatus," Thompson writes.
"As it happens, only three of the six states that experienced the most substantial increase in prison populations in 2008 (Pennsylvania, Florida, Alabama, Indiana, Arizona, and Tennessee) had a serious guard union presence."
Unions like CCPOA and NYSCOPBA have taken some abhorrent positions when it comes to the policies of the New Jim Crow. But Thompson argues that most prison officer unions rarely play much of a political role. And when they do, their general opposition to prison privatization and the risks that overcrowding places on workplace safety has at times led prison guard unions to stand against the expansion of the carceral state.
In any case, right-wing political forces like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are far more powerful in their agenda to widen the oppressive reach of the prison system than any union could ever be.
Still, when the preservation of jobs is the main focus of union activism, prison guard unions are more likely to oppose efforts to reduce the prison population and shut down prisons. Like other unions, they advocate for their members at the workplace level, bargaining for better wages, benefits and working conditions. Their political activism beyond the workplace puts them in the public fray over economic and social priorities as they lobby for policies that would seem to benefit their membership.
But if there has been any impact from this advocacy, it has been the New Jim Crow that has impacted organized labor, not the other way around.
It's no coincidence that the prison boom has coincided over the last three decades with the decline in industrial manufacturing jobs. As Alexander points out in The New Jim Crow, "In the early 1980s, just as the drug war was kicking off, inner-city communities were suffering economic collapse. The blue-collar factory jobs that had been plentiful in the 1950s and 1960s had suddenly disappeared."
Since the 1970s, neoliberal outsourcing and deindustrialization has contributed to unemployment among people of color, leading to the tripling of urban poverty rates over a period of ten years. Economic deprivation has continued and worsened for the poor since the 1980s, providing the conditions for drug use and trafficking in the midst of the law-and-order hysteria of the drug war. Harsh sentencing, including mandatory minimums for non-violent drug offenses and the crack-cocaine disparity, has been a key weapon in a war on drugs that has in effect been a war on the poor and people of color.
Not surprisingly, the decline in union representation in manufacturing has happened alongside the growth of correctional workers represented by unions. While the shift is a reflection of the larger economic trends in those two sectors, it presents challenges for the labor movement from a social justice perspective.
Like the prisoners behind bars, prison guards are a part of the working class. But when their unions support prison growth, they set the interests of the working-class prison guards against the rights and dignity of the working-class prisoners. Rather than leveraging their influence to push for both better working conditions for their members and progressive reforms to beat back the New Jim Crow, prison employee unions counterpose union rights and social justice when they campaign to keep facilities like Tamms open.
By opposing the racist policies of mass incarceration and fighting to expand industrial employment, labor can win good union jobs for those who are otherwise railroaded by the criminal justice system. From the shop floor to the cell block, workers have so much more to gain from that struggle.
In fact, the very integrity of the working class depends on it.
Dozens of people gathered outside of a supermax prison in Illinois in April demanding that the facility be shut down. They held signs that read "I am a mom," a spin on the iconic "I am a man" signs held by striking sanitation workers in Memphis in 1968.
In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer permissible to use race explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion and social contempt...Once you're labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination - employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other benefits, and exclusion from jury service - are suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a Black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow.
The question of whether unionism among police and correctional officers puts a segment of the union movement at odds with the movement to dismantle the New Jim Crow is too often ignored or given short shrift within the labor movement. Unions representing prison guards and workers typically frame their public advocacy using the rhetoric of public safety, playing into the conservative trope about protecting communities from dangerous criminals. This undermines any positive role these unions might play in challenging the policies of mass incarceration.
Correctional officer unions and organized labor as a whole need to more forcefully take part in the conversation about prison reform before opportunistic union-busters succeed in steering public outrage at mass incarceration toward anti-union sentiment.
In fact, the policy interests of prison guard unions have already given way to pro-reform arguments from the right-wing that blame mass incarceration on the unions. A recent article in the Philadelphia CityPaper looks at the how one conservative foundation is "criticizing a labor union for being too tough on crime."
As Daniel Denvir writes in the article, "After decades of bipartisan support for tough-on-crime politics, it is oddly refreshing to hear conservatives attack an ostensibly left-leaning group for stoking crime paranoia."
But Denvir also notes that the right-wing is using increased public awareness and interest in prison reform "as yet another bludgeon with which to beat up on the labor movement." Also important is the fact that conservative ideas about "prison reform" rely heavily on turning penal institutions over to for-profit operations.
In an article published last year in Criminology & Public Policy, Temple University professor Heather Ann Thompson counters the idea that prison guard unions wield any real influence in preserving the status quo of mass incarceration.
"There is little correlation between the presence of guard unions, even the presence of large guard unions who have had a militantly conservative history like the CCPOA and NYSCOPBA [New York state correctional officers union], and the fate of a given state's carceral apparatus," Thompson writes.
"As it happens, only three of the six states that experienced the most substantial increase in prison populations in 2008 (Pennsylvania, Florida, Alabama, Indiana, Arizona, and Tennessee) had a serious guard union presence."
Unions like CCPOA and NYSCOPBA have taken some abhorrent positions when it comes to the policies of the New Jim Crow. But Thompson argues that most prison officer unions rarely play much of a political role. And when they do, their general opposition to prison privatization and the risks that overcrowding places on workplace safety has at times led prison guard unions to stand against the expansion of the carceral state.
In any case, right-wing political forces like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) are far more powerful in their agenda to widen the oppressive reach of the prison system than any union could ever be.
Still, when the preservation of jobs is the main focus of union activism, prison guard unions are more likely to oppose efforts to reduce the prison population and shut down prisons. Like other unions, they advocate for their members at the workplace level, bargaining for better wages, benefits and working conditions. Their political activism beyond the workplace puts them in the public fray over economic and social priorities as they lobby for policies that would seem to benefit their membership.
But if there has been any impact from this advocacy, it has been the New Jim Crow that has impacted organized labor, not the other way around.
It's no coincidence that the prison boom has coincided over the last three decades with the decline in industrial manufacturing jobs. As Alexander points out in The New Jim Crow, "In the early 1980s, just as the drug war was kicking off, inner-city communities were suffering economic collapse. The blue-collar factory jobs that had been plentiful in the 1950s and 1960s had suddenly disappeared."
Since the 1970s, neoliberal outsourcing and deindustrialization has contributed to unemployment among people of color, leading to the tripling of urban poverty rates over a period of ten years. Economic deprivation has continued and worsened for the poor since the 1980s, providing the conditions for drug use and trafficking in the midst of the law-and-order hysteria of the drug war. Harsh sentencing, including mandatory minimums for non-violent drug offenses and the crack-cocaine disparity, has been a key weapon in a war on drugs that has in effect been a war on the poor and people of color.
Not surprisingly, the decline in union representation in manufacturing has happened alongside the growth of correctional workers represented by unions. While the shift is a reflection of the larger economic trends in those two sectors, it presents challenges for the labor movement from a social justice perspective.
Like the prisoners behind bars, prison guards are a part of the working class. But when their unions support prison growth, they set the interests of the working-class prison guards against the rights and dignity of the working-class prisoners. Rather than leveraging their influence to push for both better working conditions for their members and progressive reforms to beat back the New Jim Crow, prison employee unions counterpose union rights and social justice when they campaign to keep facilities like Tamms open.
By opposing the racist policies of mass incarceration and fighting to expand industrial employment, labor can win good union jobs for those who are otherwise railroaded by the criminal justice system. From the shop floor to the cell block, workers have so much more to gain from that struggle.
In fact, the very integrity of the working class depends on it.