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There are many ways to honor South African civil rights leader Nelson Mandela, on his United Nations designated day, July 18.
Nelson Mandela not only advocated for opportunity and equality for all, he also sought to heal the many wounds his country had suffered in its decades of apartheid. “Separate, but equal” was as unequal and oppressive in South Africa as it was in the U.S.
When South Africans began advocating for equal rights under the law, they were incarcerated en masse. The civil rights movement in the United States also led to mass incarceration, a policy that continues to have a disproportionate impact on people of color, the poor, the unhoused and the ill.
Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison prior to becoming president of South Africa. Perhaps it was that time that led him to see with his heart and to recognize that “no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.”
We honor Nelson Mandela when we act to ensure the humane treatment of those held in prisons and jails, and we have much work to do.
The United States has been criticized by a United Nations human rights expert for “dehumanizing conditions of detention, routinely used by U.S. correctional facilities.” To reverse this situation, we must first recognize that they exist and then work actively to change them.
That is our challenge on July 18, Nelson Mandela Day.
Jan M. Collins, assistant director, Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition
Wilton
