Haunted House USA

Posted on by J. Nelson

Word of the day: PALIMPSEST
pal·imp·sest
noun
noun: palimpsest; plural noun: palimpsests
• something reused or altered still bearing visible traces of its earlier form.
• a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain.

“Whites Only” and other racist palimpsests endure throughout America.

Rich Frishman’s photography can be both meditative and empowering. Meditative, because it inspires self-examination, and empowering, because it’s created to show and tell.

Frishman’s Ghosts of Segregation project offers us a contemplative and quiet study of America’s racist past, a practical exhibition of photographic evidence in which images are captioned most poignantly by their place in history. It’s also an incredibly useful, “when they go low, you go high” answer for when you’ve taken the bait of that family bigot or folks activated by the politics of ethno-nationalism (formerly known as “old friends”).

Personally, I want Ghosts of Segregation open on my laptop whenever I’m rejecting “woke” as an insult, explaining equity vs. equality, and discussing the difference between canceled and accountability. Not as some sort of a mic drop though; more like finding a common emotional truth. These powerful palimpsests can’t help but force a needed pause in such an exchange ––and could even offer an escalator up.

See what you think:

Ghosts of Segregation

SLAVE EXCHANGE – NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA – PHOTOGRAPHED: 2019
The enigmatic inscription “change,” floating above Chartres Street in New Orleans’ French Quarter, largely goes unnoticed. It is the vestige of the sign over the St. Louis Hotel Slave Exchange. The luxurious hotel included a bank, ballroom, shopping arcade and trading exchange. Six days each week from 1838-1862, under the hotel’s domed rotunda, auctioneers sold off land and goods as well as thousands of enslaved people.
REDLINING WALL – DETROIT, MICHIGAN – PHOTOGRAPHED: 2018
When the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) was founded in 1934, the process of “redlining,” the act of denying loans and financial services to black neighborhoods while granting them for white neighborhoods, was codified. The Detroit neighborhood of Wyoming was a redlined black neighborhood for nearly a decade until the early 1940s, when developers wanted to build a white development in the area. They were denied by the FHA because their plan placed the white neighborhood “too close” to the black neighborhood. Thinking quickly, the developers responded by building a half-mile long wall directly between Mendota Street and Birwood Avenue for a full three blocks. This was enough to be given the nod of approval from the U.S. government. The wall, now known as 8 Mile Wall, was the official racial divider for over 20 years, until the Fair Housing Act supposedly abolished such racist policies in 1968.
NEGRO LEAGUE STADIUM – HAMTRAMCK, MICHIGAN – PHOTOGRAPHED: 2019
Built in 1930, Hamtramck Stadium was home to the Negro National League Detroit Stars in 1930-1931 and again in 1933. The field was also home to the Detroit Wolves of the Negro East-West League in 1932, and to the Negro American League Detroit Stars in 1937.

Visit:

Ghosts of Segregation

Opening Day Privilege

Posted on by J. Nelson

My grandfather was hired by Gene Autry in 1961 to engineer-produce radio broadcasts for the Los Angeles Angels. The privilege of his world was easy to see, even as a kid.

I remember many drives out to Angel Stadium: my mom, my dad, my brother and I. We usually left the car a drunk-crawl away from the entrance turnstiles, but once or twice we’d get directed to spaces “far away,” like 20 or so cars further than our usual guest spot.

We, too, entered the stadium through the turnstiles but soon left the public promenade through a hip-high gate that was opened for us. I remember climbing exterior stairs and avoiding golf carts down a wide corridor, then going up more stairs. Finally we’d reach press-box row, which was constructed almost entirely of steel.

Whichever grown-ups were leading the way –my dad, grandparents, uncles or “friends”– niceties were exchanged with familiar employees, including the middle-aged woman who usually guarded the boxes and who made cheery eye contact with everyone. Then we’d follow that lady down a wonderfully curved hallway, under what seemed like countless fluorescent light tubes. Mini-skirted cocktail waitresses streamed in and out of doors, carefully eyeballing their drink trays and backing against the cold steel as we passed. The rising and falling, roaring angry joy of the crowd was, of course, the acoustic backdrop for this journey.

Insider associations with Major League Baseball had much more cultural cachet back then than they do today: they were less political, but more powerful for it. Every now and then when we walked through that middle door, former President Nixon, Nolan Ryan, or some other luminary would be in there and we’d be told not to point or talk. Foul balls were the only exception to red light rule, since they’d fire right into the unprotected box and nail the back wall. My grandfather would be sitting next to announcers Dick Enberg and former Dodgers pitcher Don Drysdale, the only one in the room tall enough to flinch when those fouls came in. 

