By MYRTLE OSNER

Once upon an evening dreary (December) the Editorial Board of this newspaper sat racking their brains for story ideas. February is a month of valentines; what do we like about our area? February is also Black History Month; discussion turned to the many community leaders we have of African American descent. It was a natural progression to the thought of interviewing a few of these leaders, highlighting positive local experiences.

So much of the news we hear today is negative. A peace and justice newspaper is looking for models of positive, forward-thinking experiences, so that's what we asked for. Here are the comments of a few of these leaders:

Odessa Johnson: Dean of Community Services at Modesto Junior College; elected member of the Modesto City Schools Board of Education:

Odessa Johnson, a long time resident of Modesto, is proud of the achievements of African American students in this community.

During the past few years, she has seen consistently higher percentages of African American students achieving higher grade point averages than previously. More are eligible for scholarships; more are highly qualified to receive scholarships and are getting them.

Not only are greater numbers going on to higher education and finishing their degrees, but she is now seeing some of them coming back to this community to work, something that happened rarely in the past. We can hope that the "brain drain" is being slowed, at last.

One of the keys to this advance, she believes, is that parental involvement is greater than before. Parents are taking an interest and motivating their children to achievement. She hastens to add that this is not limited to African Americans but is true across the board and is one of the most powerful tools for improving our level of achievement all round.

Ms. Johnson cautions that we must "raise the bar" for all students. We must expect excellence; we must be clear and continuous in our expectations if we are to produce adults capable of fulfilling the jobs we have available here in our community.

As a school board member she will continue to make the Modesto City Schools system the best it can be. Commenting on newly elected Governor Gray Davis' inaugural speech, in which he promised to improve the California education system, she reminded us that no amount of rhetoric at the state level will achieve the real improvements that can only be made by local people, on the scene, implementing their own standards tailored to their own community.

Although Odessa Johnson did not mention the abysmal funding level that the state provides to its school system, implicit in her remarks was a commitment to do the best with what we have, working to make our system better in whatever way is possible with limited funding.

Paul Jefferson, Chief of Police, City of Modesto:

Police Chief Paul Jefferson is proud of the changes the Modesto Police Department has made since he arrived six and a half years ago.

After 24 years in the humungous Los Angeles Police Dept., leaving there as a captain, Mr. Jefferson came here after the retirement of a chief with a very long tenure in office.

Chief Jefferson emphasized the supreme importance of the way in which changes have been made. The biggest challenge, instituting community policing, was a model formed uniquely for Modesto and its people's makeup.

It all began with a series of five town hall meetings, held in high schools. Acknowledging that Modesto is a very diverse community, it was true that each neighborhood had its own set of problems, and it was crucial to meet them. People from the surrounding neighborhoods told the department what they wanted and needed, pinpointing the problems. Each area now has its own advisory council and a cadre of volunteers, who may often do work of a preventive nature, especially with children and youth. Chief Jefferson sees this as one of the most positive, creative aspects of the system.

A reservoir of good will and willingness to volunteer was created which has served us well.

A baseline survey of the community was done and correlated by experts at Cal State University Stanislaus. This survey undergirded the way in which the police department responded to the needs within each area. A followup study is done every six months.

Area offices are the heart of community policing. They enable the department to be pro-active and a part of the community, instead of just reacting to emergencies.

Many other cities have visited Modesto to study our system with a view to beginning their own version. Now the County Sheriff's Department is instituting area offices, based on Modesto's model of community policing, thus reinforcing its effectiveness.

Chief Jefferson characterizes the model as "ever evolving" and "long range". One of the newer aspects is the "Adopt a Neighborhood" plan, in which a police officer takes on an area as his own project and immediately begins to involve the whole community. Officers are assigned an area for a minimum of two years.

Another community activity of which Chief Jefferson is very proud is the "Neighborhood Watch National Night Out" which has grown over the past few years, and happens in August. In our category (cities of 99,000 to 249,000 residents), Modesto came out Number One. We had more things going on than any other city in our population category.

Modesto's police department has 400 employees, of whom 258 are sworn officers. [Another innovation: some of those are bicycle officers!]

