"Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a racist puppet of Donald Trump, should show independence and leadership by helping her constituents through more proactive alternatives for economic development. Stefanik shouldn’t prioritize incarceration in an effort to keep state employees employed or to push her political agenda."
- Dr. Alice P. Green
Image: New York Daily News/Times Union
Albany, NY – August 5, 2024 – Ever since 1845, the Adirondacks has housed incarcerated people. In the 1960s Adirondack facilities started to significantly increase the incarceration of New Yorkers, drawing many of the imprisoned from New York City. By the 1970s War on Drugs, which targeted Black communities even though whites were using and selling drugs as well, many more prisons were built to create a huge prison industrial complex to oppress, exploit, and insure the increased flow of Black and Brown men into those prisons. The entire process separated hundreds of thousands of men from their families, destroying them in the process, reminiscent of chattel slavery in America. In time, 70 percent of the Black population in the Adirondacks were behind bars.
Many of these imprisoned men at Comstock suffered from placement in what had been labeled the most brutal and racist prison in New York State. Their families were not even welcomed as visitors to the area as they travel long painful trips to visit with their incarcerated loved ones. Now, facility staff and their families are protesting the closing of Comstock, partially because of the travel time to other facilities where the State plans to employ Comstock staff.
Those protesters should be using their energy and resources to demand help from the state and federal government to promote economic development that will not depend on the destruction of Black and Brown people. Plattsburg successfully did it when the Air Force base, which the city depended upon, was closed. Despite the doom and gloom, it is now a thriving community with good housing, employment, and communal activities.
Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a racist puppet of Donald Trump, should show independence and leadership by helping her constituents through more proactive alternatives for economic development. Stefanik shouldn’t prioritize incarceration in an effort to keep state employees employed or to push her political agenda.
State Senator Dan Stec and former great meadows corrections officer Peter Lockart put Stefanik’s hateful intentions in clear language. Lockhart stated, “How about changing the laws to start incarcerating people again and fill up the jails. Then everybody wins.” A shameless prioritization of one’s career over the lives of others and a willingness to increase incarceration without a public safety rationale. Senator Stec asks, “why guards would be willing to accept jobs hours away so that they could have ‘excrement thrown at them while watching the animals of society.’” Folks like Stefanik, Stec, and Lockhart do not view incarcerated people as human. Their calculus on the question of closing the facility is severly skewed by this hate.
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