Victorian Troubles, or The Working Day

An interesting story has been breaking this week in the Southern Metropolis Daily, a Chinese state newspaper in the Sichuan province that actually does investigative journalism because it has to sell papers.

Unfortunately, the Southern Metropolis Daily isn't translated or online.

The story, is like something out of 19th Century England. "Young people – some aged under 10 – are said to have been discovered being bought and sold at a street market in Sichuan, one of rural China's most overpopulated provinces.

According to investigative reporters, the children stood in line as they were assessed like cattle, before being driven on trucks to factories in the Pearl River Delta, China's manufacturing heartland."

So we have slave markets in the most densely populated province in China, which is incidentally the industrial heart of the nation. Province officials have made arrests of 4 individuals involved in the illegal labor trafficking and rescued more than 100 children, according to NYTimes reports. No doubt pressure has mounted about these sorts of things with the Olympics about to be held at the center of the new industrial world. But will a few Lady Bountifuls address the underlying issues of population and capital accumulation?

The Times notes, "The abuses may also reflect the combined pressures of worker shortages, high inflation and a rising currency that have reduced profit margins of some Chinese factories and forced them to scramble for an edge — even an illegal one — to stay competitive."

This story is totally ripped from the pages of Marx's Capital Vol. 1. The logic at work in Chinese industry seems internal to the process of capital accumulation. "The establishment of a normal working day is therefore the product of a protracted and more or less concealed civil war between the capitalist class and the working class. Since the contest takes place in the arena of modern industry, it is fought out first of all in the homeland of that industry--England." We might substitute the word China for Engand in the above quote from Marx's chapter on "the working day." The civil war continues even with laws on the books.

"This did not, however, prevent them, throughout the following decade, from spinning silk for 10 hours a day out of the blood of little children who had to be put on stools to perform their work...This time the pretext was 'the delicate texture of the fabric in which they were employed, requiring a lightness of touch only to be acquired by their early introduction to these factories.' The children were quite simply slaughtered for the sake of their delicate fingers, just as horned cattle are slaughtered in southern Russia for their hides and fat."

In Marx's day manufacturers had built a whole system of relays, rotating children from one work station to another, to prevent inspectors from verifying the hours of their work. Sounds a lot like the fake papers used to prevent the verification of childrens ages (in China the legal age of work is 16).

The Southern Metropolis Daily, who has been breaking these stories, was tipped off by residents close to the street market. "Since journalists could discover the facts by secret interviews in a few days," Southern Metropolis wrote in a separate editorial on Tuesday, "how could the labor departments show no interest in it and ignore it for such a long time?"

A good question. One must remember that the arrests of a few child traffickers will never put an end to the practices, just as it is not the individual capitalist himself who conspires to exploit his laborers. The logic of capital accumulation forces him to do so.

And to think that China was once considered communist under Mao. To quote Marx, quoting Virgil, Quantum mutatus ab illo!

Prisoners of Katrina II: Exodus and the Sheriff

"On Tuesday, August 30th 2005 at approximately 5PM I am evacuated from my unit. I have no idea that what is on the other side of that door will continually haunt me all the days of my life," Inmate 56 wrote in his ACLU questionnaire. "Then the pools of water appear. We are forced into it at gunpoint. At first I hesitate. There are things floating in it, and upon closer examination I can readily identify gasoline, used blood bags, feces, needles, tampax and the smell of urine is invasive. This contaminated abyss is up to my shoulders."

Because the New Orleans Parish Prison was under water, vehicles could not reach them at the doors. 6,000 to 8,000 prisoners (exact figures are impossible to know as all records were destroyed in the flood) were ferried by boat to the partially submerged Broad Street overpass of interstate-10. This site was used as a staging area for 72 hours while prisoners were shuttled in shifts to other Louisiana prisons by bus.

The images of this prison exodus are incredibly surreal.


In Discipline and Punish, Foucault outlines a physics of disciplinary power--a power that seizes hold of the body of the prisoner through subtle techniques to gain access to his soul. Individuating cells provide opportunity for constant examination; a daily routine substitues institutional goals for individual wills; a system of rules and punishments constructs a clear hierarchy of obedience and consequence.

What happens when this physics of power is unsettled? When docile individuated bodies are transformed into a furious undifferentiated multitude?

Two word answer: riot police.