Sterling Fountain, Risk and Property Analyst for the Modesto Irrigation District.

As an African American woman employed by the MID for 31 years, Sterling Fountain has nothing but praise for the even-handedness and fair treatment she has received in her job. Her perception is that MID does not focus on issues of women or race, but hires the best qualified person for the job. She finds it a progressive company.

When Ms. Fountain gets warmed up in talking about her involvement in the community, you really hear her enthusiasm. She credits Odessa Johnson for "pushing" her to venture out into community service. As a member of a Leadership Modesto class, she learned a lot about what was going on outside of her personal experience and this developed her sensitivity to community needs.

Now Fountain encourages other women to be active in the community and broaden their horizons, and sees that a lot of women are willing to venture out and work at all sorts of volunteer activities. She has been on the United Way and the Muir Trail Girl Scout Council Board of Directors, and is outgoing President of Soroptimist International here. In 1990 she was named an Outstanding Woman of Stanislaus County.

Dearest to the heart of Sterling Fountain is the work of the Women's Auxiliary, which was originally formed to assist the King-Kennedy Center, but has now branched out to larger fields. The group's chief work is raising money for scholarships to award to outstanding high school students, Each year it gives at least one scholarship to a student in each of Modesto's five high schools. Over the years the Auxiliary has given $60,000 for this purpose. This year it gave $1,000 for the skateboard park, and also sponsored a baseball team. The annual Red, Green and Black Ball is the chief source of fund raising, with an additional event in the summer, "Modesto Men Can Cook."

Other things are happening in the African American community that give us hope for the future, says Sterling. One is the formation of the Free Spirit Club, which provides role models for black young people. She also sees a resurgence in interest and attendance at the black churches in town.

As you can see, we've just scratched the surface of what's happening in Modesto. The Peace/Life Center has been a sponsor of the Study Circles, an attempt to bring people of differing backgrounds together to creatively address conflict and learn to know each other. The Center is a co-sponsor of the annual Martin Luther King commemorative event at King-Kennedy Center. And this past fall it worked with Modesto High School in developing the school's "Days of Respect" program.

Look to the future with hope!

For information regarding Black History Month events at CSUS, call 667-3391; at MJC, call 575-6051.

BY TINA ARNOPOLE DRISKILL

"I don't remember any racial prejudice until after graduating from California State University, Fresno and accepting my first teaching position in Visalia in the early 1970's," says Gladys Williams, president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Williams, an African American woman raised in Texas City, Texas, describes her hometown as multi-cultural and multi-ethnic. Her first experience with racial prejudice came when she attempted to rent an apartment in Visalia and learned there were no properties in town that would rent to blacks. She finally was able to rent a room in the home of a local black woman with the help of the school district. It was not until her Caucasian friend from CSUF took a job in Visalia and rented an apartment several months later, that she was able to live independently in a non-black living situation.

While in Visalia, she and another black teacher were the only black educators with the local school district. Opposed to being one of two token black teachers, she looked for another district that would hire her on her merits. At approximately the same time, a friend from CSUF living in Modesto informed her Modesto City Schools was looking specifically for minority teachers. This pre-affirmative-action movement was strongly influenced by the late Rev. Monroe Taylor and the King-Kennedy Memorial Center Board. Modesto's small, but influential black community wanted black teachers to educate their children, says Williams. Her interview included meetings with school district personnel staff and a final approval session with Rev. Taylor.

Williams observes MCS did a great deal of minority hiring, primarily for West Side positions during the 70's. She saw increased minority hiring within education and in all employment areas throughout the Stanislaus County area during the 1980's with the advent of Affirmative Action. The momentum of the 80's seems to have peaked, and Williams has seen a slowdown in the commitment to hire minority employees, even before Proposition 209 put an end to Affirmative Action in California. She sees the area's slowing economy as a major influence in all areas of hiring.

She says she has received numerous calls from youth between the ages of 21 and 25, who have been terminated from employment without explanation just prior to completing their probationary period. She feels that in order for the NAACP to provide job success counseling, employers need to provide the youth with reasons for the terminations.

