Unsettle Frederick

09/03/2015

08/11/2015

"A cursory look suggests that adding hundreds of thousands of police on the streets of America has not been motivated by altruism: making us safer."

An article by Lacino Hamilton on the trajectory of police militarization in the United States, all the more relevant with the resurgence of unrest over police brutality in Ferguson

3 Aug 2015 The explosive growth of police with a military orientation by Lacino | posted in: Dissenting Opinion | 0 Politicians in the U.S., as well as the mass media, have almost universally ignored the continuous expansion of the police. A significant move in a sea of policies (and absence of poli…

07/08/2015

"Despite rhetoric that anyone can get ahead if they work hard enough, a girl child in the U.S., for example, especially if she is poor and black, is still unlikely to imagine herself as president. I do not believe Hillary Clinton’s 2016 bid for the highest elected office, win or lose, will significantly alter that. That is because oppression denotes structural and material constraints that both purposively shape the group-being-oppressed’s life chances and sense of possibility. Oppression restricts self-development and self-determination."

6 Jul 2015 Oppression, the language to illuminate the complex working of gender inequality by Lacino | posted in: Dissenting Opinion | 0 I can hardly think of a subject more strained by denial than the oppression of women. Our denial about this matter goes much further back than the current clash in…

06/24/2015

"I assure you that being a student, in prison, is extremely more difficult than most people realize, considering that most people are unaware of the priority of staff and guards to limit when it cannot be stopped, but ideally prevent altogether, any prisoner from recognizing a sense of their own agency as well as their sense of social responsibility toward and with others, their society, and the broader world in which we live. After all, the first rule of prison is “mind your own business.” The second rule of prison is “mind your own business.” And the third rule of prison is, when in doubt, “revert back to rules one and two.”"-Lacino Hamilton

15 Jun 2015 Why I am a student by Lacino | posted in: Dissenting Opinion | 0 On a day-to-day basis I am a student of life, and in particular of social justice. Though it should be included that I am a student of an education rooted in the great tradition of radical black politics. But since I have b…

06/12/2015

"We should never forget the harm that is inflicted on the mind and spirit of prisoners. Mind and spirit suffocate in the context of prison, hegemony, domination. Which only allows for two possibilities: fossilization of infinite capacities, or the forced appropriation of the jailer’s theory of innate inferiority."
http://unsettlefrederick.org/2015/05/25/a-wager-on-which-i-shall-stake-the-meaning-of-my-life/

05/12/2015

A new article from Lacino Hamilton about recent events in Baltimore on our prisoner blog Dissenting Opinion. This one is a must read

11 May 2015 We will sing, march, and clap after we defeat police oppression by Lacino | posted in: Dissenting Opinion | 0 Are American police more abusive and violent all of a sudden, or is the phenomenon of camera phones and cities wired for surveillance now capturing behavior that had been distort…

05/07/2015

"Some mornings I wake up with a pain between the fourth and fifth rib so intense, I wince. Got to dig deep those mornings. I have been punched hard: 52 to 80 years, flat time, for a crime I am 100 percent factually innocent of. Some mornings I rise feeling superior to the task. Any task! This morning I am somewhere in between..."

read the latest article by Lacino Hamilton for Dissenting Opinion, Unsettle Frederick's blog on the experience and facts of incarceration

4 May 2015 Critical resistance of the yeast variety by Lacino | posted in: Dissenting Opinion | 0 Some mornings I wake up with a pain between the fourth and fifth rib so intense, I wince. Got to dig deep those mornings. I have been punched hard: 52 to 80 years, flat time, for a crime I am 100 percen…

04/23/2015

“Nobody really ever looked at the evidence of how we did it, we had an accuser, someone pointing the finger that’s good enough for us. And yes race did play a big part, big big part in this case.”

How will these men be compensated? How do you pay for 20 or 39 years in prison for something someone didn't do? More often than not civil suits brought against the state for wrongful incarceration damages are thrown out.

How many others like them are still stuck behind bars?

04/21/2015

Wrongfully incarcerated Lacino Hamilton, who has been stuck behind bars in Michigan prisons for the last 20+ years, and previously incarcerated Unsettle Frederick member Daylynn discuss what incarceration really is. For more information on Lacino, including how to write to him or send him funds, visit the Unsettle Frederick webpage.

04/20/2015

A brief view of the inside of a working modern day slave plantation.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/17/prison-labor-company-features-promo-video-touting-best-kept-secret-outsourcing/

Searching for the "best kept secret in outsourcing," one that can "provide you with all the advantages" of domestic workers, but with "offshore prices"? Try prison labor!

04/20/2015

Does this mean all Black people will be released from their jails??

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/19/fbi-says-hairmatch-expert_n_7095968.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000021

WASHINGTON, April 19 (Reuters) - The FBI and U.S. Justice Department have acknowledged that almost all of the experts in a forensic unit dedicated to microscopic hair comparison gave flawed testimony against defendants before 2000, the Washington Pos...

04/20/2015

Put your hands in a fighting position!


http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/20/death-in-custody-of-baltimore-man-freddie-gray-sparks-call-for-independent-inquiry

Family of black man who suffered a broken neck after his arrest demand that the inquiry into his death be taken away from the city police