With his patent leather shoes and cardigan sweaters, my grandfather often appeared as though he’d just come from a golf course lunch or NASA briefing. I never once saw that man sweaty, sloppy, or demanding. Fans in the stands dressed like fans, but we dressed like for church or for the airport.

I revisit these memories each Opening Day (or during the first hour of “Casino“). To me, the very best times were when we accompanied my grandmother to say goodbye when my grandfather was boarding the bus with the team to hit the road. It was always late at night, right outside the Disneyland Hotel, and the whole club would be there, along with the player’s wives and kids. Talk about a hug fest.

My privilege was in being free to enjoy the unity I saw there for what it was, without being branded by the cultural significance of those memories to the point of relying on an imperfect era to define the way the world should be.

When I’d finally grown old enough to sit in the dugout, my honor came the day I exchanged hellos with Reggie Jackson, Rod Carew, Don Baylor and Brian Downing during what is considered to be the best Opening Day lineup in Angels history. 

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In Each Other’s Shoes

Posted on by J. Nelson

Walking in each other’s shoes is not about how you would feel dealing with their circumstances. It’s about seeing how the other person feels dealing with their own circumstances.

Inmates and guards betray their respective roles more often than one might imagine, and more often than custody comportment will allow either to admit.

In fact, even aside from 12-step support stuff, so-called emotional safes zones do exist on maximum security prison yards. They feel as odd as they are accidental, and God help the fool who utters a phrase like “emotional safe zone” out loud.

Capitalizing on this all too human need to be heard and understood is a program modeled on the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, which places college students in classrooms with inmates for semester-long, full-credit courses. Today more than 150 institutions of higher education have successfully sponsored courses in more than 200 correctional institutions. Even more notable, since 2016, Police Training Inside-Out (PTI-O) has been explored as a way to better train cops. 

A partnership between Duquesne University (and founder Norman Conti), the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police, and the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, PTI-O was designed to bring cadets and cons together once a week in an academic seminar held behind prison walls. The idea was to supplement traditional police academy training with a way for law enforcement officers to develop a more nuanced professional vision than “us versus them.” Based on the depth of the interaction, a similar mindset shift is expected to occur among participating inmates as well.

During my own incarceration, one particular Corrections Officer worked our unit’s lonely “lights out shift” quite frequently. He was a schlub who basically listened to the fellas snore, pray, and turn the pages of books. The warning about him went, “Pretend you’re asleep when Officer X does his rounds: that dude’ll talk your ear off.”

Guys shuffling to and from the toilets during the night would report his conversations with various inmates, but it was less a matter of, “What’s that rat-snitch blabbing to the badge about?” and more, “Ha! That dummy forgot to tip-toe!” I was that dummy once or twice myself. Returning from the can, I’d been waved over to his desk, only to endure mindless blather about his crappy vacation or doc-ordered dietary changes.

And this guy wasn’t alone. I encountered or heard about several prison guards who took psychic hostages this way, though most of us were at least begrudgingly charitable. They’d roll their eyes when we talked about our big post-custody plans, and we’d roll our eyes when they trotted out the obligatory (though likely part-true): “Believe me: I could just as well have wound up in your shoes.” Never mind the similarities of our breathing the same prison air, burying much of the same PTSD, or the burdens of secrets and stereotypes.

There was relief and humanity found in such truces, and I know many of the men on both sides of those exchanges felt it. Sometimes those fleeting moments –mundane as they may have been– were even slightly charming. But the very best were the exchanges in which we got into each other’s heads just a little, and then disclosed our findings.

For a few days I repeatedly dropped, “The sergeant with the missing finger told me how he lost it!” I hadn’t been the only person he told, but for a minute I proudly thought otherwise.

A typical PTI-O class puts police and inmates in small groups, discussing questions like: “What are prisons for?”; “Why do people commit crimes?”; “What are some things that prisons do well/poorly?”; and “What would you say to the assertion that prisons are now our country’s principal government program for the poor?”

Conti, the program’s founder, says he still deals with reluctance on both sides. To get them to sign up, some inmates have to be reminded that it’s better for their communities back home to deal with a cop who knows how to do more than divide the world into “citizens” and “predators.”