The NAACP maintains a job listing, and Williams wants to encourage more businesses to use this service. They can contact the NAACP at 549-1991. The end of Affirmative Action is "just the first quiet step to pushing minorities back," Williams contends. She predicts job and educational opportunities for high school and college age minorities will be adversely impacted from this time forward.

She sees major inequities in the treatment of prison inmates locally and is often called upon to troubleshoot complaints from prisoners and their families. She has dealt with concerns over medical care, use of the law library, visiting and parental rights. She also finds herself on call to handle civil liberty issues in various school settings, including racial harassment, rights of the physically handicapped, and cultural difference considerations.

Williams has seen the local African American population grow from a few established families, mostly on Modesto's West Side, to a much larger population spread throughout the area's diverse neighborhoods. She claims many of the newest African American community members are commuters from the San Francisco Bay Area, who came here because of lower housing costs. Consequently, she explains, they are hard to identify, because their community focus is still in the Bay Area.

Since the local African American population, then and now, appears largely invisible, the NAACP is planning satellite meetings throughout the Modesto area beginning April 17, in order to identify these people and "help them desire to have a tie to this community."

The organization also is planning a women's tea March 20 in the King-Kennedy Memorial Center to honor women who have contributed greatly to the well-being of the Modesto community at large.

Williams notes the success of the ongoing mentorship program, which pairs strong adult role models with junior high school age children. There is a waiting list for those who wish to participate.

The group will sponsor its second annual graduating high school student human rights recognition ceremony in June to honor approximately 50 area high school seniors for their service in the area of human rights.

When asked about the future for minorities in this area, Williams said, "I'd like to see the whole community become more of a melting pot, working together for common causes. The nicest thing would be to see better housing and more job opportunities for everyone and to see the business community reflect the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic nature of the community at large."

By ANGELA Y. DAVIS

Note: This article appeared in the Fall 1998 issue of ColorLines, a new quarterly magazine devoted to Race, Culture and Action. Subscriptions are $15 for six issues available at http://www.arc.org/Pages/ArcColorLines.html

Imprisonment has become the response of first resort to far too many of the social problems that burden people who are ensconced in poverty. These problems often are veiled by being conveniently grouped together under the category "crime" and by the automatic attribution of criminal behavior to people of color. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages.

Prisons thus perform a feat of magic. Or rather the people who continually vote in new prison bonds and tacitly assent to a proliferating network of prisons and jails have been tricked into believing in the magic of imprisonment. But prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings. And the practice of disappearing vast numbers of people from poor, immigrant, and racially marginalized communities has literally become big business.

The seeming effortlessness of magic always conceals an enormous amount of behind-the-scenes work. When prisons disappear human beings in order to convey the illusion of solving social problems, penal infrastructures must be created to accommodate a rapidly swelling population of caged people. Goods and services must be provided to keep imprisoned populations alive. Sometimes these populations must be kept busy and at other times -- particularly in repressive super-maximum prisons and in INS detention centers -- they must be deprived of virtually all meaningful activity. Vast numbers of handcuffed and shackled people are moved across state borders as they are transferred from one state or federal prison to another.

All this work, which used to be the primary province of government, is now also performed by private corporations, whose links to government in the field of what is euphemistically called "corrections" resonate dangerously with the military industrial complex. The dividends that accrue from investment in the punishment industry, like those that accrue from investment in weapons production, only amount to social destruction. Taking into account the structural similarities and profitability of business-government linkages in the realms of military production and public punishment, the expanding penal system can now be characterized as a "prison industrial complex."

The Color of Imprisonment

Almost two million people are currently locked up in the immense network of U.S. prisons and jails. More than 70 percent of the imprisoned population are people of color. It is rarely acknowledged that the fastest growing group of prisoners are black women and that Native American prisoners are the largest group per capita. Approximately five million people -- including those on probation and parole -- are directly under the surveillance of the criminal justice system.

