Alyssa,
…
You might know this but one of my biggest hero’s lives in your home state of California. She is this amazing weed that has been wreaking havoc on the industrial farmers of Cali. In a couple of weeks, her roots can dig further down than 20 feet. Even Mousanto’s worst successful herbicide “RoundUp” is a useless weapon against her persistence. She is what science calls a super-weed. She has been taking over complete fields all through Cali. She shows up on the worst destroyed and depleted soils. Soils so damaged that nothing else can grow in them without a massive cocktail of chemical fertilizers. With roots so extensive she keeps the soil from being washed or blown away. She’s slowly bringing the soil back to life, so that it can eventually support more life once again. In a few years, capitalism, industry, progress, science and greed will find a chemical harsh enough to kill her. But before she dies she will release millions of seeds. Those seeds are her children and only a few will make it. Those that survive will change at a rate faster than any human can study or stop them. They will become the newest warriors against civilization and will resist with more passion than even their mothers before them. Civilization not only tries to poison our bodies, but also our spirits, our feelings, our lovemaking. I fight back every time I make love, every time I feel, every time I breathe. And I will continue to fight even after I die. Even as I decay and break down I will continue to fight. I will die on the frontlines. I will die fighting for those barely surviving soils. Eventually, I will die to become food for those warrior weeds and eventually I will become those weeds and for centuries to come I will fight back in many forms, and eventually I will win and eventually we will all win. Since childhood, my favorite flower has been dandelions.
With all the love my raging heart can beat,
Jayson Tx
Written from the Douglas County Jail
(Transcribed by Charity)
Friday, September 25, 2009
Dear FDA (but not really),
One time I was so hungry I ate something that contained thiamine mononitrate, monoglycerides, ascorbic acid, calcium sulfate, azodicar bonamide, color, preservatives (calcium propionate, potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate, TBHQ, sorbic acid, tocopherols), food starch modified, sodium steroyl lactylate, sodium phosphate, calcium carbonate, propylene glycol, triglycerides, sodium hexameta phosphate, ethyl alcohol, BHT, fumaric acid, blue 1, red 40, titanium dioxide color, sodium casienate, ammonium sulfate, sodium acid pyrophosphate.
That was just the stuff I don’t even know exactly what is….
I imagine two things might even be good for me but the simple fact that we can go our whole life digesting this stuff never questioning it all… is well, insane! Is well… who says that? Maybe I’ll blame all the poisons in my body the same way Tara said Marilyn Manson made me do it.
To ingredients that sound like jet fuel boosters,
No longer inmate #10126758
Written from the Nueces County Jail
(Transcribed by Charity)
That was just the stuff I don’t even know exactly what is….
I imagine two things might even be good for me but the simple fact that we can go our whole life digesting this stuff never questioning it all… is well, insane! Is well… who says that? Maybe I’ll blame all the poisons in my body the same way Tara said Marilyn Manson made me do it.
To ingredients that sound like jet fuel boosters,
No longer inmate #10126758
Written from the Nueces County Jail
(Transcribed by Charity)
Dear Friends,
One time for breakfast I at ½ cup of eggs made from a powder, 1 tablespoon of peanut butter that was so old that it turned into powder and ½ an orange. Then for lunch I received a single 2-3 oz soy/hamburger patty. One time I was told I was being provided an adequate and balanced diet plan approved by the State and created by a dietician. Remember that on time Nueces County Jail was full of it? Eh. I don’t think I even like writing about it although I feel the need to vent or something because every time “chow” time comes I can feel myself getting angered.
I will be glad to be going to the much worse state jail facilities, at least they have an actual process for inmates to aggrieve, of course no one probably listens but even an at’a boy would be nice right now.
Lacking food and therefore lacking energy, I’ve been laying around a lot, idling, loafing, or what have you. Most of the time I’m thinking about things to write and stuff like that, but I’m starting to get what I can only define as day-mares. Sometimes I close my eyes and images or a short nightmarish dream will play through my mind. Sometimes it’s not even as tangible as that… I’ll just be sitting and I’ll be overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of fear or endangerment. I wonder if this feels like what a woman feels when she walks a dark street at night; or when a dark person finds themselves “on the wrong side of town” and has the eyes of 200 angry ghosts staring at him; or how a deer feels when she hears the first gunshot of her life; or how salmon feel battering their heads against concrete that is preventing them from returning to their home to continue on life with their death; or how a sex worker feels when she sees a John pay her pimp the extra dollar so he will not have to wear that silly condom; or the feelings a junkie gets when he’s coming down off of a 3 month high into a world that’s still spinning way too fast for him to handle; or the feelings his girlfriend gets a week later, after their biggest score, when he is having “trouble waking up;” or is it the feelings of the 72 year old lady every time she sees the spotlight from a chopper above flying through her neighborhood; or maybe it’s the feelings of her next door neighbor, the single mother, who can hear the gunshots enter the living room where her child is watching cartoons; or is it the SWAT officer’s overwhelming feelings as he shoots into the wrong house for the 3rd time this week wondering if he’ll make it home to his wife and baby that night; or is it the feelings of ancient air being crowded out and poisoned by chemicals and industrial waste; or is it the feelings of ancient soil and ancient waters suffering from the same; or maybe it’s the feelings of a dolphin being entrapped by something she does not know is called a net; or the Chinese man working on the troller dragging the net as he thinks of his brother who got washed overboard the week before and of his cousin who worked for three months and then was still denied a paycheck; or could it be the feelings of their Grandma as she makes her way from the electronics landfill that use to be her farm land; or of her husband’s feelings as he sees for the first time computers, LCD’s, LEDs, Plasma screen TV’s and men who walk around carrying guns as they make their way into the city. Of course it’s a feeling of dread, but I can’t even imagine it being as dreadful as the feelings from all of those I just listed. Still, I can’t help but to notice that all of these feelings are birthed from the same problem. I’m not trying to project, create, assume, presume, or establish false realities. I’m simply trying to relate. Here’s to surviving this dreadful culture.
Here’s to their death. In the name of our health.
Written from the Nueces County Jail
(Transcribed by Charity)
I will be glad to be going to the much worse state jail facilities, at least they have an actual process for inmates to aggrieve, of course no one probably listens but even an at’a boy would be nice right now.
Lacking food and therefore lacking energy, I’ve been laying around a lot, idling, loafing, or what have you. Most of the time I’m thinking about things to write and stuff like that, but I’m starting to get what I can only define as day-mares. Sometimes I close my eyes and images or a short nightmarish dream will play through my mind. Sometimes it’s not even as tangible as that… I’ll just be sitting and I’ll be overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of fear or endangerment. I wonder if this feels like what a woman feels when she walks a dark street at night; or when a dark person finds themselves “on the wrong side of town” and has the eyes of 200 angry ghosts staring at him; or how a deer feels when she hears the first gunshot of her life; or how salmon feel battering their heads against concrete that is preventing them from returning to their home to continue on life with their death; or how a sex worker feels when she sees a John pay her pimp the extra dollar so he will not have to wear that silly condom; or the feelings a junkie gets when he’s coming down off of a 3 month high into a world that’s still spinning way too fast for him to handle; or the feelings his girlfriend gets a week later, after their biggest score, when he is having “trouble waking up;” or is it the feelings of the 72 year old lady every time she sees the spotlight from a chopper above flying through her neighborhood; or maybe it’s the feelings of her next door neighbor, the single mother, who can hear the gunshots enter the living room where her child is watching cartoons; or is it the SWAT officer’s overwhelming feelings as he shoots into the wrong house for the 3rd time this week wondering if he’ll make it home to his wife and baby that night; or is it the feelings of ancient air being crowded out and poisoned by chemicals and industrial waste; or is it the feelings of ancient soil and ancient waters suffering from the same; or maybe it’s the feelings of a dolphin being entrapped by something she does not know is called a net; or the Chinese man working on the troller dragging the net as he thinks of his brother who got washed overboard the week before and of his cousin who worked for three months and then was still denied a paycheck; or could it be the feelings of their Grandma as she makes her way from the electronics landfill that use to be her farm land; or of her husband’s feelings as he sees for the first time computers, LCD’s, LEDs, Plasma screen TV’s and men who walk around carrying guns as they make their way into the city. Of course it’s a feeling of dread, but I can’t even imagine it being as dreadful as the feelings from all of those I just listed. Still, I can’t help but to notice that all of these feelings are birthed from the same problem. I’m not trying to project, create, assume, presume, or establish false realities. I’m simply trying to relate. Here’s to surviving this dreadful culture.
Here’s to their death. In the name of our health.
Written from the Nueces County Jail
(Transcribed by Charity)
Interdependency over Codependency
With a new pen and some fresh words sent straight from the heart, I’m ready to spit fire. I really believe there are significant differences between interdependency and codependency. The most radical belief in their differences is that interdependency is real and codependency is not. I started a radical health mental zine dispelling codependency before getting locked up.
Codependency started, was established as a term to describe the conditions, the material reality in which battered and abused women suffered from at the hands of men with substance abuse issues. It went from a term of explaining a situation to becoming the reason, or more appropriately the scapegoat for those men and their personal culpability. Victim blaming 201. Because these women gave love, gave money, gave and stayed, they perpetuated the beatings; if they were to leave the men would stop beating. Men only beat enablers. The men aren’t guilty, just products of their surroundings. Now codependency is so openly vague that it pretty much covers any dependency. Counselors in the 90’s realized that people are so brainwashed to accept specialization and authority (or professionalism) that they will take advice that even seems so incredibly wrong as long as it comes from an authority. Clearly authority figures have been capitalizing on this fetishization of over specialization for centuries but for psychology it’s become really bad in the last 20 years.
Anyways, long story short, you can train a counselor over a weekend workshop (you decide which hotel conference room) to learn the language (no matter how deceptive and wrong) of codependency and then they can cure most of America (or the industrialized world) of its inflictions (caring, loving, longing for reciprocation, did I mention caring and loving).
My Mom drank and my brother used drugs and so now I only look for people with problems to “fix” them. I further perpetuate abuse by telling my Mom “I love you and I wish you’d quit drinking.” I should say, “I will be able to allow myself to love you once you quit drinking.” Control. Control. Control. Unconditional love becomes the disease not the substance abuse… Damn I forgot, long story short, codependency is beyond wack victim blaming, over simplification, problem solving.
Codependency is Ayn Rand’s wildest dystopic erotic fantasy on steroids. Individualism, selfishness, and conditional reward based affection are the altruistic goals of the codependency model.
Remember when the world, ecosystems, animals, the cycle of life and death was based on interdependency? Remember when humans and their ancestors were interdependent on not only one another but the rest of the natural world for millions of years? Remember when humans were social creatures and part of survival meant relying on social well being? Remember when I asked a bunch of rhetorical questions to get across what I was trying to say?
Case in point (I don’t even know what that phrase means); why interdependency over codependency, three words, Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated.”
Written from the Nueces County Jail
(Transcribed by Charity)
Codependency started, was established as a term to describe the conditions, the material reality in which battered and abused women suffered from at the hands of men with substance abuse issues. It went from a term of explaining a situation to becoming the reason, or more appropriately the scapegoat for those men and their personal culpability. Victim blaming 201. Because these women gave love, gave money, gave and stayed, they perpetuated the beatings; if they were to leave the men would stop beating. Men only beat enablers. The men aren’t guilty, just products of their surroundings. Now codependency is so openly vague that it pretty much covers any dependency. Counselors in the 90’s realized that people are so brainwashed to accept specialization and authority (or professionalism) that they will take advice that even seems so incredibly wrong as long as it comes from an authority. Clearly authority figures have been capitalizing on this fetishization of over specialization for centuries but for psychology it’s become really bad in the last 20 years.
Anyways, long story short, you can train a counselor over a weekend workshop (you decide which hotel conference room) to learn the language (no matter how deceptive and wrong) of codependency and then they can cure most of America (or the industrialized world) of its inflictions (caring, loving, longing for reciprocation, did I mention caring and loving).
My Mom drank and my brother used drugs and so now I only look for people with problems to “fix” them. I further perpetuate abuse by telling my Mom “I love you and I wish you’d quit drinking.” I should say, “I will be able to allow myself to love you once you quit drinking.” Control. Control. Control. Unconditional love becomes the disease not the substance abuse… Damn I forgot, long story short, codependency is beyond wack victim blaming, over simplification, problem solving.
Codependency is Ayn Rand’s wildest dystopic erotic fantasy on steroids. Individualism, selfishness, and conditional reward based affection are the altruistic goals of the codependency model.
Remember when the world, ecosystems, animals, the cycle of life and death was based on interdependency? Remember when humans and their ancestors were interdependent on not only one another but the rest of the natural world for millions of years? Remember when humans were social creatures and part of survival meant relying on social well being? Remember when I asked a bunch of rhetorical questions to get across what I was trying to say?
Case in point (I don’t even know what that phrase means); why interdependency over codependency, three words, Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated.”
Written from the Nueces County Jail
(Transcribed by Charity)
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Dear Department of Justice,
Today you came to Nueces County Jail, the facility I am currently incarcerated at, to give your “National Inmate Survey.” You sent or hired individuals to come interview about 350 inmates in a jail with a population of over 1,000. Furthermore, you stated that you plan on doing similar surveys at about 500 facilities Nationwide.
Your consent form states that, “The results of this study MAY help improve the condition and well being of inmates in correctional facilities across the nation (emphasis on may is mine, not yours). It also explains that “The purpose of this research project is to estimate the numbers of inmates who are sexually assaulted in prisons and jails each year.”
Unfortunately, I am writing you today to let you know that you can add one more to the already staggering numbers of inmates who have tragically been sexually assaulted during their incarceration. Of course, in your cold statistical survey percentages, this individual assault will not even change your numbers a fraction of a percent. The assault actually occurred during the same exact time you were requesting inmates for your survey today. The already well understaffed jail was having a significantly hard time fulfilling your requests for potential surveyees, giving the perpetrating inmate an ample amount of time to assault the victim. To better your statistical understanding, in our own unit, the on duty corrections officer spent a collective one to one and a half hours sending and collecting people to your survey. Furthermore, the survivor of this assault happens to be the only openly transsexual person in our unit, and her earlier requests for protective custody had been brushed off by jail staff.
After consulting with the survivor-inmate, I have promised to keep her identity anonymous as she only has a few more days left to serve and does not want any amount of individual or systematic blowback for whistleblowing on an already traumatic experience. Also, out of my own fear of receiving some sort of “terrorism,” sedition, or defamation charge, I by no means am nor would I ever, insinuate or state that any government branch or office is liable for this rape. Also, I would not dare state that this is a tragically precise example of the institutional failure in your self-fulfilling, self-interested, self-perpetuating, bloated and bureaucratic monopoly on violence. I would further like to ass that as a God-fearing patriot of this amazing nation – one that was proudly founded on the genocide of entire native populations and economically fueled for over two centuries by the exploitation and enslavement of even more human beings – that I undyingly support every racist, classist, and insane policy created and enforced to make this beautiful country the world’s leader in incarcerations and state-sanctioned executions. But before moving on, I would like to clarify that in your own laws (legitimate of course, only through the monopoly of violence that you, the State, uses for enforcement; in other words, your rules because you have the guns to say so), you have explicitly stated, that for better or worse, you will assume all legal responsibility for the protection and well being of these inmates while incarcerated.
So, as an ex-economics major and community college dropout, I have learned through the years a couple things that might interest you. The first would be, how to effectively run a black market gun and drug running operation. Oops. Wait, I actually learned that from you, the United States Government, in History 1302, during the section on the Iran-Contra Affair. The second thing (really, I guess now the only thing) I learned while studying economics is that statistics are ALWAYS used by their two largest producers, for profit corporations and governments to even further legitimize and justify their claims to power (as if force was not enough). Through the use of deceptive and limiting language (such as words and terms like “only,” “some,” “way below,” and “comparatively), the facilitation of only selective statistics (lying through omission is still lying), even within the carefully scripted manner on how statistics are displayed (for example, stating that “Only 22% of those currently incarcerated admit to being sexually assaulted,” instead of more explicitly stating, “660,000 of the 3 million currently incarcerated inmates, or almost 1 in 4, admit to being sexually assaulted during incarceration, but the total number of unreported assaults would bring this number even higher”) your statistical narratives will only paint a rose-tinted portrait of correctional facilities. Once again, but in different words, these are the same facilities that you have an oversigting responsibility to fulfill all inmates’ constitutional guarantees while under state incarceration. This is not an attempt to accuse you of, now or ever, purposely misconstruing or outright manufacturing “the facts” to rationalize or justify your actions, or sometimes more fundamentally destructive, your inactions. That would be as horrible as establishing unfounded and false pretenses for a war (like the existence of weapons of mass destruction), which you have never been accountable for, so that must mean you are not guilty of doing such dishonest things. But then again, look for who is in charge of the accountability process or even the accounting process for that matter. Wait, there is an accountability process?
