Virtual democracy and the prison-industrial complex.

As I write, I am surrounded by American flags. In the months since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks there seems to have been a resurgence of patriotism across the United States. Full-page newspaper advertisements, signs in the windows of car dealerships and elsewhere read "God Bless America--Land of the Free." The United States is still fighting in Afghanistan in search of the Enemy of the Month: Osama bin Laden. According to former U.S. President Bill Clinton: "Americans are targets of terrorism because we act to advance peace and democracy." Freedom, peace, democracy--these words swirl around my head like letters in a bowl of alphabet soup.

In truth what we have in the United States is "virtual democracy." According to my Oxford Essential Dictionary of 1998, virtual refers to the "generation by computer software of an image or environment that appears real to the senses." These computer programs are often used to train airline pilots in flight simulation and by the Defense Department to play war games. Author Urvashi Vaid has remarked that "in virtual reality, nothing is real, but we experience it as if it were."

The U.S. government has done an excellent job of convincing billions of people that the United States is the pinnacle of freedom and democracy--a nation to be emulated. This is a facade created and maintained through the mass media. The United States--the world's only information superpower--produces and distributes more films, television programs, books, magazines, and music than any other country. There are U.S. Information Service libraries in more than 100 countries, and Voice of America, alone, has more than 90 million listeners. The United States is thus a propaganda machine churning out the concepts of freedom, democracy, and peace as though they are commodities to be purchased at the nearest grocery store.

I remember sitting in my high school U.S. history class, staring at a poster with the faces of all our past presidents on it. Their expressionless white faces all seemed to merge into one. Together they symbolized a single hegemonic world order. According to my dictionary, democracy is defined as "government by a whole population, usually through elected representatives." And a democratic government is supposed to "favor social equality." Currently, however, less than half of all eligible U.S. citizens exercise their vote. Those who do vote are basically presented two choices--Republican or Democrat--which in the end really look like the same choice. In order to contest a seat in the House of Representatives, candidates must raise about $500,000, a seat in the Senate costs about $5 million, and the U.S. presidency is currently selling for about $100 million. Politics is big business and it always has been. George Washington was the equivalent of a multimillionaire in his time. Back then it was only the white males who owned land who were allowed to vote. Now more Americans have the right to vote but that doesn't mean they exercise it. I love the unrealized dream that the United States is predicated upon; however, America has never been a "true" democracy. It is my great hope that one day it will.

American politics are full of contradictions in terms of both domestic and foreign policy. One of the most paradoxical features of the nation is that, despite its reputation for freedom and democracy, "the United States now imprisons more people than any other country in the world"--according to the December 1999 Atlantic Monthly, "perhaps half a million more than Communist China." This creates a bizarre situation. The most common-sense notions that Americans hold about their own country are found to be anything but true. In actuality, the U.S. government is quite authoritarian. Most Americans are just too passive or apathetic to realize it. The famous German statesman and writer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, once remarked, "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."

According to the U.S. Department of Justice Bulletin NCJ175687, there were 1,825,400 people incarcerated in the United States as of the end of 1998. Now there are more than two million--and the number keeps rising. According to William Blum in Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, "From 1991 to 1999, the number of people in U.S. prisons rose by more than 50 percent." We are in the midst of a prison population boom, and the cells are already full. State and federal prisons are operating above capacity, and more prisons are being built all the time.

One of the main reasons for this increase in prison population is the Draconian sentencing laws passed by some states. In California, the "three-strikes" law was passed in order to protect residents against violent, repeat criminals. Yet people are being sentenced to twenty-five-years-to-life terms for petty theft. The National Criminal Justice Commission reported in February 1996 that the United States "incarcerates five times as many people [per capita] as Canada, and seven times as many people as most European democracies--despite the fact that we have similar overall rates of crime." One of the main reasons for this discrepancy is that the United States has much harsher laws for drug possession. For instance, a person convicted in New York of selling two ounces of cocaine receives a mandatory sentence of fifteen years to life--the same penalty meted out to a convicted murderer.

The number of drug offenders imprisoned in New York State today is more than twice the number of inmates imprisoned for all crimes in 1978. This increase in the prison population of nonviolent drug offenders has meant that many more women are in prison than ever before. Since 1990, the number of female prisoners has increased 92 percent. Many of them are mothers, necessitating that their children be raised either by relatives or in foster homes. U.S. Department of Justice statistics indicate that children whose parents spend time in jail are much more likely to end up in prison themselves.

People of color are disproportionately represented in the penal system. According to the National Criminal Justice Commission, "African-Americans constitute 12 percent of the U.S. population, 13 percent of the drug-using population, but an astonishing 74 percent of the people in prison for drug possession." African-American men are especially vulnerable and are much more likely than whites to be sent to prison. Several issues factor in: they are more likely to be targeted by police for surveillance, the sentencing laws are harsher for possession of crack than for cocaine, and African-Americans are less likely to have access to the financial resources necessary to hire expert defense council. As a result, the commission reports, "approximately 80 percent of young black men under age thirty-five have a criminal record."

