Government

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Defends Paul Manafort On General Principles Of Humanity

Like AOC, I wouldn't wish Rikers on my worst enemy.

By  
on

Paul Manafort (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

I’ll admit that when I first saw the news that Paul Manafort was being transferred to Riker’s Island, I was afraid to speak out. I knew it was wrong. Riker’s Island is an outdated abomination that should be shut down. Nobody should be sent there. And, generally speaking, nobody should be sent to solitary confinement. Sending an old man, a non-violent offender, to solitary confinement is just wrong.

But Paul Manafort is an evil man who has benefited his whole life from his white privilege. Even his sentence was light, given the nature of his financial crimes, because he is white. Paul Manafort being sent to Riker’s is an injustice, but it’s not a greater injustice than what happens to all the other people sent to Riker’s and all the other black and brown people whose names I don’t even know sitting in the hole right now. Stanning for Manafort felt like intellectual consistency at the expense of racial hypocrisy, and I just wasn’t willing to take any heat in his defense.

Which is as good an explanation as any for why I am me and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should be President someday.

She’s absolutely right. She’s absolutely right, and some liberal needed to say this, if for no other reason than to give cover to cowards like me to stand behind her and shout “yeah!”

Don’t get me wrong, when it comes to revenge, I have a bit of James Brown in me. I’m always looking for the big payback. You put Manafort in a kennel, and I’m as likely as not to react like Sansa Stark and just cooly walk away.

Sponsored

But the state should stop me. Stopping the individual thirst for vengeance is one of the essential functions of SOCIETY. It’s on goddamn page one of the social compact.

And Manafort isn’t even being held in isolation because he was a bad boy. As a high-profile prisoner, he’s being held in isolation to protect him. Our prison system, especially prisons like Riker’s, are so messed up that the state can’t even guarantee the safety of its wards without cutting them off from human interaction. That alone should stand as an indictment of our prison system and lead to immediate reforms.

Solitary confinement is state-sanctioned torture. It is entirely inappropriate for non-violent offenders, even for “their own protection.” It’s also inappropriate for probably all offenders, but I digress. The “punishment” of incarceration should be just that, incarceration. You don’t need to lard it up with beatings or rapes or being slowly driven mad because you have nobody to talk to. If Manafort can’t be “protected” at Riker’s then they need to find a prison where he can.

I hope the rest of Paul Manafort’s life is miserable. I do not wish for it to be sadistic. And if I did, I’d need the state to step in and stop it. AOC gets it. If the hole is wrong, it’s wrong for everybody, including people like Paul Manafort.

We need to close Riker’s and end solitary. It’s a far more important issue than whatever happens to Manafort.

Sponsored

Paul Manafort to Be Sent to Rikers, Where He Will Be Held in Isolation [New York Times]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

Topics

, , ,