So this was written Oct 22nd, and I'm finally typing it up. Sorry for the delay! Edited for spelling/grammar.
-Ruthie
Curtis Townsend, recovering meth-head, and survivor of the police brutality lottery: His grand earnings after medical expenses and attorney fees weighed in at just under $54,000. Although less than the amount a typical American family will take home annually, for Curtis, this amount was enough to change his world.
Despite the facial scars, old age, and near eye crows feet, when Curtis smiles he more closely resembles a 20 year old virgin than a 40 year old father of two. The night he was apprehended he was tazed three times while handcuffed lying face down on the ground. After his arrest, it took an hour and a half to arrive at the hospital--but when he did finally arrive, carrying the artifacts of his beating, the emergency room medical staff were nauseated by the sight of his swelling, bruising and bleeding. Still, Curtis deems the facial scarring minimal, considering that when he arrived at the E.R. his face was smashed in so god damn far, that cranial fractures on his right side made it impossible to continue to hold on to his eyeball.
Locked up, the first thing Curtis did with his negligible prize winnings was to pay off the $20 grand still owed on the trailer his mom and kids live in. He then dropped another two thousand dollars on a down payment for his mom's fly new ride, and another grand on two brand new bicycles for his two kids to ride. With only four months remaining of his reduced 9 month sentence, he now tries to supply all of his friends on the inside with enough jail comforts to make their mutual time fly right by. Ramen noodles, honey-less honey buns, pre-stamped envelopes, and a pair of tube socks will do a number of wonders to a person's self-esteem while being forced to remain behind bars.
He will, without a doubt, spend well over half the amount that was awarded to him on his family and friends, and all before he leaves the pen. Down to his last dollar, he will still shine his surprisingly white-toothed smile, because as he sees it, with meth out of his life, he can finally be a father to his kids and avoid the horrendous and unneeded custody battles with his ex-wife. After all, it's never about the financial gain when someone actually survives the insurmountable odds within the state funded lottery of unjustifiable police brutality.
Can't Stop, Won't Stop
-Jayson
Monday, November 16, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
Seagulls 08-31-09
He is from Argentina. He's tall and very dark brown. Soil dark brown. He's six foot three or six foot four, but add in the bouncy monstrosity of his 'fro and you could then add on six inches or more. He weighs no more than 125 pounds and so his clothes sa off of him, more closely resembling window drapes. Throughout the length of his arm the thickest section is where his hands attach to his wrists. He is the epitome of what it means to be a human stick. When he walks around it most closely resembles a stringless dia de los muertos (calaca) puppet.
I know very little Spanish and he knows even less English, so when we talk it is very limited. The other inmates have come to call him "Seagull" because after each meal he hovers around the garbage can, with a large plastic cup in hand, he scoops everyone else's leftovers into it. For some reason the great majority of other inmates can't stand it.
The black inmates beat him to the garbage and the wait for him to get there. When he does, with exaggerated movements almost taunting him, they dump whats left of their meals instead of giving it to him.
The young Hispanics will accidentally drop their bread on the floor and then after recovering it will send one of their to deliver it. Sometimes the filth on the bread is still really obvious, but they'll hand it to Seagull with a sincere face of charity.
The group of older Hispanics always share portions of their beans and rice, but they never forget to add snot, spit and mucus before giving it. They will even have a friendly conversation in Spanish while doing it.
The whites of all ages, to no surprise, are by far the worst. They try to police the situation by complaining to the guard that its not fair that he gets more to eat. They loudly scoff, scold, insult and harrow him in a language he cannot understand but with a body language that is universally crystal clear.
I can't help but to feel that all of this is more than an exotic big bird being locked in a cage and fed scraps as a source of amusement. This isn't just ignorant cruelty, but intense and deep feelings of hate. I've tried to ask each group of inmates why they do this, and tehy are all quick to get aggressive and I am even quicker to go back to my form of self-protective silence. Sometimes I feel just as guilty for perpetuating this silence through my own silent passivity. How are we ever going to ever see that it is us the inmates, against them, the guards, if we can't even see each other as humans?
Even my use of the nickname Seagull really started bothering me, that is until I realized how anthropocentric I was being. I was viewing seagulls only as I was raised to see them. I was only seeing them as a scavenger of human trash but now I can see that calling the young Argentinian as a seagull is far from an insult and may be an accurate description,
Seagulls are forced to rummage through a city's trash only because cities have successfully ruined their original food sources. Industrial commercialized fishing has stolen most of the ocean's fish while hospitals, factories and refineries have polluted all the world's water. The ecosystems of beaches have become places of beer, tanning and other senseless forms of recreation. After seagulls are born on their native sea shores, they are quickly forced to migrate into cities to subsist on what humans deem waste and trash.
