Pubdate: Sun, 08 Jan 2006
Source: Gainesville Sun, The (FL)
Copyright: 2006 The Gainesville Sun
Contact:  http://www.sunone.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/163
Author: Kinloch C. Walpole
Note: Kinloch C. Walpole is director of the Gateless Gate Zen Center 
of Gainesville, a group that works with prison inmates in North 
Central Florida.

RECONSTRUCTION AND THE WAR ON DRUGS

The unfolding story of ex-felons voting rights in context of the war
on drugs parallels the history of African Americans fight for voting
rights during reconstruction.

There are over 600,000 disenfranchised voters in Florida who are ex-
felons. The civil turbulence that surrounded the march to Selma is not
a road we need to travel again.

Reconstruction marked a period where exploitive cultures struggled to
regain and then maintain political power after losing it in the Civil
War. The tools of the struggle included poll taxes, literacy tests and
criminal disenfranchisement enshrined in state constitutions. The Ku
Klux Klan and public lynching were the underlying forces behind
institutional bigotry and segregation.

In 1965, the repression erupted into the national consciousness on
"Bloody Sunday" at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. The
brutality at Selma unleashed over five years of civil unrest marked by
riots, demonstrations and the formation of violent revolutionary movements.

All of this was happening against a back drop of horrendous daily
casualty counts in Vietnam and the sense of impending doom associated
with a potential nuclear holocaust from the Cold War.

The blatant abuse of illegal drugs appeared to be one of the main
threads woven through the civil unrest. A war on drugs held the
promise as a simplistic solution to the civil discontent erupting
across the country. But what appeared to be a simple solution to
difficult problems morphed into a problem in its own right.

 From its inception in 1971 till the end of the cold war, the war on
drugs was like a dormant volcano. The players on both sides of the war
were becoming entrenched in the politics, culture and economies of
illegal drug abuse.

The crime wave that erupted around the late 1980s and continued
through the 1990s was centered on the shifting dynamics of the drug
trade. The main shift was the transformation of the drug business,
which was mostly small entrepreneurs, to the organized efforts of the
Mafia, as well as the cartels of Mexico and Colombia.

The drug trade also shifted to accommodate improved enforcement
mechanisms and increasing severity of penalties. This shift was from
the bulky units of the more benign marijuana to drugs with an increase
in potency and addictive qualities, such as heroine, cocaine and
methamphetamines.

Essentially, the war on drugs and fighting crime became the new badges
of political relevance in the election of 1988. Our elected officials
needed a crusade to save us from ourselves and found it.

But the crime wave associated with illegal drugs was artificial in
that it took what was largely a medical problem with social and
spiritual dimensions and turned it into a legal problem. Trying to fix
a medical problem with the rule of law is analogous to sending a SWAT
team into a hospital to wipe out a virus.

Florida's felon voting laws date back to 1838 when they were used to
limit the number of freed slaves who were eligible to vote. Today,
there are an estimated 600,000 ex-felons of which 60 percent were
convicted of drug related or drug inspired crimes.

Think of the political careers made by getting tough on crime that
would disintegrate with their enfranchisement. Especially, in a state
where there is a legislature so well entrenched that all but one
incumbent was re-elected in the last election.

Think of the cataclysmic economic upheavals of those invested in
getting "tough on crime" should the war on drugs end. The prison-
industrial complex is not a matter to be taken lightly. There are
149,000 men, women and children locked up in the jails and prisons
throughout Florida.

Not to be forgotten are over 151,000 citizens on probation and parole
that are supervised by the Department of Corrections. And there are
over 49,000 men and women employed by federal, state and county
jurisdictions to keep the inmates in their jails and prisons.

Not to be overlooked in this equation is the judicial complex that
embraces the police, courts and related services. Then there is the
industry that provides the goods and services these organizations
depend on. We are now talking about a ratio of 10 to 15 people being
economically dependent on each prison inmate.

Florida courts have taken the first steps in the restoration of voting
rights by requiring the state to streamline and facilitate the
restoration process. However, the struggle between the courts and
legislature on this issue has yet to take form.

The pool of disenfranchised voters remains at 600,000 with another
300,000 soon to join it. The war on drugs is the single largest
contributor to the pool of disenfranchised voters. The question of who
will galvanize the disenfranchised and what direction they will be led
is still open.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake