by C. Uzondu
The United States maintains Guantanamo-like prisons around the globe, but its most populous Gulag is here in the U.S., home of one-quarter the world’s prisoners, about half of them Black. “it is absolutely necessary…to remind ourselves that the ascendancy of a Black man to the White House does not automatically signal the demise of white supremacy. This is no post-white supremacy moment, keep your eyes on the jails.” Perhaps it is apt to call the American Prison Gulag the Guantanamo Complex.” Racialized populations (even as we resist domination) are perceived and produced as perpetual prey for the predations of capital.”
One, Two, Three, Many Domestic Guantanamos
by C. Uzondu
“The criminal injustice system, even when the judges are not explicitly bribed, will continue to cannibalize us.”
In honor of the new president we should rename the United States of America. This is fitting because one of the first things President Obama did on taking office was to issue an edict to close the U.S. military base at Guantanamo, Cuba. I suggest we call it Gitmo States.
Gitmo States incarcerates more than 2 million people, mainly poor and racialized. It is a country whose criminal injustice system is deeply structured by white supremacist-patriarchal-capitalism. It is risky to restate the prior fact and this additional one – the United States has more people incarcerated than any other industrialized country in the world – because it is easy for the circumstances of the incarcerated to be ignored, especially in these disastrous economic times. But, it is absolutely necessary, in this moment of the Obama presidency, to remind ourselves that the ascendancy of a Black man to the White House does not automatically signal the demise of white supremacy. This is no post-white supremacy moment, keep your eyes on the jails. And, still intact are both patriarchy and capitalism.
Global capitalism is experiencing convulsions. Still, despite the current capitalist economic crisis gripping the globe, and of course the United States, where the rot started, capitalism is not yet on its deathbed. Preserving the capitalist system is indeed the primary task of President Obama. He must also conjure legitimacy for U.S. imperial rule. Indeed, shifting global opinion from disgust at U.S. imperial arrogance to wonderment and hope about “change we can believe in” was central to the closing of Guantanamo. It was one of Obama the Savior’s first gifts to the subjects of empire. We are to believe “America does not torture.” We are to believe in the myth of “America.”
“The ascendancy of a Black man to the White House does not automatically signal the demise of white supremacy.”
But a brutal reality confronts us. In this time of economic crisis, nothing new for the majority of Afrikans, other racialized peoples, and the working classes generally, it is imperative that we not lose sight of the Gitmo States’ prisons and its jails. That the U.S. gulags continue to destroy an extraordinary amount of human life should forever remain at the forefront of our minds and actions. The closing of Gitmo has not changed the fundamentally imperialistic nature of the United States. (The U.S. did not return Guantanamo – a stolen base from an earlier imperial moment – to Cuba).
Keeping our sights on the Gitmo States’ prisons and jails is extremely important when we recall the recent case where two judges, Mr. Ciavarella and Mr. Conahan, pleaded guilty to federal charges of wire and income-tax fraud. These judges had taken more than $2.5 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately operated detention centers. If these are two bad apples, they are but the fruit of a rotten tree. The closing of Gitmo has not, was not supposed to change the fundamentally white-supremacist nature of the United States criminal injustice system. In other words, the same way that subprime loans are predatory practices inherent to capitalism (especially the U.S hyper neoliberal version) and white-supremacist societies, so too are private and “public” prisons. Racialized populations (even as we resist domination) are perceived and produced as perpetual prey for the predations of capital.
As President Obama goes about “saving the economy, fixing health care, and building a green economy,” it is up to us to make dismantling the prison-industrial-warfare complex, the Guantanamo complex an urgent task. This should not require further argument. The same way that the Gitmo State organized and incorporated terror and torture in Guantanamo, so it does in the prisons across the so-called “land of the free.” This fact was again restated by a Human Rights Watch report. One only has to think of the case of the Angola 3 for one example of domestic terror and torture. The continued incarceration of freedom fighters from the Black Liberation Movement: I think of our soldiers like Mutulu Shakur, Jalil Muntaquin, Eddie Conway, Sekou Odinga, and Seth Hayes. Also recall the continued incarceration of Leonard Peltier from the American Indian Movement and other liberationists like Marilyn Buck. The ongoing incarceration, the systematic denial of parole, the deliberate withholding of adequate medical treatment (in key instances) that some of these freedom fighters experience is simply criminal. Since cruel and inhuman (but not unusual) treatment is commonplace in Gitmo States’ Guantanamo complex, we must close all the guantanamos.
“The closing of Gitmo has not changed the fundamentally imperialistic nature of the United States.”
Indeed, these economic times make the task of dismantling the prison-industrial-warfare complex even more urgent. The amount of money spent on incarceration is often nearly as much as that spent on higher education. In a moment when state governments are facing budget crisis, if ever there was a time to abolish prisons there is a strong argument that the time is now. Of course, there is nothing inherently progressive about various states changing destructive sentencing practices to save money. It is at best a pragmatic move, hopefully pragmatic enough so that the liberals, the “left,” and the “progressives” who endorsed Obama can give their support to a political/policy agenda to close the domestic guantanamos.
For those relegated to the margins of U.S. society and those in solidarity with them, an evaluation of the Obama presidency will have to be concerned with the U.S. gulags, its domestic Guantanamo complex. We must not wait for the end of an Obama presidency to evaluate changes in the Gitmo State. The criminal injustice system, even when the judges are not explicitly bribed, will continue to cannibalize us. Racialized peoples almost always have higher rates of unemployment and underemployment than their white counterparts, so in the current economic climate that means even more “surplus” populations than normal to be devoured by the system.
If we are unwilling to organize widespread protest to stop the looting by the bankers, probably we can organize movement(s) that will compel Obama the Savior to demonstrate some of that fiscal discipline he often speaks of, and at least do the cheap thing – set our captive sisters and brothers free. Then again, the Gitmo State may be able to exist without Guantanamo, but can it exist without its guantanamos?
C. Uzondu can be contacted at nalsoja@yahoo.com.
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