Pseudonym Jones

vampire-core:

odinsblog:

dantalaois:

secretladyspider:

molothoo:

afronerdism:

niggazinmoscow:

THIS RIGHT HERE

You guys are dangerously close to realizing specifically what kinds of people they keep from voting and why.

I want to drill this into everybody’s head:

• The United States of America has the highest prison population in the world
• Black Americans and Latin people make up the majority of this population (many of whom are non-violent offenders)
• Federal Prisons in America require that their state keeps their prisons at a maximum occupancy at all times.
• The 13th amendment did not entirely abolish slavery…just one form of it. It remains legal through industrial prison system

Oh and we have privatized prisons which allow companies to actually make money off of keeping people incarcerated 

Here’s what’s really perverse: prisoners, who cannot vote, still get counted in the U.S. Census. The more prisoners a county has, the more representation it gets, even though the prisoners cannot vote. See how that works? The more black and brown people they lock up, the more government resources and political representation they get. Even though those prisoners have no say and cannot vote.

If county-A has a population of 50 voters but no prisons, and county-B has a population of 50 voters and 50 prisoners, the county with the prisoners gets more government funding and more political represention. This is sometimes called “prison gerrymandering” and it is used in redistrictring.

Not so fun Fact: Southern states that reliably vote for Republicans also have the highest prison population in the United States. (source). So mass incarceration is a double whammy. It’s both a form of voter suppression and a tool to strengthen white people’s political power.

[id: the first image is a tweet by Ryan Grim / @.ryangrim that reads: Ya know, if a country has so many people in prison that allowing them to vote could swing an election, maybe there are too many people in prison.

the second image is a tweet by Anthony Oliveira / @.meakoopa that reads: hi everyone - a government that denies its prisoners the right to vote is a government that now has an extremely vested interest in jailing its political opposition

thank you to coming to this, the literal first class of Civics 101 /end]

(via jetgreguar)

littlethingsmart:

(source)

(via littlethingsmart)