From D.C.: Sasha Abramsky on booktour for “Conned.”

Sasha Abramsky

From D.C.: Sasha Abramsky on booktour for “Conned.”

Well, this could be the problem with trying to blog from scratch. I wrote a long entry about the joys and perils of being an author on the road, and somehow managed to erase the enire thing. So... an abbreviated rehash. I wrote Conned: How MIllions Went to Prison, Lost the Vote, and Helped Send George W. Bush to the White House as a political travelogue; I saw it as a road trip essay combined with a political analysis, a sort of de Tocquevillian musing, update for our modern age

I traveled the country from several months, in the run-up to the 2004 election, faithfully carrying de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" with me, looking at how the increasingly large number of people in this country with felony convictions and thus restrictions on their voting rights was impacting the nation's political process. I traveled, in fits and starts, from Washington, in the northwest, to Florida, taking in about a third of the states en route. It was fun, a chance to see America, in all its glory and its messiness, unfold before me, and to write about America and American politics. It was also an important project, allowing me to look at what happens to a supposedly democratic political system in an era of mass incarceration and, by extension, mass disenfranchisement. It's not just important philosophically but also pragmatically. Five million people cannot vote in this country; most are poor, many are from ethnic and racial minorities. Excluding them from the political process cannot help but skew the political discourse in a more conservative direction than would be the case were these people to be a part of the process. In states such as Florida, where upwards of three quarters of a million cannot vote, this clearly has impacted election results, including, most notoriously, the 2000 presidential election, ultimately decided in Bush's favor by a few hundred ballots.

Now I'm on the road again, talking about my book. It's both exhilierating and exhausting. I've flown across country three times in two weeks, been to New York, Sacramento, Binghamton and Philadelphia. I'm now in D.C., en route, this afternoon, to an event in Baltimore sponsored by a coalition called Justice Maryland. On Wednesday, at 6.30, I'm at Politics and Prose bookstore in D.C., an event being filmed by Book TV. When the energy's good, when the audience gets involved, there's nothing like it; when, for whatever reasons, that connection isn't established, the minutes weigh like heavy meat. On the whole, though, it's a real joy to be doing these events and talking about issues I care about.
Sasha Abramsky.

Comments

Politics and Prose is itself a good reason why we need to support local book stores. That place is great.

What do you do when you encounter people that believe that people who have broken the law don't deserve to vote? Many 'regular people' seem to think this- and their reasoning why isn't them just trying to find an excuse to keep poor folks from voting for Democrats. Regular people think this is a "moral issue" and that prisoners don't deserve to vote.

I disagree with them but its sometimes hard to argue when people have this outright refusal to acknowledge the humanity or prisoners.

Sasha:

I am in the middle of reading Conned right now.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Its a wonderful effort that will make a lot of arguments more forceful and complete. It would be good to find a way to make Conned mandatory reading for all Democrats. Especially right wing Democrats like John Kerry who built his political career and resume as a first generation drug war prosecutor and later legislator. The creep wanted to turn military bases sbeing closed into concentration camps for first time pot offenders.

Personally, I have been obsessing on the apportionment manipulation aspects of mass imprisonment and disenfranchisement. Its double dipping the criminal disenfranchisement issue. Not only are urban citizens disenfranchised but they are taken to rural right wing prison districts where they are counted for apportionment but have no vote in the community. SEE: Pennsylvania -democracy incarcerated-

In answer to the two comments, when people say it's a "moral argument," the easy response is that the more appropriate moral solution to crime is to seek rehabilitation in addition to punishment; and, I believe, when society wants to rehabilitate someone it has to be prepared to provide them with the same political rights other citizens have. Also, I'd argue it's deeply counter-productive from a pragmatic standpoint to further alienate people from a political and social process they already might be pretty alienated from.

Regarding the issue of "double-dipping." This is clearly a problem; first off, prisoners and ex-prisoners lose their ability to vote; then, the communities from which they come lose political power as they cease to be counted amongst the residents of those communities and instead are counted as residents of the county in which their prison is located. This means that counties with large numbers of prisons suddenly end up with far more political clout than they ought to have.

It's a big problem, and is one of the reasons political power, in an urbanized country such as America, is still skewed toward rural areas in many states.

Sasha.

An addendum... In my hurry to put up my entry, I mis-identified the place that I'll be reading in in D.C. on May 10th. It's NOT Politics and Prose, but rather Poets and Busboys.

Apologies for the error.

Sasha Abramsky.

In Pennsylvania its not a moral issue at all. The state constitution is very specific.

"Elections shall be free and equal, and no power, civil or military, shall at any time interfere to prevent the free exercise of the right of suffrage." Constitution of Pennsylvania, DECLARATION OF RIGHTS, Article I, �5.

Even still all people in prison are barred from voting and the legislature is trying to extend disenfranchisement as long as possible in the parole process.

If the state constitution were applied I estimate that at least 8 state senate districts and 15 House districts would need to be redrawn. Including the GOP president pro tempore of the senate. Without the prisoners their districts would not have the minimum allocated after the 2000 census.