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News :: Miscellaneous |
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A Fragile Freedom |
Current rating: 0 |
by Craig Bernardini
Email: helldriver99 (nospam) hotmail.com (unverified!) |
20 Jun 2001
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Families Against Mandatory Minimums celebrates the release of Cory Stringfellow and pledges support for the thousands of others still unfairly incarcerated About fifty people came together in front of the Utah State Capitol on Saturday, June 9, to celebrate with Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), a national sentencing-reform group, the release of Cory Stringfellow. |
Cory, who is the son of Burt Stringfellow, Utah FAMM’s founder, had served six years out of a sixteen-year sentence for \"conspiring to distribute LSD\" when his sentence was commuted by then-President Clinton. The long sentence for a nonviolent drug offense illustrates what FAMM calls \"sentences run amok\" and American society’s \"irrational rage to punish.\"
Speakers assembled in front of a statue of a Native American who, as Ken Larsen of FAMM noted, holds a peace pipe. While Larsen alluded to the peaceful public gathering, the peace pipe also provided a fitting contrast to the excesses of the drug war, which has claimed so many mandatory minimum sentencing victims.
Among the speakers was Salt Lake mayor Rocky Anderson, who was involved, along with FAMM and, remarkably, Utah Senators Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch, in lobbying for Cory’s release. Anderson has drawn fire from conservatives in recent years for eradicating the DARE program from Salt Lake schools, as well as for his consistent and vocal opposition to the drug war.
Anderson called mandatory minimums \"one of the greatest political fiascos, one of the most inhumane measures a society has ever imposed against other people in our nation.\"
\"In all the years of our drug war atrocity, we have not reduced drug use,\" Anderson said. \"We have not reduced addiction. We have not reduced the problem. My view is that the drug war and the atrocities committed in its name are causing far more damage to America than the drug users. We as a society need to take a far more rational and compassionate approach.\"
Anderson went on to note that an alternative approach to drugs would not only be more humane, but also save taxpayers billions of dollars which have gone to support both America’s burgeoning prison population and military interventions like Plan Colombia.
Anderson outlined three parts to an alternative approach, beginning with the ultimate goal of harm reduction rather than attempting to eradicate drug use. Second, Anderson called for real research into drug prevention, education, and treatment, including replacing \"phony\" programs like DARE and unrealistic abstinence-based programs—analogous to those the Utah legislature has touted in sex education—with honest information. (Afterward, Anderson named Atlas and Life Skills Training as possible alternatives, though research remains to be done). Third, Anderson advocated funding treatment programs, noting that fully a third of those who seek drug treament are unable to receive it, either because of lack of availability or program cost.
Burt Stringfellow echoed Anderson’s appeal for treatment and an alternative to incarceration for nonviolent offenders. In what he calls a \"wicked disparity,\" Stringfellow noted that the US, which contains only 5% of the world’s population, holds 25% of the incarcerated people in the world.
\"Are we to believe that our country is five times more criminally oriented than the rest of the world?\" he asked. \"Ridiculous.\" And, to supporters of mandatory minimums: \"If you are one of those who believes in, ‘Lock ‘em up and throw away the key and let ‘em rot,’ wake up! You are part of the problem.\"
If it is the \"irrational rage to punish\" which has led to the current massive U.S. incarceration rate, it was tireless lobbying on the part of FAMM and Utah politicians that led to the release of Burt’s son Cory. Cory’s was one of twenty-one drug sentences commuted by President Clinton in his final moments before leaving office.
But despite the symbolic and personal victories in Cory’s release, Burt Stringfellow calls the twenty-one \"a drop in the bucket.\" Father and son, as well as FAMM as an organization, pledged to continute fighting for the thousands still unfairly incarcerated.
Ken Larsen compared Cory’s release to the release of one Jew from the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. \"There are still tens of thousands of people just like Cory rotting in federal prisons because of mandatory minimum sentencing,\" Larsen said.
Cory Stringfellow sounded like a concentration-camp survivor himself as he alluded to the \"immense guilt\" he feels at his own good fortune while thousands like him remain in prison.
\"It would be wonderful just to forget everything that happened and try to have a life again,\" Cory said. \"But I couldn’t live with myself. I have a moral obligation [to those still incarcerated]. Their lives are still destroyed and their families are still without them.\"
As for FAMM’s goals, Larsen noted the importance of raising awareness on the issue of mandatory minimum sentencing, which he hoped the press coverage of the rally would help to accomplish. By raising the issue in public consciousness, FAMM hopes that concerned citizens will get in touch with their representatives.
\"The Utah State Legislature has been wise enough to repeal mandatory minimums and return that judicial authority to the judiciary,\" Larsen said. \"We would like Congress to do the same.\"
Mandatory minimum laws were repealed in Utah in 1995, in a last-minute legislative move whose details remain obscure.
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See also:
http://utah.indymedia.org/
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"THE CLINTON CHRONICLES" |
by Judy
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
21 Jun 2001
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See the video "THE CLINTON CHRONICLES" with the drug running in MENA, AK for 10l years with not one arrest! Yet, they put the normal, mostly honest, person in jail! Meanwhile, the real criminals are running around like crazy assholes - and we can't even drive without a seatbelt! |