Now the young Argentinian is forced to salvage what he can from inmate's leftovers because he has no access to subsistence food sources. Argentina's land, people, forests and beaches have been converted into resources for hospitals, factories and refineries serving the on-demand exploitative consumption of cities, especially the rich and white ones. Ex-African slave/indigenous forests and shore communities that share the young Argentinian's beautiful espresso skin tone are all but almost completely removed from their native lands and are forced into city centers, slums and even landfills. Their natural communities they were once a part of are now Burger King cattle ranches and the ultimate alcohol and club filled spring break hot spots.
All of this abstract theorizing and critiquing does not change these very real world situation though. Seagulls are still dying from consuming pounds of plastic instead of pounds of fish, while Seagull himself is being subjected to extremely cruel and malicious behavior from other inmates in an already over-bearing, disempowering and oppressive system. Beaches and forests are dead or dying from our gross domestic consumption. Inmates are spending time policing and oppressing each other instead of making attempts to challenge their mutual and overriding conditions. The destructive ideas of waste and trash are still as prominent in the outside world as they are on the inside. The world is going to be completely discarded, just as the inmates in jails and prisons have been, just so a select few can have a world of power, control and money.
This isn't a very good ending and that bothered me at first, but now I'm not worried about an ending. The world's major religions start with people and end with abstractions of faith and paradise and sometimes we as radicals/people/animals are guilty of the same thing. We look at theories as a relief ending point of some understanding instead of using them as a starting point for tangible and meaningful action. We look at events with their own beginnings, middles, and ends instead of looking at our lives as a constant struggle. Who cares if some battles are won if you and everything you are fighting for gets eradicated before the war's end?
This is not the only an end to my writing, but a beginning- no, a continuation of my personal struggle. A struggle that is interwoven into other struggles, human and non-human alike. A struggle of seagulls. A struggle of Seagull. A struggle against those who destroy life.
I know very little Spanish and he knows even less English, so when we talk it is very limited. The other inmates have come to call him "Seagull" because after each meal he hovers around the garbage can, with a large plastic cup in hand, he scoops everyone else's leftovers into it. For some reason the great majority of other inmates can't stand it.
The black inmates beat him to the garbage and the wait for him to get there. When he does, with exaggerated movements almost taunting him, they dump whats left of their meals instead of giving it to him.
The young Hispanics will accidentally drop their bread on the floor and then after recovering it will send one of their to deliver it. Sometimes the filth on the bread is still really obvious, but they'll hand it to Seagull with a sincere face of charity.
The group of older Hispanics always share portions of their beans and rice, but they never forget to add snot, spit and mucus before giving it. They will even have a friendly conversation in Spanish while doing it.
The whites of all ages, to no surprise, are by far the worst. They try to police the situation by complaining to the guard that its not fair that he gets more to eat. They loudly scoff, scold, insult and harrow him in a language he cannot understand but with a body language that is universally crystal clear.
I can't help but to feel that all of this is more than an exotic big bird being locked in a cage and fed scraps as a source of amusement. This isn't just ignorant cruelty, but intense and deep feelings of hate. I've tried to ask each group of inmates why they do this, and tehy are all quick to get aggressive and I am even quicker to go back to my form of self-protective silence. Sometimes I feel just as guilty for perpetuating this silence through my own silent passivity. How are we ever going to ever see that it is us the inmates, against them, the guards, if we can't even see each other as humans?
Even my use of the nickname Seagull really started bothering me, that is until I realized how anthropocentric I was being. I was viewing seagulls only as I was raised to see them. I was only seeing them as a scavenger of human trash but now I can see that calling the young Argentinian as a seagull is far from an insult and may be an accurate description,
Seagulls are forced to rummage through a city's trash only because cities have successfully ruined their original food sources. Industrial commercialized fishing has stolen most of the ocean's fish while hospitals, factories and refineries have polluted all the world's water. The ecosystems of beaches have become places of beer, tanning and other senseless forms of recreation. After seagulls are born on their native sea shores, they are quickly forced to migrate into cities to subsist on what humans deem waste and trash.
Now the young Argentinian is forced to salvage what he can from inmate's leftovers because he has no access to subsistence food sources. Argentina's land, people, forests and beaches have been converted into resources for hospitals, factories and refineries serving the on-demand exploitative consumption of cities, especially the rich and white ones. Ex-African slave/indigenous forests and shore communities that share the young Argentinian's beautiful espresso skin tone are all but almost completely removed from their native lands and are forced into city centers, slums and even landfills. Their natural communities they were once a part of are now Burger King cattle ranches and the ultimate alcohol and club filled spring break hot spots.
