OAAP hopes to incite awareness

Oberlin Action Against Prisons sponsors series of campus events

Prison isn't just for criminals anymore. It has become a breeding ground for capitalism and racism, according to Richard Stratton, a speaker brought to Oberlin by Oberlin Action Against Prisons in observationof Prison Awareness Week.

The Prison Awareness Week will continue this weekend with the third annual Ohio Prison Activist Confrence and a forum of four former women inmates. Members of Oberlin Action Against Prisons said the purpose of Prison Awareness Week was to inform the Oberlin community about prisons and to take action.

Thursday night featured a speech by editor of Prison Life magazine Stratton and novelist, prison-educator David Matlin.

Stratton, arrested in the 60s for smuggling marijuana was sentenced to 25 years with parole and spent eight years in prison. Mattin worked in prisons in New York teaching English language and creative writing to inmates.

Both speakers emphasized that state of prisons in the United States is due, in many ways, to the capitalist and racist society. Stratton began by noting that blacks and Latinos are 90 percent of inmates in New York States prisons.

Stratton said he feels it is important to speak and act out against prisons because "there are alot of myths" about prisons. Prison's are "about money and are huge buisnesses," he said. "Big companies are building private prisons. What does this say about our country?" Stratton asked. He aslo argued that prisons are popular becasue their construction provides employment.

"[The prison system] takes blacks and Latinos and puts them in prisons in white backwoods areas," Stratton said. Both Stratton and Mattin repeatedly targeted what they called the "racist economic country" that allows prisons to exist. Stratton called prisons a "whole sale wearhousing of blacks, Latinos, and people of color."

The system Stratton claims, is "unfair because a person with 20 grams of crack goes ten years without parol whereas a kingpin can pay 1 million dollars from a Swiss bank account and rat on a couple guys and get off."

In addressing the moral issues of prisons, Stratton said, "Taking someone's liberty and locking them up is a very extreme form of punishment." He also said that within prisons, he had witnessed a lot of violence which he described as "systematic oppresstion."

Stratton also predicted that because of recent organized resistance to prisons and the war on drugs that "intense things" would happen in the next few years. He continued with more hypotheses. "We'll see riots like we saw riots in black ghettos accross the country in the 1960's," he said.

Mattin then took the floor saying, "I am scared and I hope to scare you too." His readings from his work centered on his fear of an "emerging tolerance of dictatorship." Both speakers forsaw the future as well as beheld the past. Mattin read "the cold war made us cold, made us into a racist economic country" and now kidnapping is taking place in the form of incarceration of surplus population headed for prisons. A friend of Stratton's, Mansfield Frazier, cut into the discussion from his seat among the students providing an analogy that "crime is the new communism" in that it is used to scare us into appreciating prisons and thus continue to finance them. Yet, he noted that unlike communism there "exists no opponents".

Two other questions by students addressing the factor of young prisoners and religion in prisons lead to a discussion among Frazier Mattin, and Stratton. Frazier said "younger prisoners are taught by older prisoners manners" that help them adjust to the social enviornment of prison infrastructure.

Frazier said that many prisoners were scared to leave their prison lives and some preferred to stay because in projects they never were sure of their position. He said that in the projects "you worry if a stray bullet will hit you," but in prison, convicts are more in control of there positons. He also explained that for black men, being in prison provided them with the feeling of "equality and even superiority over whites".

One student said she came to "educate herself more about the prison system because I saw there are some very screwed up things that go on [in prisons]." Another student said that she is "horrified by the dehuminization you read about in prisons." One member of the Oberlin Action Against Prisons, who wished to remain anonymous, said after the speech, "Oberlin is very academic, yet it is important to be informed and understand the condition of prisons."

Tonight Eddie Ellis will be giving a lecture on the role of prisons in society. The third annual Ohio Prison Activist Conference will take place on Saturday as well as a panel of four former female inmates that were incarcerated in Marysville Corrections Institute in Southern Ohio. They will speak about there experiences as women in the Ohio prison system.