On all fronts, the police training version of Inside-Out represents cutting edge criminal justice reform and offers a true hand in reversing mass incarceration. It validates a small but valuable prison souvenir/takeaway of my own: “Sometimes you have to get in the box to think outside of it.”

Check out Officer Training Behind Prison Walls to learn more about how the program works. Maybe bring it up to cop you know and see if they roll their eyes.

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YOU ARE CHUCK STONE.

Posted on by J. Nelson

A disturbed man is waiting for you on line two. The person who answered was told that your office’s best people won’t do; it’s you, or it’s nobody.

The caller refuses to reveal his location. He’s tired, alternately weeping and cursing. He can’t run anymore. It was self-defense, he insists, the murder he’s suspected of committing. In police hands, he knows he’s in for beatings and probably death.

Terrific. You’ve got enough hassles. Hell, down the hall, above the restrooms, the words “COLORED” and “WHITE” live under scant few of coats of paint, and you remember when the first had been applied. In an all white newsroom, you stick out enough.

Explicit racial segregation may have been recently outlawed, but implicit segregation is everywhere. While your colleagues don’t openly question why you’d been given the job, it’s clear many of them don’t want you to lose sight of their doubts.

You’re one of maybe three black journalists in America working for a major metropolitan newspaper –white owned, of course– and your next story is being personally handed to you. No competing for the lead. No hunting down witnesses for lengthy interviews, no knocking on doors and being told to get lost.

On the other hand, agreeing to take this call will put you in the path of 20 seething beat cops, each one rattling the starting gate for a run at your new friend. And controlling the narrative of an apprehension is one thing law enforcement officers hate the most. No way will your intrusion be easily be forgotten.

Well, let ’em remember.

You’ve got this.

You are Chuck Stone.

Your place in journalism and in the media has been controversial long before now. As the former editor of the black-owned newspaper, New York Age, you once put a white dude on staff, gave him a page-one column, and let him fend for himself in your newsroom. 

The obstacles you’ve overcome and the powerful agendas you’ve battled have prepared you to take the news as it comes, without compromise. Remember how you were once fired as editor-in-chief of the Chicago Daily Defender for refusing to back off of Chicago’s “Boss,” the infamous Mayor Richard Daley?

You’d been right on the heels of this “committed white supremacist,” a public official who said to a sitting US Senator without blinking an eye, “Fuck you, you Jew son-of-a-bitch, you lousy motherfucker – go home.”* As the Senator addressed the 1968 Democratic National Convention, uttering things Daley didn’t want heard, the Boss drew a finger in a slicing motion over his throat signaling to cut the Senator’s microphone. You, Chuck Stone, stuck with the story. You had to be thrown out before you’d be intimidated into leaving.

Hell of a time in America then, eh? Hmph…Hell of a time now.

And you didn’t attack Daley’s leg-breaker public persona: you stayed focused on what he was doing while no one was looking, like playing dumb about a long-running Chicago Police torture ring. Or diverting millions in city funds to a firm that employed his son. “If a man can’t put his arms around his sons and help them,” was Daley’s retort, “what’s the world coming to?” 

For pushing for change; for what and who you chose to tackle in print; for standing up to men like Daley; and for your friendships with Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Stokely Carmichael you were labeled “the angry man of the Negro press.” It was a nickname you brushed aside before entering electoral politics yourself, rolling up your sleeves as a special assistant for Congressman Clayton Powell Jr. Your time on The Hill was short-lived, but that may have been for the best given Powell’s controversial trajectory.

And either way you, Chuck Stone, were just getting started. Many of your articles would soon be published under the title, “Tell It Like It Is.” Shortly after that came Black Political Power in America, a spotlight on black exclusion from government jobs, policy-making, and essentially any position within which jobs could be created or dispensed.

You took on what you called “the testing mafia” as well, arguing that SATs and ACTs are virtually pointless since, “in an unequal society, standardized test scores only reflect inequality.” If that wasn’t enough (and because you are Chuck Stone), you founded the Cambridge-based National Center for Fair and Open Testing. Finally, you became the Philadelphia Daily News’s first black columnist, which is the desk your fugitive has just demanded. 

So those 20 plus street cops waiting to pounce can just keep on sitting tight until you’re ready. You will first meet secretly with the murder suspect on the phone. You will calm him down and prepare him. You will take pictures of his face from multiple angles, just in case the police decide to go to town on it. 

