RE: Prison garden in Missouri

H* A*

Emma,

Prison farms are an old story in the USA. The restorative justice spin is
window dressing for the use of unpaid prison agricultural labor in what has
come to be known as "The Prison Industrial Complex" . That the food banks
get fresh food is a splendid end. The means is appalling.  This end would be
better met by free, independant farmers paid a living wage by the
government.  That the unpaid agricultural labor of prison inmates is
construed by the program directors  as a great gift is similar to the
"Arbeit Macht Zu Frei" ( work makes you free) cast iron signs on the gates
to Nazi concentration and forced labor camps. Orwell lives.

 The largest and oldest self-sustaining organic prison farm is Louisana's
Angola Prison (which was designed on the ante-bellum slave plantation
model.)  Angola prison, whose inmates are predominantly African-American,
and whose sentences are often life imprisonment, can hardly be considered a
progressive institution. Forced agricultural labor in a chain gang is not
the model of renewable agriculture that we should foster.

Adam 

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Emma Eyre [SMTP:emma_eyre@hms.harvard.edu]
> Sent:	Monday, July 10, 2000 12:03 PM
> To:	community_garden@mallorn.com
> Subject:	[cg] Prison garden in Missouri
> 
> Hello garden folks,
> 
> Thought some of you might be interested in the following article (link
> below) on a prison garden in Boonville, Missouri.
> http://www.cnn.com/2000/FOOD/news/07/07/seeds.of.reform.ap/
> 
> I have recently received a Peace Corps invitation to serve as an
> agriculture/forestry volunteer in El Salvador for a couple of years.  My
> recruiter said that I would most likely be working in a gardening
> cooperative or a tree nursery.  Does anyone on this list have any
> experience in agriculture work in Latin America -- specifically Central
> America?  I would love to get in touch with you.  Also, if anyone knows of
> internet resources I should look up, please drop me a line -- see my
> e-mail
> above (so you don't have to reply to the whole list).
> 
> Thank you,
> Emma Eyre
> 
> 
> 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Emma Eyre
> Curriculum Coordinator
> Division of Medical Sciences
> Harvard Medical School
> 260 Longwood Avenue
> Boston, MA  02115
> (617) 432-0605
> 
> 
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