Inga Muscio has inspired me - yet again. She lists this phenomenal "Imagination Reclamation Resource Guide" at the end of her book, Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil. The guide is also available online here.

I was flipping through the weblinks, many focused on the Prison-Industrial Complex, and came accross a wonderful resource: Prisonsucks.com. The site features a plethora of mind-boggling statistics about the US Prison system. It features such gems as:

U.S. incarceration rates by race, June 30, 2004:

Whites: 393 per 100,000
Latinos: 957 per 100,000
Blacks: 2,531 per 100,000

Gender is an important "filter" on the who goes to prison or jail, June 30, 2004:

Females: 123 per 100,000
Males: 1,348 per 100,000

Look at just the males by race, and the incarceration rates become even more frightening, June 30, 2004:

White males: 717 per 100,000
Latino males: 1,717 per 100,000
Black males: 4,919 per 100,000

If you look at males aged 25-29 and by race, you can see what is going on even clearer, June 30, 2004:

For White males ages 25-29: 1,666 per 100,000.
For Latino males ages 25-29: 3,606 per 100,000.
For Black males ages 25-29: 12,603 per 100,000. (That's 12.6% of Black men in their late 20s.)

This is perhaps the most depressing set of facts I've come accross in some time. It is the kind of thing you know to be true, but obviously are allowed to easily forget in this racist / Imperialist / classist society.

Perhaps the website's best factoid is their comparison of incarceration rates for South Africa under Apartheid versus America under George Bush:

South Africa under Apartheid was internationally condemned as a racist society.

South Africa under apartheid (1993), Black males: 851 per 100,000
U.S. under George Bush (2004), Black males: 4,919 per 100,000

What does it mean that the leader of the "free world" locks up its Black males at a rate 5.8 times higher than the most openly racist country in the world?

I'll leave you with that thought. Oh, and the vomit coming up in the back of your throat.