Listen to the BAR commentary HERE

Attorney General Eric Holder will tell you he has a lot of power. But will he use any of that power to stop or even slow down the futile and corrupt War on Drugs, the 40^th anniversary of which falls this month? David Simon, producer of the HBO TV series “The Wire,” makes the attorney general an offer he should not refuse, but probably will…

“The Wire” Producer to Attorney-General Eric Holder – “End the War On Drugs”

“A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

The functionaries of the Obama administration, like those of every preceding regime, live in a different world than the rest of us. The distance between them and us was underscored once again when Attorney General Eric Holder invited several actors from the HBO TV series The Wire to a Justice Department media event intended to highlight the harm that illegal drugs do to children.

The attorney general, addressing the audience and naming the show’s producers, said “Do another season of the Wire… I want another season, or a movie,” he said, adding “I have a lot of power…”

Apparently the attorney general is a big fan of the show, but one of those lazy, inattentive fans who doesn’t care to look too deeply. Among much else, The Wire depicts the moral corruption and futility of the so-called war on drugs, which has been waged mostly in the nation’s poor and black neighborhoods for forty years now. If anything, the show is a stinging indictment of Mr. Holder’s predecessors and of the Obama administration which, despite its “Hope and Change” branding, has chosen to co-sign and continued the War on Drugs rather than fulfill the wishes of the comunities swept this president and attorney general into office.

“In other words, use your power to end the war on drugs, Simon told the attorney-general, and we’ll use ours to make another season of The Wire. ”

The attorney general was right about one thing. He does have a lot of power, and even a lighthearted remark from so powerful an individual deserves an appropriate response. That response was not long in coming.

“The Attorney-General’s kind remarks are noted and appreciated,” replied the show’s producer David Simon. “I’ve spoken to Ed Burns and we are prepared to go to work on season six of The Wire if the Department of Justice is equally ready to reconsider and address its continuing prosecution of our misguided, destructive and dehumanising drug prohibition.”

In other words, use your power to end the war on drugs, Simon told the attorney-general, and we’ll use ours to make another season of The Wire. This week will mark the 40^th anniversary of the War on Drugs, orginally proclaimed by President Nixon. At a cost by now reckoned in the trillions of dollars, this hypocritical, and futile war has been used as an excuse to selectively over-police and lock up vast numbers of mostly black and brown youth, even though their rates of drug use are statistically no higher than rates of white drug use.

One of the Obama administration’s most listened-to promises in Black America was the pledge to do away with the longstanding 100 to 1 difference in penalties between crack and powdered cocaine. But even with the power of the attorney-general’s office, the White House and Democratic majorities in both houses of congress, all the administration was willing to get was a reduction in that disparity from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1, and that was mostly achieved by raising the penalties for powdered cocaine. Eric Holder and the Obama Administration have a lot of power, to be sure. They’re just not interested in using it for the people, by ending the War on Drugs.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Bruce Dixon. Find us on the web atwww.blackagendareport.com

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and based in Marietta GA, where he is also on the state committee of the Georgia Green Party.

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

Vowing to die, if necessary, inmates at the dreaded “SHU” section of California’s Pelican Bay prison begin a hunger strike on July 1. “Like the strike by inmates in Georgia’s prison system late last year, the Pelican Bay protest cuts across racial lines.” The core issue: a brutal, soul-killing policy of solitary confinement and other deprivations aimed at turning every inmate into a snitch on everyone else.

 check out the story at Black Agenda Report

Pelican Bay: Hunger Strike in Super-Max

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

“Inmate organizers say prisoners have been subjected to solitary and a whole range of deprivations for ten, twenty, even forty years.”

On Friday, July 1^st, between 50 and 100 men at the Security Housing Unit of California’s infamous Pelican Bay prison go on hunger strike to protest cruel and unusual punishment. It is a punishment inflicted, primarily, on their minds. At the heart of the protest is solitary confinement, the barbaric torture that deprives prisoners of contact with fellow human beings, condemning them to a kind of “social death” – some for decades.

This is the “dark side” of the American repressive arsenal that Vice President Dick Cheney was so happy to unleash as a weapon in the so-called War on Terror: the stripping down of captive people through methodical deprivation of everything that makes them human. Yet these excruciating mind-destruction techniques are routinely deployed on the domestic front, in the American prison gulag, at places like Pelican Bay.

Inmate organizers say prisoners have been subjected to solitary and a whole range of deprivations for ten, twenty, even forty years. They are most incensed at the policy euphemistically called “debriefing,” in which inmates are pressured to confess to every crime they have ever committed in life. They are then expected to inform on other prisoners, their crimes, conversations and gang affiliations. This information – whether true or false – is then used to throw fellow inmates into the special Hell of solitary confinement. It is a brutal, sadistic cycle of degradation, a bizarre world in which everyone is compelled to “snitch” on everyone else. Prisoners are routinely given indeterminate solitary on the mere word of an informer. The worst section of the SHU is called the “short corridor,” where 200 men languish in the deepest isolation. These are the men at the center of the hunger strike.

“It is a brutal, sadistic cycle of degradation, a bizarre world in which everyone is compelled to ‘snitch’ on everyone else.”

One of them is named Mutope Duguma, formerly known as James Crawford. The “call” for the hunger strike was put out under Duguma’s signature. It asks that “all prisoners throughout the State of California who have been suffering injustices in General Population, Administrative Segregation and solitary confinement…join in our peaceful strike to put a stop to the blatant violations of prisoners’ civil/human rights.” Like the strike by inmates in Georgia’s prison system late last year, the Pelican Bay protest cuts across racial lines, involving, in the prisoners’ words, “united New Afrikans, Whites, Northern and Southern Mexicans, and others.” The organizers warn inmates to “beware of agitators, provocateurs, and obstructionists” among the prisoner population.

The Pelican Bay hunger strikers vow to die, if necessary, in a struggle against dehumanization. In the San Francisco Bay area, supporters from the outsidehave formed Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity (prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity@gmail.com), to let the inmates know that they are not alone, and “to make sure their voices are heard outside of prison.”

From the inside, inmate Gabriel Huerta reminds us that “Using indeterminate total lock down to extract confessions is