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Clint Smith
@ClintSmithIII
, 7 tweets, 2 min read Read on Twitter
I’ve been working in prisons for five years now & there is not a single person in there who doesn’t deserve the right to vote. To suggest otherwise is to have a myopic, regressive view of who & is not deserving of citizenship.
Any cursory glance at history makes clear that one of the central functions of mass incarceration is that it serves as another insidious tool of voter suppression. This isn’t a matter of opinion, the people who built this system named it outright.
People will always use the most egregious & heinous examples of violence to legitimize the entire social project of prisons. Using the Boston Bomber to ask if people in prison should be allowed to vote only reifies the caricatures of a system that throws millions of people away.
.@jbouie wrote a helpful primer on this a couple weeks ago that’s worth reading for people new to the idea:

nytimes.com/2019/04/11/opi…
I find it difficult to take seriously any person who acknowledges that criminal justice system is “broken” but who then turns around & lifts up that same system as being an effective means of deciding who does & does not get to vote. I don’t think you can have it both ways.
A lot of ppl are bringing up this idea that “if you committed a crime you should lose your rights.” Beyond that being an unnecessarily draconian position, what about all the people who commit crimes who aren’t incarcerated? Are you saying only ppl who commit crimes & are caught?
Because this is central to the question. As I say all the time, criminality is not an objective phenomenon. Who is and is not considered a criminal is a decision made by ppl in positions of power. Any assessment of what rights incarcerated ppl deserve has to take tht into account
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More from @ClintSmithIII see all

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Clint Smith
@ClintSmithIII
There are so many people who believe that they would have been these radical abolitionists during the era of slavery who regularly demonstrate an inability to imagine the society they actually live in right now as anything other than what it is.

It’s revealing.
Folks are out here walking around thinking they would have spoken out against slavery, the only economic model this country had ever known, but as soon as you bring up the idea that prisons shouldn’t operate as they currently do those same people think you’re being preposterous.
If you accept how contemporary systems of oppression operate as a given, simply because you’ve never seen something different, you would have very likely done the same in any other era.
Read 3 tweets
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Clint Smith
@ClintSmithIII
On this day in 1864, Confederate troops slaughtered black Union soldiers, most of whom were former slaves, in Fort Pillow, Tennessee. What made the attack so horrific is that the majority of the black soldiers were killed as they put down their weapons & attempted to surrender.
There’s little doubt as to what motivated the massacre. Southerners were furious that the union had begun using former slaves as soliders. Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forest's field commander later bragged that his men had taught "the mongrel garrison of blacks" a lesson.
The Fort Pillow massacre is considered to have been one of the worst atrocities of the Civil War.

After the war Nathan Bedford Forest, who led the assault, went on to become the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
Read 6 tweets
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Clint Smith
@ClintSmithIII
A good way to remember today's anniversary of Confederate surrender at Appomattox is to read this 1871 speech by Frederick Douglass on how, only 6 years after the Civil War ended, he feared that history was already being rewritten to portray Lee & his army as honorable fighters:
“When the dark and vengeful spirit of slavery, always ambitious, preferring to rule in hell than to serve in heaven, fired the Southern heart and stirred all the malign elements of discord, when our great Republic, the hope of freedom and self-government throughout the world…”
“…had reached the point of supreme peril, when the Union of these states was torn and rent asunder at the center, and the armies of a gigantic rebellion came forth with broad blades and bloody hands to destroy the very foundations of American society the unknown braves..."
Read 11 tweets

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