Letter to Jill Stein

(I wrote this letter to Jill Stein because of a letter I received from her (I'm on her mailing list because I voted for her for president.) I am very encouraged that she is so solution-oriented about what we need to do in this country to have honest elections. She talks about how she's been targeted in the Russiagate investigation. I've copied in her letter at the end of this post so that you can see what I am referring to about her being solution-oriented.) 

Here in Arizona we have a special election to vote more money for our prisons, which are anticipated to grow in numbers of prisoners over the next few years. I think that instead of planning on housing more prisoners, that we should tackle quality of life issues that lead to incarceration, and look at alternatives to imprisoning people.

Maybe you can consult with people you know, and see what is out there to change our prison system. We should be looking at ways to close them, and reduce the number of prisoners with innovative programs, such as real jobs that pay well enough to sustain individuals and families. 

Here are a couple of ideas. I'm sure many more have been discussed in the past, and many more could be generated with brainstorming sessions.

1.  ALTERNATIVE CONSEQUENCES TO INCARCERATION  

A council of elders, who would be mostly women, might provide an alternative to the present justice system. Perhaps in a transitional period over a period of 3-10 years, those people facing a jail sentence might choose instead of going to trial, to meet with a council of elders to discuss restitution and other alternatives to incarceration.

2.  JOBS  In order to reduce recividism, when someone is released from prison, make sure they have a job to go to that they will like, and which will support them well. The CCC met a need for employment in the depression, planting trees, creating public art, and other programs.  

 A jobs program for people looking for work could go a long way to prevent people from making the choices that lead to being imprisoned. We need to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure in this country, we need to support our children in the schools with counselors. We need to support working families with more and better after-school programs. 

There is so much that needs to be done for the environment and for people. If we started to address the true needs of our people, there could be many, many jobs generated. For instance, there is a great need for training in healthy eating, cooking, preparing meals, and making sure that your body has all of the nutrients needed to be healthy. Programs to meet these needs could generate a great many jobs.

Also programs that encourage and support people to get more exercise.

Programs to encourage people to become more civic-minded, such as community gardens and other projects that contribute to the life of the community. These could be supported with paid staffers and in other ways that reward involvement.

We could have a public works program to build community centers across the nation, places where political issues are discussed, where local bands play, dances are held, international holidays celebrated, and diversity encouraged and supported, sharing of cultures and ideas. Authors could give talks, experts give lectures and hold debates and question and answer sessions. Workshops could be given there. These community centers would be designed to create jobs for people, not only in their construction, but also in the richness and variety of programs and events that they offer the community.

Really, we need to build community in the United States, and get people interacting in person with each other again. Today this role has been left to the churches, which mostly divides people further. Schools used to meet many of these needs, but with ongoing cutbacks, there is very little done in the way of community programs any more. Everyone in a local community could be involved in some ways with their schools.

These should never be federally mandated programs with centralized authority. Most of the decision-making needs to be made by the local communities. However, there should be federal funds for these programs. There could never be anything on the scale of what we now spend on our bloated military and intelligence community, because most of that has been financed by debit spending anyways, but if we shift our priorities, I'm sure that there are people who can figure out how to make this approach rebuild our economy.

Dear Ariel, Today, I’m breaking months of silence on the targeting of our campaign by the political establishment - both Democrats and Republicans - in their investigation of alleged Russian election interference. Let’s be clear: this was a baseless and politically-motivated act of intimidation against an independent political movement that both establishment parties see as a threat. But we’re used to that sort of thing. So having been dragged into the battle over election interference, we have an incredible opportunity to fight for critical solutions to the very real problems that threaten our elections - and to knock down the establishment’s false solutions of warmongering, censorship and repression. Please take a moment to read my statement on “Russiagate” and help spread the word by sharing it on Facebook and Twitter. You may be getting tired of the media’s obsession with “Russiagate” - and believe me, so am I. That’s why it’s so critical that we seize this rare opportunity to focus the discussion on real, urgent threats to our elections - many of which were uncovered by the 2016 recount effort - and how we can fix them. And we must push back against the effort to twist legitimate concerns about election interference into a campaign of warmongering, censorship and political repression. Thank you for all that you do to build the movement for peace and real democracy. It’s in our hands! Jill