Transcript
Please feel to post. Thank you. FM. Fighting Oppression (Man vs USP Tucson) During difficult times, there comes a time where you must stand for something, even in prison. The assumption that society has is that every inmate is evil, is inferior, and devoid of rights. This, of course, is not true. Left to believe this, mankind will, by their nature, devolve to barbaric treatment of others, based on the ideology of a greater over a lesser. Sadly, society and our world hasn't learned this, though we have reminders. For example, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization - or UNSESCO - has designated several sites for "events of universal significance”. Here are two: The first is the island of Goreé, off Senegal, a memorial of the horrific treatment of Africans from the 1500’s to 1800, where, off that site, 20 million Africans passed through there, headed to a horrible life of slavery. Such an oppression is a reminder of man's inhumane treatment of another. The second is Auschwitz Birkenau, the infamous German Concentration and Extermination Camp from 1940-1945. Over 1 million Jewish people, tens of thousands of Polish victims, and others were executed. As quoted in the 7th edition World Heritage Site back from 2015, “evidence of this inhumane, cruel and methodical effort to deny human dignity to groups considered inferior, leading to their systematic murder”, was why this site was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979. Sadly, oppression continues in many forms, even in prisons. I cannot possibly compare the inhumane treatment of what the Africans and Jewish people went through, to the inhumane acts done in prisons like USP Tuscon. Prisons aren't putting inmates in small cells, chaining them by the neck and arms, with 150 to 200 people in a room, for sometimes months, before sending them as slaves (if they had) overseas. But, during a COVID-19 pandemic, to force inmates to work, or threaten punishment in a dangerous cell, is still inhumane. To put these guys at the highest risk to catch the Coronavirus, by having them work around staff that don't wear their face masks half - 2 - the time, is inhumane. Yet this is what's going on. But I say to that, Psalm 103:6, “The Lord executes righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed”. And of course, prisons aren't putting people in the gas chamber, and experimenting torturous experiments on innocent people like they did at Auschwitz Birkenau, but officers and staff do in fact use similar tactics, a policy of spoliation, degradation and humiliation, all inhumane treatment. They lack only extermination in wide fashion. Yet during the COVID-19 pandemic, research shows as of July of 2020, the infection rate for prisons is 6 times greater than the most infected country in the world - the USA. (Federal Defense of NY BOP Covid-19 Charts & Graphs 7.08 p3 - date July 14th 2020) But to this I say that Psalm 146:7 says of God, “Who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry, the Lord gives freedom to the prisoners”. In each scenario, the oppressed were made to feel less than human, and the oppressor felt that their victims were” guilty and unredeemable”. Africans were seen as an inferior people because of the color of their skin. The Jewish people, because of their religion, and prisoners because of their sentence and charge. We can validate superiority over anyone, just find a reason. But inhumane treatment by officers simply because they can hide behind the Bureau of Prisons in actuality make them no better than the Nazis who mass murdered over a million people, or the slave traders who made untold wealth selling 20 million people to slavery. Oppression, in any form, is still oppression. But to fight it, we take a stand. We trust God, and simply refuse to give up. Just as Goree and Auschwitz, and USP Tucson display evidence of the worst of man, there is also evidence of the best of mankind, those who fight against oppression. As long as there's humanity - and faith in God, we can beat oppression - as long as we don't give up.