"At around 10PM I make it to the Broad St. Overpass via boat. What awaits me is beyond belief. There are thousands of inmates lined in a close sitting position. Armed guards continually encircling them," Inmate 56 continues. "I spend the entire night in this uncomfortable sitting position. It is impossible for any of us to sleep."

"Throughout the next day I witness all sorts of horror. Many inmates suffer being maced, shot at with bean bag guns, tasered, and I saw an old man being attacked by police K-9s simply because his limbs became numb and he needed to stretch. When we asked for water, they simply doused us with contaminated water. All the while they are drinking bottled water. I feel faint."

Sleep deprivation, stress poses, starvation, dehydration are also a way to create docile bodies. Attack dogs, pepper spray, and rubber bullets shock bodies into submission. The testimony of Inmate 56 is consistent with thousands of other questionnaires that inmates of the Parish Prison submitted to the ACLU. These inmate testimonies have also been corroborated by OPP deputies.

Gusman claims that he called in reinforcements from the state Department of Corrections when he received reports of extensive flooding in the prison. The Sheriff denies that there was ever a loss of order inside.

What deputies described is a complete breakdown in the chain of command:

"Deputy Foster reports similar confusion in the House of Detention. 'As the storm approached, [things became] chaotic. No one gave any orders. Everyone said, "I think we need to do this, I think we need to do that." Deputies were running the jail.' One deputy states: 'When we got there, they hadn't told us anything. They kept telling us they were waiting to see what the sheriff was going to say. No procedures, no safety precautions. No evacuation plan. The sheriff shouldn't be a head of nothing. Anytime a man can't even handle his employees. . . . I been there three years and I been through a whole lot." (ACLU Report, p. 57)

Gusman has dismissed these stories from his own prison guards as "lies" and said, "the people making them are dis-gruntled ex-employees and possibly deserters." When asked by reporters about prisoners' testimonies he responded, "None of it was true. But when you put it in the paper it becomes more credible and it frustrates the hell out of me. Don't rely on crackheads, cowards and criminals to say what the story is."

The same Sheriff who said "we will keep our prisoners where they belong," made the disaster a centerpiece of his re-election campaign. "We stood at our posts. We did our duty, and we're proud of the job we did" he says in one of his radio spots.

Gusman made quite a showing at the scene of the spectacular evacuation. With cameras rolling, he rolled up his shirtsleeves, waded through floodwater to break open the doors to the women's prison, and shuttled prisoners on boats.

These images ended up in television commercials that got him re-elected. His opponent lost and relied on prisoner's testimonies of the chaos.

Of course, in the midst of the Katrina disaster, this Orleans Parish Prison debacle appears to be the result of a natural disaster. The Sheriff's spectacular evacuation looks like a heroic rescue mission. Many of the prisoners of Katrina had not been convicted of any crimes; you can't tell that by looking at them lined up on an overpass wearing orange jump suits. The imagination runs wild: what if they had escaped?

If it weren't for the fact that Gusman appears, by all accounts, to be a bungling idiot, it does seem a little orchestrated right? Expose a marginalized group of people to danger. Jump to their rescue when cameras are rolling. Deny the violence and danger ever occured. Make sure the only other eyewitnesses are "crackheads, cowards and criminals," or guards who "deserted" their post.

We needn't assert a conspiracy to make our point; the prisoners testimonies expose the cynical contradictions of political power very well.

After this whole ordeal, Warden Burl Cain, of the enormous Louisiana State Prison sent a letter to his colleague Sheriff Gusman, which the latter proudly posted to his re-election campaign website. "I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed working with you during the evacuation," Cain gushed on September 9, 2005, "none of us could have imagined that we would have such a devastating disaster." A betrayal, perhaps, of the lack of any emergency plans. "Finally, now that the evacuation is over we can laugh at you in the rubber boots and short pants."

"I look forward to working with you at Camp Greyhound. You'll try to reopen, and I'll keep the jail for you until you do."

Camp Greyhound?!

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Prisoners of Katrina Part I: Troubled Waters

"Therefore will we not fear, though the earth do change,

And though the mountains be shaken into the heart of the seas;

Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled,
Though the mountains tremble with the swelling thereof. Selah

The nations raged, the kingdoms were moved:
He uttered his voice, the earth melted.

Come, behold the works of Jehovah,
What desolations he hath made in the earth."

-Psalm 46:2-3, 6, 8

The biblical proportion of the images is undeniable. Thousands crammed into the Superdome, masses escaping a flooded city down abandoned superhighways, human corpses floating down dark watery streets. These are some of the lasting images that, for many, epitomize the human dimension of the Katrina disaster.