All of this abstract theorizing and critiquing does not change these very real world situation though. Seagulls are still dying from consuming pounds of plastic instead of pounds of fish, while Seagull himself is being subjected to extremely cruel and malicious behavior from other inmates in an already over-bearing, disempowering and oppressive system. Beaches and forests are dead or dying from our gross domestic consumption. Inmates are spending time policing and oppressing each other instead of making attempts to challenge their mutual and overriding conditions. The destructive ideas of waste and trash are still as prominent in the outside world as they are on the inside. The world is going to be completely discarded, just as the inmates in jails and prisons have been, just so a select few can have a world of power, control and money.
This isn't a very good ending and that bothered me at first, but now I'm not worried about an ending. The world's major religions start with people and end with abstractions of faith and paradise and sometimes we as radicals/people/animals are guilty of the same thing. We look at theories as a relief ending point of some understanding instead of using them as a starting point for tangible and meaningful action. We look at events with their own beginnings, middles, and ends instead of looking at our lives as a constant struggle. Who cares if some battles are won if you and everything you are fighting for gets eradicated before the war's end?
This is not the only an end to my writing, but a beginning- no, a continuation of my personal struggle. A struggle that is interwoven into other struggles, human and non-human alike. A struggle of seagulls. A struggle of Seagull. A struggle against those who destroy life.
Monday, November 2, 2009
To Whom It May Be of Interest
Sandra C. aka Sandanista posting some backlog letters from everyone's favorite part-time pop star, Jayson Tx. In this entry, I included the prefacing letter to illuminate the lulzy quality of Jaybird's writing. This kid, I swear.
To My Dearest Sandanista, In the wee hours of 9/25/9
To begin with, to say I'm in crisis for paper and up past my bedtime would be an understatement. To start off a letter with an understatement would be blasphemous. To start off another sentence with "to" would just be annoying. To waste four lines when I have only 20 to write with would be quite inane. To use inane instead of silly to sound smarter is the epitome of Jayson Tx, to use it incorrectly or in improper context would be the icing on the honey-less honey bun... to say I miss you more than I miss full sheets of paper might become soon self-evident. To say self-evident reminds me of this country's genocidal forefathers, or to say in clearer words slave-owning crackers, to continue on in this format seems beyond my current control. To speak of current control reminds me of currency control. To write currency control, I feel I am paying homage to Tesla. Yes, Nicola. To further currency control the lizard people, Illuminati, Ron Byers, CCPD and the Zapatista will bankrupt the federal reserve to bring about the new world order. To get to the point, or to make a futile attempt at such would be to state that I found a "to whom it may concern" letter. To say I lost it for a while would be correct. To further leave it up to you to determine if it is of postable character would be appropriate to say the least. To end this ridiculous excuse of a letter now would be to save you the way Jesus saved my brother. To clarify: while in jail J-dizzy saved my bro. Eeek.
Evict me from your worries
and let me squat in your loving affection,
Jayson Tx
_____________________________________________________________________________________
? 9/14/9 ?
To Whom it May Be of Interest (And Yes, Even the F.B.I. this time),
The last couple of days have been "do art and forget about the real world" type of days. My good friend the Colonel, as well as one of the sweetest people I have ever met got tased a couple of nights ago for talking too loud. The correctional officer who tased him has spent the last two days joking and bragging about the whole incident.
My personal food trays during the last couple of days have consisted of not much more than apple sauce and iceberg lettuce. I am told consistently by the guards "Damn, they doin' you wrong. Real wrong." Yet in the same breath they refuse to use what minute power they actually have to help me out a little bit. Even the tone of this letter is following my typical grievance-form voice.
About three of my friends that I met in here all recieved 10-15 year sentences this last Friday, all from the same judge, who as one underpaid public defender stated, "he was probably just having a bad day". My friends will have to do the majority of their sentences, because they were enhanced as habitual criminals- the Texas equivalent of a three strikes law. One will be 72 years old or dead before he leaves the custody, or more appropriately the ownership, of the Texas Department of Corrections. All the while, a Nazi-sociopath pimp who brags about raping and killing women, or in his terminology "facilitating a use and the discarding them", will be back on the street in less than sixty days. He has two brainwashed, desperate and traumatized sex workers waiting and saving up money for him. He explicitly stated that he's also trying to find a way to discard of them as well.