Okay, so I guess my real intention of writing this letter is not to give you a lesson in either economics or statistics (by looking around at the current financial situation, it seems you already have that one down perfect). My intentions actually come from the much more frustrating by honest standpoint of being locked up behind bars. Honest, because I actually admitted to my actions (so, how many coups and assassinations does the C.I.A. have under its belt now?). Frustrating, because the internment, belittlement, suffering and countless other harmful implications of my being incarcerated, have no more meaning to you than the tax margins on a capitalistic end of year accounting spreadsheets. Marginalized by statistics, then branded with an 8-12 digit inmate identification number, we become no more than data in computers, which is then printed out on yearly congressional reports, that end up being not only double the size of San Antonio’s completely un-abridged phone book, but also about twice as useless. Reports demanding the same thing annually; more tax dollars and harsher sentences; a reduction in prison education programs and more control; less inmate’s rights and more greed; less nutrition in the food and more power; ultimately producing lesser human beings.
Some would say that there are only two major distinctions between you and the Nazi’s. The first simply being that while the Nazi’s exclusively used only IBM computing machines, that you further perpetuate an illusion of free markets with purchases from Dell, Compaq, HP, Macintosh, Acer, Toshiba, etc. The second is that while the Nazi’s systematically eliminated Jews, gypsies, gays and other minorities; inside ghettos; packed on to cattle-cars; shot with rifles and machine guns; and by Zyklon-B gas chambers disguised as showering rooms; that you, the U.S. Government, are only systematically murdering poors, blacks, browns, yellows, reds, among other minorities; inside ghettos, hooked on government trafficked drugs; shot with police issued handguns and tasers; and death caused from old age and stress from fighting within a trap of probation, jails, and a lack of property rights, if we’re a part of the lucky ones; or if we are not so lucky then it’s death by parole, prisons and the loss of all rights.
You hold the power to take away one’s rights at anytime, such as the right to vote or the right to a fair trial. You instead replace them with the rights of all white juries; drunken public defenders; racist judges; three-strike laws; mandatory minimums; private, for profit, maximum security detention facilities; a bastardization and crumbling of due process and habeas corpus; and parole and probation violations that are as arbitrary as not being able to find work as a felon; or successfully renting a residency as a felon; or establishing a line of credit with the local phone company as a felon, just in order to have a landline to hook your monitoring bracelet into each night. And who the fuck, in America, still can rationalize a landline when cell phones are sold at Wal-Marts, Safeway’s, and Dollar Stores for only $9.99; an amount that is less than a tenth of a percent the true cost of total ecological destruction caused by the ridiculously obscene manufacturing of cell phones; or one hundredth of a percent less the cost of medical expenses from the economically coerced slave-wage laborer, that could never actually afford the luxury of a hospital or health care, so instead incurring the ultimate cost of or price of numerous cancers; yes, the same precious gift of cancer that is continued to be passed down through a poisoned land base and water table, onwards to their children and countless generations to follow; all while the necessities of food and drinkable water are being denied to those same newborn children through so called “necessary” U.S. economic sanctions; running concurrent with IMF and World Bank imposed mandatory repayment plans on loans, that those same people never saw a dime nor even a penny from; making the countries that those same people reside in, labeled so obscurely in global economic indicator terms as, net food exporters, but in more honest words, food robbed from the poor to be given to rich world’s landfills; all while, CCIA propped up military dictators run to offshore banks with billions in profits swindled from those same IMG and World Bank’s loans that are now seeking repayment (and interest) of another way of saying, holding hostages, in the form of destition and starvation; the same exact Caiman Island offshore banks that double as tax shelters, for many of world’s largest multinational corporations, from the burden of “unfair” and “harsh” United States corporate tax laws,; laws that are overlooked by U.D. lawmakers and the lobbyists who own them, in order to reallocate funding from schools, healthcare, and other social programs into financial bailouts and economic stimulus plans; plans that end up benefiting the same tax-evading corporations with tax payer dollars amounting into the trillions; all under the flag of freedom, free enterprise, free trade, and freeways only for those house servants that can afford to cash in their clunker for a more gas efficient, ethanol-burning, hybrid SUV; burning up the same ethanol produced from the heavily tax-subsidized corn, that use to be sent overseas as food rations from U.S. Aid; all while the U.S. claims to aid “backwards” countries forwards into freedom and democracy, with its leaders like a broken record repeating freedom and democracy, freedom and democracy, as they continue to “liberate” poor countries to much more manageable sizes; with the use of depleted uranium and cluster bombs, wars, when properly managed can increase the cancer rates while decreasing the voting rates which makes for a better transition into the democracy of industry; So, once these war stricken countries become stable enough for business, the same multinational corporations make their way to economically enslave more of the world’s poor; among the many new sweatshop factories, is one that produces lithium ion batteries for prepaid cell phones, and another that produces clothing for Bob Barker’s prison supply industries; and of course, like any system of abuse, the cycle continues to perpetuate itself at the expense of most, for the delusions of a few.
Being that your job is to isolate and quantify very real world things into abstractable numbers, I don’t expect you to understand all of this, or any of it, for that matter. These things are all connected and not just by numbers. If you really were interested in “help[ing] improve the conditions and well being of inmates in correctional facilities across the nation,” you would not interview a limited few thousand inmates by computer survey and then expect to gain an understanding of the infliction, problems, concerns affecting over 3 million inmates. Instead you would interview all 3 million plus inmates, and not just without a survey with preset parameters, but actual interviews requiring an open dialog. Actually, if you really cared about any inmates, you would no longer be able to justify in words or numbers their ongoing internment under such a corrupt, insufficient and broken system.
But if you allowed yourself to care, you would no longer be able to justify waking up Monday through Friday, just to leave your own kids behind to then spend all day staring into a glowing box as it shoots out magical numbers and a paycheck twice a month. Is your salary worth the bloody perpetuation of oppressive wars abroad, repressive policing here at “home,” an overall enslavement of most human life, and all at a historically unmatched, irreversibly destructive exploitation of the land base that all life depends on? Is the best way to benefit your children to be away from them forty hours a week? Is that what you or they think?
Do they actually prefer self-medicating their lack of identity with television, cell phones, computers and video games? Instead, would they much rather prefer forming a substantial relationship with their father, who up until this point, they have grown up never knowing because he spends his day doing his part to the continuation of incarceration, a colder way of saying, keeping other fathers locked up away from their own families? Do you realize your daily monotonous tasks are inseparable from the nightmarish consequences of the larger institutions that through your career have used and pimped you? Do the answers to any of these questions scare you?
What’s your child’s favorite book? What was your favorite children’s book? Have you even had the time to share it with your own child? Can you imagine trying to read to your child during a ten minute visit, once a month, using a dirty plastic phone, because multiple plates of shatter-proof glass and bolted down prefabricated sheets of steel separated you? Have you ever even read any stories or told some of your own, to your child at night by their bedside? Can you imagine only being able to read to your child, by their graveside, all because one year earlier they were killed by a daisy cutter, that was unsuccessful in targeting someone who might have shared your religion, your neighborhood, your skin color, or maybe the only common ground you two shared was both being poor? Can you imagine not even knowing how to read because you were raised from factory to factory and now that your oldest daughter has just turned ten, she to will be forced into working just like you? Do these questions even affect you or are you so numb from booze, work, and T.V., that you stop yourself from feeling anything?
When was the last time you made love? Have you ever been overwhelmed with feelings while in another’s arms, or have you always just rated them on a scale of ten to one? Have you ever had to sit in front of a computer screen and listen to a manufactured voice, list out multiple choice questions about sexual assault? Can you imagine doing this after witnessing a cery real assault? Would you be afraid to tell the truth? Would it do any good if you had? Have you, yourself, ever been sexually assaulted? Have any of your children or significant others been coerced into such a traumatizing experience? If they had, would you even know, or would you just be at work? Would you place them in a freezing cold building, in front of a screen, with a computer voice poking and probing with dozens of emotionless questions, in hopes that you’ll be able to understand them better? Would you try to bribe them with a bag of 100 calorie mini-snack cookies to answer question after question? How, when, where, and with what were they sexually assaulted by? How hard was it? How long did it last? Did they take a bribe of a honey bun or ramen noodle soup afterwards? Did they bruise? Did they bleed? Did anything break or tear? Can you even imagine, you or anyone else you love, answering these questions to a computer with a robot voice, limited to only replies of yes-no, true-false, a) b) c) d)? Would it make it easier if you used the touch pad or touch screen? Would it make it easier if these questions were interpreted in Spanish? Can you imagine not knowing that at the end of the day, all of your answers were simply tallied up, equated out, and averaged to find a few numbers or maybe percentage? Could you imagine knowing any of this? Does any of this make you feel anything at all and if not, what will? What will it take for you to see statistics as a disgusting, inappropriate, warped and insane way of viewing the world?
Thanks for your time,
Inmate #10126758
Nueces County Jail
Written on 08.03.09
(Transcribed by Charity)
Your consent form states that, “The results of this study MAY help improve the condition and well being of inmates in correctional facilities across the nation (emphasis on may is mine, not yours). It also explains that “The purpose of this research project is to estimate the numbers of inmates who are sexually assaulted in prisons and jails each year.”
Unfortunately, I am writing you today to let you know that you can add one more to the already staggering numbers of inmates who have tragically been sexually assaulted during their incarceration. Of course, in your cold statistical survey percentages, this individual assault will not even change your numbers a fraction of a percent. The assault actually occurred during the same exact time you were requesting inmates for your survey today. The already well understaffed jail was having a significantly hard time fulfilling your requests for potential surveyees, giving the perpetrating inmate an ample amount of time to assault the victim. To better your statistical understanding, in our own unit, the on duty corrections officer spent a collective one to one and a half hours sending and collecting people to your survey. Furthermore, the survivor of this assault happens to be the only openly transsexual person in our unit, and her earlier requests for protective custody had been brushed off by jail staff.
After consulting with the survivor-inmate, I have promised to keep her identity anonymous as she only has a few more days left to serve and does not want any amount of individual or systematic blowback for whistleblowing on an already traumatic experience. Also, out of my own fear of receiving some sort of “terrorism,” sedition, or defamation charge, I by no means am nor would I ever, insinuate or state that any government branch or office is liable for this rape. Also, I would not dare state that this is a tragically precise example of the institutional failure in your self-fulfilling, self-interested, self-perpetuating, bloated and bureaucratic monopoly on violence. I would further like to ass that as a God-fearing patriot of this amazing nation – one that was proudly founded on the genocide of entire native populations and economically fueled for over two centuries by the exploitation and enslavement of even more human beings – that I undyingly support every racist, classist, and insane policy created and enforced to make this beautiful country the world’s leader in incarcerations and state-sanctioned executions. But before moving on, I would like to clarify that in your own laws (legitimate of course, only through the monopoly of violence that you, the State, uses for enforcement; in other words, your rules because you have the guns to say so), you have explicitly stated, that for better or worse, you will assume all legal responsibility for the protection and well being of these inmates while incarcerated.
So, as an ex-economics major and community college dropout, I have learned through the years a couple things that might interest you. The first would be, how to effectively run a black market gun and drug running operation. Oops. Wait, I actually learned that from you, the United States Government, in History 1302, during the section on the Iran-Contra Affair. The second thing (really, I guess now the only thing) I learned while studying economics is that statistics are ALWAYS used by their two largest producers, for profit corporations and governments to even further legitimize and justify their claims to power (as if force was not enough). Through the use of deceptive and limiting language (such as words and terms like “only,” “some,” “way below,” and “comparatively), the facilitation of only selective statistics (lying through omission is still lying), even within the carefully scripted manner on how statistics are displayed (for example, stating that “Only 22% of those currently incarcerated admit to being sexually assaulted,” instead of more explicitly stating, “660,000 of the 3 million currently incarcerated inmates, or almost 1 in 4, admit to being sexually assaulted during incarceration, but the total number of unreported assaults would bring this number even higher”) your statistical narratives will only paint a rose-tinted portrait of correctional facilities. Once again, but in different words, these are the same facilities that you have an oversigting responsibility to fulfill all inmates’ constitutional guarantees while under state incarceration. This is not an attempt to accuse you of, now or ever, purposely misconstruing or outright manufacturing “the facts” to rationalize or justify your actions, or sometimes more fundamentally destructive, your inactions. That would be as horrible as establishing unfounded and false pretenses for a war (like the existence of weapons of mass destruction), which you have never been accountable for, so that must mean you are not guilty of doing such dishonest things. But then again, look for who is in charge of the accountability process or even the accounting process for that matter. Wait, there is an accountability process?
Okay, so I guess my real intention of writing this letter is not to give you a lesson in either economics or statistics (by looking around at the current financial situation, it seems you already have that one down perfect). My intentions actually come from the much more frustrating by honest standpoint of being locked up behind bars. Honest, because I actually admitted to my actions (so, how many coups and assassinations does the C.I.A. have under its belt now?). Frustrating, because the internment, belittlement, suffering and countless other harmful implications of my being incarcerated, have no more meaning to you than the tax margins on a capitalistic end of year accounting spreadsheets. Marginalized by statistics, then branded with an 8-12 digit inmate identification number, we become no more than data in computers, which is then printed out on yearly congressional reports, that end up being not only double the size of San Antonio’s completely un-abridged phone book, but also about twice as useless. Reports demanding the same thing annually; more tax dollars and harsher sentences; a reduction in prison education programs and more control; less inmate’s rights and more greed; less nutrition in the food and more power; ultimately producing lesser human beings.
Some would say that there are only two major distinctions between you and the Nazi’s. The first simply being that while the Nazi’s exclusively used only IBM computing machines, that you further perpetuate an illusion of free markets with purchases from Dell, Compaq, HP, Macintosh, Acer, Toshiba, etc. The second is that while the Nazi’s systematically eliminated Jews, gypsies, gays and other minorities; inside ghettos; packed on to cattle-cars; shot with rifles and machine guns; and by Zyklon-B gas chambers disguised as showering rooms; that you, the U.S. Government, are only systematically murdering poors, blacks, browns, yellows, reds, among other minorities; inside ghettos, hooked on government trafficked drugs; shot with police issued handguns and tasers; and death caused from old age and stress from fighting within a trap of probation, jails, and a lack of property rights, if we’re a part of the lucky ones; or if we are not so lucky then it’s death by parole, prisons and the loss of all rights.
You hold the power to take away one’s rights at anytime, such as the right to vote or the right to a fair trial. You instead replace them with the rights of all white juries; drunken public defenders; racist judges; three-strike laws; mandatory minimums; private, for profit, maximum security detention facilities; a bastardization and crumbling of due process and habeas corpus; and parole and probation violations that are as arbitrary as not being able to find work as a felon; or successfully renting a residency as a felon; or establishing a line of credit with the local phone company as a felon, just in order to have a landline to hook your monitoring bracelet into each night. And who the fuck, in America, still can rationalize a landline when cell phones are sold at Wal-Marts, Safeway’s, and Dollar Stores for only $9.99; an amount that is less than a tenth of a percent the true cost of total ecological destruction caused by the ridiculously obscene manufacturing of cell phones; or one hundredth of a percent less the cost of medical expenses from the economically coerced slave-wage laborer, that could never actually afford the luxury of a hospital or health care, so instead incurring the ultimate cost of or price of numerous cancers; yes, the same precious gift of cancer that is continued to be passed down through a poisoned land base and water table, onwards to their children and countless generations to follow; all while the necessities of food and drinkable water are being denied to those same newborn children through so called “necessary” U.S. economic sanctions; running concurrent with IMF and World Bank imposed mandatory repayment plans on loans, that those same people never saw a dime nor even a penny from; making the countries that those same people reside in, labeled so obscurely in global economic indicator terms as, net food exporters, but in more honest words, food robbed from the poor to be given to rich world’s landfills; all while, CCIA propped up military dictators run to offshore banks with billions in profits swindled from those same IMG and World Bank’s loans that are now seeking repayment (and interest) of another way of saying, holding hostages, in the form of destition and starvation; the same exact Caiman Island offshore banks that double as tax shelters, for many of world’s largest multinational corporations, from the burden of “unfair” and “harsh” United States corporate tax laws,; laws that are overlooked by U.D. lawmakers and the lobbyists who own them, in order to reallocate funding from schools, healthcare, and other social programs into financial bailouts and economic stimulus plans; plans that end up benefiting the same tax-evading corporations with tax payer dollars amounting into the trillions; all under the flag of freedom, free enterprise, free trade, and freeways only for those house servants that can afford to cash in their clunker for a more gas efficient, ethanol-burning, hybrid SUV; burning up the same ethanol produced from the heavily tax-subsidized corn, that use to be sent overseas as food rations from U.S. Aid; all while the U.S. claims to aid “backwards” countries forwards into freedom and democracy, with its leaders like a broken record repeating freedom and democracy, freedom and democracy, as they continue to “liberate” poor countries to much more manageable sizes; with the use of depleted uranium and cluster bombs, wars, when properly managed can increase the cancer rates while decreasing the voting rates which makes for a better transition into the democracy of industry; So, once these war stricken countries become stable enough for business, the same multinational corporations make their way to economically enslave more of the world’s poor; among the many new sweatshop factories, is one that produces lithium ion batteries for prepaid cell phones, and another that produces clothing for Bob Barker’s prison supply industries; and of course, like any system of abuse, the cycle continues to perpetuate itself at the expense of most, for the delusions of a few.