Three decades ago, the imprisoned population was approximately one-eighth its current size. While women still constitute a relatively small percentage of people behind bars, today the number of incarcerated women in California alone is almost twice what the nationwide women's prison population was in 1970. According to Elliott Currie, "[t]he prison has become a looming presence in our society to an extent unparalleled in our history -- or that of any other industrial democracy. Short of major wars, mass incarceration has been the most thoroughly implemented government social program of our time."

To deliver up bodies destined for profitable punishment, the political economy of prisons relies on racialized assumptions of criminality -- such as images of black welfare mothers reproducing criminal children -- and on racist practices in arrest, conviction, and sentencing patterns. Colored bodies constitute the main human raw material in this vast experiment to disappear the major social problems of our time. Once the aura of magic is stripped away from the imprisonment solution, what is revealed is racism, class bias, and the parasitic seduction of capitalist profit. The prison industrial system materially and morally impoverishes its inhabitants and devours the social wealth needed to address the very problems that have led to spiraling numbers of prisoners.

As prisons take up more and more space on the social landscape, other government programs that have previously sought to respond to social needs -- such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families -- are being squeezed out of existence. The deterioration of public education, including prioritizing discipline and security over learning in public schools located in poor communities, is directly related to the prison "solution."

Profiting from Prisoners

As prisons proliferate in U.S. society, private capital has become enmeshed in the punishment industry. And precisely because of their profit potential, prisons are becoming increasingly important to the U.S. economy. If the notion of punishment as a source of potentially stupendous profits is disturbing by itself, then the strategic dependence on racist structures and ideologies to render mass punishment palatable and profitable is even more troubling.

Prison privatization is the most obvious instance of capital's current movement toward the prison industry. While government-run prisons are often in gross violation of international human rights standards, private prisons are even less accountable. In March of this year, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest U.S. private prison company, claimed 54,944 beds in 68 facilities under contract or development in the U.S., Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Following the global trend of subjecting more women to public punishment, CCA recently opened a women's prison outside Melbourne. The company recently identified California as its "new frontier."

Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (WCC), the second largest U.S. prison company, claimed contracts and awards to manage 46 facilities in North America, U.K., and Australia. It boasts a total of 30,424 beds as well as contracts for prisoner health care services, transportation, and security.

Currently, the stocks of both CCA and WCC are doing extremely well. Between 1996 and 1997, CCA's revenues increased by 58 percent, from $293 million to $462 million. Its net profit grew from $30.9 million to $53.9 million. WCC raised its revenues from $138 million in 1996 to $210 million in 1997. Unlike public correctional facilities, the vast profits of these private facilities rely on the employment of non-union labor.

The Prison Industrial Complex

But private prison companies are only the most visible component of the increasing corporatization of punishment. Government contracts to build prisons have bolstered the construction industry. The architectural community has identified prison design as a major new niche. Technology developed for the military by companies like Westinghouse are being marketed for use in law enforcement and punishment.

Moreover, corporations that appear to be far removed from the business of punishment are intimately involved in the expansion of the prison industrial complex. Prison construction bonds are one of the many sources of profitable investment for leading financiers such as Merrill Lynch. MCI charges prisoners and their families outrageous prices for the precious telephone calls which are often the only contact prisoners have with the free world.

Many corporations whose products we consume on a daily basis have learned that prison labor power can be as profitable as third world labor power exploited by U.S.-based global corporations. Both relegate formerly unionized workers to joblessness and many even wind up in prison. Some of the companies that use prison labor are IBM, Motorola, Compaq, Texas Instruments, Honeywell, Microsoft, and Boeing. But it is not only the hi-tech industries that reap the profits of prison labor. Nordstrom department stores sell jeans that are marketed as "Prison Blues," as well as t-shirts and jackets made in Oregon prisons. The advertising slogan for these clothes is "made on the inside to be worn on the outside. Maryland prisoners inspect glass bottles and jars used by Revlon and Pierre Cardin, and schools throughout the world buy graduation caps and gowns made by South Carolina prisoners.