It isn’t your first time at their rodeo, no sir. At this point, this is maybe the 75th African-American fugitive suspect to call you.

And why? Because you can handle walking into dark rooms with fearful, desperate men  – murderers in most instances –  and still maintain professional equilibrium. You’re known for snapping pre-surrender mug shots, collecting details the cops will have to wait for. What are your thoughts when you do this? Are you mentally back at your desk, drafting invective for alternately thuggish and fatally bumbling Philadelphia mayors, Frank “The General” Rizzo and Wilson Goode? (They were desperate men too – desperate to get away from you!)

Your writing is informative, scathing, funny, and even safe for kids. (A children’s book?) Newsroom doubters and biggots may think you’re an ornament, another bow-tied militant ready to take on Whitey. But they wish they could come up with zingers like yours.

And you, Chuck Stone, are not one of those people to climb a ladder only to pull it up behind him. You taught students to do what you do, though perhaps less controversially. You became an English professor at the University of Delaware. And leave it to you to win the city’s Excellence in Teaching award, then go to earn another just like it from North Carolina’s School of Journalism.

Did I mention your days in Tuskegee, Alabama during World War II? You were a Tuskegee Red Tail navigator. You were also a husband and a father of three. You were a White House correspondent and editor of the Washington Afro-American. You were an NBC-TV news commentator for the Today show, and before that a distributor of food and farm equipment to forgotten farmers in Egypt and India. You invented “Stone’s Index of Proportional Equality,” a tool used to measure an ethnic group’s percentage in the population against its percentage of elected officials.

And all the while, you’ve been exposing police brutality, corrupt college placement, political heavies and their goons…and you still aren’t satisfied! You’re Chuck Stone, and you don’t let your bow-tie or flat-top fool anyone, not even the inmates at Pennsylvania’s Graterford Prison, who’ve just taken 39 hostages under the leadership of Joe-Joe Bowen, a man who, while at his last penitentiary, stabbed to death the Deputy Warden and then did the same thing to the Warden.

You think little of walking into such a “riot-torn hellhole” to square off with Joe-Joe, the hostage-taker with the shotgun. Was your mind still calmly back on the papers you had to grade when they told you Bowen had shot an elderly couple, killed a cop, and could kill you?

Whatever it was, you helped negotiate to free the Graterford hostages, then worked a deal for the Bowen gang’s surrender. Pennsylvania’s governor himself asked for you. He’d been told that anyone agreeing to meet with Bowen couldn’t be some plain-clothed cop or corrections mediator; it would have to be the real deal. It would have to be Chuck Stone, the black journalist known as “the surrender middleman.”

Negotiations ended with Bowen telling you, “Everything here is cool,” and it was. You probably thought Joe-Joe was a cupcake compared to Mayor Daley. And you robbed the guards of possible reprisals by maneuvering Bowen’s transfer from state to federal custody.

You died almost seven years ago now, but you lived an incredible life, always finding opportunities, promoting equity, outliving doubters, and speaking truth to men of power at every step of your career.

Today, your legacy is the push for media diversity and rests at the National Association of Black Journalists, the institution you served as founding President.

Whoever’s up next to speak to the fugitive on line two, we can only hope he’ll live up to your standards. (Literally, the ones you called “FEAT” for Fairness, Even-Handedness, Accuracy and Thoroughness.)

Charles “Chuck” Stone, Jr., you were a true first responder to fires set by arsonists hoping to burn facts and build false narratives. I wish you were here today. 

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* Allegedly said to Senator Abe Ribicoff of Connecticut, when the Senator challenged Daley’s use of force during the ’68 DNC  (Source: Wikiquote)

 

The L.A.County Men’s Central Jail: Day Zero

Posted on by J. Nelson

The on again, off again initiative toward bulldozing this municipal black site might finally be realized.

In 2014, when the LA County Board of Supervisors turned their attention back to the city’s contemptible Men’s Central Jail (MCJ), demolishing it was a given. A civic corner had been turned, taking all plans to update and expand the existing structure off the table. There could be no escaping the curse of a bloodthirsty culture of deputy-on-inmate violence that lived deep in the building’s bones: the miserable concrete labyrinth had to come down.

Yawn.
The lockup built in 1962, and often referred to as “the old side,” continues to rot in place. Former Sheriff Lee Baca has since been convicted, but the facility itself is still overseen by the Custody Operations Division as atrociously as ever. Equally troubled Alex Villanueva likely runs it with as much “Us vs. Them” spite than during my own 10-month stay as a pre-trial prisoner under then-Sheriff Sherman Block (at the time America’s highest paid public official).