Being that your job is to isolate and quantify very real world things into abstractable numbers, I don’t expect you to understand all of this, or any of it, for that matter. These things are all connected and not just by numbers. If you really were interested in “help[ing] improve the conditions and well being of inmates in correctional facilities across the nation,” you would not interview a limited few thousand inmates by computer survey and then expect to gain an understanding of the infliction, problems, concerns affecting over 3 million inmates. Instead you would interview all 3 million plus inmates, and not just without a survey with preset parameters, but actual interviews requiring an open dialog. Actually, if you really cared about any inmates, you would no longer be able to justify in words or numbers their ongoing internment under such a corrupt, insufficient and broken system.
But if you allowed yourself to care, you would no longer be able to justify waking up Monday through Friday, just to leave your own kids behind to then spend all day staring into a glowing box as it shoots out magical numbers and a paycheck twice a month. Is your salary worth the bloody perpetuation of oppressive wars abroad, repressive policing here at “home,” an overall enslavement of most human life, and all at a historically unmatched, irreversibly destructive exploitation of the land base that all life depends on? Is the best way to benefit your children to be away from them forty hours a week? Is that what you or they think?
Do they actually prefer self-medicating their lack of identity with television, cell phones, computers and video games? Instead, would they much rather prefer forming a substantial relationship with their father, who up until this point, they have grown up never knowing because he spends his day doing his part to the continuation of incarceration, a colder way of saying, keeping other fathers locked up away from their own families? Do you realize your daily monotonous tasks are inseparable from the nightmarish consequences of the larger institutions that through your career have used and pimped you? Do the answers to any of these questions scare you?
What’s your child’s favorite book? What was your favorite children’s book? Have you even had the time to share it with your own child? Can you imagine trying to read to your child during a ten minute visit, once a month, using a dirty plastic phone, because multiple plates of shatter-proof glass and bolted down prefabricated sheets of steel separated you? Have you ever even read any stories or told some of your own, to your child at night by their bedside? Can you imagine only being able to read to your child, by their graveside, all because one year earlier they were killed by a daisy cutter, that was unsuccessful in targeting someone who might have shared your religion, your neighborhood, your skin color, or maybe the only common ground you two shared was both being poor? Can you imagine not even knowing how to read because you were raised from factory to factory and now that your oldest daughter has just turned ten, she to will be forced into working just like you? Do these questions even affect you or are you so numb from booze, work, and T.V., that you stop yourself from feeling anything?
When was the last time you made love? Have you ever been overwhelmed with feelings while in another’s arms, or have you always just rated them on a scale of ten to one? Have you ever had to sit in front of a computer screen and listen to a manufactured voice, list out multiple choice questions about sexual assault? Can you imagine doing this after witnessing a cery real assault? Would you be afraid to tell the truth? Would it do any good if you had? Have you, yourself, ever been sexually assaulted? Have any of your children or significant others been coerced into such a traumatizing experience? If they had, would you even know, or would you just be at work? Would you place them in a freezing cold building, in front of a screen, with a computer voice poking and probing with dozens of emotionless questions, in hopes that you’ll be able to understand them better? Would you try to bribe them with a bag of 100 calorie mini-snack cookies to answer question after question? How, when, where, and with what were they sexually assaulted by? How hard was it? How long did it last? Did they take a bribe of a honey bun or ramen noodle soup afterwards? Did they bruise? Did they bleed? Did anything break or tear? Can you even imagine, you or anyone else you love, answering these questions to a computer with a robot voice, limited to only replies of yes-no, true-false, a) b) c) d)? Would it make it easier if you used the touch pad or touch screen? Would it make it easier if these questions were interpreted in Spanish? Can you imagine not knowing that at the end of the day, all of your answers were simply tallied up, equated out, and averaged to find a few numbers or maybe percentage? Could you imagine knowing any of this? Does any of this make you feel anything at all and if not, what will? What will it take for you to see statistics as a disgusting, inappropriate, warped and insane way of viewing the world?
Thanks for your time,
Inmate #10126758
Nueces County Jail
Written on 08.03.09
(Transcribed by Charity)
Alyssa...
Alyssa,
The Bahamas are nice this time of year; this vacation was very much needed. I heard a hurricane is headed here soon, so I figured our fly out on my private jet within the next couple days. Before I go, I hope to purchase more sweatshop produced souvenirs for some ridiculously cheap price. Nothing says the Bahamas quite like a “Made in China” authentic sombrero.
You know I called my accountant and they said the person renting out one of my condos was 3 days behind on rent. I called the cops and they said I have to wait 15 days to evict them. Can you believe the nerves of these so called peace officers? You can’t have people just not paying rent, that anarchy and we all know anarchy is the opposite of peace. Plus what about my profits, uhh! It’s so hard being rich.
I’m thinking about putting Steve, my youngest child in rehab. You know his coke habit has reached $300 a day. I mean when I was a kid, if I went over $200, my Dad would take away my BMW. Kids these days.
So I hope all is well with you, I mean not that I really care but I’m obliged to say nice things in letters like this, but really all I care about is me me me me me me me me; oh and don’t forget me. You know I used to pay for hookers, but now I find it much more enjoyable just to have sex with money. Man I love money as much as Jesus loves me.
Here’s to the next million,
Dr. Jayson Thomas III Phd L.M.N.O.P
Written from the Nueces County Jail
(Transcribed by Charity)
The Bahamas are nice this time of year; this vacation was very much needed. I heard a hurricane is headed here soon, so I figured our fly out on my private jet within the next couple days. Before I go, I hope to purchase more sweatshop produced souvenirs for some ridiculously cheap price. Nothing says the Bahamas quite like a “Made in China” authentic sombrero.
You know I called my accountant and they said the person renting out one of my condos was 3 days behind on rent. I called the cops and they said I have to wait 15 days to evict them. Can you believe the nerves of these so called peace officers? You can’t have people just not paying rent, that anarchy and we all know anarchy is the opposite of peace. Plus what about my profits, uhh! It’s so hard being rich.
I’m thinking about putting Steve, my youngest child in rehab. You know his coke habit has reached $300 a day. I mean when I was a kid, if I went over $200, my Dad would take away my BMW. Kids these days.
So I hope all is well with you, I mean not that I really care but I’m obliged to say nice things in letters like this, but really all I care about is me me me me me me me me; oh and don’t forget me. You know I used to pay for hookers, but now I find it much more enjoyable just to have sex with money. Man I love money as much as Jesus loves me.
Here’s to the next million,
Dr. Jayson Thomas III Phd L.M.N.O.P
Written from the Nueces County Jail
(Transcribed by Charity)
Jail riot
“The revolution will not be televised, an over-used but interestingly appropriate title for an unintentional play by play report on an almost full scale county jail riot.”
So for the first time being in Nueces County Jail, we the inmates held it down together, we had this particular shitty guard who was being an ass and coming up with dumb rules, one of which is we couldn’t change the channel on the T.V. (yes I know, give me convenience or give me death!). Anyways, it was because the guard himself was watching T.V. He admitted this to us saying that “We’ll watch what I wanna watch.” He also was looking for any excuse to rack us up (lockdown) probably so he can better watch T.V.
So anyways, I was watching a chess game (yes of course with my hand carved and molded soap pieces) and someone changed the T.V. channel and soon after the guard came in and unplugged it telling us all to “rack it up,” about 50 of the 70 refused telling him to call rank, so we can explain to them that he’s trying to watch T.V. instead of doing his job. Of course we were right and he refused to call and that’s when the showdown began.
In refusal of his orders, the T.V. got turned back on and channels were changed, people started getting on with their chess and card games. He came and unplugged it again so we all moved out to where the camera was the best angle and continued to yell and taunt him… he was scared and knew he was in the wrong. So he called in the JET (Jail Enforcement Team i.e. Jail SWAT) He told all of us to rack up but refused to open our cell doors (a dirty, dirty trick I might add). So we were all still out in the open when 5 guards with riot sized pepper spray cans came in ready to throwdown.
After a short standoff they realized it was not only a part of protocol, but in their best interest to pen our cells and at least give us the opportunity to rack down, and of course face to face with pepper spray, all but one of us did. So no riot, but we still flexed some of our strength which is more than I ever expected from my neighboring inmates who usually do a good enough job policing themselves and each other. We also without a doubt left an impression on the asshole guard. He will also have to justify to his superior why he called in the JET team, i.e. the equivalent of sending him to the principal’s office. Yes!!!
The one guy is still out there getting questioned by all the guards, and he’s still holding his own as best he can. I would have gave in already, fuck being called out and isolated like that. He’s going to have to receive some sort of punishment, because although he was in the right, he’s an inmate and it’s blasphemy to show the guards for the scum that they are. Plus, if they didn’t punish him, we would all know that we can get away with standing up for ourselves. So, fuck T.V. but I’m glad something was a catalyst for this showdown. After each sentence I write, I get up to go check on the inmate still getting questioned… so if this sounds scattered it’s because it’s still very much happening.
Five minutes have passed and things have settled some, they took the inmate out of the unit, and now they are P.R. Bonding (letting someone go free) the wife beater because the jail has reached over-capacity. Fuck that! Half of these inmates are on lesser non-violent drug and property offenses but of course they let the wife beater go. Then again, in our culture, wives and children are just as much property as a T.V. or probably valued at even less. It’s only called domestic violence in name not in definition. It’s an illusionary term to appease the masses, to make it look like they are holding violent perpetrators accountable.
It’s amazing how any one hour of being incarcerated will foretell the disgusting hypocrisy of those in power. Even that’s not right. Hypocrisy assumes they are going against their self or stated interests and those in power are safely hidden well behind these hourly and salaried grunts. The struggle to stay in power rages on. We just got unracked, and I’m going to go see if I can find out if that one inmate is okay.
15 minutes have passed and in a typical “abuse of power” (once again an illusionary term to appease the masses, whether we see it that way or not, they hold an unaccountable and self-justifying monopoly on violence), the prison guards are running through the rule book to justify their actions, after the fact. Still no word on the inmate, or what kind of punishment he faces, the only thing for sure is that he will face it. Fuck incarceration!
Written from the Nueces County Jail
(Transcribed by Charity)
Steve...
Steve is in recovery from what he hesitates to call the worst years of his life. It started with the disillusionment of being left in the aftermath of the first peak in the green anarchy movement.
Starting from the points where green anarchy had failed to answer, he flocked to the baptismal pool of academic understanding. Interpreting replaced experiencing, analyzing took priority over feeling and compassionate objectification secretly ousted subjective uncertainty in such a subtle manner that it went even more unrecognized than the most successful of CIA coups.
While entrenched in this world where the political is always separate from the personal; his intimate love life started to more and more resemble the aftermath of a 15,000 pound Daisy-cutter bomb dropped upon a small Afghani town; or more suitably a pioneer wagon circle around the piled corpses of tens of thousands of bison. Following in the same manner which the settlers did to the Indians, he inched towards relationships that destroyed him, the starving, as he desperately approached searching for any subsistence.
Soon armed with a liberal arts Bachelor’s degree, his metamorphosis finalized uniformed in fashionably tacky hipster clothing and a religious dependency on alcohol that makes a normal addiction look like child’s play. Realizing that his career options ranged from bad to atrocious, he signed up to be a soldier among the ranks in the United States government’s domestic cheerleading branch, Ameri-Corps.
He could not perceive this just quite yet, but analogous with the Vandals, Luddites, and countless indigenous before him, every self-inflicted attempt to defoliate his spirits and systemic defilement into assimilation was resisted by something fermenting insistently inside of him. So while this mischievous brew permeated through premature emotional negativity such as frustration, disappointment, depression and anxiety, his nervous childhood ticks came back to seemingly nullify his self-perception and self-esteem. Then unbeknownst, this brew left percolating grew darker and stronger, stronger and richer, richer and bolder, until in all its boldness it replenished his insurrectionary beauty, as if the first signs of re-growth from a much belated spring had finally arrived.
Like a rainstorm does to the aged and shredded layers of paint on a ran-down drug reddened dope house, he broke through the pieces of anguish and trauma built up from the previous days, weeks, months and years. In replication of how someone would eat an artichoke, he worked his way backwards through memory and emotions, peeling back pedal by pedal, going through layer by layer, digesting and internalizing any valuable meat along the way, while discarding the remainders. He made his way back to his heart.
Not much long after, in economic desperation, he took up the job to clear out a forest of invasive species. On one of these days he worked on taking out some Himalayan blackberry brambles. Cutting through layers the same way he did his own life, but this time he was left even more startled by what he found in the center of this so-called problem. Nestled in the large thorn fortress, a mamma had protectively hid her two baby raccoons. Who was Steve to evict these two from the safety of their blackberry home?
As two baby coons stared up at him, he was re-grounded once again in the quest of what it meant to be alive. He lowered his machete and walked away from the brambles, deciding then and there that no amount of paid reward would ever be worth the destruction of a place that another called home. Feelings, experience and the particular; these were the only weapons he would ever need to challenge each new situation; to live as a human; to live as an animal. And maybe, just maybe, a few pounds of TNT.
Written from Nueces County Jail
(Transcribed by Charity)
Starting from the points where green anarchy had failed to answer, he flocked to the baptismal pool of academic understanding. Interpreting replaced experiencing, analyzing took priority over feeling and compassionate objectification secretly ousted subjective uncertainty in such a subtle manner that it went even more unrecognized than the most successful of CIA coups.
While entrenched in this world where the political is always separate from the personal; his intimate love life started to more and more resemble the aftermath of a 15,000 pound Daisy-cutter bomb dropped upon a small Afghani town; or more suitably a pioneer wagon circle around the piled corpses of tens of thousands of bison. Following in the same manner which the settlers did to the Indians, he inched towards relationships that destroyed him, the starving, as he desperately approached searching for any subsistence.
Soon armed with a liberal arts Bachelor’s degree, his metamorphosis finalized uniformed in fashionably tacky hipster clothing and a religious dependency on alcohol that makes a normal addiction look like child’s play. Realizing that his career options ranged from bad to atrocious, he signed up to be a soldier among the ranks in the United States government’s domestic cheerleading branch, Ameri-Corps.
He could not perceive this just quite yet, but analogous with the Vandals, Luddites, and countless indigenous before him, every self-inflicted attempt to defoliate his spirits and systemic defilement into assimilation was resisted by something fermenting insistently inside of him. So while this mischievous brew permeated through premature emotional negativity such as frustration, disappointment, depression and anxiety, his nervous childhood ticks came back to seemingly nullify his self-perception and self-esteem. Then unbeknownst, this brew left percolating grew darker and stronger, stronger and richer, richer and bolder, until in all its boldness it replenished his insurrectionary beauty, as if the first signs of re-growth from a much belated spring had finally arrived.
Like a rainstorm does to the aged and shredded layers of paint on a ran-down drug reddened dope house, he broke through the pieces of anguish and trauma built up from the previous days, weeks, months and years. In replication of how someone would eat an artichoke, he worked his way backwards through memory and emotions, peeling back pedal by pedal, going through layer by layer, digesting and internalizing any valuable meat along the way, while discarding the remainders. He made his way back to his heart.
Not much long after, in economic desperation, he took up the job to clear out a forest of invasive species. On one of these days he worked on taking out some Himalayan blackberry brambles. Cutting through layers the same way he did his own life, but this time he was left even more startled by what he found in the center of this so-called problem. Nestled in the large thorn fortress, a mamma had protectively hid her two baby raccoons. Who was Steve to evict these two from the safety of their blackberry home?
As two baby coons stared up at him, he was re-grounded once again in the quest of what it meant to be alive. He lowered his machete and walked away from the brambles, deciding then and there that no amount of paid reward would ever be worth the destruction of a place that another called home. Feelings, experience and the particular; these were the only weapons he would ever need to challenge each new situation; to live as a human; to live as an animal. And maybe, just maybe, a few pounds of TNT.
Written from Nueces County Jail
(Transcribed by Charity)
Friday, September 18, 2009
Jayson's Current Situation
I don't know exactly who reads this or how much you guys know about Jayson's current situation, but just in case anyone's out of the loop I will give a brief update.
Originally Jayson was supposed to be transferred from county to state jail on Thursday, September 3rd. However they didn't come for him, and thinking for sure he would get transfered the next Thursday he continued to tell people not to write to him in case those letters didn't reach him in time. On Thursday the tenth, again they did not come for him, even after apparently he had been assured by a few guards and inmates that he would definitely catch chain.
Yesterday was Thursday Sept. 17th... and I guess all we can do at this point is hope that he is finally getting transfered after an extra two weeks of waiting. None of this counts towards his "actual sentence" of course which totally sucks.
So cross your fingers for Jayson getting out of the frying pan and into the fire. Hopefully the first person to get his new address/number will post it up here so we can all write to him to make up for all the time he spent with no letters coming in :(.
