ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL--EXCEPT IN DRUG WAR

Throughout the 20th century, which saw more than its share of inhumanity,
the most common excuse about why such things were allowed to happen was "We
didn't know." Well, after the report that Human Rights Watch released
Thursday, we no longer will be able to use ignorance to shield us from the
reality of the racial injustice perpetrated every day in America in the name
of the drug war--completely ignored by national political leaders.

The report, "Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on
Drugs," features a groundbreaking state-by-state analysis of the role race
and drugs play in prison admissions. When 10 states--including Illinois,
Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio and West Virginia--send black men to prison on
drug charges at a rate 27 to 57 times higher than white men, how can we
continue to boast about our "equal protection under the law" when it's so
obviously not true for so many people? The cookie-cutter excuse is that the
unequal sentencing reflects an unequal use of drugs. Well, that excuse has
also expired--in fact, five times as many whites use drugs as blacks, yet 62
percent of drug offenders sent to state prisons nationwide are black.

But the depth of this tragedy can be conveyed only through the personal
stories of what this injustice has wrought not only on the nonviolent
offenders but also on their families and especially their children. Groups
such as Families Against Mandatory Minimums, Family Watch and the November
Coalition perform a great public service by putting flesh and blood on the
statistics.

"Dear judge, I need my mom. Would you help my mom," reads a note written in
the scrawl of 9-year-old Phillip Gaines, just before his mother was
sentenced to nearly 20 years after associates of her crack-dealing former
boyfriend testified against her in exchange for lighter sentences. "I will
cut your grass and wash your car every day just don't send my mom off.
Please please please don't!!" Phillip is only one of an estimated 1.5
million children with a parent in jail.

Sharvone McKinnon is another African-American mother whose boyfriend--in her
case, an abusive crack dealer who threatened to kill her if she left
him--helped land her in jail. She's also a particularly chilling case study
of the madness our drug laws have led to: a nonviolent, first-time offender
sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for conspiracy
to distribute cocaine--even though the government concedes she played only a
tangential role and never actually used or sold drugs.

"One of the problems of our justice system," a U.S. District Court judge
told me, "is that the government is settling for very small fish that are
easy to catch and easy to punish. The big ones aren't being pursued."

The silence of both major parties and their nominees on this widespread
injustice is the starkest example of the bankruptcy of the two-party system.
Even the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has endorsed Al Gore and will be
campaigning for him, is not pulling his punches. "On this matter," he told
me, "we have one party with two names, or two parties with one assumption.
The assumption is that these lives can be thrown away. The change we seek
can only come outside the two parties. In the same way that it took a
movement to bring about the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, it's
going to take a movement to put an end to this tragic undermining of
hard-fought civil rights victories."

It's up to us to demand an end to the inhumanity.

E-mail: arianna@ariannaonline.com