Many young people who might have been able to look forward to a job now look forward to prison. And in prison, they often work for many of the corporations at wages that are the same as the Third World wages. Forty seven cents an hour for example, in many prisons. So that the capitalism that appears to triumph does so only at the expense of the lives of enormous numbers of people who are considered expendable. And that is why we decided to make the organizing principle of the conference and campaign the prison industrial complex.
Material conditions are a lot worse.
I could never have imagined that almost 2 million people would be in the country's state and federal prisons and county jails. In the late 60's there were about 200,000 people, and we felt that that was an enormous number. The devastation of black communities I could never have imagined then. But we're better in that our consciousnesses are deeper. And more complicated.