-Ruthie
Monday, September 14, 2009
Excerpt from a Letter (Written 8-23-09)
Parts of this letter have been excluded for personal/security reasons.
...
When I first got locked up I was so so angry and energetic. Now I'm starting to get in the "groove" of things, and I hate it. ... Today I spent more time with the sociopath woman killer... He scares me so much. I gave him my email. He thinks we are not only on the "same side" but also potential friends. If he emails me when he gets out we will have to come up with some evil plan for him, or at least mischievous.
The "Colonel" is this schizophrenic who is on lock-down for 23 hours a day, and they only let him out for one hour between like 2 and 3 am, and so he just came to my door and we talked for a bit. He's a sweetheart, and it hurts to see him in here, especially with his infliction. It can't be good. He's been in here for like 4 months for improper use of 9-11, but I think there is more to it.
Well I really was just writing because I was wide awake thinking about my cell mate, and I also don't want to have to go to bed and have nightmares. Last night they were the worst they've ever been in here... I hate it... but good news: I read today about inmates setting a prison on fire in Kentucky and about a dam being taken down here, and about Mexico City decriminalizing drugs, and about California having to let go of thousands of inmates cause they can't afford them, and about "natural disasters" getting more intense in the next 20 years--I only hope I can do the same--no I'll make sure I can do the same.
...
Something meaningful and inspiring,
-Jailbird J
(Transcribed by Ruthie)
Excerpt from a Letter (Written 8/20/09)
Some parts are left out for personal/security reasons.
He identifies as an industrialist, neo-nationalist (Nazi), Mormon, superior to women, ex-military current militia patriot, drug dealer (meth), pimp (escort security), and he hopes to buy land and clear cut it to make money to buy guns. He wants all minorities dead, all women to know their place, all disabled and white trash dead (haha he grew up "trash"). He thinks Stalin and Lenin's murder of 26 million people was necessary, he knows the holocaust was a lie, he kills animals for fun (and talks about it). He thinks that we're "friends" (i.e. he thinks I'm dumb enough to help him in his causes), he's anti-government but pro-America, he's disgusting, creepy, hateful, and a sociopath. He creeps me out more than any child molester (chomos as they are called here), judge, or cop I have ever met and I've met some evil mother fuckers.
Anyways after we finish talking I get so upset and overwhelmed... talking to you on the phone was the only thing to calm me down and make me happy.
...
I am forced to drink city water in here which is disgusting not only in taste, but in contaminants. I think David said this was one among only 20 cities whose water system completely failed the national standards (which are horrible to begin with). for 21 days I couldn't eat any of the food in here save for oranges, lettuce, and occasionally potatoes. I came in at 185 and now I weigh 168... and last week I was 165 so I'm doing better. When I get to state jail they'll have better (but not good and definitely not healthy) food, and I hope to get back to 175 before leaving. My arms have dwindled and my chest too. Oddly enough, my stomach has bloated out. I honestly don't think my arms have been this skinny since I was 12. If not 12 for sure 13.
I'm almost positive that without receiving protein or nutrients if I were to "work out" it would just burn away more muscle. I don't want to become one of those skinny malnourished vegan anarchists (i.e. my friends). But it's all set up to make me break down and start punishing myself, haha they have to be joking themselves to think I'm about to do that.
I'm in a mental health unit because I have a wheat allergy and this is the safest place for me in case of a "medical emergency". So I'm in a unit with 74 people--two to a cell except for the "high risks" that stay in their cells on a 23 hour lock-down. Most of the people aren't crazy (I mean as far as civilized people go) but there are some inflicted people and it breaks my heart. It also breaks the law that they are in here but they have no one advocating for them. I've seen a schizophrenic dwindle to nothing because of this environment...
This guy "The Colonel" is on 23 hour lockdown and sings children's songs. He's incredibly smart and kind but he's a paranoid schizophrenic and so things trigger him and he goes on yelling rampages. He's allowed out from 1-2am by himself, and the rest of the time he stays in his cell. :( The guards purposefully fuck with these inflicted people to set them off for entertainment purposes. So do the inmates. I've almost gotten into two fights for calling out the inmates on it (I can get in fights here but in state jail its zip my mouth for 75 days) and I've been writing grievances on the fucked up guards (which does nothing here and at state jail would make me a target).
There are also very old people in here in their 70's that are not a threat to anyone and are actually so endangered in here--their eyes are always glossed over and red from sadness or recent tears. It made me think about DGR and Lierre talking about how our movements don't have elders, we don't respect them and she's right, warriors are nothing without the guidance of elders. We just follow the same way the rest of this culture treats them... lock em up in homes if they're rich, and in jails if they're poor. We need to reclaim our elders and the knowledge they carry with them.
It's about 30-35% black in here when there are less than 10% blacks in the county. Every single one in my unit came from the same neighborhood. The same 8 blocks. The run down part of town on refinery row.
...
Just to give you an idea of what I'm eating in here: for breakfast I had 1 ounce of cereal with a little cartoon of 2% puss and blood filled industrially factory farmed raped milk, and 3/4 (four out of six slices) of an orange. Then for lunch I had a "salad", which is 2 ounces at most of ice burg lettuce with no dressing (hah), a half of a half of an orange (3 slices this time), one 3 ounce hamburger/soy patty. No bun, no veggies, and no dressing. Also two stick of celery this size...
______________________
[______________________] <---This is the size of the picture he drew me.
Dinner will be just like lunch, and I actually get fed better than everyone else because I have a "special diet". It all sounds miserable but it's not. I have Endgame 1 & 2, and Culture of Make Believe. I'm waiting to get more books when I get to state. I have a cool ass anti-civ celly and some other interesting people... we carved and molded a chess set out of soap bars and died the dark pieces with coffee... so playing that has been lots of fun.
I get tons of letters, not tons but comparatively more than the others, and I know that I've got hella love and support from the outside. It breaks my heart to hear from people getting locked up and coming out to find that everyone they knew and loved is dead (no exaggeration). Fuck prisons and jails, burn them down. But also please please please x32 don't worry. I guarentee I'll be fine, plus it's only making me hate them more. If we could pass out anti-civ literature in every jail/prison (to people who already hate and are most negatively affected by it), civilization would be sooo 2009.
...
...
-Jailbird J
(Transcribed by Ruthie)
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Letter to "Linda"
Space Jam here, for another installment of the Jayson Thomas Fuck the Law Reader.
Today is a special treat for those of yall who aren't from our hood (361 Represent).
If you haven't ever been to Corpus Christi and wonder what it is like, this letter and the characters (some would say caricatures, but those of us who grew up here know all too well the reality of the contents/context) therein are a pretty accurate representation of the culture that surrounded, (in)formed, rejected, disfigured, inhabited, accepted us--making many of us the people we are today: completely fucking insane. In a totes awesome/endearing way, though; we keep it real. Frealz.
I've taken the liberty of breaking the letter up into paragraphs for ease of reading, as well as clarifications of places/events (they will be in italics within brackets).
Much love to my boy Jay, holdin' it down in the dirty third.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Linda,
Girl, I miss you. Bein locked up in her is just not fair cuz I love you more than I love weed. Now I know I've said that before, but baby girl, you gots to believe me. You know, it's like that one time at Bayfest [an awesome/trashy, annual city festival/carnival complete with rides, food/vendor booths, and washed up musical acts] when when I shot them ducks and gots you that big tweety bird. Girl, I spent 30 bucks tryin to shoot them ducks. You know how much weed I could have bought with dat der money. Cuz I'm a balla, I could of got like 2 blizzies off my cuz.
Speaking of my cuz, Shorty, I've heard you been calling him up sayin that you think about leavin me. My other cuz be sayin that you be sayin that your girl be sayin that 2 weeks is too long to wait for no man. Now I know I be servin some hard time but baby girl, you know I gots to do me for me.
So I know Whataburger [awesome local fast food place] be payin you on Friday, and I wonderin, well you know I love you, I gots you that tweety bird, you know, and since I can't be on the grind, since I aint stuntin in here, can you put some money on my commissary. These guards be treatin me bad like my name's Yolanda and I just shot Selena. Shorty, I tried to holla at Hot Z-95 [local rap/R&B station], you know, send out a dedication to you, cuz i know you be listening for our song, but they don't be acceptin no collect calls up in that ho.
First thing when I get up out of here, Ima smoke a blunt and then take you out to eat at Boat N Net [fast food seafood shack. the drive thru "intercom" is a pvc pipe you yell into] and go see a dollar movie. Nah you know what, my cousin owes me like $12.50 for some herb I be sellin, so I'm gonna take you out to the movie and then Golden Corral. I mean I get out on Monday but let's wait til Wed, you know movies be cheaper then.
You know let's got eat and then go to the dollar show and babe, bring that big Gucci purse, so we can fill that ho up with gummy bears from Golden Corral. See if your momz will let you take some of those sodas too, cuz you know my momz only be buyin that Hill Country Fair [local cheapie store brand] stuff.
Speakin of my cousin I heard from my cuz that he saw you at the mall with your cousin and he say you be dressin all like you goin to the club, but its all good cuz I know you aint cheatin on your big daddy like that. You know that Master P song "Them Ho'z crazier than a bag of Ding Dongz" came on and I thought about you. Especially that line about "girl, can you put some money on my books, this world throwed and them cops be a bunch of crooks." That always makes me think of you.
You know speakin of which, since you my shorty and I'm your daddy, you think that when you get payed on friday you can put some money in my books. Nah, better yet check this, you know how me and your cousin used to date, well I know HEB be payin her ass on Tuesday so see if she can put some money on my books. Tell her if she remembers that one time i spent like 2 twenties on her at Bayfest trying to win her that Tweety poster that said "smoke weed." And what about that time I got money from my momz and bought both you and her a funnel cake at the rattlesnake races [exactly that].
Yo, i saw Joker from Robstown, his ass got locked up and your cousin Flip, he's in here too but I heard that the secret service be lookin at your uncle tito because he connected to all that blood shit.
When I get out of here boo, I'm going to buy me one of the Escalades on 32's. I'll get you one of them baby pits that my cousin flip be sellin you know.
Your Southside Country Gangsta,
Dope Boi
PS- Tell your brother to put some money on my books. I know Stripes [local convenience store] pays him on Monday.
Today is a special treat for those of yall who aren't from our hood (361 Represent).
If you haven't ever been to Corpus Christi and wonder what it is like, this letter and the characters (some would say caricatures, but those of us who grew up here know all too well the reality of the contents/context) therein are a pretty accurate representation of the culture that surrounded, (in)formed, rejected, disfigured, inhabited, accepted us--making many of us the people we are today: completely fucking insane. In a totes awesome/endearing way, though; we keep it real. Frealz.
I've taken the liberty of breaking the letter up into paragraphs for ease of reading, as well as clarifications of places/events (they will be in italics within brackets).
Much love to my boy Jay, holdin' it down in the dirty third.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Linda,
Girl, I miss you. Bein locked up in her is just not fair cuz I love you more than I love weed. Now I know I've said that before, but baby girl, you gots to believe me. You know, it's like that one time at Bayfest [an awesome/trashy, annual city festival/carnival complete with rides, food/vendor booths, and washed up musical acts] when when I shot them ducks and gots you that big tweety bird. Girl, I spent 30 bucks tryin to shoot them ducks. You know how much weed I could have bought with dat der money. Cuz I'm a balla, I could of got like 2 blizzies off my cuz.
Speaking of my cuz, Shorty, I've heard you been calling him up sayin that you think about leavin me. My other cuz be sayin that you be sayin that your girl be sayin that 2 weeks is too long to wait for no man. Now I know I be servin some hard time but baby girl, you know I gots to do me for me.
So I know Whataburger [awesome local fast food place] be payin you on Friday, and I wonderin, well you know I love you, I gots you that tweety bird, you know, and since I can't be on the grind, since I aint stuntin in here, can you put some money on my commissary. These guards be treatin me bad like my name's Yolanda and I just shot Selena. Shorty, I tried to holla at Hot Z-95 [local rap/R&B station], you know, send out a dedication to you, cuz i know you be listening for our song, but they don't be acceptin no collect calls up in that ho.
First thing when I get up out of here, Ima smoke a blunt and then take you out to eat at Boat N Net [fast food seafood shack. the drive thru "intercom" is a pvc pipe you yell into] and go see a dollar movie. Nah you know what, my cousin owes me like $12.50 for some herb I be sellin, so I'm gonna take you out to the movie and then Golden Corral. I mean I get out on Monday but let's wait til Wed, you know movies be cheaper then.
You know let's got eat and then go to the dollar show and babe, bring that big Gucci purse, so we can fill that ho up with gummy bears from Golden Corral. See if your momz will let you take some of those sodas too, cuz you know my momz only be buyin that Hill Country Fair [local cheapie store brand] stuff.
Speakin of my cousin I heard from my cuz that he saw you at the mall with your cousin and he say you be dressin all like you goin to the club, but its all good cuz I know you aint cheatin on your big daddy like that. You know that Master P song "Them Ho'z crazier than a bag of Ding Dongz" came on and I thought about you. Especially that line about "girl, can you put some money on my books, this world throwed and them cops be a bunch of crooks." That always makes me think of you.
You know speakin of which, since you my shorty and I'm your daddy, you think that when you get payed on friday you can put some money in my books. Nah, better yet check this, you know how me and your cousin used to date, well I know HEB be payin her ass on Tuesday so see if she can put some money on my books. Tell her if she remembers that one time i spent like 2 twenties on her at Bayfest trying to win her that Tweety poster that said "smoke weed." And what about that time I got money from my momz and bought both you and her a funnel cake at the rattlesnake races [exactly that].
Yo, i saw Joker from Robstown, his ass got locked up and your cousin Flip, he's in here too but I heard that the secret service be lookin at your uncle tito because he connected to all that blood shit.
When I get out of here boo, I'm going to buy me one of the Escalades on 32's. I'll get you one of them baby pits that my cousin flip be sellin you know.
Your Southside Country Gangsta,
Dope Boi
PS- Tell your brother to put some money on my books. I know Stripes [local convenience store] pays him on Monday.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Excerpt from a Letter (Written 8/11/09)
Here's most of another letter sent just after his court date in Texas. Some parts are left out for personal reasons.
I am in so incredibly tired and in so much pain, but I feel obligated to write you today.
I hope someone let you know the court decision but I'll explain it in detail later. This letter is going to be crude because my body is exhausted and my mind still numb and my heart still racing (it is actually having really sharp pains) but fuck fuck fuck the law! With every ounce of my dying breath, fuck 'em!
I have to say though that my overall feeling is one of absolute adorement. I have the most amazing and inspiring friends, in the whole world. You are included in this without a doubt, but let me give you the run down of the whole day. Wake up and shave, get shackled up and wait for hours to go to court and get bombarded with all sorts of legal paperwork. My friends and Mom are there, my Mom starts crying and it breaks my heart. Then I basically talk on my own behalf. I probably fell short... it's so hard to balance my actual feelings and desires with trying to sound remorseful and all that bullshit.
Then my Mom went up and fuck! What an amazing woman. She did so good Ruth ... she stayed so strong even though during the cross examination the D.A. tried to belittle and ruin her. I wanted to hurt him so badly for making my mom feel like shit. He had no right, and if his job is the excuse then he's still wrong, and even more so.
Then David came up, he did good but was David, all hella relaxed, which is what I needed. Then Charity from Roseburg went ahead and said some of the most loving things I've ever heard. You're going to love her. She has this reserve about her so that when she does speak up finally, it's usually the most amazing clear thoughts, plus she's not "read-up" or any of that. Everything she says comes from experience which is mad crazy!
Then came Sandra, clearly the most eloquent speaker. She has the capability of expressing anti- civ and anarchist sentiments in such a way and tone that it comes off as widely acceptable and desirable. She stood as such a strong Latina woman and refused to be frustrated by the D.A. I'm still crying this whole time, or most of it, it was just so much I couldn't handle it. I could hear my Mom crying behind me and it just killed me.
After Sandra came Tara who spoke with such definitive love and rage... it was so god damn inspiring. It doesn't help that we've been best friends for fucking ever, but god god damn--and when the D.A. tried to trip her up and attack her she fired back with a certainty in herself and in her words that I had never seen in any one else, period.
Then cam Emma. I literally met her the day before I got arrested, but damn I love that girl. Plus her words were straight up in your face anarchy 101. She was able to fill any gaps or doubts previously left open. Then last, but not least, was Jenny from Corpus, and god damn! If you were to take Tara's sincerity and Sandra's clarity and Mom's straight up love and put them in a flour tortilla, that was fucking Jenny.
By the I had stopped crying, but she started... and then I did again. I don't really get the point of explaining it to you like this... the whole thing was surreal. I think for a while I forgot why I was there. I even forgot that it was for me.
Also in the court was Alyse (an old friend from CC, TX) and she was so strong the whole time, Kaleb (a new friend who came all the way from Roseburg) who I literally had talked to for like 30 minutes before getting locked up but now I feel the ultimate love and friendship for, Alyssa (my new friend who's moving to Roseburg!) who I spent some time with having the best connection and personal talks with--she is such an adorable and caring kid, and George who without a doubt is my most underappreciated friend. I've been through so much with him and we go for months without talking, but I can't think of anyone else I'd want to spend hard time with. Okay maybe Mumia (???can't read it) but that's because he's already holding it down.