But as Americans rethink their positions on criminal justice, LA’s Men’s Central Jail should be seen as both worst-case and day zero.

First, the worst.
Secrecy has long permeated the ranks of LA Sheriff’s Brass and enshrouds MCJ. It’s such an organizationally controlled fortress, only touring an aircraft carrier can compare. Murals, tributes, trophy cases, banners, badges, and memorials force feed visitors law enforcement martyrdom to the point where one can’t sense how much it’s all spinning until reunited with fresh air and sunlight. 

The Department has managed for decades a kind of denial sleight-of-hand involving its budgets, bad apples, excessive force settlements, corruption scandals, secret deputy gangs, and a conveyor belt of civil rights violations and allegations of misconduct. There’s always an excuse as to why it’s “not the right time” to close MCJ’s old side, hold the LASD accountable, or discuss ways to reduce corruption, even as 539 of 606 lawsuits against the city in fiscal year 2018-19 were filed against the Sheriff’s Department alone. (And to the tune of $81.5 million). In the end, this shell game of postures and pushback has prolonged the life of their beloved Men’s Central Fight Club.

• Department Leaders had a lax attitude towards deputy aggression and discouraged deputy discipline
• Department was aware of deputy cliques present at MCJ and known to high level management as far back as 2004
• The Sheriff allowed his Undersheriff and Assistant Sheriff to run the Custody Division without effective oversight
• Deputies Have Enabled Inmates to Use Force Against Other Inmates
• Witnesses have told the Commission that deputies enabled inmates to attack other rival inmates by opening the doors to several cells at once, which inmates refer to as “racking the gates.”
• The Commission also heard about deputies who have intentionally placed inmates in dangerous situations, such as placing high-security inmates in the general population and announcing their crimes to the other inmates.

In the current climate, the future for reform looks a bit brighter. Still, it’s unclear what will actually become of MCJ. Zócalo’s Joe Matthews makes a case for keeping the old dungeon around, perhaps as a museum of mass incarceration or a center for democratic principles in action. “To tear down Men’s Central Jail would be to risk forgetting what the place has meant, and to miss a historic opportunity to turn this torture chamber into a vital center for California’s future,” he writes. Conversely, there is an optimistic view among many Angelenos that the very act of destroying MCJ could usher in a new era of transparency for the historically corrupt Sheriff’s Department. Perhaps by reclaiming the vital downtown real estate MCJ occupies, the thinking goes, the LASD can be shaken of its worst impulses and elements, allowing its more reform-hungry and youthful professionals to elbow their way to the fore.

At minimum, the County Supervisors voted last year to cancel a $1.7 billion expansion of the facility into a Supermax on steroids. That little project–– now thankfully also off the table–– was being referred to as the “mental health jail” (talk about a jinx). Sights are now set on a sprawling campus of support housing, drug diversion and reentry programing, and the critical mental health and addiction recovery services that would comprise a true Restorative Justice Village.

Phase One was approved in September and includes the Vignes Project, aka “Hope Village,” a predominantly CARES Act-funded $48-million bridge housing facility artfully made of shipping containers. Planned for rapid construction in MCJ’s industrial backyard, the idea is to begin diverting the city’s growing homeless population away from incarceration, where it’s 60-100% more expensive to detain those with mental health or substance use disorders. A second Chinatown property once intended for MCJ parking is also slated for an affordable or supportive housing development. As part of the LA Board of Supervisors’ new “care first, jail last” policy, Hope Village may someday swallow the LASD complex altogether.

So could MCJ, the “The Abu Ghraib of Los Angeles,” home of the heroin burrito, be swapped out for a recovery university and support shelter?

Ha! It’s better than the idea I had back in 2014, when I proposed that the whole karmic Superfund site be turned into a mall. Hey, I’m optimistic too, but with how little we thought of criminal justice reform, disenfranchised and forgotten citizens, immigrants, and any further legwork to achieve racial justice, a custody-themed Cellblock Shopping Town is what I thought we deserved.

It still will be if we ––and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors–– let this chance to turn a corner pass us by.

For a historical perspective on the LASD’s excessive use-of-force in its jails and failure to discipline rogue officers, check out: L.A. County Sheriff’s Department: A Report by Special Counsel James G. Kolts & staff, 1992 –– and this Los Angeles Times Story Gallery

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Nursing Covid-19 in Prison

Posted on by J. Nelson

Couldn’t care less about “criminal scum”? Then how about one of your heroes – of the frontline healthcare variety?

