ScienceJustice

A student collective at YouthBuild Charter School in the city of Norwalk that explores the conditions in the California prison industrial complex. We have also started a Justice Food Truck to support our work toward collective, revolutionary justice.

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[sciencejustice]

Despite vote, California death penalty still stalled

BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Posted:   11/18/2012 01:01:57 AM PST

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Robert Fairbank's appeal of his death sentence for the 1985 rape and murder of college student Wendy Cheek.

With that rejection, Fairbank joined at least 13 other death row inmates who have completed the decades-long capital punishment appeals process and are eligible for execution.

Nonetheless, none of the 14 death row inmates who have "exhausted" their appeals will receive a lethal injection any time soon -- even though 53 percent of the California electorate reinforced its support of the death penalty with the rejection of Proposition 34 on Nov. 6.

Lawsuits in federal and state courts have halted executions since January 2006 and it will take months, maybe years, to resolve the litigation. Judges have ordered a halt to executions and lawyers with the state's attorney general's office have promised not to pursue any executions until the cases are resolved.

Read more: http://www.thereporter.com/ci_22021342/despite-vote-california-death-penalty-still-stalled

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Vote November 6!!!

[sciencejustice]

Vote NO on California Proposition 34!!!

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L.A. County supervisors embrace proposed jail reforms

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-jail-commission-20121010,0,6915826.story

By Jack Leonard and Robert Faturechi, Los Angeles Times

October 9, 2012, 8:14 p.m.

Reacting to a scathing report of sheriff's deputy brutality in the Los Angeles County jails, county supervisors Tuesday embraced dozens of reforms to curb inmate abuse and said they would be responsible for ensuring that Sheriff Lee Bacacarries them out. The Board of Supervisors accepted the findings of a blue-ribbon commission that spent nine months investigating allegations of excessive force before concluding that Baca failed to heed repeated warnings over the years about abuse and other misconduct in the Sheriff's Department's jail system. "It is our hope that this report will not be simply another one to be added to the very large bookshelves that contain scores of reports that have been issued over decades," Miriam Krinsky, the commission's executive director, told county supervisors. "The solutions that have been seen thus far have been stop gap... What is needed is a steadfast commitment and vigilance to bringing these changes about."

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Recommended Website: http://www.equityproject.org

The Equity Project is an initiative to ensure that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth in juvenile delinquency courts are treated with dignity, respect, and fairness. The Equity Project examines issues of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression (SOGI/E) that impact youth during the entire delinquency process, ranging from arrest through post-disposition.

Core activities of the Equity Project:

Gathering information from stakeholders about LGBT youth in juvenile delinquency courts

Identifying obstacles to fair treatment

Reporting findings

Crafting recommendations for juvenile justice professionals

[sciencejustice]

The Unfair Criminalization of Gay and Transgender Youth

Read full article:

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/lgbt/report/2012/06/29/11730/the-unfair-criminalization-of-gay-and-transgender-youth/

An Overview of the Experiences of LGBT Youth in the Juvenile Justice System

Gay, transgender, and gender nonconforming youth are significantly over-represented in the juvenile justice system—approximately 300,000 gay and transgender youth are arrested and/or detained each year, of which more than 60 percent are black or Latino. Though gay and transgender youth represent just 5 percent to 7 percent of the nation’s overall youth population, they compose 13 percent to 15 percent of those currently in the juvenile justice system.

These high rates of involvement in the juvenile justice system are a result of gay and transgender youth abandonment by their families and communities, and victimization in their schools—sad realities that place this group of young people at a heightened risk of entering the school-to-prison pipeline.

[sciencejustice]

LA County DA Machinery of Justice

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California’s ‘Willful Disobedience’

New article in the New York Times about California prison overcrowding:

"Last year the Supreme Court took the extraordinary step of ordering California to reduce the dangerous overcrowding in its prisons. The state had challenged an earlier ruling requiring it to meet a specific limit on the number of state prisoners. The court firmly rejected that challenge.

Without such a limit, Justice Anthony Kennedy said for the majority, there would be “a certain and unacceptable risk of continuing violations” of prisoners’ rights caused by horrible conditions, amounting to cruel and unusual punishment."

Read more here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/opinion/sunday/californias-willful-disobedience.html

[sciencejustice]

Highly Recommended Books

The Rock and the River, Kekla Magoon.

"In Chicago in 1968, Sam, 14, obeys his father, an eloquent civil-rights leader who is close with Dr. King and is passionately committed to nonviolent protest. But after King is assassinated and Sam witnesses police brutality toward a friend, Sam follows his rebellious older brother, Stephen (“Stick”), and joins the Black Panthers, whose revolutionary platform is the opposite of the nonviolent philosophy that Sam has been taught at home. Then Sam’s father is stabbed. Will the brothers retaliate with violence? True to the young teen’s viewpoint, this taut, eloquent first novel will make readers feel what it was like to be young, black, and militant 40 years ago, including the seething fury and desperation over the daily discrimination that drove the oppressed to fight back. Sam’s middle-class family is loving and loyal, even when their quarrels are intense; and Magoon draws the characters without sentimentality. Along with the family drama, the politics will grab readers, especially the Panthers’ political education classes and their call for “land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace."

Economic Apartheid in America, Chuck Collins & Felice Yeskel.