There was at least one more person, maybe two, but I couldn't see because all the seats were full. The amount of love that was expressed in that court is going to keep me strong every day I'm locked up and then for the rest of my life, and that's not an overstatement. I had never felt so much on the right side than I did today, I guess that's the point of all this. There I stood against the most destructive and powerful government of all times, and I was not in the least bit scared. There could not have been a single thing said or done to me that would have made me feel ashamed or in the wrong. You know, me and you are pretty pessamistic about winning (whatever that means) but today I realized that we have the most important traits to win.
Everyone in that room (my mom included) proved to me everything I had always believed. We are on the right side. Each one of us can take a thousand of them. The state can and will do fucked up things to us but we won't break.
I have never been so excited about my personal future and the future in general. I know you are deaestated that I will be locked up for a while (at least 6 months, maybe 2 years).
...
Just please remember that I'm going to fight on your side till my very last breath and that I will do anything I have to to help you out while I'm locked up, and when I get out. I mean anything and everything ...
-Jayson
(Transcribed by Ruthie)
I am in so incredibly tired and in so much pain, but I feel obligated to write you today.
I hope someone let you know the court decision but I'll explain it in detail later. This letter is going to be crude because my body is exhausted and my mind still numb and my heart still racing (it is actually having really sharp pains) but fuck fuck fuck the law! With every ounce of my dying breath, fuck 'em!
I have to say though that my overall feeling is one of absolute adorement. I have the most amazing and inspiring friends, in the whole world. You are included in this without a doubt, but let me give you the run down of the whole day. Wake up and shave, get shackled up and wait for hours to go to court and get bombarded with all sorts of legal paperwork. My friends and Mom are there, my Mom starts crying and it breaks my heart. Then I basically talk on my own behalf. I probably fell short... it's so hard to balance my actual feelings and desires with trying to sound remorseful and all that bullshit.
Then my Mom went up and fuck! What an amazing woman. She did so good Ruth ... she stayed so strong even though during the cross examination the D.A. tried to belittle and ruin her. I wanted to hurt him so badly for making my mom feel like shit. He had no right, and if his job is the excuse then he's still wrong, and even more so.
Then David came up, he did good but was David, all hella relaxed, which is what I needed. Then Charity from Roseburg went ahead and said some of the most loving things I've ever heard. You're going to love her. She has this reserve about her so that when she does speak up finally, it's usually the most amazing clear thoughts, plus she's not "read-up" or any of that. Everything she says comes from experience which is mad crazy!
Then came Sandra, clearly the most eloquent speaker. She has the capability of expressing anti- civ and anarchist sentiments in such a way and tone that it comes off as widely acceptable and desirable. She stood as such a strong Latina woman and refused to be frustrated by the D.A. I'm still crying this whole time, or most of it, it was just so much I couldn't handle it. I could hear my Mom crying behind me and it just killed me.
After Sandra came Tara who spoke with such definitive love and rage... it was so god damn inspiring. It doesn't help that we've been best friends for fucking ever, but god god damn--and when the D.A. tried to trip her up and attack her she fired back with a certainty in herself and in her words that I had never seen in any one else, period.
Then cam Emma. I literally met her the day before I got arrested, but damn I love that girl. Plus her words were straight up in your face anarchy 101. She was able to fill any gaps or doubts previously left open. Then last, but not least, was Jenny from Corpus, and god damn! If you were to take Tara's sincerity and Sandra's clarity and Mom's straight up love and put them in a flour tortilla, that was fucking Jenny.
By the I had stopped crying, but she started... and then I did again. I don't really get the point of explaining it to you like this... the whole thing was surreal. I think for a while I forgot why I was there. I even forgot that it was for me.
Also in the court was Alyse (an old friend from CC, TX) and she was so strong the whole time, Kaleb (a new friend who came all the way from Roseburg) who I literally had talked to for like 30 minutes before getting locked up but now I feel the ultimate love and friendship for, Alyssa (my new friend who's moving to Roseburg!) who I spent some time with having the best connection and personal talks with--she is such an adorable and caring kid, and George who without a doubt is my most underappreciated friend. I've been through so much with him and we go for months without talking, but I can't think of anyone else I'd want to spend hard time with. Okay maybe Mumia (???can't read it) but that's because he's already holding it down.
There was at least one more person, maybe two, but I couldn't see because all the seats were full. The amount of love that was expressed in that court is going to keep me strong every day I'm locked up and then for the rest of my life, and that's not an overstatement. I had never felt so much on the right side than I did today, I guess that's the point of all this. There I stood against the most destructive and powerful government of all times, and I was not in the least bit scared. There could not have been a single thing said or done to me that would have made me feel ashamed or in the wrong. You know, me and you are pretty pessamistic about winning (whatever that means) but today I realized that we have the most important traits to win.
Everyone in that room (my mom included) proved to me everything I had always believed. We are on the right side. Each one of us can take a thousand of them. The state can and will do fucked up things to us but we won't break.
I have never been so excited about my personal future and the future in general. I know you are deaestated that I will be locked up for a while (at least 6 months, maybe 2 years).
...
Just please remember that I'm going to fight on your side till my very last breath and that I will do anything I have to to help you out while I'm locked up, and when I get out. I mean anything and everything ...
-Jayson
(Transcribed by Ruthie)
Excerpt from a Letter (Mon 8/03/09)
This is most of an older letter sent from the Roseburg Jail. Some parts are excluded for possible security reasons.
I Hate Jail, it is a cold and desperate place. They make it that way to break your spirits, but I refuse to let them break mine. I'm goin to stay strong through all of this no matter how ridiculous their attempts at punishing me may be. In case my Mom hasn't informed you, here's the brief rundown. They are trying to prosecute me because I fled probation. I fled probation because I was miserable. The probation was for graffiti ... So the only thing you didn't know was that I was still on the run for it ... So I'm facing 2 years in State Jail. If so I will serve day for do all two years.
This is so ludicrous. Most cases of rape and manslaughter get 10 years in prison with parole out in 18 months--but this is capitalism. This is a culture that puts a price on everything it owns. It clearly values buildings over women and children. Yes, I hate it. Yes we will change it, or die trying.
So there is an 18-20% chance that we can convince them not to lock me away and an even smaller chance that I will be able to leave the state of Texas, but I want you to know I am trying hard and you are one of the main motivating factors. Look at the bright side, I'll have some crazy amazing stories when I get back.
So they have been moving me every few days, and every time they do, they take all my shit away, including my legal paperwork and letters. I finally have a chance to write you, but I still have to make it short because my wonderful Mom has to transcribe it via e-mail to you ... I did not fully realize how much people care about and depend on me until I got kidnapped away from them.
It took 7 very long days to get to my destination of Nueces County Jail. Sleeping shackled sitting up in a van is no fun at all. They forced McDonalds happy meals down my throat three times a day for the whole 7 days. I kind of know how you feel being surrounded by sexist, racist and homophobic people who by no means "get it". The skinheads and Nazis are pissed that I didn't join them for their protection, but I've been fighting them since I was 14 and I'm not going to stop now.
It's scary how segregated jail and prison are. Even if I get locked up there is good work to do from in here. ...
Until the last cop is hung by the entrails, or the last judge.
-Jayson
(Transcribed by Ruthie)
I Hate Jail, it is a cold and desperate place. They make it that way to break your spirits, but I refuse to let them break mine. I'm goin to stay strong through all of this no matter how ridiculous their attempts at punishing me may be. In case my Mom hasn't informed you, here's the brief rundown. They are trying to prosecute me because I fled probation. I fled probation because I was miserable. The probation was for graffiti ... So the only thing you didn't know was that I was still on the run for it ... So I'm facing 2 years in State Jail. If so I will serve day for do all two years.
This is so ludicrous. Most cases of rape and manslaughter get 10 years in prison with parole out in 18 months--but this is capitalism. This is a culture that puts a price on everything it owns. It clearly values buildings over women and children. Yes, I hate it. Yes we will change it, or die trying.
So there is an 18-20% chance that we can convince them not to lock me away and an even smaller chance that I will be able to leave the state of Texas, but I want you to know I am trying hard and you are one of the main motivating factors. Look at the bright side, I'll have some crazy amazing stories when I get back.
So they have been moving me every few days, and every time they do, they take all my shit away, including my legal paperwork and letters. I finally have a chance to write you, but I still have to make it short because my wonderful Mom has to transcribe it via e-mail to you ... I did not fully realize how much people care about and depend on me until I got kidnapped away from them.
It took 7 very long days to get to my destination of Nueces County Jail. Sleeping shackled sitting up in a van is no fun at all. They forced McDonalds happy meals down my throat three times a day for the whole 7 days. I kind of know how you feel being surrounded by sexist, racist and homophobic people who by no means "get it". The skinheads and Nazis are pissed that I didn't join them for their protection, but I've been fighting them since I was 14 and I'm not going to stop now.
It's scary how segregated jail and prison are. Even if I get locked up there is good work to do from in here. ...
Until the last cop is hung by the entrails, or the last judge.
-Jayson
(Transcribed by Ruthie)
The Impossible Palm Tree (A Primer on Subversive Golf Course Maintanence, or a Lack Thereof)
I got moved to a new cell--one on the second tier with no bunk--so I get the whole thing to myself. Most of my view from the window is blocked by a palm tree, or actually, a number of them. They are of course exotics, not native to this area. That's a horrible drawing of one of them...
They got me thinking about two things: leverage and breaking points.
Leverage points. This tree is incredibly skinny about half way up its trunk, and when the wind blows, it threatens to snap in two. If it did, it would land right on top of a few cop cars--which is always good to think about. But more to the point, the fragile trunk reminded me of a similarities between the palm tree and interstate highways.
The palm tree is most alive at the top and in the roots, which are dependent on each other. To stay alive they have to exchange nutrients through the trunk, and if the trunk was to break at its thinnest point, the entire tree would die. Cities are the same way. They are large and interdependent on one another (as well as on the destruction of the living world).
Cities rely on highways, which work like trunks. They're the weakest point through which critical resources are exchanged. Highways thin down to the fewest lanes when they are about halfway between cities, just like the trunk between the roots and foliage of a palm tree, so it would be most effective to break or attack a highway between two large urban centers. It would take more time, resources, and work to repair a road the farther it is from the city, and this strategy would maximize the distance from both cities.
Breaking Points. The trees outside my window are particularlyweak and breakable because they are not in native soil. Civilization is the same way: it tries to mimic itself in every area, no matter its surroundings. (Las Vegas; case in point) The same is true for major religions, science, and the English language. All of these, just like civilization, try to have universality with little or no regard to their actual circumstances. It is finding or realizing these breaking points that will help bring a stop to this insane culture.
Civilization tries to impose golf courses everywhere it goes, but a golf course, (although always absurd) would not be as significant a target in Washington State as it would be in Pheonix AZ. On the smallest level, the irrigation system of a golf course would be more crucial in Arizona than in Washington. On a much larger scale, Pheonix's entire water supply would be a much more effective target than anywhere in the northwest.
Taking out a fertilizer company in the midwest would cause more overall damage than attacking one in the southwest. Targetting a rail line in New York or Chicago would have a bigger impact than choosing one in SCL or Houston, because those places aren't as dependent on public commute networks.
Think seasonally. A (displaced, tropical) tree can go without being watered for a longer time during the the wetter months than it can during the summer. Similarly, Pheonix needs and uses elictricity more in the summer than in the winter, and Seattle would be the opposite way. We sometimes get caught up in strategies and tactics that worked well once, or in one place, but--just like civilization demanding a golf course in the desert--some things are not meant to be universally applied. All tactics should be viewed circumstancially.
If what we want is to fight on the same side as nature, using seasonal, regional, and circumstancial thinking will maximize our effectiveness.
I feel I should mention a third strategy that takes both leverage and breaking points into account. Civilization is often extremely limited on a certain product or resource. These can serve as critical target points, which are not always specific to one region or area. If there was, for instance, one supplier that provided some important metal used in making computer processing components, and this metal was stored at just one climate controlled facility, no matter where the facility was in the world it would be a crucial target.
Be as diverse as the wild itself.
Most importantly, strategies are worthless unless enacted, and enacting them is impossible if you are locked up or dead. Be brave and careful, courageous and thoughtful, and let fear be a cautionary process--not a paralyzing endpoint.
Till the last exotic palm tree falls on the head of the last Nueces County Sherriff,
J-Bird
(Transcribed by Ruthie)
They got me thinking about two things: leverage and breaking points.
Leverage points. This tree is incredibly skinny about half way up its trunk, and when the wind blows, it threatens to snap in two. If it did, it would land right on top of a few cop cars--which is always good to think about. But more to the point, the fragile trunk reminded me of a similarities between the palm tree and interstate highways.
The palm tree is most alive at the top and in the roots, which are dependent on each other. To stay alive they have to exchange nutrients through the trunk, and if the trunk was to break at its thinnest point, the entire tree would die. Cities are the same way. They are large and interdependent on one another (as well as on the destruction of the living world).
Cities rely on highways, which work like trunks. They're the weakest point through which critical resources are exchanged. Highways thin down to the fewest lanes when they are about halfway between cities, just like the trunk between the roots and foliage of a palm tree, so it would be most effective to break or attack a highway between two large urban centers. It would take more time, resources, and work to repair a road the farther it is from the city, and this strategy would maximize the distance from both cities.
Breaking Points. The trees outside my window are particularlyweak and breakable because they are not in native soil. Civilization is the same way: it tries to mimic itself in every area, no matter its surroundings. (Las Vegas; case in point) The same is true for major religions, science, and the English language. All of these, just like civilization, try to have universality with little or no regard to their actual circumstances. It is finding or realizing these breaking points that will help bring a stop to this insane culture.
Civilization tries to impose golf courses everywhere it goes, but a golf course, (although always absurd) would not be as significant a target in Washington State as it would be in Pheonix AZ. On the smallest level, the irrigation system of a golf course would be more crucial in Arizona than in Washington. On a much larger scale, Pheonix's entire water supply would be a much more effective target than anywhere in the northwest.
Taking out a fertilizer company in the midwest would cause more overall damage than attacking one in the southwest. Targetting a rail line in New York or Chicago would have a bigger impact than choosing one in SCL or Houston, because those places aren't as dependent on public commute networks.
Think seasonally. A (displaced, tropical) tree can go without being watered for a longer time during the the wetter months than it can during the summer. Similarly, Pheonix needs and uses elictricity more in the summer than in the winter, and Seattle would be the opposite way. We sometimes get caught up in strategies and tactics that worked well once, or in one place, but--just like civilization demanding a golf course in the desert--some things are not meant to be universally applied. All tactics should be viewed circumstancially.
If what we want is to fight on the same side as nature, using seasonal, regional, and circumstancial thinking will maximize our effectiveness.
I feel I should mention a third strategy that takes both leverage and breaking points into account. Civilization is often extremely limited on a certain product or resource. These can serve as critical target points, which are not always specific to one region or area. If there was, for instance, one supplier that provided some important metal used in making computer processing components, and this metal was stored at just one climate controlled facility, no matter where the facility was in the world it would be a crucial target.
Be as diverse as the wild itself.
Most importantly, strategies are worthless unless enacted, and enacting them is impossible if you are locked up or dead. Be brave and careful, courageous and thoughtful, and let fear be a cautionary process--not a paralyzing endpoint.
Till the last exotic palm tree falls on the head of the last Nueces County Sherriff,
J-Bird
(Transcribed by Ruthie)
Saturday, August 15, 2009
"A Song Unowned" 7-31-44
I'm surrounded by concrete, steel, and relentless lighting. Actually, I am entrapped by these things. But even in this brutally cold and hostile environment, I can think of so many inexplicably beautiful memories.
Places, feelings, people. Memory is a world where tangible and intangible collide, where material and immaterial are express equally on the same flashing screen. During this internment, one memory keeps providing me security within myself while in such a despicably depressing, disgusting entrapment.
It is not a memory of the free world, one from the outside, but one born from within similar confines. My first time I was locked up for any meaningful amount of time, I was struggling to survive through a horrible depression and it was during those days that this memory was created.
I spent those days, reading my only inspiration from within, the black and white daily newspaper. Everyday I searched for stories and then the riots in France hit full swing. A real revolution, even if it was just momentarily, became the for the first time in my life, a feasible possibility.
But along with that burning inspiration came the heavy realization of my current confines of only a sympathetic spectator. I was locked up, incapable of escaping the walls burdening my emotional, spiritual, mental, and physical self. I was impaired and disconnected, trying to swallow the prepackaged guilt, blame, regrets, and shame inflicted upon me.
It was then and there while reading those words of inspiration, that it found me. I was sharing the stainless steel jail table with two dark skinned old-schoolers. It's easy to tell who the old schoolers are, because they carry the weight of each year they have served sinking down upon their backs and shoulders. But they always make sure to never let their heads be burdened by the weight. They have been here too long to know, that in this place, you always keep your head up.