"For private business," write Eve Goldberg and Linda Evans (a political prisoner inside the Federal Correctional Institution at Dublin, California) "prison labor is like a pot of gold. No strikes. No union organizing. No health benefits, unemployment insurance, or workers' compensation to pay. No language barriers, as in foreign countries. New leviathan prisons are being built on thousands of eerie acres of factories inside the walls. Prisoners do data entry for Chevron, make telephone reservations for TWA, raise hogs, shovel manure, make circuit boards, limousines, waterbeds, and lingerie for Victoria's Secret -- all at a fraction of the cost of 'free labor.'"

Devouring the Social Wealth

Although prison labor -- which ultimately is compensated at a rate far below the minimum wage -- is hugely profitable for the private companies that use it, the penal system as a whole does not produce wealth. It devours the social wealth that could be used to subsidize housing for the homeless, to ameliorate public education for poor and racially marginalized communities, to open free drug rehabilitation programs for people who wish to kick their habits, to create a national health care system, to expand programs to combat HIV, to eradicate domestic abuse -- and, in the process, to create well-paying jobs for the unemployed.

Since 1984 more than twenty new prisons have opened in California, while only one new campus was added to the California State University system and none to the University of California system. In 1996-97, higher education received only 8.7 percent of the State's General Fund while corrections received 9.6 percent. Now that affirmative action has been declared illegal in California, it is obvious that education is increasingly reserved for certain people, while prisons are reserved for others. Five times as many black men are presently in prison as in four year colleges and universities. This new segregation has dangerous implications for the entire country.

By segregating people labeled as criminals, prison simultaneously fortifies and conceals the structural racism of the U.S. economy. Claims of low unemployment rates -- even in black communities -- make sense only if one assumes that the vast numbers of people in prison have really disappeared and thus have no legitimate claims to jobs. The numbers of black and Latino men currently incarcerated amount to two percent of the male labor force. According to criminologist David Downes, "[t]reating incarceration as a type of hidden unemployment may raise the jobless rate for men by about one-third, to 8 percent. The effect on the black labor force is greater still, raising the [black] male unemployment rate from 11 percent to 19 percent."

Hidden Agenda

Mass incarceration is not a solution to unemployment, nor is it a solution to the vast array of social problems that are hidden away in a rapidly growing network of prisons and jails. However, the great majority of people have been tricked into believing in the efficacy of imprisonment, even though the historical record clearly demonstrates that prisons do not work. Racism has undermined our ability to create a popular critical discourse to contest the ideological trickery that posits imprisonment as key to public safety. The focus of state policy is rapidly shifting from social welfare to social control.

Black, Latino, Native American, and many Asian youth are portrayed as the purveyors of violence, traffickers of drugs, and as envious of commodities that they have no right to possess. Young black and Latina women are represented as sexually promiscuous and as indiscriminately propagating babies and poverty. Criminality and deviance are racialized. Surveillance is thus focused on communities of color, immigrants, the unemployed, the undereducated, the homeless, and in general on those who have a diminishing claim to social resources. Their claim to social resources continues to diminish in large part because law enforcement and penal measures increasingly devour these resources. The prison industrial complex has thus created a vicious cycle of punishment which only further impoverishes those whose impoverishment is supposedly "solved" by imprisonment.

Therefore, as the emphasis of government policy shifts from social welfare to crime control, racism sinks more deeply into the economic and ideological structures of U.S. society. Meanwhile, conservative crusaders against affirmative action and bilingual education proclaim the end of racism, while their opponents suggest that racism's remnants can be dispelled through dialogue and conversation. But conversations about "race relations" will hardly dismantle a prison industrial complex that thrives on and nourishes the racism hidden within the deep structures of our society.

The emergence of a U.S. prison industrial complex within a context of cascading conservatism marks a new historical moment, whose dangers are unprecedented. But so are its opportunities. Considering the impressive number of grassroots projects that continue to resist the expansion of the punishment industry, it ought to be possible to bring these efforts together to create radical and nationally visible movements that can legitimize anti-capitalist critiques of the prison industrial complex. It ought to be possible to build movements in defense of prisoners' human rights and movements that persuasively argue that what we need is not new prisons, but new health care, housing, education, drug programs, jobs, and education. To safeguard a democratic future, it is possible and necessary to weave together the many and increasing strands of resistance to the prison industrial complex into a powerful movement for social transformation.