An alarming number of people aren't allowed to vote based on their criminal convictions. Many of these individuals belong to ethnic minority groups. They are also prevented from attaining financial aid for college. In the past there was at least a notion of rehabilitation for convicts; now the emphasis is on punishment. Rarely do you hear the term correctional facility anymore. One negative repercussion of the overcrowding of the prisons is that inmates are seeing more and more of their rights taken away in regard to academic classes, vocational training, reading materials, sports exercise, prison law libraries, access to free legal advice, ease of appealing their cases, and access to the media.

One of the most recent developments in the penal system has been the privatization of prisons. According to Amnesty International, "In order to cut costs, states have increasingly contracted out to private firms the management of facilities as well as services such as health care. As a result, incarceration has become one of the fastest growing businesses in the United States, generating large profits." This new industry depends on filling prison cells to make a profit. A steady flow of new prisoners is required. To be profitable, private prison firms must maintain a 90 to 95 percent capacity rate. Companies contracting to employ prisoners, either directly or through their subsidiaries, include such well-known corporations as AT&T, Bank of America, Boeing, Chevron, Costco, Dell Computers, Eddie Bauer, IBM, Microsoft, and Starbucks.

A brochure from a conference on prison privatization held in Texas during December 1996 asserts, "While arrests and convictions are steadily on the rise, profits are to be made--profits from crime. Get in on the ground floor of this booming industry now!" Instead of operating sweatshops overseas, it is easier and less expensive for companies to use prison labor domestically. It isn't uncommon for prisoners to work nine hours a day, earning forty-five cents per hour. And now these companies can attach a label to their product that boasts "Made in the U.S.A."

Since private companies have a stronger interest in cutting costs, they are more likely to abuse inmates and subject them to poor conditions. They may try to reduce the money spent on such things as staffing, training, health care, educational and rehabilitation programs, and even food. Amnesty International and the Human Rights Watch have both documented physical abuse inside private prisons.

The U.S. government not only has helped to fill up the prisons by enacting harsh sentencing laws but has also had a hand in providing the drugs which land abusers in prison. One need look no further than the Iran-contra scandal. As David McGowan reports in Derailing Democracy: The America the Media Don't Want You to See, the Central Intelligence Agency, in an effort to circumvent a congressional ban and provide illegal funding to the Nicaraguan contras, allowed and even assisted in the trafficking of massive amounts of cocaine into the United States. This led to the distribution of large quantities of cocaine throughout Los Angeles' inner city at a time when drug users and dealers were trying to make the costly white powder more affordable by changing it into powerful little nuggets of "crack." The Nicaraguans funneled a large portion of their drug profits to the contras' cause while helping to fuel a disastrous crack epidemic in Los Angeles and other cities and enabling the gangs to buy automatic weapons.

During the 1980s and early 1990s, the CIA also supported the mujahideen rebels of Afghanistan in opium cultivation while they fought the Soviet-supported government. Not only did the CIA help breed militants, such as our former ally Osama bin Laden, but it also provided political protection and logistical assistance that enabled a huge increase in the heroin output of that country. According to Blum in Rogue State, this operation is estimated to have provided up to one-half of the heroin used annually in the United States and three-quarters of that used in western Europe.

It appears that the "War on Drugs" of the 1980s was really a war that the U.S. government waged against its own urban poor--and its weapons of choice were crack cocaine and heroin. The rise in gang membership and urban violence is reflective of the funneling of cheap drugs into the inner cities. Then once drug addiction had spread widely enough, the state enacted harsh sentencing laws. Now prisons are built and run for profit, completing the circle. The chasm between the rich and the poor is rapidly widening, and the injustices are magnified to an unimaginable level.

Despite all this, I remain an optimist. Most Americans don't realize what their government has done and is doing and how they are being manipulated. They walk around in a patriotic stupor, waving their flags, wearing their "Land of the Free" T-shirts, and quoting George W. Bush. They are unaware and trusting citizens who mean well. Adolf Hitler once remarked, "How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think." Anne Frank witnessed the tragedy of the Holocaust, and she experienced the horrors herself before dying in a concentration camp. Despite this ugly display of egregious inhumanity, she had the courage to write in her diary: "I still believe that people are really good at heart." I agree with her. The bulk of humanity means well, but it is the minority who really make a mess of things. And even they probably mean well; it is greed that corrupts even the best of intentions.

Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." Eventually the disparity will become too great and poor folks around the world will rise up against their corrupt governments. I am a pacifist, and I would never promote bloodshed. I am hoping for peaceful solutions to the world's problems. But I am afraid that before things get any better they might get a whole lot worse.

In his book The Art of Happiness, the Dalai Lama said, "I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. That is clear. Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, we are all seeking something better in life. So, I think the very motion of our life is toward happiness." The African-American man sitting in his solitary confinement cell twenty-four hours a day wants to be happy. The prison guards and the wardens want to be happy, too. So does the CEO of the corporation that runs the prison. As do you. As do I.

We need to reach out and connect with those members of our society and our world who are most vulnerable and who work to make virtual democracy take form and substance. I have heard that the meaning of life is a life of meaning. What better way to spend our time on this planet than by helping each other and thereby ourselves?

I end with a poem by Rabindranath Tagore: "I slept and dreamt that life was joy/I awoke and saw that life was service/ I acted and behold that service was joy."

Melissa Barthelemy is now a twenty-four-year-old graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz, with a B.A. in history. This essay placed third in the eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-old age category of the 2001 Humanist Essay Contest for Young Women and Men of North America.