So, they sat there talking, laughing, and playing chess. The concrete walls and floors were replaced by trees and grass. Exchanging the steel doors, locs, and bunks for squirrels, birds, and light posts, they soon found themselves surrounded by the landscape of a well-maintained downtown park, late summer. The mold and dust-filled air-conditioning ventilation along with the flicker from the fluorescent lighting transforms into warm sunshine piercing through the tree's canopy, while the first sign of autumn approaching comes from a cool breeze.
The loud shouting of men bouncing off the hardened walls of incarceration diffuse to the sounds of kids playing games and birds singing over the creaking of swing sets, with a mellow swoosh from the traffic in the distance. The large durable gray plastic garbage cans, well, they remain large durable gray plastic garbage cans, but they do become encased by an ornamental, metal frame-work and an assortment of bees and flies battling over the delicacies humans so easily define and discard as waste.
This was not my naive imagination wandering, but an actual transformation of experience refusing to be a just spectacle any longer. So, when they began their game of chess, I, too found myself integrated into the scenery. Into the moment.
We sat at one of those nice, heavy, stone tables. The ones with rounded seats and a chessboard engraved into the top of the table. They took turns making swift but casual moves, and each time one would finish a move, he would sing out a line or two. The other one would then move next also adding a couple more lines. I tried to pin down the song they were singing. Was it an old jazz tune? A newer soul song? Or, any even older tune born from times when slavery was as much a reality as these moments now.
Some time passed before I realized they were not reciting any old tune. The songs they were singing, were being created in that very moment. They were telling a story, a narrative. One in which they each took turns continuing the storytelling collectively, while all the while still competing in an extraordinarily thoughtful game of chess.
They sang the stories of their lives. They talked of old lost loves and childhood adventures, new found loves and current trials and tribulations. They talked of their grandchildren, describing problems and joys they may have to face or embrace. A melody of lifetimes.
Each one of them had won a couple of games, but I soon realized that it was beside the point, and I was the only one keeping tally of a pointless score. We spent the whole afternoon doing this. Being and becoming this. I gained some bravery and on occasion would add to their stories. They did not seem to mind my intrusion and through one of the song's storytelling they nicknamed me "Young Pup."
Eventually, it all started to rapidly fade away. The trees and insects, the grass and cool breeze, all started to disappear, as the unpleasant voice of a guard yelling, "Rack it up!", became more and more prevalent. Until, once again, we were in the horrible jail we began in.
Those old-schoolers shared an amazing thing with me that day. They showed me that we can take all of the horrible punishments forced on us by those abusing power, and turn it into something to benefit ourselves. Unbroken spirits can only partially begin to define those two old men. They had both spent the majority of their lives locked up, they ultimately refused to give up their own self-determination.
It was those stores they sang to each other. Those songs that held the timeless beat of their aging, pounding hearts. Those songs that did not bother distinguishing dreams from realities. Those songs resisted confinement of the towers and walls. Those songs are the songs that I continue on. Those songs have become mine, but they can be as much yours, as no one person can ever own them, really. Those songs refuse this current entrapment of concrete, steel, and relentless lighting. I refuse to be entrapped as well.
I'm surrounded by concrete, steel, and relentless lighting. Actually, I am entrapped by these things. But even in this brutally cold and hostile environment, I can think of so many inexplicably beautiful memories.
Places, feelings, people. Memory is a world where tangible and intangible collide, where material and immaterial are express equally on the same flashing screen. During this internment, one memory keeps providing me security within myself while in such a despicably depressing, disgusting entrapment.
It is not a memory of the free world, one from the outside, but one born from within similar confines. My first time I was locked up for any meaningful amount of time, I was struggling to survive through a horrible depression and it was during those days that this memory was created.
I spent those days, reading my only inspiration from within, the black and white daily newspaper. Everyday I searched for stories and then the riots in France hit full swing. A real revolution, even if it was just momentarily, became the for the first time in my life, a feasible possibility.
But along with that burning inspiration came the heavy realization of my current confines of only a sympathetic spectator. I was locked up, incapable of escaping the walls burdening my emotional, spiritual, mental, and physical self. I was impaired and disconnected, trying to swallow the prepackaged guilt, blame, regrets, and shame inflicted upon me.
It was then and there while reading those words of inspiration, that it found me. I was sharing the stainless steel jail table with two dark skinned old-schoolers. It's easy to tell who the old schoolers are, because they carry the weight of each year they have served sinking down upon their backs and shoulders. But they always make sure to never let their heads be burdened by the weight. They have been here too long to know, that in this place, you always keep your head up.
So, they sat there talking, laughing, and playing chess. The concrete walls and floors were replaced by trees and grass. Exchanging the steel doors, locs, and bunks for squirrels, birds, and light posts, they soon found themselves surrounded by the landscape of a well-maintained downtown park, late summer. The mold and dust-filled air-conditioning ventilation along with the flicker from the fluorescent lighting transforms into warm sunshine piercing through the tree's canopy, while the first sign of autumn approaching comes from a cool breeze.
The loud shouting of men bouncing off the hardened walls of incarceration diffuse to the sounds of kids playing games and birds singing over the creaking of swing sets, with a mellow swoosh from the traffic in the distance. The large durable gray plastic garbage cans, well, they remain large durable gray plastic garbage cans, but they do become encased by an ornamental, metal frame-work and an assortment of bees and flies battling over the delicacies humans so easily define and discard as waste.
This was not my naive imagination wandering, but an actual transformation of experience refusing to be a just spectacle any longer. So, when they began their game of chess, I, too found myself integrated into the scenery. Into the moment.
We sat at one of those nice, heavy, stone tables. The ones with rounded seats and a chessboard engraved into the top of the table. They took turns making swift but casual moves, and each time one would finish a move, he would sing out a line or two. The other one would then move next also adding a couple more lines. I tried to pin down the song they were singing. Was it an old jazz tune? A newer soul song? Or, any even older tune born from times when slavery was as much a reality as these moments now.
Some time passed before I realized they were not reciting any old tune. The songs they were singing, were being created in that very moment. They were telling a story, a narrative. One in which they each took turns continuing the storytelling collectively, while all the while still competing in an extraordinarily thoughtful game of chess.
They sang the stories of their lives. They talked of old lost loves and childhood adventures, new found loves and current trials and tribulations. They talked of their grandchildren, describing problems and joys they may have to face or embrace. A melody of lifetimes.
Each one of them had won a couple of games, but I soon realized that it was beside the point, and I was the only one keeping tally of a pointless score. We spent the whole afternoon doing this. Being and becoming this. I gained some bravery and on occasion would add to their stories. They did not seem to mind my intrusion and through one of the song's storytelling they nicknamed me "Young Pup."
Eventually, it all started to rapidly fade away. The trees and insects, the grass and cool breeze, all started to disappear, as the unpleasant voice of a guard yelling, "Rack it up!", became more and more prevalent. Until, once again, we were in the horrible jail we began in.
Those old-schoolers shared an amazing thing with me that day. They showed me that we can take all of the horrible punishments forced on us by those abusing power, and turn it into something to benefit ourselves. Unbroken spirits can only partially begin to define those two old men. They had both spent the majority of their lives locked up, they ultimately refused to give up their own self-determination.
It was those stores they sang to each other. Those songs that held the timeless beat of their aging, pounding hearts. Those songs that did not bother distinguishing dreams from realities. Those songs resisted confinement of the towers and walls. Those songs are the songs that I continue on. Those songs have become mine, but they can be as much yours, as no one person can ever own them, really. Those songs refuse this current entrapment of concrete, steel, and relentless lighting. I refuse to be entrapped as well.
Vita Pro
Around 1995, during the same time cigarettes were banned in Texas prisons for health related reasons, also came the introduction of a suppliment and meat filler by the name of VitaPro. The Canadian based company who produced VitaPro suggested a 25%-75% filler to meat ratio, but in no time Texas was soon serving the delicacy in 90%-100% filler ratios. This of course is the same Texas Department of Corrections that has always prided themselves on raising tens of thousands heads of sheep, cattle and pig livestock.
Some inmates and staff became curious and decided to inquire about how the state could justify auctioning off their livestock at discount rates to instead purchase an expensive meat filler. Their "inquiries" were met with only a subtle reply of cricket orchestras serenading them from the surrounding fields.
It wasn't long after the introduction of VitaPro that inmates started to complain of major stomach pains and uncontrollable flatulence. "God damn! The whole unit done turned itself into a gas chamber on death row after all of them meals" explained an inmate who was incarcerated at the time. Never to see daylight again, all further inmates complaints were tossed in TDC's extensive skeleton closet. That is until the more valued TDC livestock began mysteriously dying off.
After an initial investigation, it had been determined that the prison kitchen slop being fed daily to the pigs was actually the murderous culprit. Upon further investigation, it became even more clear that VitaPro was killing the pigs by blowing up their intestines. The pigs, who up until this point in human history, had been known as an animal capable of devouring any and all types of food had to be safely taken off the VitaPro mixture. It never became questionable why the inmates still remained eating it multiple times a week.
The inmates skin began to boil, literally. And eventually after the compounding pressures of the inmate's increasingly serious health conditions and growing interest from outside advocacy groups, the state's courts finally led an inquiry in the prisons use of VitaPro. They came to find out that not only had most of the prison units overserved massive amounts of VitaPro, but that also one of the Canadian company's paid consultants was none other than the current TDC director, Andy Collins. So the state owned inmates and livestock were not the only things blowing up, with a $1,000 a day corporate consultants fee. Director Collins bank account also was on the verge of exploding.
VitaPro eventually stopped being served in prisons state-wide, yet its legacy still remains as large as the gigantic TDC owned warehouses that have remained stocked to the brim with buckets upon buckets of VitaPro. With a shelf life that gives Twinkies a run for their money, the pig exploding VitaPro may one day sneek its way back into the perpetually nutrient dwindling meals of Texas corrections, some inmates believe it already has.
Written from Nueces County Jail
(Transcribed by Charity)
Some inmates and staff became curious and decided to inquire about how the state could justify auctioning off their livestock at discount rates to instead purchase an expensive meat filler. Their "inquiries" were met with only a subtle reply of cricket orchestras serenading them from the surrounding fields.
It wasn't long after the introduction of VitaPro that inmates started to complain of major stomach pains and uncontrollable flatulence. "God damn! The whole unit done turned itself into a gas chamber on death row after all of them meals" explained an inmate who was incarcerated at the time. Never to see daylight again, all further inmates complaints were tossed in TDC's extensive skeleton closet. That is until the more valued TDC livestock began mysteriously dying off.
After an initial investigation, it had been determined that the prison kitchen slop being fed daily to the pigs was actually the murderous culprit. Upon further investigation, it became even more clear that VitaPro was killing the pigs by blowing up their intestines. The pigs, who up until this point in human history, had been known as an animal capable of devouring any and all types of food had to be safely taken off the VitaPro mixture. It never became questionable why the inmates still remained eating it multiple times a week.
The inmates skin began to boil, literally. And eventually after the compounding pressures of the inmate's increasingly serious health conditions and growing interest from outside advocacy groups, the state's courts finally led an inquiry in the prisons use of VitaPro. They came to find out that not only had most of the prison units overserved massive amounts of VitaPro, but that also one of the Canadian company's paid consultants was none other than the current TDC director, Andy Collins. So the state owned inmates and livestock were not the only things blowing up, with a $1,000 a day corporate consultants fee. Director Collins bank account also was on the verge of exploding.
VitaPro eventually stopped being served in prisons state-wide, yet its legacy still remains as large as the gigantic TDC owned warehouses that have remained stocked to the brim with buckets upon buckets of VitaPro. With a shelf life that gives Twinkies a run for their money, the pig exploding VitaPro may one day sneek its way back into the perpetually nutrient dwindling meals of Texas corrections, some inmates believe it already has.
Written from Nueces County Jail
(Transcribed by Charity)
Thursday, August 13, 2009
When the ants stop marching one by one...
It's summertime in the Lone Star State and the Rasberry Crazy ants are at it again. This time, they have turned their attacks on the Texas domesticated honey bee populations. For years they have been terrorizing the Tejas urban, suburban, and now rural landscape. These tiny ants seem largely resistant to all but the most toxic of pesticides allowing them to spread like wildfire.
It has recently been observed that these small ants will aggressively cannabilize other types of ants, even one's multiple times their own size. Recent reports describe them attacking and consuming entire colonies of fire ants, and ant previously defined as one of Texas' most dangerous insects. Breaking from the outdated forms of classical warfare, such as the method of marching in regimented lines, the Rasberry's have become known as the first ants to embrace guerilla warfare tactics. Their Human enemies have not yet been able to make sense of their new, more effective tactics, instead humans one handedly rationalize the recent attacks as crazy, unorganized, and erradic, but with the other hand pressure the state to label them, a top "pest" priority, which would be the insect equivalent of topping the F.B.I's Domestic Terrorist Threat list, just like the Elf, Alf, and other so called "Ecoterrorists" that currently claim the #1 spot on the F.B.I.'s List, these ants appear dedicated to destroying industrial civilization's most important infrastructures.
Last year, in the greater Houston area alone, they were responsible for millions of dollars in damage to the public works system. On a few occasions, with surprise attacks, they would swarm out of the tall grass thickets and into large electrical sub-station boxes. Within a matter of minutes they would successfully overload entire neighborhoods' electrical framework, leaving behind thousands powerless and important components non-repairable. The Rasberry's become most active during the sizzling August and September months and with every business and household blasting their air conditioning units at full throttle, there becomes no better time to cause blackouts in Texas.
Along with attacks on the larger electrical grid, they also make attacks on tertiary targets, such as smaller government and corporate computers also rendering them beyond repair. Other targets include automobiles, heavy farming and construction machinery, sewage pumps, and anything that may contain an expensive, delicate or intricate electrical system. These electrical systems seem to be their favored picks, and why not, in most machines and equipment, these components tend to be the most crucial, costly and fragile parts. Guerilla warfare states that when any resistance group is taking on much larger enemy targets, and in this case millions of times larger, that it becomes strategically fundamental to find a fulcrum, or leverage point, and the Rasberry crazy ants have done just that.
The relentless Texas drought, that is currently decreasing all industrial and agricultural production (in as much as the two can or should ever be separated), only seems to be aiding the intensity of the Rasberry forces. The most recent statistics verify that they now have an established presence in 11 Texas counties and are still growing rapidly. It is with this recent expansion, that they seem to have found their next leverage point, the domesticated honeybee.
Within the last few years, domesticated honeybee populations have become the most crucial link in sustaining Texas' farm and food production. Even taking in consideration the recent crisis of an extreme shortage in irrigatable water and annual rainfall, pollination is still the basis for maintaining any successfull harvest.
Texas, throughout its history has destroyed millions of acreage considered wilderness, rapidly converting it, to make room for the big businesses of cotton, corn, cattle, feed, and oil. Now, with the exception of a few designated wilderness areas, the much more manageable Texas farm and ranch lands stretch out in all directions, well beyond the seeable horizons. All of this has led to a population crash and almost extinction of the wild bee populations, leaving their domesticated cousins busily buzzing around attempting to pick up the tragic slack. The ageless homage of, "Everything's bigger in Texas!" although cliche, rings so very loud and true when describing bee farms across the state. In some of the world's largest bee farms, the busiest little Texas workers can be found laboring non-stop, around the clock. Just in Texas state production, honey, considered a secondary product of the busy bee industry, can be measured in the billions of pounds.
In the spirit of capitalist industry, Texas bee farms, or more honestly, Texas bee factory farms have become more in search of profits, then even the Texas-sized, evangelical, mega-church prophets. Having found cost cutting methods of cramming so many bees into each square inch, the bee farmers have comparatively made the otherwise disgusting KFC factory farm, chicken per square foot ratio, look like suburban sprowl. The all so densely populated bee hives began to look like a diaramic of the most overcrowded urban slum. Farpassing Bangkok, New Delhi, and Mexico City, these prefabricated uniform dwellings, tower to incredible heights and are so closely packed together that the bees sometimes have to squeeze by surrounding tenements to get their own housing unit.
The workerbee's daily conditions become comparable to those of Indonesian sweatshops and Latin American coffee and banana plantations. The factory farms become a place where living, flying, and loafing all become serious occupational hazards and the amount of dead workers surmount to numbers so despairing, that not even the cruelest C.I.A. funded dictator of S.O.A. trained death squad would fantasize about them. Like any good factory, or for that matter, any form of property including mines, forests, stocks, women and children, the only valuable measure is it's output. Desperate and miserable in their own living conditions, domesicated bees reveal an easy breaking point for industrial agriculture, it becomes no wonder the Rasberry crazy ants would pick them as their next target.
