At our country’s 240th birthday, I am reminded of our forefathers’ preamble to the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
While history has uncovered the blatant shortcomings of this dictate, the rights to one’s liberty, or freedom, seem particularly important to highlight now. With nearly 95,000 childrenincarcerated in adult jails and prisons each year, the vast majority of them children of color, we have a responsibility to question this concept of liberty in the shadow of our carceral state.
Liberty, defined as being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views, has a long history of grotesquely unequal application in our country: It certainly wasn’t a protected right at the birth of our country for slaves, women or children, nor was it promised to numerous other special populations — immigrants, people who are disabled, LGBT communities, indigenous peoples to name a few. Yet, as many scholars have noted, as unique populations have gained access to liberty through the courts, other structures of oppression have emerged to stifle their ultimate achievement of freedom. Perhaps the most well-known and egregious obstruction of liberty is incarceration.
[For more of this story, written by Marcy Mistrett, go to http://jjie.org/incarcerated-y...heir-release/273369/]
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