The Unsilenced Voice of a ‘Long-Distance Revolutionary’ by Chris Hedges

by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
December 10, 2012

Mumia Abu-Jamal

Image by Prison Radio via Flickr

I am sitting in the visiting area of the SCI Mahanoy prison in Frackville, Pa., on a rainy, cold Friday morning with Mumia Abu-Jamal, America’s most famous political prisoner and one of its few authentic revolutionaries. He is hunched forward on the gray plastic table, his dreadlocks cascading down the sides of his face, in a room that looks like a high school cafeteria. He is talking intently about the nature of empire, which he is currently reading voraciously about, and effective forms of resistance to tyranny throughout history. Small children, visiting their fathers or brothers, race around the floor, wail or clamber on the plastic chairs. Abu-Jamal, like the other prisoners in the room, is wearing a brown jumpsuit bearing the letters DOC—for Department of Corrections.

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Prison labor booms in US as low-cost inmates bring billions

Dandelion Salad

Arrested

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

RussiaToday on Dec 9, 2012

US breeds a Chinese-style inmate labor scheme on its own soil. Both state and some of the biggest private companies are now enjoying the fruits of a cheap and readily available work force, with tens of millions of dollars spent by private prisons to keep their jails full.
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