When the levees broke on August 29, 2005, still darker events were unfolding one mile northwest of the infamous Superdome at the Orleans Parish Prison, where prison guards left nearly 8,000 men, women and children locked behind bars to drown in the rising floodwaters mixed with sewage and filth. This is the first of a 4 part series about these "Prisoners of Katrina."

The ACLU relased a 142 page report on the OPP in 2006, titled "Abandoned & Abused" that contains most of the facts presented in this post unless otherwise noted.

The Orleans Parish Prison (Pictured Above) is not one building, but a prison complex of twelve buildings located in downtown New Orleans. The Parish Prison is not technically a prison; it functioned as a local jail. On an average day before Katrina, the Parish Prison's population housed 6,500 individuals, 60% of whom were "pre-trial detainees," meaning they had not been convicted of any crime, and had been arrested on municipal charges such as traffic violations, public drunkenness and failure to pay a fine. Though primarily a local prison serving the population of New Orleans, the OPP received money from other state and federal agencies for renting beds out to them. At the time of the storm, the OPP was housing 2,000 state prisoners, many of whom were completing drug and alcohol rehab as a condition of probabtion. Once they completed their programs, these "prisoners" were eligible for release. When Katrina made landfall, OPP rented out beds to 200 federal prisoners, including immigration detainees, who had not been charged with any crime, and federal prisoners charged with violations of federal criminal law. (ACLU, 13-16)

Pre-Katrina, New Orleans had the highest incarceration rate in America with nearly 1,480 prisoners per 100,000 residents, which is double the national average. Katrina exposed the deep racial divide that exists across the country, and the story of the Orleans Parish Prison serves as a focus into the over-incarceration of African-Americans.

From the ACLU Report:

"For example, while only 12.3% of American citizens are black, they make up 43.7% of the incarcerated population across the country. In 2005, the incarceration rates for black males of all ages were 5 to 7 times greater than for white males in the same age groups. Prior to Katrina, an astonishing 12% of all black males in their late twenties were in prison or jail in the United States. In Louisiana...the black incarceration rate at state prisons and local jails was 4.7 times higher than the white rate in 2005. Orleans Parish was no exception: although the parish itself was only 66.6% black prior to Hurricane Katrina, almost 90% of the OPP population was black."

On August 28, 2005, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin surmised the awesome power of the storm and declared a mandatory evacuation, "with only the following exceptions. Essential personnel of the United States of America, state of Louisiana and city of New Orleans. Essential personnel of regulated utilities and mass transportation services. Essential personnel of hospitals and their patients. Essential person of the media. Essential personnel of the Orleans Parish criminal sheriff's office and its inmates. And the essential personnel of operating hotels and their patrons."

After Mayor Nagin and Gov. Kathleen Blanco described the disastrous potential of the storm to the media, a reporter asked, "What about the prisoners in the jail right now? Will they just simply stay in the jail?"

Nagin deferred the question to Sheriff Marlon Gusman (Pictured Above). "We're going to keep our prisoners where they belong," he responded. Gusman runs the Orleans Parish Prison to this day.

So what happened to the prisoners?

Before Katrina made landfall, the prisoners were placed on lockdown; they were unable to use the phone, riot squads entered the jail; prisoners were maced, beaten, and packed into cells meant for 2 people. After the storm while George W. Bush announced the state of emergency on the Gulf Coast, 200 or more new arrests were being packed into the already crowded prison.

One prisoner describes the situation in his cell:

"Before I knew it my bottom bunk was underneath water. At this point I knew for sure the deputies was nowhere in the building. Still time continue to pass by, water still rising. No food for us to eat. Finally a female deputy came by we shouted to her about our conditions. She then replied there's nothing we can do because there's water everywhere and she left. At this point water had risen to at least 4 ft deep. I thought for sure I would never see freedom again."

As flood waters rose, the electricity generators in the basement blew out, leaving many sections of the OPP in total darkness. Prisoners complained about flood water rising in their cells, kicked down doors, and tried desperately to escape, as some prison deputies walked off their posts.

