Not Down with the Lockdown: Youth Speak Out Against SuperJail

By Suzy Khimm, WireTap. Posted July 31, 2001.

Mary Rubach is wincing.

"There's no need for this noise," she says in a clipped British accent. She appears to be in her early seventies, though I don't dare ask her exact age. "Shouldn't someone go up there and tell them to turn the speakers down?"

Tracy
by Samantha Liapes and Mei-ying Ho (Bold verses by Mei-ying Ho)

They locked up tracy
cuz her baby got scabies
from the s.r.o mattress and she
said fuck this and
put down the want ads
delivered a dime bag
to get money for a crib
a clean bed for her kid
and she got caught
and gota
mandatory minimum
in a central valley prison
now her kids are in the system
same system that refused
to assist them financially
readily rips apart their family see
tracey couldn't get a job
on the outside
seemed only white folks hirin
and only their kind
and when employers realized where she resided
eyes became wideand
applications denied and
besides
none of the wages advertised
could pay
rent and childcare
no not anywhere
in this city
forget it she
had no choice but to do what she did
and now she has no choice
but to work for the
pennies they payher
what they sayher
labor is worth
like her great great grandmothers worth
based on her capacity to birth
more cotton pickin machines
this system don't see Tracy as a human been
but as potential profit

--This poem was read by Samantha Liapes at the rally. Samantha is an organizer for Bay Area PoliceWatch.

But try telling that to this crowd -- the hundreds of folks who've come to Frank Ogawa Plaza in Oakland, protesting the construction of what may become one of the largest juvenile detention centers in the nation. Organized by Books Not Bars and the Youth Force Coalition, this "Summer Jam to Stop the SuperJail" is the biggest public gathering for the campaign thus far.

Alameda County officials have been pushing for two years to build a massive "Juvenile Complex" to replace its present 330-bed juvenile hall. The proposed structure would be the largest per-capita juvenile detention center in the country and may house 450 beds. It would be larger than the juvenile halls in Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Las Vegas, the largest of which has only 112 beds.

Officials argue that the old juvenile detention center is overcrowded and structurally dangerous, as it was built on an earthquake fault line. While activists agree that a new detention center needs to be built, the proposed scale seems like a wasteful way to spend money and social resources. It also has people worried that more beds will mean more arrests.

In the last decade, the juvenile crime rates have dropped consistently in the Bay Area. In a region desperate for more spending on education and social services, one might question using $131 million of public funds on a huge detention center.

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