Among the key findings in a September 2020 report from The Council on Criminal Justice is that COVID-19 infection rates for inmates are four times higher than for the general public. Mortality rates are double. As of last summer, prisons in America accounted for 19 of the top 20 clusters of confirmed Coronavirus cases in the United States.

For real time California numbers, check out the Los Angeles Times’ Coronavirus tracker, currently providing updates of cumulative cases, new cases, and deaths by day.

As one who envisions the redirection of adult offenders rather than the mere recycling of them, I urge you to absorb the statistics, detention hotspots, and death counts while imagining the heart and hope that is suspended amidst the ongoing disqualification of those in custody.

The world is a place where nothing is guaranteed, clearly. But since prison is a smaller, simpler microcosm of society, the loss of goal-oriented trajectories, guidance, and rewards in custody is intensified. For many prisoners and detainees with hampered coping skills and emotional and self-management challenges, there are little or no real diversions as exist elsewhere. Coronavirus kills these aspirational programs even quicker than people as infection safeguards are enacted.

Adding insult to injury is what I call bonus justice, by which the incarcerated are treated as eligible for additional hardship and dismay just because, “You’re here, aren’t you?”

But maybe you see the incarcerated as “criminal scum,” and these things don’t offend your humanity. Fine. How ’bout healthcare workers? You like frontline heroes? Think they’re worth something? Then let’s talk about a prison nurse, one who’s been a friend of mine for years.

This particular nurse earned her credentials with the tenacity and dedication of an astronaut in training. I remember her long hours and that pain-in-the-ass car in which her commute was endured. I was surprised when she announced just over a year ago that she’d accepted a nursing position in a men’s prison, and I admire her for putting need above judgment.

At present, my friend is facing the risk of COVID-19 transmission every single day, and she does so in an atmosphere of fiercely elevated environmental, personal, and psychological vigilance. The emotional and cognitive burden she carries would simply snap many of the rest of us — and that’s without Coronavirus-related fears. Prison is a minefield of rules to remember, and protocols are substituted as abruptly as security requires. Sure, my friend can leave each night, but she’s no less subjected to the righteousness of an amped-up military chain-of-command than are the badges and bad guys. How “at home” could she be with barbed wire, gate buzzers and barking men in her head?

Additionally, as citizens, we use our values and principles to judge each other, with courtesy and manners acting as referees. On the prison yard, philosophies and integrity just square off. In the aftermath, it’s up to whoever’s left standing to pester someone behind a fortified walk-up window for a band-aid. Meanwhile the dread and the aggressive energy of gang ideation never lets up. The cartoonish yet unfunny macho posturing is woven into her work-language, as are minute-to-minute suspicions and charity-killing levels of bureaucracy.

On an average day, this is just some of what my nurse friend has to shake off during her (long) drives home. Now she has the danger of bringing COVID home with her, too. How many of these tensions have morphed, I wonder, into corrosive strains of their own by the time she pulls into the driveway?

There have been 139 reported Coronavirus deaths among prison staff, but since testing information is sporadic and not all states release info on prison employees tested for COVID-19 – these critical frontline workers are forced to speculate, trade rumors, and hope they’re being given the straight story. In that way, at least, they’re just like inmates they serve.

“The nurses are so behind because there are soo many medical emergencies,”

UPDATE:

Los Angeles Times front page – January 13th, 2021:
“The nurses are so behind because there are soo many medical emergencies…”


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“Freedom” 2020 Excuse of the Year

Posted on by J. Nelson

Of all the con jobs we’ve witnessed this year, “freedom,” as both a behavioral exemption and grounds for radicalization, is by far the most repulsive.

From rationalizing hysterical self-centeredness to racism, betrayal, co-signing cowardice, gas-lighting, and willful ignorance, 2020 offered too many candidates for this decision to have come easily.

Oceans of petulant finger-pointers, neo-Nazis, and applauders of malice (on both sides) gave us a perfect storm; a Category 5 from which Americans sought moral shelter in those crude dwellings of justification. Welcome to the shantytown.

Which shack appeared the least structurally sound? Or so went my criteria, until the examples of our taking freedom for granted simply flooded the competition. Take this one, for instance:

The Uniformed Firefighters Association (UFA) survey of 2,000 members of the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) showed that 55% of participants said they would not bother to get inoculated.

