The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Military Prison Project

WHAT IS IT?

This project will be a combination of research, analysis and personal accounts of life inside the military prison. It will result in a pamphlet or zine of some sort that will be available for distribution in Winter 2005.

There is research, activism, and organizing around the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), and also the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) in terms of recruitment, corporate interests, and racism and sexual violence within the military and in its praxis around the world. However, very little research, activism and organizing exists to expose the prison system within the military. Since the Abu-Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal came to public attention in the summer of 2004, international attention has been brought to the treatment of people held as prisoners of war by the US, but there was no analysis of the US military justice system as a whole, and how it imprisons those within it! s own ranks. This project will help to fill that void by looking at the following issues:

1. Who is in military prison?

2. What offenses are people serving for, and what are their sentences?

3. What is the racial breakdown, and sentence disparities among race, class and gender?

4. What are the conditions of confinement and treatment of folks in military prisons?

5. How does the military justice system reproduce ideologies about certain communities being criminal, pathological and violent that are common in the "civilian" world?

6. Does the military justice system and how it works change the situation of young, poor black women and men who enter the military as a means of escaping poverty, gaining status as a "respectable citizen" and to evade their likelihood of being incarcerated in the PIC, or does it replicate this situation within the military?

This publication will assist family members of military prisoners, former military prisoners, activists, organizers, and educators who are doing work around prison issues, military recruitment, and racial, sexual and economic justice.

INTERESTED IN SUBMITTING TO OR WORKING ON THIS PROJECT?

Are you a veteran who has served time in a military prison and has a story to tell (you may remain ANONYMOUS)? Are you a family member or friend of someone who was or is currently in a military prison? Are you a concerned activist interested in doing research and analysis? Do you have access to some resources we should know about in pursuing this endeavor? Email:militaryprisonproject@yahoo.com

***BEHIND THE PROJECT***

ABOUT THE EDITOR: Kenyon Farrow is a 30 year old Black Gay man, writing and organizing in Brooklyn, NY. He recently served as the Southern Regional Coordinator for Critical Resistance, a prison abolition organization, and continues to work in the New York City chapter. He has also served as an adult ally for FIERCE!, a queer youth of color community organizing project in New York City. Kenyon has written several articles and essays, the most widely circulated of which have been "Is Gay Marriage Anti-Black?", and "Connecting the Dots: Michael Moore, White Nationalism and the Multi-racial Left" with writer Kil Ja Kim. Kenyon has also appeared on radio, given many public lect! ures and served on many panels dealing with race and prison issues, and race and queer issues as well, including at Temple University, University of Wisconsin/Madison, and The University of New Orleans. He is currently co-editing his first book project entitled "Letters from Young Activists" with Dan Berger and Chesa Boudin, due out in Fall 2005 with Nation Books.

OTHER GROUPS BEHIND THE PROJECT: This project is sponsored by the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors (www.objector.org) and the National Youth and Militarism Program of the AFSC (http://www.afsc.org/youthmil/Default.htm) as part of a multimedia project entitled "Everywhere is War, Everywhere is Resistance."