LEFTISTS SET TO BATTLE THE LOCK-'EM-UP MENTALITY
A CONFERENCE last weekend at the University of California at Berkeley was a
throwback to the radical 1960s. Even though Cal maintains a liberal image,
there are large, if not overwhelming, numbers of centrists and conservatives
now.

So an international conference on the growth of the prison industrial
complex - concerning not only the number and size of our prisons, but
America's growing reliance on the prison system as a solution for society's
ills - seemed both a natural and counter-intuitive to our current political
climate.

Called "Critical resistance: Beyond the prison industrial complex," the
conference drew some 3,000 people, surprising organizers since only 1,200
had registered in advance. I was at the Sunday afternoon closing plenary
session, and if that one session typified the three-day conference, one is
left wondering whether the radical left and liberals - pariahs in our New
World Order of global capitalism and conservatism - are beginning to mount a
spirited comeback.

Angela Davis, the longtime prison-reform activist and leftist theoretician,
was one of the conference's principal organizers. She was joined at the
closing session by another icon of the '60s left - Bernadine Dohrn, a former
Weather Underground leader who now works on children and family issues.
Geronimo Pratt, a Black Panther who was granted a new trial after spending
25 years in prison on a murder conviction, was also there.

They and other speakers roused the crowd with inspirational messages that
were part 1960s rhetoric about struggles and movements, and part New Age
talk.

Pratt reflected on the need for leftist reformers to give strokes to
colleagues. Left and liberal groups are famous for trashing one another over
sometimes arcane points of dogma, and for personality and ego conflicts.

Whether the emotional send-off to conferees to continue fighting against the
spread of the prison industrial complex will yield progress is anyone's
guess. Given our current political culture, one can't be too optimistic
about changing the will of the American people, for whom leftist radicalism
is all but anathema.

This is not to say that prison reformers ought to give up. America needs to
be reminded of what we stand for as a nation when our willingness to finance
more prisons outstrips our willingness to help needy people before they get
into trouble. It is much easier to ignore the fact that the number of
Americans in local jails and in state and federal prisons has risen almost
60 percent since 1990. Many Americans now favor a "lock 'em up and throw
away the key" approach.

Prison reformers and others who object to punishment as our society's
preferred strategy for dealing with people who break our laws are clearly
fighting an uphill battle. Just consider the November elections for
governor, U.S. senator, and state attorney general.

Candidates from both major parties are crawling all over one another to
prove to voters they are toughest on crime. Either by implication or
explicitly, major party candidates favor the continuation of the prison
industrial complex that last weekend's conferees object to. Other than
standard platitudes about improving public education, there is almost no
talk about more public attention to drug and alcohol treatment programs,
family services or other human-resources initiatives to turn around
potentially troubled young lives before they fall into the law-enforcement
abyss.

Californians ought to be embarrassed that corrections takes up a larger
percentage of the state budget than higher education. And aren't we bothered
by the fact that the state prison guards' union has grown so powerful that
it can demand, and get, a huge pay raise from Gov. Wilson?

Reviving weary 1960s chants may not be original, but restoring some balance
to the law-and-order discourse, as the critical resistance meeting tried to
do, is a step whose time has come.

1998 San Francisco Examiner Page A 23

Checked-by: Don Beck