Tag: equal protection of the laws

On Dec. 9, Supervisor John Avalos introduced a resolution to the Board of Supervisors to address racial profiling and the use of force by police officers, nationally and locally, as well as to uphold the right to nonviolent protest. Supervisors David Campos, Jane Kim, Malia Cohen and Eric Mar signed as cosponsors. A final vote on the resolution will be held on Tuesday, Dec. 16, and a large showing of support is vital to its passage.

On Feb. 9, 2014, prisoners in the special management unit of the Georgia Diagnostic Correctional Prison began another hunger strike to protest conditions. Some of the prisoners have had enough of the oppression and decided to take a true stand in fighting for their rights. Most of the prisoners participating are some of the same prisoners from the Dec. 9, 2010, and the June 11, 2012, hunger strikes, and these prisoners are again refusing to eat until conditions change.

In oral arguments before the Supreme Court on the Voting Rights Act, Justice Antonin Scalia slandered the act as a “racial entitlement,” arguing, “whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.” The justice proved once more that he is not a neutral arbiter of the Constitution but a right-wing activist with an agenda to enforce.

The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, which is torture, which is us prisoners being held in solitary confinement indefinitely, without ever breaking a prison rule or state or federal law, anywhere from 10 to 40 years, under conditions of sensory deprivation, isolation, etc., etc. The fact that solitary confinement is torture is recognized by the U.N. – but not by the U.S., yet.

The founders of the U.S. did not like corporations and for the first few decades of the existence of this nation, corporations were only given limited “privileges” and not “rights.” But after the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1868 – which extended equal protection under the law to all male citizens of the U.S regardless of race – attorneys for the corporations recognized the opportunity that had been gifted to them and started to scheme for corporate personhood.