The most upsetting part- okay, I can't say that- but an upsetting part is, this neo-industrialist, rapist, drug dealer not so explicitly explained that one of them has to go because he's falling in love with her and that would disrupt his power structure he currently has and needs in place. You really do have to commodify and objectify something to exploit and destroy it.
But don't worry, even in this meek and disparaging mood I'm still thriving and surviving. Resiliency. It helps to know that I'm a white male and if I choose to, in as much as we can make choices in this culture, I can wear long sleeve button down shirts and slacks and never make it back to similar confines. Of course, I will probably make some right choices and my reward will be the gift of a longer repeat to my current conditions, but it helps to know I have choices. I actually feel more alive than I have in months, and more human, which if anything means simply that I have an upper hand in some unusual way against those oppressing me. That's more than the rest of the world, human and non-human can say. Or maybe the feel the same way.
Even the strongest wall will crumble
and the thickest of cages will eventually rust through.
To My Dearest Sandanista, In the wee hours of 9/25/9
To begin with, to say I'm in crisis for paper and up past my bedtime would be an understatement. To start off a letter with an understatement would be blasphemous. To start off another sentence with "to" would just be annoying. To waste four lines when I have only 20 to write with would be quite inane. To use inane instead of silly to sound smarter is the epitome of Jayson Tx, to use it incorrectly or in improper context would be the icing on the honey-less honey bun... to say I miss you more than I miss full sheets of paper might become soon self-evident. To say self-evident reminds me of this country's genocidal forefathers, or to say in clearer words slave-owning crackers, to continue on in this format seems beyond my current control. To speak of current control reminds me of currency control. To write currency control, I feel I am paying homage to Tesla. Yes, Nicola. To further currency control the lizard people, Illuminati, Ron Byers, CCPD and the Zapatista will bankrupt the federal reserve to bring about the new world order. To get to the point, or to make a futile attempt at such would be to state that I found a "to whom it may concern" letter. To say I lost it for a while would be correct. To further leave it up to you to determine if it is of postable character would be appropriate to say the least. To end this ridiculous excuse of a letter now would be to save you the way Jesus saved my brother. To clarify: while in jail J-dizzy saved my bro. Eeek.
Evict me from your worries
and let me squat in your loving affection,
Jayson Tx
_____________________________________________________________________________________
? 9/14/9 ?
To Whom it May Be of Interest (And Yes, Even the F.B.I. this time),
The last couple of days have been "do art and forget about the real world" type of days. My good friend the Colonel, as well as one of the sweetest people I have ever met got tased a couple of nights ago for talking too loud. The correctional officer who tased him has spent the last two days joking and bragging about the whole incident.
My personal food trays during the last couple of days have consisted of not much more than apple sauce and iceberg lettuce. I am told consistently by the guards "Damn, they doin' you wrong. Real wrong." Yet in the same breath they refuse to use what minute power they actually have to help me out a little bit. Even the tone of this letter is following my typical grievance-form voice.
About three of my friends that I met in here all recieved 10-15 year sentences this last Friday, all from the same judge, who as one underpaid public defender stated, "he was probably just having a bad day". My friends will have to do the majority of their sentences, because they were enhanced as habitual criminals- the Texas equivalent of a three strikes law. One will be 72 years old or dead before he leaves the custody, or more appropriately the ownership, of the Texas Department of Corrections. All the while, a Nazi-sociopath pimp who brags about raping and killing women, or in his terminology "facilitating a use and the discarding them", will be back on the street in less than sixty days. He has two brainwashed, desperate and traumatized sex workers waiting and saving up money for him. He explicitly stated that he's also trying to find a way to discard of them as well.
The most upsetting part- okay, I can't say that- but an upsetting part is, this neo-industrialist, rapist, drug dealer not so explicitly explained that one of them has to go because he's falling in love with her and that would disrupt his power structure he currently has and needs in place. You really do have to commodify and objectify something to exploit and destroy it.
But don't worry, even in this meek and disparaging mood I'm still thriving and surviving. Resiliency. It helps to know that I'm a white male and if I choose to, in as much as we can make choices in this culture, I can wear long sleeve button down shirts and slacks and never make it back to similar confines. Of course, I will probably make some right choices and my reward will be the gift of a longer repeat to my current conditions, but it helps to know I have choices. I actually feel more alive than I have in months, and more human, which if anything means simply that I have an upper hand in some unusual way against those oppressing me. That's more than the rest of the world, human and non-human can say. Or maybe the feel the same way.
Even the strongest wall will crumble
and the thickest of cages will eventually rust through.
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