In the hopes that they would be rescued, some prisoners burned their bedsheets in their windows to attract the attention of the patrolling military helicopters outside (See Burnscars in Picture Above)

Several female prisoners were pregnant and reported miscarriages resulting from their days spent at OPP. Many of the prisoners had medical conditions that made them particularly vulnerable to the conditions, like Keanna Herbert, who was HIV-positive and a diabetic housed in the Medical Observation Unit (MOU), "In the days of Katrina, my choice [to take care of myself and treat myself] was taken from me and put in the hands of the M.O.U. We were left abandoned there for 3 days in stagnant water without any care for any of my problems. Due to neglect my T-cells went down to 11 making me extremely ill. In those 3 days I received a [stomache] infection that affected me so bad that I looked as though I was 9 months pregnant...I will not just accept that this happened to me." (ACLU, 41)

The ACLU Report details thousands of stories that emerged from the flooded bowels of the Orleans Parish Prison. Under normal circumstances, prisons place lives in the hands of a state apparatus. Being locked in a cage, we are told, is a form of punishment meant to straightforwardly deprive humans of their autonomy and freedom. Mayor Nagin declared prisoners to be "exceptions" to his mandatory evacuation order, and this naked human life was exposed to disaster, neglect and the caprice of circumstance.

We must take Keanna Herbert's words at face value. Calamity doesn't "just happen" to the governed. To borrow a phrase from Michel Foucault, sovereign decisions were made to "disallow life."

A parking ticket in New Orleans on August 26, 2005, resulted in beatings, mace, and death on August 29, at the hands of the State.

This is the first in a 4 part series about the "Prisoners of Katrina."

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United States of Incarceration: 2.3 Million Americans Caged

The U.S. leads the world in both total number of persons behind bars (2.3 million) and in the more meaningful statistic of incarceration rates (751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population).Since 1970, our incarceration rate has increased five-fold. America currently cages 1% of the adult population.

A rather Toquevillian NY Times article published today parses out a series of comparative prison statistics from around the globe. America imprisons far more of its population than the rest of the world with Russia and China coming in the No. 2 and 3 spots respectively. The NY Times doesn't really tell us anything new. A discussion of race is brushed aside in the account because:

"Many specialists dismissed race as an important distinguishing factor in the American prison rate. It is true that blacks are much more likely to be imprisoned than other groups in the United States, but that is not a particularly distinctive phenomenon. Minorities in Canada, Britain and Australia are also disproportionately represented in those nation's prisons, and the ratios are similar to or larger than those in the United States."

Perhaps America is not "exceptional" among democracies with regard to imprisoning its minorities; however, we might ask why democracies have such predilection for putting them behind bars. The political democratic process itself is implicated by the Times analysis of the American exception:

"Most state court judges and prosecutors in the United States are elected and are therefore sensitive to a public that is, according to opinion polls, generally in favor of tough crime policies. In the rest of the world, criminal justice professionals tend to be civil servants who are insulated from popular demands for tough sentencing."

American fear tactics, used by a predominantly white political establishment to drum up votes, necessitate high incarceration rates. We start caging humans at the ballot box. Ever heard white New Yorkers speak wistfully about how Guilliani "cleaned up" the city?

It reminds me of a passage in The Autobiography of Malcom X (1965), which was written shortly before the explosion of incarceration rates:

"You never heard your name, only your number. On all of your clothing, every item, was your number, stenciled. It grew stenciled on your brain. Any person who claims to have deep feeling for other human beings should think a long, long time before he votes to have other men kept behind bars—caged. I am not saying there shouldn't be prisons, but there shouldn't be bars. Behind bars, a man never reforms. He will never forget. He never will get completely over the memory of the bars." (p. 155)

It may seem strange that Malcolm X protested the existence of bars in prisons rather than the existence of prisons themselves. However, his statement, illustrates for us the political problem of imprisonment: he takes the bars as a metonym for the prisoner, not the prison. Imprisonment uses a series of techniques to discipline men and women to obey orders, to labor in prison yards, to submit themselves to a continual examination, but never to be "reformed," for the social processes giving rise to crime are seldom within an individuals' control and never solved by the existence of prisons. Malcolm X found hope and salvation in prison when he converted to Islam in the 1950s, so our problem is further complicated by the fact that the Malcolm X of the 60s was, in a certain sense, a product of his imprisonment in the 50s. We can only understand his statement if we read "bars" as a sign for the part of the person or that part of the population that always remains a prisoner—a psychological and social imprisonment that persists outside the strict walls of the prison itself.

Interestingly, Louisianans are the most incarcerated population in America at 1,138 per 100,000, which is 50% higher than the national average.

But more on Louisiana in the next post!