WE LOCKED 'EM UP, THREW AWAY THE KEY

Justice: What does it say about us that we've imprisoned so many of our
minorities? Ask The Reverend.

Jesse Jackson for president. Absurdly late, I know, but his voice is
what has been missing in this campaign season. I'm aware of the
cynicism toward the man that resides in the media and a part of the
electorate. But after observing him in front of an audience of inmates
the other day at the Los Angeles County Jail in Castaic, I see him as
the one public figure still willing to address the great intractable
issue that we face: Race.

You had to be there! Jackson, in the company of the real life Rubin
"Hurricane" Carter, a former middleweight boxing contender who spent
20 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, at a jailhouse
screening of "The Hurricane" before a mostly black and brown audience
whose future prospects seemed as drab as their faded inmate uniforms.

But when Jackson stood before them, alongside the now free and still
vibrant 63-year-old Carter and led the prisoners in chanting, "Keep
hope alive," that overused phrase seemed as inspirational as the
Sermon on the Mount. They are words intended for the least among us,
the forgotten and discarded, and the Rev. Jackson extended the
Almighty's hand.

The optimism of the movie's tale of survival, embodied in this man
Carter, who had endured for so many years to emerge strong and who
bore a message of self-improvement under the direst of circumstances,
caught the eyeballs and ears of guards and prisoners alike. Carter
talked of the guards being trapped in the same system and cautioned
the inmates to follow the rules and not to doubt "their authority to
bop you."

But he also talked about using the jail as the only school they were
likely to enter at this point in their lives. "Don't let this be dead
time," he said, urging them to learn to read and recalling his own
immersion in the works of Dostoevsky and in the example of Nelson
Mandela during his long, tough prison time. At the end of the
screening, following a thunderous ovation, Carter pleaded with the men
to "go through the small door to the large room" and to "be in jail
but not let the jail be in you."

Jackson and Carter had taken this show to the Cook County Jail in
Chicago the week before, and once again they were screening this movie
about redemption to hundreds of the almost 2 million prisoners whom
the rest of society has doomed to the hell of more or less permanent
incarceration. Many in the audience were still in the early stages of
recycling through the prison system, America's answer to its failure
to deal with its legacy of racial oppression.

When Jackson asked those who were repeat offenders to stand, many rose
to their feet under the nervous watch of the suddenly alert guards
lined against the walls. When Carter said, "I was innocent, but don't
jive me; most of you did the crime," there were sad nods of agreement.

Jackson ticked off the dismal statistics of America's prison growth
industry: almost a third of young black men caught in the legal system
and more in jail than in universities, statistics so shocking in their
implications that they are barely comprehensible. We have 500,000 more
prisoners than China, which has four times our population, and yet we
complain about its human rights record.

Of the almost 2 million people in jail--as Jackson goes on in his
rhythmic indictment of a system created by politicians who have
abandoned any notion of rehabilitation--1.2 million are incarcerated
for drug use and other victimless crimes. These are the prisoners of
the drug war waged mostly in the ghettos. These are the people who
need medical help, psychiatric treatment, education, jobs--not endless
prison time.

Jackson excoriated the inequities of a criminal justice system brought
vividly to life by Denzel Washington's brilliant performance in "The
Hurricane." Despite the nit-picking of critics, the movie reminds us
that it took a courageous federal judge to undo the woeful miscarriage
of justice condoned by the entire New Jersey political and judicial
system.

This country has used a prison-based apartheid system as an
alternative to truly integrating its largest racial minorities into
the mainstream of educational and economic opportunity. While
politicians scramble to build more prisons than schools and pay guards
more than teachers, Jackson is the one political leader still willing
to cry in shame for the discarded young.

At moments like that, he is indeed The Reverend who uses reglion to
unify rather than divide, and the justified inheritor of the mantle of
his mentor, Martin Luther King Jr.