politics for the 99%

Published on The Guardian, by Chris Arnade, June 15, 2014:

Cecily McMillan is behind bars, unlike any of the architects of the financial crisis. In an exclusive conversation with the Guardian, she explains why her sentence serves a purpose …;

A former banker visits the only member of Occupy Wall Street to receive a prison sentence: it sounds like the set-up of a joke or a parable of the modern age. Instead, it was a real scene last Thursday, when I went to see jailed OWS activist Cecily McMillan at Rikers Island.  

That the opposite would never have happened was not lost on Cecily or me: bankers don’t get sent to jail, and, when they rarely do, they certainly don’t get sent to Rikers … //

… I wanted to catalogue her experiences, too, but visitors aren’t allowed to bring recording devices. I wanted to write down her exact words, but visitors aren’t even allowed paper or pencils. So I came in my capacity as a former banker who has spent the last three years focusing on the injustices I have seen in my work with addiction. I came partially because I wanted to further understand the injustices that I, as a banker, might have helped create.

Cecily has spent most of the last month focused on trying to find a way to use her story to broaden her social activism, and to refocus the attention on her sentence to help people understand that incarceration is commonplace for many communities.

 I had two years to prepare for this, she explained. Most everyone else in here had no time to prepare – but a lifetime of realizing it will happen to them at some point. Jail, and negative confrontations with the police, is for many a reality.

***

Join the conversation: Cecily McMillan’s jail sentence. This is why street criminals fill the prisons and white collar criminals are rarer prey: Not out of institutional bias, although that certainly exists, but simply the practical fact that it’s a lot more expensive, a lot more complicated, and a lot less emotionally fraught for the public than street crime. – JoJo McJoJo

(full text).

(See also:

• Cecily McMillan didn’t get off easy, Her case is a threat to the future of protest, on The Guardian, by Allison Kilkenny, May 19, 2014: Three months in jail might seem like a light sentence. But the Occupy movement was suppressed by the heavy hand of police brutality – and a legal system that discouraged and ultimately dissolved dissent;
• New York settles with Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, on The Guardian, by Jon Swaine in New York, June 10, 2014: City agrees to pay $583,000 to group of Occupy demonstrators who alleged they were wrongfully arrested in January 2012 (Picture: The NYPD pursued a policy of arresting thousands of people who had done nothing wrong, said David Thompson, an attorney for group of marchers).

Links:

Gazprom puts Ukraine on gas prepayment plan after chronic failure to pay debt, on Russia Today RT, June 16, 2014;

US Carrier reaches Gulf, on ZNet (first on Informed Comment), by Juan Cole, June 15, 2014;

Iraq crisis: US embassy workers evacuated as Republicans slam Obama, on The Guardian, be Dominic Rushe in New York, June 15, 2014;

Anti-racism work is being undermined by football’s leaders, on Left Foot Forward, by Claudia Tomlinsons, June 15, 2014: The many achievements of the Kick It Out campaign risk being undermined by the game’s leaders;
The Kick It Out Campaign;

Greek Women, on ZNet, by Nikos Raptis, June 14, 2014;

The Problem with Philanthropy, on In These Times, by DAvid Sirota, June 13, 2014: the occasional $120 million check doesn’t offset tech billionaires’ erosion of the public sector;

An open letter to Tony Blair from Iraq, on Socialist Unity, June 13, 2014;

Class Segregation and the Housing Market, on NYTimes eXaminer, June 12, 2014;

Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, on en.wikipedia … abbreviated as ISIS or alternately ISIL, is an unrecognized state and active Jihadist militant group in Iraq and Syria influenced by the Wahhabi movement.[31][32] In its unrecognized self-proclaimed status as an independent state, it claims the territory of Iraq and Syria, with implied future claims intended over more of the Levant — including Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Cyprus and Southern Turkey.[33] It was established in the early years of the Iraq War and pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda in 2004. The group was composed of and supported by a variety of insurgent groups, including its predecessor organisation, the Mujahideen Shura Council, al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), Jaysh al-Fatiheen, Jund al-Sahaba, Katbiyan Ansar Al-Tawhid wal Sunnah, Jeish al-Taiifa al-Mansoura etc, and other clans whose population profess Sunni Islam. Its aim was to establish a caliphate in the Sunni majority regions of Iraq, later expanding this to include Syria.[34] In February 2014, after an eight-month power struggle, al-Qaeda cut all ties with ISIS …;