Free Speech T.V.

Free Speech T.V. is one of the best channels out there, and I wish I would remember that more and watch it more.

Last night, it had me crying and cracking up about a dozen times with many of the great programs it run, which all seek to advance the great work of true progressive democracy in America.

Probably no other television channel is as cognizant of the fact that democracy is a process, is in process, and not a finished work!

There was a program about the Habeas Project in California, which seeks to help women and transgender individuals who have been sentenced wrongfully or to inordinate jail terms for crimes committed while they were under the abusive influence of others.

The stories told by these survivors, women who have been freed through the Habeas Project and who have made valuable contributions to society, were just heartrending.

They told of how their friends (fellow inmates) were routinely allowed to die due to poor or absent medical treatment in the California penal system, how inmates could get sentenced to a year in solitary confinement for hugging another inmate whose spouse (and sole contact on the outside) had died....on an on, just one horror story after another...

Just absolute horror stories of how women who had been dehumanized by those who were supposed to love them were then further dehumanized by the State and its often self-hating drones. (All day long, prison guards and "caregivers" repeatedly tell themselves the lie that they are "not the ones in prison.")

I'll see if I can find some of this documentary on YouTube.

Here's their site where donations can be made.

I want to make a donation to this valuable organization (staffed by pro bono attorneys and tireless and probably completely unremunerated or underremunerated social workers and activists).

You can find them here...

Help Free a Victim of Abuse from Prison...

What's truly unfortunate is how attitudes about rehabilitation have changed in the California penal system in the past few decades; some of the women on this program benefitted greatly by educational opportunities offered them back in the eighties when the concept of prison time as an opportunity for reform was still valued.

As one Habeas success story lamented, "Sadly that pendulum has now swung the other way in California, and the emphasis is on the punitive alone."

One of the women tells of how she had a "fifth grade education" when she was sentenced for the crime of doing the bidding of her drug dealer husband who treated her less kindly than he treated his dog.

The Habeas Project is a truly worthwhile endeavor and I hope other states are inspired to take up the gauntlet in like manner.