ABC News – 12/7/2020

Call me crazy, but don’t NYC’s first responders have arguably the best health care options in the United States? Isn’t their not wanting “to be looked at as test subjects” just a tad spoiled? How is this not like Trump refusing to wear a mask with the assurance of top-notch medical treatment?

“As a union,” says Andrew Ansbro, president of the UFA, “we are defending the right to make that choice.” Defending it from what, suspicion? Responsibility? This is the heroism we’re constantly told to revere?

Elsewhere, California governor Gavin Newsom and other suits – whose failures to practice Coronavirus safety protocols seemingly put them above their own decrees – have the “freedom” to be two-faced while they kiss my ass.

Likewise, the “freedom” not to wear a mask despite their proven ability to help protect others from our personal respiratory exhaust is not self-government. It’s a selfish distortion of independence.

Refusing to refer to Joe Biden & Kamala Harris as “President and Vice President Elect” is the “freedom” to show disdain for leadership and professionalism. It’s choosing to exhibit bad sportsmanship before the eyes of young people. It leaves adherents in the self-righteous and phony position of telling others to respect them and their institutions rather than demonstrating why.

I myself am a fan of comedians Doug Stanhope and Dave Chappelle, but both could stand to realize that “freedom” from the boogeyman of political correctness isn’t found in belittling gender identity. Instead of re-purposing “faggot” as a comedic garnish could you maybe free your progressive audience from second guessing you?

Showing hatred toward those of different cultures or expressing immigrant xenophobia ––and calling it patriotism–– is “freedom” as well. So is beating your dog with a stick and calling it “correcting”.

Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old charged with shooting and killing two people during a civil disturbance in Wisconsin (itself the exercise of varying degrees of “freedom”), went looking for a fight, yet some call him a patriot for allegedly defending the “freedom” of entitled others. Either way, Rittenhouse’s own “freedom” will likely go as far as OJ Simpson’s, in that he’ll never be anything other than a murderer too young to legally purchase a gun, who traded a trigger for his own narrative.

As 2020 drags to a close, it’s high time we drop “freedom” from the all-time American short list of excuses for bad behavior. In too many ways, we’ve already lost the “freedom” of a last laugh.

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COVID-19 FATIGUE LICENSES Sold Here…

Posted on by J. Nelson

Are you grinding your teeth due to Coronavirus-related stress? COVID-19 FATIGUE is real. And so is your self-respect.

REGISTER NOW FOR A COVID-19 FATIGUE LICENSE

Are you:
•      traumatized by supermarket hostilities?
•      upset at new-fangled telecommunications?
•      disappointed over lost vacations?
•      triggered by eyewear fog?

Health Medical Groups nationwide now recognize COVID-19 FATIGUE syndrome as a debilitating condition on par with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and other serious conditions such as Backward Retention and Panic Swirl. 

The American Oral League says the coronavirus pandemic is causing “an epidemic of jaw pain” due to “New Normals” compelling Americans to adapt to high-handed procedures despite their better judgment – and at levels never before seen in a “free” country!

Treatment for COVID-19 FATIGUE may include counseling, medications such as antidepressants, and lobotomy. But now, for just two easy payments of $169.99, YOU can get your certified COVID-19 FATIGUE LICENSE right away! 

SCIENTISTS CLAIM THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC IS PROOF THAT HUMAN HABITATION HAS DESTABILIZED ECOLOGICAL BOUNDARIES, LOOSENING EARTH’S GRIP ON DISEASES WORLDWIDE. DON’T LET SOME GROCERY STORE CLERK BLAME THE EXISTENTIAL THREAT OF OUR TIME ON YOU!

If you are:
•      dismayed at closed sports-bars and movie theaters,
•      angry at having to teach your child math, or
•      sick of waiting in lines…

…this is the card to play!

Your anxiety over washing hands, wearing masks, and maintaining physical distance can now be recognized as the debilitating, psychosocial illness it is. Just present your COVID-19 FATIGUE LICENSE in casinos, airports, post offices, gas stations, and many more places of business! 

Finally, you can carry identifying documentation that designates YOU as a sufferer of COVID-19 FATIGUE, the symptoms of which are recognized by medical professionals and government authorities around the world. 

Your COVID-19 LICENSE will allow you the freedom to be recognized
– NO MATTER WHERE YOU GO.

REGISTER NOW!