"The authors, social activists rather than economists, explain the growing economic insecurity and inequality in the U.S. While they do not have a comprehensive blueprint for change, they offer an analysis of the problems that they believe threaten human values and our quality of life. The first three chapters explain the impact of the growing inequality on daily living; examine trends in income, wages, savings, and wealth; and consider the causes of inequality, such as the rise of corporate power and the decline of worker power. While chapter four discusses the building of a fair-economy movement, the final chapter offers an action plan for reducing inequality with ideas such as lifting the income and wealth floor for people at the bottom; progressive taxation on income and wealth; and policies that fundamentally redistribute power and wealth. While many will not agree with the ideas in this book, all voices should be heard in a democracy searching for solutions to economic problems."

No Choirboy: Murder, Violence and Teenagers on Death Row.

"No Choirboy takes readers inside America’s prisons, and allows inmates sentenced to death as teenagers to speak for themselves. In their own voices—raw and uncensored—they talk about their lives in prison, and share their thoughts and feelings about how they ended up there. Susan Kuklin also gets inside the system, exploring capital punishment itself and the intricacies and inequities of criminal justice in the United States. This is a searing, unforgettable read, and one that could change the way we think about crime and punishment."

[sciencejustice]

Army of Che Water Warriors

The ScienceJustice Collective has found a source of fat-free and oppression-free water. We have created labels to celebrate and honor Che Guevara, the Argentinean, revolutionary, politician, military theorist, and guerrilla.

This Friday, at the Student UnitY Festival, we will be driving our Food Truck to Exposition Park to distribute Che Water, Che Chips, and political pamphlets. Our Justice Food Truck serves the goal of ending oppression in the East Los Angeles region and inspiring others to do the same.

Che Quotes

If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.

The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.

The people are weary of being oppressed, persecuted, exploited to the maximum. They are weary of the wretched selling of their labor-power day after day — faced with the fear of joining the enormous mass of unemployed — so that the greatest profit can be wrung from each human body, profit later squandered in the orgies of the masters of capital.

[sciencejustice]

Recommended Websites on Prison Reform:

http://www.cellblocknation.com/

http://twitter.com/#!/PrisonReformMvt

http://www.facebook.com/Fast4Freedom

http://www.facebook.com/PrisonReformMovement

http://blog.simplejustice.us/

http://srqcjr.blogspot.com/

http://incarcerationreform.blogspot.com/

http://humanityforprisoners.org/

http://mothersforprisonreform.wordpress.com/

http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/

http://www.theagitator.com/

http://www.usprisonculture.com/blog/

http://www.whoopassforjustice.org/

http://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights

http://breakthechains.info/

http://www.prisons.org/index.htm

http://conflictwithconviction.tumblr.com/

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Recommended Weblog: Prison Movement

http://prisonmovement.wordpress.com/

From blog:

Against the death penalty; the United States Criminal Justice System is flawed, broken, yet fixable; Prison Reform and Sentencing Reform should be major agenda's for each state- we need to stop warehousing prisoners and ready those who are going to parole.

Inmate rehabilitation improves public safety and lowers prison costs.

“We have to care because we can't afford not to".

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Why promote prison reform?

Central to the arguments to promote prison reforms is a human rights argument - the premise on which many UN standards and norms have been developed. However, this argument is often insufficient to encourage prison reform programmes in countries with scarce human and financial resources. The detrimental impact of imprisonment, not only on individuals but on families and communities, and economic factors also need to be taken into account when considering the need for prison reforms.

(from: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/justice-and-prison-reform/prison-reform-and-alternatives-to-imprisonment.html)

[sciencejustice]

Che Vitamin Water

Drink this after eating our Chomsky Chips! The vitamins and minerals are 100% organic and free from oppression. This will make you body, your mind, and your society more healthy. Health is not just about eating better; it is about creating and living in a better world.

The ScienceJustice Collective Agrees with Noam Chomsky:

Chomsky asserts that authority, unless justified, is inherently illegitimate, and that the burden of proof is on those in authority. If this burden can't be met, the authority in question should be dismantled. Authority for its own sake is inherently unjustified. 

The SJ Collective Agrees with Che Guevara:

I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves.

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Che Liberation Water

To paraphrase Coleridge: Water, water, everywhere!

The ScienceJustice Collective has gathered this water from a natural spring in Freedomland. The ingredients are 100% Organic Justice. Low carb, fat-free, gluten-free, and oppression-free. One refreshing gulp will refresh your desire for liberation from capitalism.

Like Che, the ScienceJustice Collective disagrees with the principles of capitalism, including its free market modes of production, the hierarchical social organizations it promotes, and the exploitative economic relations it creates with workers.

To Quote Noam Chomsky:

The idea of 'free contract' between the potentate and his starving subject is a sick joke, perhaps worth some moments in an academic seminar exploring the consequences of (in my view, absurd) ideas, but nowhere else.

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Che Chips

This is the taste of the Revolution!

This is the taste of Justice!

This is the taste of Freedom!

The Justice Food Truck has created this delicious, oppression-free bag of snacks. They will fill you will the energy required to build a just society. Stop by the Student Unity Festival at Exposition Park to pick up your own bag!

Our Food Truck was created to spread the word of Justice and Freedom throughout East Los Angeles. The ScienceJustice Collective distributes revolution and justice-themed food and political pamphlets. Our mobile truck allows us to follow the revolution and chase down oppression.

Who was Che Guevara?

Ernesto "Che" Guevara was a revolutionary. He was born in Argentina but never called the country home after his college years, studying medicine. Through his travels during his college years, he became aware of the povery and inequality in South America. This inspired him to fight for the equality he felt Marxism would bring. Che is known for his effect on the communist revolution in Cuba. He also fought in revolutions in Congo and Bolivia. He is a man who impacted the world. He is the man who invented guerrilla warfare.