Remember the commercial that featured the line "If a tree falls in a forest will it be heard?" That is even more meaningful in terms of today's Internet and the wealth of information that can be found there -- if you're looking for it.
What am I getting at? Because of my recent interest in the corrupt drug war world, I have been scouring the Web in search of meaningful information. And there is a ton of it out there. But like the tree that fell in the forest and no one was there to hear it, unless someone specifically looks for this type of information it will never be found. And those of us who are specifically looking for it, unfortunately, already know it. We already know that DEA agents lie and do anything else to make an arrest (however, I'll admit I'm astonished as to what extent they will actually go to.) We already know that they will use informants and knowing the informants are lying in most cases, they will just lie with them in order to get an arrest and conviction.
So this is for those of you who may still think that the "Stop Snitching Movement" is aimed at good citizens who would witness a murder or robbery and tell the police who did it. This is what they want you to believe snitching is all about. And they desperately want to stop the stop snitching movement, so they have come out with their own propaganda movement. You saw it on 60 Minutes when they had the rapper Cameron saying (in all of his ignorance) how much he hated cops and therefore, if someone was murdered before his eyes he wouldn't tell -- or some such nonsense.
I could tell you so many eye-opening things about what snitching is really all about and why it is in the interest of the powers that be to stop the stop snitching movement. But I won't attempt to re-invent the wheel. There is an organization by the name of the November Coalition, which was founded by Nora Callahan, and this organization does a wonderful job of telling us everything we need to know about this horrible drug war which the November Coalition is committed to end. You can access it at www.november.org. I thought I knew it all, but this article that you can access here: http://www.novemeber.org/stayinfo/breaking07/AbusinSnitching.html, even surprised me in terms of the lengths "law enforcement" and "justice" personnel will go to to convict innocent people.
When you visit the November Coalition's site, be sure to visit the "Prisoners of the Wall". These are a series of true stories about men and women who have been caught in the snares of the war on drugs via "informants."
Some people will read their stories and figure "Oh well, they must have done something wrong. They must have made some bad decisions and are paying for them. They must have been hanging with the wrong people." (As if wrong decisions or hanging with the wrong people justify 10,20,30 year and even life sentences ) It's not for me to say whether that type of reaction demonstrates a total lack of compassion that results from watching too much FOX TV and Court TV and self-righteous Televangelists. But it's scary to think the average person has that attitude, since the average person is a potential juror who will convict a man or woman after having seen no evidence based only on their belief that "they must have done something." Then there are the people in positions to do something -- the media, the community organizers, the elected officials -- who will look at the appalling facts and refuse to be appalled. If they become outraged, then they will have to do something. So they seem to have developed a collective immunity to injustice. This leaves the ones who care, the ones who are about the people and not the money, fighting battles on their own. There are people like Sheila Jackson Lee, Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Constance "Connie" Howard, Danny Davis, Reverend Al Sharpton (I'm sorry I started naming names, because I'm sure I left some out). These people (and the ones I inadvertently left off this list) will stick their necks out. They have the courage to cry foul. They don't wait until an issue becomes news before they jump on the bandwagon. The Honorable Congressman Danny Davis has been sponsoring a bill to reinstate Parole in the Federal Prison System for years, with practically no backing from fellow Congressmen. What's it to them if nonviolent offenders who are most likely innocent serve long terms in prison without a chance of parole, right? No one is talking about the murderers or the bank robbers, most of them are in State Prisons anyway, and State Prisons do have parole. The federal prisons are reserved mostly for politicians and drug war victims.
So now that I have completely digressed, let me wrap up by asking everyone to please, please, please go to the site of the November Coalition and read the articles, look at the wall, read the "Razor Wire" their monthly publication. Yes, this stuff does actually happen in the United States of America. But it's still your country, and it's still your right to write to your Congressmen, your newspaper editors and your friends and associates. Only through a collective, unified effort will we be able to take this country back and stop allowing a corrupt few to make what was once called "the Land of the Free" a living hell for too many of its citizens.