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Tarra Simmons, Modern America’s First Ex-con Elected Official

Posted on by J. Nelson

The future is…second chances.

The emergence of the United States’ first formerly incarcerated member of a state legislature defies the conventionally held view that ex-cons can’t become elected officials. 

And when I say, “conventionally held,” I’m referring to the one, two, and three people covered by the fact that one in three American adults has a criminal record, according to the FBI. And if 30% of adults have a criminal record, just about every American is likely familiar with the hard truths, impressions, and clichés of mass incarceration*.

Yet almost all of us believe that people with records are permanently disqualified from post-conviction opportunities. Former inmate Tarra Simmons is a reminder to check that belief.

And sure, there have been a number of other cases where ex-cons have successfully sought office. The difference is, those stories usually involve a privileged, corrupt suit who wants back in the game. Simmons is anything but. She did time for drug delivery, sales, and firearm possession. Then she attended Seattle University School of Law, graduating with honors in 2017.

When the Washington State Bar Association voted against admitting Tarra Simmons, a former bank-robber-turned-lawyer, Shon Hopwood, brought her fight to the State Supreme Court – and won. By mid- 2018, Simmons had been sworn in as an attorney. 

Although she had no political aspirations prior to 2019, Simmons ran as a Democrat this year in an effort to “give people a first chance, so they won’t need a second chance later on in life.”

You might say she was provoked. With some encouragement, she announced her candidacy for a seat in Washington’s 23rd Legislative District after Republicans gave her state bar victory the Willie Horton treatment: a snail-mail attack used in a state Senate race called Simmons a “drug addicted ex-con.” 

She just took her district by 63.32% of the vote.

But no more spoilers. Simmons’s story is a fun, inspired tapestry. You’ll be hearing about her a lot in the coming years, I suspect. After all, she has seen the future, and it looks like criminal justice reform.

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*Convicted or not, employment and other forms of discrimination are still a thing.

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STORMTRUMPERS

Posted on by J. Nelson

Truck Dicks are old news that’s been kicked upstairs.
As of this week, they’re no less than Shock Troops.

The armed Texas Trump Train that reportedly outnumbered police 50-1 while surrounding a Biden campaign bus on a Texas highway has received their leader’s eager endorsement. Drivers of giant pick-ups, particularly those with confrontational or tantrum-like adornments, will now be lumped in with political vultures who have essentially become a Storm Division.

The galloping neuroses of men in monster trucks has never been more conspicuous or weaponized.

Already at ease with their cartoonish potency, Truck Dicks have achieved hero status of the “stand back and stand by” variety. Also, they’re probably relieved to have found purpose for their Ford Platinum Super Duty F-350 MSRP of $87,110. What third wife is gonna nag her celtic-tattooed mid-lifer about that monthly $967 insurance/car payment combo while they’re leading the most American parade since the Lafayette Welcoming of 1824?

Yup. Trump’s magic wand again, the meatball stick waved over empty heads. POOF! Knighthood! 

Oh, I don’t mean every mega-truck owner is susceptible, but aren’t the cop groupies who yammer on about law enforcement (as though it were a life form) the easiest of Trump’s recruits? You know, the Dave & Buster’s dadbods whose rigs are too clean to be hauling America-building payloads like in the commercials?

I’m talking about the aging flat brimmers who mansplain about the bells ‘n whistles of doom survival. They swear that 700 pounds per foot of rear-wheel torque and a 40-gallon diesel gas tank are the only things standing between their families and any number of possible human extinction scenarios. Yeah, those 5’5″ fuckers whose flip flops dangle out the door when they fence-hop themselves into the cab.

Not so much guys with the shipyard cred: I mean the haters with the Heineken spread.

It’s almost as if Truck Dicks blossomed at the discovery that they’ve been driving Somali Technicals to Lowes and the bullet store. Their 18-guage steel tiger-cobra-rhino-dominators are now platforms for select historical celebrations, looter hunting, and ideological policing of all sorts. It doesn’t help with their child support payments, but hey, “blood purge.” USA! USA! USA!

If it weren’t for Donald Trump, some of these men might be relegated to the usual parking lot small-penis appraisals. But after ganging up on and endangering the passengers of an election campaign bus, who knows? There may be an Executive Order in their future, one mandating that “Intimidation Performance” be considered in the assessment of full-size pick-up resale value.

Here is our Where Excuses Go to Die screen-grab tribute to the men, trucks, and flags of MAGA enforcement.