The Third Sunday In May Is Virginia Prisoners Day

As we at VAPAC [Virginia Prisons Accountability Committee] continue the work of holding the Virginia prison official accountable it is necessary it is established that the prisoner as narrative exist independent of that colloquial supposition, which the petty tyranny of the above the law attitude of a faction of Virginia politics exploits. The Virginia Prisoners Day is a principle declaring that the Virginia prisoner is not a scape goat, a distraction and diversion to be blamed for Virginia's historic and systemic injustices. 

For This 2023, May The 21st Inaugural Virginia Prisoners Day: We State

The Commonwealth of Virginia historically has had a schizophrenic cognizance of human life. See the Virginia Thomas Jefferson's pronouncements in the United States declaration of Independence, "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......" even as he held enslaved hundreds of black men and women in direct contravention of his pronouncements. even as he serially raped the enslaved Sally Hemmings whom he deprived of her created equality, endowed unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

On April 17th 1861; Virginia became the 8th state whose political-economic needs and wants were structured on enslaving human beings, specifically black men and women to declare war against the united states in pursuit of its practice of enslaving human beings, a pursuit that violated the all men are created equal dicta. Again on the Virginian Thomas Jefferson imploring the witness of a "candid world" in the declaration of Independence even as he prejudiced the "candid world" by the enslavement of millions of black people.

Again in 1871, the Commonwealth of Virginia despite the repudiation of the contradiction of Dred Scott in blood and Catholic perdition of the civil war and despite the emergence of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution still pursued its rabid intoxication with enslaving human beings if not as the former social fact it would under the travesty of law and order. So in November 1871 we find the Supreme Court of Virginia dementedly declaring in the case Ruffin v. Commonwealth 62 VA. 790

"The Bill of Rights is a declaration of general principles to govern a society of freeman, and not of convicted felons and civily dead. Such men have some rights it is true, such as the law in its benignity accords to them, but not the rights of freemen. They are slaves of the state undergoing punishment for heinous crimes committed against the laws of the land. While in this state of penal servitude, they must be subject to the regulations of the institutions of which they are inmates, and the laws of the state to whom their service is due in expiation of their crimes."

What the 1871 Supreme Court of Virginia revealed is that continuum of schizophrenic cognizance of what is the Virginia prisoner we see displayed since 2021, for example by Harold Clarke Director of the Virginia Department of Corrections with his 54%  of Virginia prisoners would violently re-offend were they released       A declaration that remains unchallenged by Virginia's media.

As we mark May 21, 2023 as Virginia Prisoners Day we ask all life loving persons to join in underscoring the fact: As a society we are not redeemed when the prison official is unaccountable and above the law;

#VaPrisonersDay #MayVAThirdSunday

In Strength and Solidarity We Stand

vapac