With only a slight advantage in group numbers, the ants are incredibly disadvantaged against the bees in weight, size, and mobility, but this doesn't stop them. Camouflaged under the raise of a friendly neighborhood ant, just passing by, quite a few Rasberry's are able to infiltrate their way into the megatropolis to surveying the enemies' infrastructure. Once enough ants are inside the massive complex, they signal for the rest to come out from hiding. In a spectacle far more spectacular than the Trojan Horse debackle, their friendly demeanor suddenly converts into a savage flood, as the rage of the wilderness is unleashed upon the prefabricated environment.
The bees fight back but because of domestication and selective genetic breeding for relative passivity, they don't stand a chance. The previously fortified honeycombs, now, are no more together than, if by chance, the U.S. Federal Reserve awoke one morning to find itself 4,000 miles away in the center of a fallujan neighborhood, or better yet, if it awoke to find itself a couple hundred miles away in the middle of West Baltimore's ghetto. Just like the ground corporate bail out of 2008, but on opposite day, each ant makes off with such a large amount of honey, that it comparatively makes a citi-group executive's bonus seem like monopoly money. So by the time the capitalist owner's find the battle scene, their hives are as ravaged as a collapsing ransacked Rome, after a final visit from the German tribe of Vandals. Tens of thousands of hives can now be counted in the hundreds. One factory farm attacked, in a week turns to five, in a month turns into forty, in a year one can only dream.
Interestingly enough, Rasberry crazy ants are not named after their favorite variety of vine-grown fruit, but instead, ironically, they are named after, no in honor of, one of their most enduring and hated enemies, Tom Rasberry. Good ol' Tom Rasberry is one of the leaders in this modern day, fear-mongering, McArthist, insecticidal witch hunt. Tom, a lowly exterminator by trade, now finds himself as the lead expert on the aggressive little ants. This has landed him employment as a part of a special force unit, a combined federal and state funded project, or more clearly seen as the bug's world equivalent to a post 911 government agency, his group no longer has the time to actively battle the ants, the only reason the group was established in the first place. Instead they spend their time traveling from Academic universities, to city and state agencies of all shapes and sizes, and even the occasional local neighborhood watch program (I wouldn't dare make this up), spreading unfounded and fear-filled propaganda in attempts to receive support, more specifically, additional funding. The primary interest to any bureacracy is the continuation of itself and Tom does this beautifully as he describes the ants invasion with a dreadfully slumbering tone, demanding his audiences to take the most immediate of actions, before the ants are able to spread anymore and ultimately cause unimaginable amounts of destruction to the state and possible the nation.
So it seems that a moral line the size of biblical proportions, okay maybe just Texas size, is currently being drawn in the sand. Soon, we will be forced to ask ourselves, "What side am I on?" Am I on the side of state and corporate interests, dillusionally demanding the complete eradication of this species before they destroy our most altruistic foundations, the American pillars of freedom, democracy, and profit? Or instead, am I on the side of the oppressed, the side of coming insurrection, the underdog, or in this case the under-ant? The united liberation front of Crazed Rasberry Armed Ant Forces vs. Industrial Civilization - honey craving, six legged guerilla sabatour extraordinairs or cancer causing, heart-stopping, bug dropping, radioactive insecticidal spray, 6 billion little David'd against one monolithic Goliath, but you know what they say about giants, The bigger they come the harder they fall.
Written from the Nueces County Jail
(Transcribed by Charity)
It has recently been observed that these small ants will aggressively cannabilize other types of ants, even one's multiple times their own size. Recent reports describe them attacking and consuming entire colonies of fire ants, and ant previously defined as one of Texas' most dangerous insects. Breaking from the outdated forms of classical warfare, such as the method of marching in regimented lines, the Rasberry's have become known as the first ants to embrace guerilla warfare tactics. Their Human enemies have not yet been able to make sense of their new, more effective tactics, instead humans one handedly rationalize the recent attacks as crazy, unorganized, and erradic, but with the other hand pressure the state to label them, a top "pest" priority, which would be the insect equivalent of topping the F.B.I's Domestic Terrorist Threat list, just like the Elf, Alf, and other so called "Ecoterrorists" that currently claim the #1 spot on the F.B.I.'s List, these ants appear dedicated to destroying industrial civilization's most important infrastructures.
Last year, in the greater Houston area alone, they were responsible for millions of dollars in damage to the public works system. On a few occasions, with surprise attacks, they would swarm out of the tall grass thickets and into large electrical sub-station boxes. Within a matter of minutes they would successfully overload entire neighborhoods' electrical framework, leaving behind thousands powerless and important components non-repairable. The Rasberry's become most active during the sizzling August and September months and with every business and household blasting their air conditioning units at full throttle, there becomes no better time to cause blackouts in Texas.
Along with attacks on the larger electrical grid, they also make attacks on tertiary targets, such as smaller government and corporate computers also rendering them beyond repair. Other targets include automobiles, heavy farming and construction machinery, sewage pumps, and anything that may contain an expensive, delicate or intricate electrical system. These electrical systems seem to be their favored picks, and why not, in most machines and equipment, these components tend to be the most crucial, costly and fragile parts. Guerilla warfare states that when any resistance group is taking on much larger enemy targets, and in this case millions of times larger, that it becomes strategically fundamental to find a fulcrum, or leverage point, and the Rasberry crazy ants have done just that.
The relentless Texas drought, that is currently decreasing all industrial and agricultural production (in as much as the two can or should ever be separated), only seems to be aiding the intensity of the Rasberry forces. The most recent statistics verify that they now have an established presence in 11 Texas counties and are still growing rapidly. It is with this recent expansion, that they seem to have found their next leverage point, the domesticated honeybee.
Within the last few years, domesticated honeybee populations have become the most crucial link in sustaining Texas' farm and food production. Even taking in consideration the recent crisis of an extreme shortage in irrigatable water and annual rainfall, pollination is still the basis for maintaining any successfull harvest.
Texas, throughout its history has destroyed millions of acreage considered wilderness, rapidly converting it, to make room for the big businesses of cotton, corn, cattle, feed, and oil. Now, with the exception of a few designated wilderness areas, the much more manageable Texas farm and ranch lands stretch out in all directions, well beyond the seeable horizons. All of this has led to a population crash and almost extinction of the wild bee populations, leaving their domesticated cousins busily buzzing around attempting to pick up the tragic slack. The ageless homage of, "Everything's bigger in Texas!" although cliche, rings so very loud and true when describing bee farms across the state. In some of the world's largest bee farms, the busiest little Texas workers can be found laboring non-stop, around the clock. Just in Texas state production, honey, considered a secondary product of the busy bee industry, can be measured in the billions of pounds.
In the spirit of capitalist industry, Texas bee farms, or more honestly, Texas bee factory farms have become more in search of profits, then even the Texas-sized, evangelical, mega-church prophets. Having found cost cutting methods of cramming so many bees into each square inch, the bee farmers have comparatively made the otherwise disgusting KFC factory farm, chicken per square foot ratio, look like suburban sprowl. The all so densely populated bee hives began to look like a diaramic of the most overcrowded urban slum. Farpassing Bangkok, New Delhi, and Mexico City, these prefabricated uniform dwellings, tower to incredible heights and are so closely packed together that the bees sometimes have to squeeze by surrounding tenements to get their own housing unit.
The workerbee's daily conditions become comparable to those of Indonesian sweatshops and Latin American coffee and banana plantations. The factory farms become a place where living, flying, and loafing all become serious occupational hazards and the amount of dead workers surmount to numbers so despairing, that not even the cruelest C.I.A. funded dictator of S.O.A. trained death squad would fantasize about them. Like any good factory, or for that matter, any form of property including mines, forests, stocks, women and children, the only valuable measure is it's output. Desperate and miserable in their own living conditions, domesicated bees reveal an easy breaking point for industrial agriculture, it becomes no wonder the Rasberry crazy ants would pick them as their next target.
With only a slight advantage in group numbers, the ants are incredibly disadvantaged against the bees in weight, size, and mobility, but this doesn't stop them. Camouflaged under the raise of a friendly neighborhood ant, just passing by, quite a few Rasberry's are able to infiltrate their way into the megatropolis to surveying the enemies' infrastructure. Once enough ants are inside the massive complex, they signal for the rest to come out from hiding. In a spectacle far more spectacular than the Trojan Horse debackle, their friendly demeanor suddenly converts into a savage flood, as the rage of the wilderness is unleashed upon the prefabricated environment.
The bees fight back but because of domestication and selective genetic breeding for relative passivity, they don't stand a chance. The previously fortified honeycombs, now, are no more together than, if by chance, the U.S. Federal Reserve awoke one morning to find itself 4,000 miles away in the center of a fallujan neighborhood, or better yet, if it awoke to find itself a couple hundred miles away in the middle of West Baltimore's ghetto. Just like the ground corporate bail out of 2008, but on opposite day, each ant makes off with such a large amount of honey, that it comparatively makes a citi-group executive's bonus seem like monopoly money. So by the time the capitalist owner's find the battle scene, their hives are as ravaged as a collapsing ransacked Rome, after a final visit from the German tribe of Vandals. Tens of thousands of hives can now be counted in the hundreds. One factory farm attacked, in a week turns to five, in a month turns into forty, in a year one can only dream.
Interestingly enough, Rasberry crazy ants are not named after their favorite variety of vine-grown fruit, but instead, ironically, they are named after, no in honor of, one of their most enduring and hated enemies, Tom Rasberry. Good ol' Tom Rasberry is one of the leaders in this modern day, fear-mongering, McArthist, insecticidal witch hunt. Tom, a lowly exterminator by trade, now finds himself as the lead expert on the aggressive little ants. This has landed him employment as a part of a special force unit, a combined federal and state funded project, or more clearly seen as the bug's world equivalent to a post 911 government agency, his group no longer has the time to actively battle the ants, the only reason the group was established in the first place. Instead they spend their time traveling from Academic universities, to city and state agencies of all shapes and sizes, and even the occasional local neighborhood watch program (I wouldn't dare make this up), spreading unfounded and fear-filled propaganda in attempts to receive support, more specifically, additional funding. The primary interest to any bureacracy is the continuation of itself and Tom does this beautifully as he describes the ants invasion with a dreadfully slumbering tone, demanding his audiences to take the most immediate of actions, before the ants are able to spread anymore and ultimately cause unimaginable amounts of destruction to the state and possible the nation.
So it seems that a moral line the size of biblical proportions, okay maybe just Texas size, is currently being drawn in the sand. Soon, we will be forced to ask ourselves, "What side am I on?" Am I on the side of state and corporate interests, dillusionally demanding the complete eradication of this species before they destroy our most altruistic foundations, the American pillars of freedom, democracy, and profit? Or instead, am I on the side of the oppressed, the side of coming insurrection, the underdog, or in this case the under-ant? The united liberation front of Crazed Rasberry Armed Ant Forces vs. Industrial Civilization - honey craving, six legged guerilla sabatour extraordinairs or cancer causing, heart-stopping, bug dropping, radioactive insecticidal spray, 6 billion little David'd against one monolithic Goliath, but you know what they say about giants, The bigger they come the harder they fall.
Written from the Nueces County Jail
(Transcribed by Charity)
Dear Heavenly Father AKA self righteous Patriarch scum-bag,
Sometimes I find myself upset that the days are going by so fast, I'm probably the only person in jail thinking like that. I'm also sad that I've heard witness and been a part of so much experience in here that I can't remember it all. My memory problems actually are another very sad story, remind me to tell you about them sometime. But one absolutely never ever depressing thing is having such Amazing Incredible Loveable Adorable Cuddable Huggable bad asses for friends! WTF, having friends send the most inspiring words from thousands of miles away, having friends come from thousands of miles away, just to talk to me through some horrible cage, so so so so amazing! They want me to feel defeated by denying me so many things, even those that are "legally mine" and I get frustrated and angry but never defeated. I can't, not with the support I have. The sky was so beautiful and clear today. Nevermind the ugly parking lots, buildings, bars, and two windows keeping me from it. Little sparrow-like birds come visit me, It's so cute, we stare at each other forever. Today one had a scorpion in its mouth. It spat it out on my window seal. I guess it could have been a spider, all I know is it made me hungry. My thought process went like this - "Ohh man, that's a bird eating a scorpion almost its same size, gross, cool, gross again, guts, oh mann, I'm hungry, I mean hungry, I hope my vegan friends wouldn't get upset seeing this - man I love non-vegan food, I bet that makes some people mad at me, well, it doesn't make non-human people mad at me and that's a good thing, I wonder if this bird is sharing, I wonder if it has babies, man I'm hungry, I could eat some babies." - and then it flew away... That was just 3-5 seconds of my day... Now you can see why my letters are non-linear - my thoughts are everywhere right now - I'm talking to my cell - we are making jokes about Global Warming and how it's melting our Jolly Ranchers and that if everyone's Jolly Ranchers were melting then people would take ecological destruction seriously - Yes... damn there's no need for these elipses, let me try again. Yes! to making inmates Anti-civ, actually Prison made them Anti-civ, I just gave them a book to put what they've always felt, in words, on pages, so they can for the first time (or at least in a long time) feel sane in their anger and frustration... One time I sat for like 16 weeks in an anger management class - I've never been so angry. So they closed the Hatto facility! It was a private prison they called a "family detention facility" but it was of course a horrible internment camp for immigrants or as they say in the German language "concentration camp." Okay, that's not German, but you can see my point. Some families got out for good, others on like a probation type thing and unfortunately a few just got relocated. But knowing that some amazing people this week got released from even worse situations than I find myself in, makes breathing a little bit easier, makes seeing birds even better, makes the sky seem so much closer, makes it to where if I close my eyes, even if only momentarily, I can feel a breeze, I mean really feel the breeze... and all of it brings me a much needed relief... I love ya'll as much as I hate cops and that's a lot! I mean (insert Anarchy-A symbol) lot!!!
Jayson Tx, the artist formerly known as #10126758
Written from the Nueces County Jail
(Transcribed by Charity)
Jayson Tx, the artist formerly known as #10126758
Written from the Nueces County Jail
(Transcribed by Charity)
Letters from Nueces County Jail
Dear Derrick Jensen,
Salmon, Salmon, Salmon, Dams, Dams, Dams, Abuse, hate, culture, Abuse, hate, insane, Salmon, Salmon, newt. Salmon, me, redwoods, indian, redwoods, salmon. Civilization makes me sad... 800 pages later, Salmon, Dams, Salmon, chrones, chrones, chrones, dams, dams, dams, bring it down, dams.
Dear Daniel Quinn,
Boring, wrong, right, me, me, me, bad, evil, bad, me, me, me, I understand, no, please explain, me, me, me, Ishmael, b, me, me, wrong, right, listen, listen, listen, now that I'm rich civilization ain't so bad, me, me, me, socratic method, me, ishmael, b, me.
Dear John Zerzan,
Uni-bomber, friend, uni-bomber, language bad, symbols, philosophy, civilization is poopy, philosophy, time, time, break windows, time, philosophy, I like big words, everything bad, nothing, future, time, more big words.
Dear EarthFirst!,
Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer, trees, ropes, disclaimer, disclaimer, back in the day, disclaimer, explicit, disclaimer, security culture, disclaimer, disclaimer.
Dear Elf/Alf,
Evidence, fingerprints, look at me, evidence, college, super glue, snitch, snitch, snitch, evidence, terrorist, evidence, snitch, lies, snitch, SUV's, evidence, snitch, communique, evidence, college, terrorist, terrorist, terrorist.
P.S. I still Love You!
Dear Everthing Non-Human,
What do you mean Sorry is not good enough... I mean at least I tried, right? Or almost tried.
If I was post-mod,ern, I would call this subversive performance art, but I was just bored.
Salmon, Salmon, Salmon, Dams, Dams, Dams, Abuse, hate, culture, Abuse, hate, insane, Salmon, Salmon, newt. Salmon, me, redwoods, indian, redwoods, salmon. Civilization makes me sad... 800 pages later, Salmon, Dams, Salmon, chrones, chrones, chrones, dams, dams, dams, bring it down, dams.
Dear Daniel Quinn,
Boring, wrong, right, me, me, me, bad, evil, bad, me, me, me, I understand, no, please explain, me, me, me, Ishmael, b, me, me, wrong, right, listen, listen, listen, now that I'm rich civilization ain't so bad, me, me, me, socratic method, me, ishmael, b, me.
Dear John Zerzan,
Uni-bomber, friend, uni-bomber, language bad, symbols, philosophy, civilization is poopy, philosophy, time, time, break windows, time, philosophy, I like big words, everything bad, nothing, future, time, more big words.
Dear EarthFirst!,
Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer, trees, ropes, disclaimer, disclaimer, back in the day, disclaimer, explicit, disclaimer, security culture, disclaimer, disclaimer.
Dear Elf/Alf,
Evidence, fingerprints, look at me, evidence, college, super glue, snitch, snitch, snitch, evidence, terrorist, evidence, snitch, lies, snitch, SUV's, evidence, snitch, communique, evidence, college, terrorist, terrorist, terrorist.
P.S. I still Love You!
Dear Everthing Non-Human,
What do you mean Sorry is not good enough... I mean at least I tried, right? Or almost tried.
If I was post-mod,ern, I would call this subversive performance art, but I was just bored.
