Free Shequanda and Stop the War!

HELP free Shequanda and other Afro teenagers languishing in American jails by listening to Free Speech Radio Network http://www.fsrn.org/. In a news insert dated 30-03-2007 we heard how Shequanda got into an altercation with a “hall-monitor” at her school, and found her way into the Texas administration penal system where she is currently incarcarated. Without any prior convictions, she was found guilty of “third-degree” assault on a “government employee” and sentenced to the maximum — I guess that means about twenty years?

On a more bizarre note, Shequanda’s sentence has subsequently been increased after numerous “suicide attempts” and by implication, “attacks upon government property”. Typical of the experience of hundreds of thousands of black American teens, Republican policies of zero-tolerance have begun to supercede the once-thought draconian measures implemented by Clinton/Gore, the duo who signed a wonderfully liberal “three-strikes out” initiative into law that sentences violent offenders, some as young as 16 to life-sentences “after three convictions”.

The result has been the quadrupling of the prison population as the US prison service, like our own, is increasingly outsourced and, in some instances even privatised. Seizures of property held by those “deemed undesirable”, caught up in the legal system but without actual conviction, has also reached epic proportions, as entire departments now get funded via the sale of assets, and in this case, the denial of Shequanda’s right to individual autonomy, and a fair hearing.

FREE SHEQUANDA AND HELP STOP GEORGE W BUSH’S WAR ON THE POOR!

Leave a Reply