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Monday, September 21, 2015

Update your new address at myvote.wa.gov by Monday! "Flux" in the Voter Database

I have created this post in part as a type of public service announcement.  October 5th, Monday is the last day to update or register electronically to vote at myvote.wa.gov.  Washington has a somewhat unique and perhaps uniquely convenient solution to voter registration and voting: all electronic registration coupled with vote by mail ballots.  If you want to vote in the primary election in Whatcom County (or any other WA County) you must have a registration in good standing. You can check this at myvote.wa.gov and it is an excellent idea to do so whether you have moved or not.

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

"the most comprehensive police state in world history"

Dear Readers:

I have now spent good portions of my 'free' time this summer trying to understand crime/incarceration in Whatcom County and the United States. My statistical research is  here on my blog: http://www.bellinghampoliticsandeconomics.com .  A short video summary of my analysis of the Whatcom County press releases for the last 4.5 years is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl6x7b_v7EI

Drug and many other laws are pursued ruthlessly against the poor in America and in Whatcom County. We have created an apartheid society described in variants not exclusive of each other: people of color vs. white, fathers vs. families, men vs. women, impoverished vs. wealthy, prisoned vs. free. The Machiavellian value of the absurdly massive law and justice industry (also known as the 'PIC' or 'Prison Industrial Complex') that now counts as its prisoners 2.3 million of us (both in jails and prisons) is to create a level of social control that imprisons and jails more citizens per capita than either Russia or China.

We traumatize the lower classes and working classes here in the land of the free while terrorizing our middle classes in most urban and many small cities. This also helps keep unemployment and voter participation down and police/military/intelligences branches fully financed and recruited. As a side effect, a number of prison industries make a nice profit. Law and Justice throughout many small counties like Whatcom is functionally a multi-hundred million/year jobs program for white people to put many people of color and poverty in jail. Drug and DUI arrests are perhaps the biggest part of this. If you add to this the ridiculous volume of DV arrests/NCO, we now have a collection of powerful control mechanisns well designed to destroy the famies of people of color and poverty.  The vast advances in forensic, predictive, and surveillance technology now mean that our country has designed and implemented the most comprehensive police state in world history.

There is something terribly,terribly,terribly wrong with all of this. Our jail, law enforcement systems, and incarceration facilities are nothing our founding fathers would approve of.  In fact, I can think of no intellectual leader I have ever read and admired - not Jefferson, Christ, Marx, St. Francis, Einstein, Oppenheimer, Malcolm X, MLK, JFK or RFK -  that would approve of our current law and justice system. Whatever the state of our jail here in Whatcom County, there can be no question that all of us owe it to our own humanity and futures to examine how poverty, racism and incarceration function now in the United States. We owe it ourselves to ask the question: "Why are there so many people imprisoned in the United States?"

The italicized email message in quotes below the break is from Joy Gilfilen for Whatcom County Executive. Joy's campaign facebook site is here: https://www.facebook.com/votingforjoy?fref=ts . Joy's campaign website is here: http://votingforjoy.com.  COB has apparently "cut a deal" to support the new jail proposal. It may be on the agenda for tonight's (Tuesday - 9/15/2015)  county councils meeting. Details are apparently scarce.. The Restorative Community (Wednesday 9/16/2015) event is here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1464033593926637 . The Restorative Community report on community alternatives to incarceration is here: http://www.whatcomrec.org/RCCReport.pdf