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NEWS & LETTERS, October 2001

Oakland, Cal.-In early August the national tour of Kemba Smith and Dorothy Gaines, two Black women, war-on-drugs prisoners, whom Clinton pardoned during his last few days in office, reached the San Francisco Bay Area

Speaking to an overflowing audience of about 200 mostly Black Oakland
residents crowded into a church basement, Dorsey Nunn introduced the
speakers by reminding us that 2.8 million African Americans are under some sort of supervision of the justice system. There are 20 states whose total population does not reach 2.8 million. Dorsey Nunn wanted this meeting to start a different kind of conversation about the criminal justice system. He said they are not building the prison-industrial complex for a few brothers in baggy pants, it is capitalism itself at work.

Kemba Smith was convicted on the basis that her boyfriend was caught with drugs. She knew nothing, thus she could not snitch on anybody and got an outrageous sentence. She stated that although her situation is individual, it is not unique. She has a purpose now: she can't just sit back and enjoy her freedom until the drug laws and policies are changed. She spoke of other women inside, like a mother, who did nothing wrong, but was sent to prison because she wouldn't snitch on her son. She spent eight-and-a-half years in prison and died there of liver disease because of the prison's medical neglect. What Kemba Smith regrets the most is that she did not know her own history. "If I knew our history maybe I wouldn't have done some things, maybe the person I was involved with wouldn't have been selling drugs." Solidarity is important and concrete to her because her own pardon was the result of the many letters written, many grass-roots organizations coming together.

Dorothy Gaines was sentenced to 20 years in prison without any evidence.
The father of her child testified against her in an attempt to stay out of prison himself. That is how the snitch laws work. She urged everyone to become a voice, to join or start their own organizations. There are a lot of good people still in prison on whom we can't give up.

The meeting was closed by youth from Castlemont high school, who informed us that Oakland just passed an ordinance putting Oakland police onto school campuses. It was Columbine, a primarily white school where students were killed, but it is Oakland schools, with mostly students of color who are not shooting each other, whose campuses are being militarized.

The new conversation for which Dorsey Nunn was asking makes it clear that African Americans' opposition to criminal (in)justice, police abuses, etc., is a form of their opposition to capitalism itself. The stories at the meeting also pointed the way out: through solidarity, breaking down the barriers between inside and outside.

-Urszula Wislanka and Mitch Weerth

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