Dear Mom and Dad,
(written from Nueces County Jail)
There are very few things more beautiful in life then short stumpy men, singing tejano naked in the shower no more than 10 feet from you. Summer camp's been awesome! I don't ever want to leave. I've learned so much during arts and crafts. We made a tattoo gun out of a fan motor and toothbrush, and ran it on an electrical charge via headphone wire from the nearest fire alarm. We melted down checker pieces for red and black ink. I learned how to make oil pastels by crushing colored pencil lead and mixing it with the oil from my very own hair. In survival school, we learn to create fire from a staple, pencil and toilet paper. We also learned how to talk to other campers through the actual toilets and air vents, it's so much easier than the can and string method. In cooking class we made a feast, it's called a cell block spread! 20 chile lime Ramen noodles, mix with 10 packages of mayonnaise, 5 bags of fire hot corn chips, 6 bags of jalapeno pretzels, 6 bags of cajun style pork rhyndes, 2 single serve packages of spam, 8 2-ounce squeeze packages of nacho cheese, and 3 packages of chili with beans. Mix together in a mop bucket or tupperware bin, add hot water and sit on it to seal. Wait 10 minutes and serve with saltine crackers. For best results crush all ingredients before mixing. The foot-stomp concrete floor method works best! Doing laundry just like the pilgrims did. Using the toilet as a tub or basin, we mix 2 parts soap to 1 part toothpaste for fresh smelling clothes. We don't have a clothesline so we use spoons to hold the drying clothes. After laundry we use the same toilet to make Hooch - it's a juice beverage made from baking yeast, kool aid, and whatever fruit we can get our hands on. I can't wait to try it, it makes all the other campers laugh and go crazy. Some of the campers save and dry banana and orange peels, then they "keester" it to take it to other campers, that's where you hold it in between your left and right buttcheeks. Then they smoke it, but I think they are using Bible papes to roll it and I don't like that at all. Today, there was pieces of bologna inside my jello, how weird is that? Well I love you both but I hope I never leave here! But I guess if I do, I can just come back next year!
Your son,
Tommy Thompson #10126758
(Transcribed by Charity)
There are very few things more beautiful in life then short stumpy men, singing tejano naked in the shower no more than 10 feet from you. Summer camp's been awesome! I don't ever want to leave. I've learned so much during arts and crafts. We made a tattoo gun out of a fan motor and toothbrush, and ran it on an electrical charge via headphone wire from the nearest fire alarm. We melted down checker pieces for red and black ink. I learned how to make oil pastels by crushing colored pencil lead and mixing it with the oil from my very own hair. In survival school, we learn to create fire from a staple, pencil and toilet paper. We also learned how to talk to other campers through the actual toilets and air vents, it's so much easier than the can and string method. In cooking class we made a feast, it's called a cell block spread! 20 chile lime Ramen noodles, mix with 10 packages of mayonnaise, 5 bags of fire hot corn chips, 6 bags of jalapeno pretzels, 6 bags of cajun style pork rhyndes, 2 single serve packages of spam, 8 2-ounce squeeze packages of nacho cheese, and 3 packages of chili with beans. Mix together in a mop bucket or tupperware bin, add hot water and sit on it to seal. Wait 10 minutes and serve with saltine crackers. For best results crush all ingredients before mixing. The foot-stomp concrete floor method works best! Doing laundry just like the pilgrims did. Using the toilet as a tub or basin, we mix 2 parts soap to 1 part toothpaste for fresh smelling clothes. We don't have a clothesline so we use spoons to hold the drying clothes. After laundry we use the same toilet to make Hooch - it's a juice beverage made from baking yeast, kool aid, and whatever fruit we can get our hands on. I can't wait to try it, it makes all the other campers laugh and go crazy. Some of the campers save and dry banana and orange peels, then they "keester" it to take it to other campers, that's where you hold it in between your left and right buttcheeks. Then they smoke it, but I think they are using Bible papes to roll it and I don't like that at all. Today, there was pieces of bologna inside my jello, how weird is that? Well I love you both but I hope I never leave here! But I guess if I do, I can just come back next year!
Your son,
Tommy Thompson #10126758
(Transcribed by Charity)
Saturday, August 8, 2009
A fugitive's run in, with a two-way mirror
As I find myself spending an undetermined amount of time in the Douglas County Jail, the unemployment rate is still rising, although it's been in the double digits for a couple decades now. So it is no surprise that, in The Timber Capitol of the World, I sit in jail surrounded by unemployed loggers. They are legally known as harsh characters; criminals, wife beaters, drug users, car thiefs, and angry vagrants.
But I know them individually as Joker, Hater, Conspiracy, David and Jose. Collectively, they are the nicest, most welcoming group of locals I have yet to meet.
The surrounding forests they once worked with chainsaws and cables are now littered with invasive species and disgusting industrious machinery. Unemployed, they now find themselves scrubbing cell floors, baking corn bread, and playing cards behind steel doors, concrete walls, and two way mirrors.
Four nights a week, all the inmates stop whatever they are doing, and turn their absolute attention to a 13" television. They sit and watch reality shows on the logging industry. Like an absurd two-way mirror, they stare intentively into the glass tube. Afterwards, they talk about the good ol' days. The long hours, the money, the girls, their families, and the money.
However, they will never be able to discuss how now, they are nothing more than outdated tools being stored in Climate Controlled Storage Units. And that's the problem with two-way mirrors. If you are on the losing side, it becomes impossible to see clearly through false Reflections.
Written on 07/15/09 from the Douglas County Jail
(Transcribed by Charity)
But I know them individually as Joker, Hater, Conspiracy, David and Jose. Collectively, they are the nicest, most welcoming group of locals I have yet to meet.
The surrounding forests they once worked with chainsaws and cables are now littered with invasive species and disgusting industrious machinery. Unemployed, they now find themselves scrubbing cell floors, baking corn bread, and playing cards behind steel doors, concrete walls, and two way mirrors.
Four nights a week, all the inmates stop whatever they are doing, and turn their absolute attention to a 13" television. They sit and watch reality shows on the logging industry. Like an absurd two-way mirror, they stare intentively into the glass tube. Afterwards, they talk about the good ol' days. The long hours, the money, the girls, their families, and the money.
However, they will never be able to discuss how now, they are nothing more than outdated tools being stored in Climate Controlled Storage Units. And that's the problem with two-way mirrors. If you are on the losing side, it becomes impossible to see clearly through false Reflections.
Written on 07/15/09 from the Douglas County Jail
(Transcribed by Charity)
No More Cages, No More Locks
His job was to fingerprint me for a ludicrous theft charge but he also asked me about my tattoos? I replied to him with ideas of anti-oppression and resistance. After surveying the surrounding area, he replies. When he speaks, he speaks of high taxes and corrupt, corporate controlled party politics, and fat cat, no good for nothin' Senators. He speaks of greed, money, and the injustices of capitalism. He knows his own role and recognizes its destructiveness, although, he just can't see just how culpable he really is. In all of this, it is not much a dialogue. I suppose what he needed was a confession. The fingerprinting booth acts as his confession cell and I as a priest. He finished the Monologue, not with feelings or even ideas, but with a statement. He looks around once again, reassuring himself no one is listening in and then says, "They better hope this revolution comes after I'm dead, because if it doesn't, I've already picked what side I'm on and I'll be the first to start unlocking cells."
Written on 07/15/09 from the Douglas County Jail
(Transcribed by Charity)
Written on 07/15/09 from the Douglas County Jail
(Transcribed by Charity)
Friday, July 10, 2009
mormon death squad
It seems that Mexico is more than willing to arm Mormons with guns to fight Mexican Narcos and that Mormons are more than willing to be a snitching retaliation force for Mexico in fashion reminencant of death squads. This might be an interesting place for young Mormons to go on thier two year "mission" for serving god.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
“Love, Earth®”
Wal-Mart's
In the past, environmental and human rights activists have made Wal-Mart the poster child for everything wrong with corporate greed and a crystal clear reflection of the wider consequences of globalization in general. Countless documentaries, reports, and lawsuits trace abuses by the world’s largest retailer so often that to do so has become passé.
But today is a new day, and Wal-Mart will soon become the prizefighter for the green revolution—or more appropriately the vanguard of ecological well-being. The people’s Big-Box Corporation is making way for their new Love, Earth® jewelry line. The same family who brought us the 3-gallon jar of pickles for $2.97 now offers us “fine jewelry created with materials from, Eco-responsible, community-friendly sources.” The largest private employer in the world has the resources and now the stated desire to help us attain an Eco-communal future, far surpassing the Lenin, Mao, and Castro revolutions of the past.
The revolution will be accessorized.
And why not? The inconvenient truth is that the world is getting hotter, so why not counter climate change by owning your own piece of “ice'? It wasn't so long ago that blood-free diamonds and responsibly-mined gold were things only affordable to the likes of Leonardo Di Caprio and other liberal elites. But in the era of “yes we can,” Eco-friendly gold is now accessible to us and our significant others—and all this with a price tag of just under a week’s worth of Starbucks' almost-fair-trade coffee. Not only can we all comfortably say “yes, we can” when it comes to purchasing Love, Earth® jewelry, we can say “yes, we will.”
In this melting global economy, Wal-Mart has turned to the motto “think globally, purchase locally.” Their main partner in this brave initiative is none other than the third largest mining company in the world, Rio Tinto. As an all-star multi-national mining group, Rio Tinto is the world's largest aluminum producer, the second largest in iron-ore mining, third largest in coal mining, and is responsible for 30% of the world’s all-natural diamond output. Rio Tinto also tops world mining and production lists in silver, uranium, talc, titanium dioxide, salt, borax, bauxite, lead, zinc, nickel, and molybdenum.
The Rio Tinto Group (RTG) has received countless awards for upstanding ethical behavior and sustainability and environmental practices from fellow multi-national corporations, including the Splenda-producing mogul Tate and Lyle. In return, Rio Tinto is the sponsor of its own sustainability award, recently recognizing a rubber and tire plant, several Indian tea plantations, a clear-cutting timber business, and everyone’s favorite oil company, Shell Oil.
Wal-Mart's Love, Earth® jewelry line consists of 24 golden rules they like to call the “Environmental and Social Sourcing Criteria for Mining and Metals in Jewelry.” Talk about a mouthful! This lengthy title leads to an even more extensive list of requirements. The list seems more verbose and inspiring than the Bill of Rights, yet is more elusive and vaguely written than the Patriot Act.
In order to be accepted as Wal-Mart’s “green partner” in the brave endeavor of ethically-mined precious metals, it had to meet each articulated requirement of Wal-Mart’s golden 24 rules.
For example, gilded rule number ten states that: “When [a mining source is] operating in zones of armed conflict... [They] should seek to ensure that, through their actions or inaction, they are not benefiting from, supporting, contributing to, nor tacitly permitting human rights abuses or atrocities, either directly or indirectly.” It should come to no surprise that since the 1950’s, Rio Tinto proudly supported the oppressive apartheid governments of many nations around the world, including governments in South Africa and Papua New Guinea. RTG did so by not only setting up “white only” facilities, but also by directly providing these apartheid governments with money and military equipment. It seems more likely that RTG read rule ten to state that any mining company should guarantee “through their action or inaction,” that they are “benefiting from, supporting, contributing to... human rights abuses and atrocities."
The golden rules obscurely mention some concerns about mercury and cyanide contamination to human and environmental health. RTG's Namibian mine employees, along with other RTG African uranium mine employees, have been exposed to toxic levels of radiation, ultimately enduring disproportionate levels of cancer and other illnesses. Most, if not all, of RTG's opened and abandoned mines contain audacious amounts of mercury and cyanide contamination in amounts ranging from toxic to deadly.
RTG's PT Kelian Equatorial Mine (PT KEM) is just one of Rio Tinto’s many mines in the
“Seek to avoid or at least minimize involuntary resettlement of communities for new operations and expansion of existing operations and where this is unavoidable compensate fully, appropriately and fairly for adverse effects on individuals and communities with the objective of improving or at least to restore the livelihoods, standards of living, and living conditions of displaced people.”
Maybe RTG assumed that since the Suharto government had already inflicted enough hardship on locals, that full, fair, and appropriate compensation for burning down villages and physically assaulting villagers was a life forced even further into squalor.
This is not just ancient history either. As recent as 2001, a number of indigenous Dayak female employees have been involved in multiple cases of abuse, rape, and sexual harassment committed by senior mining staff. In many poor countries, the senior mining staff consists of well-educated foreigners, a good number who come from the
In 2000, Australian television news show Dateline explained that local and indigenous inhabitants were murdered near and on a Brazilian Rio Tinto mine facility. One former guard told Dateline the company's head of security had “urged him and his colleagues to use violence and torture to discourage the miners." The employees at that same facility were also adversely—or more likely purposely—endangered and harmed. Contrary to the company doctor's reports, workers there had highly toxic levels of lead poisoning.
Practically every RTG mining operation in Africa,
In the world of dirty mining, we are blessed to have a system like Wal-Mart's 24 rules to help establish the basis for a 24-carat gold standard. A standard based in transfusing nasty little terms like apartheid, human rights abuse, rape, poison, contamination, and murder into the greener terminology of Eco-this and community that. By simply moving numbers from the neutered columns labeled “capital” and “resources” into the columns entitled “expenses” and “profits”, this corporate accounting alchemy develops poor foreign workers into profit rich skeletal remains, transforming backward native land into progressive toxic waste sites. The gullible may be quick to call this magic, but most know it as corporate efficient economics or more simply, sound business practices.
Green mining alchemists
The numerical alchemy responsible for the Love, Earth® line, although a part of a global foresight, seems to have its focus on a more local sight. In order to adhere to the motto “think globally, act locally,” RTG has decided that they will provide the gold and silver used for Wal-Mart's Love, Earth® collection from its
Since the 1989 buyout from British Petroleum, Kennecott Utah Copper Corporation (KUCC) has been a prized jewel on the crown that represents Rio Tinto's mining dynasty. And why not? To keep up with Wal-Mart's $2.8 billion annual jewelry sales, RTG needed a lot of gold and silver, and what better place then
As the sun rises over Utah's Wasatch Mountains, the sound of diesel engines ring in the work day, while $3 million super trucks begin moving copper ore. Billowing clouds of smoke that on some days hazes the entire
Most consumers are shocked to find out that the average 18-carat wedding ring leaves behind 40,000 pounds of waste, but RTG's Bingham mine makes those numbers seem grossly conservative. At the end of each workday 900,000,000 pounds of earth are removed from the mountain side in
Let them drink gold
According to Rio Tinto's website, under the “environmental stewardship” section on water use, KUCC uses 15,000-gallons of new water a minute. For every 8 hours the facility operates, it exhausts 7.2 million gallons of fresh water. That means that the same amount of water that KUCC uses in an 8-hour period could fill more than 14 Olympic sized pools. The average citizen in the
Among the preposterous scenery of their colossal consumption rates, it is hard to see where the environmental stewardship and conservation actually start. In typical corporate “green” fashion, water preservation seems to only exist on their web page, never making a genuine physical manifestation. As KUCC nears the end of its mining operations, wasting water will be just one chapter in the methodical books of historical achievements.
Kennecott; a barely told legacy
For the past 20 years Kennecott's executives have successfully suppressed information about the risks of their tailings waste dam faltering and failing. KUCC has dammed up over 1 billion tons in mining sludge known as tailings. If the dam failed, an ecological catastrophe greater than the Dec. 22, 2008 Tennessee coal ash spill—a disastrous event considered more than 40 times worse than the Exxon Valdez oil spill—would occur, incurring hundreds of deaths, millions of dollars in property damage, the destruction of dozens of ecosystems, and the pollution of water sources. In the process of this cover-up, KUCC went as far as to secretly buy up neighboring houses to the dam to later resell some of them to less-than-suspecting individuals. Despite their own leaked documents from hired independent engineers and government officials that elaborate on this threat, KUCC continues to release unfounded documents to nearby communities explaining that the poorly housed 1 billion tons of waste poses no real threat.
According to an EPA report on KUCC, drinking water wells and ground water in the areas surrounding Kennecott facilities are contaminated with cadmium, chromium, sulfate, zinc, copper, lead, nickel, selenium, silver, acids, and arsenic. Mining wastes continued to leach acid waters eventually creating a 72-square-mile, or three million acre water plume of sulfate-contaminated ground water. Endangering communities in
Staying true to corporate accountability, KUCC actually proposed a clean up plan that permitted them to gain a profit from pumping the aquifer dry of the contaminated water, later depositing the same untreated water into the Jordan River and Great Salt Lake. This plan would have further polluted the same bird wetlands the EPA officials showed concerned about, while ultimately increasing the human health risk.
The Magna Ditch is another recent representation of RTG\KUCC malfeasance, and one that hits even closer to home for me. Once used for Bingham mining operations, this covered ditch stretches over 17-miles long now encompassing an area filled with thousands of residential homes, schools, and agricultural areas. The Magna Ditch expands through five communities in
Some time ago, when Bingham Mine perceived the ditch no longer useful to company production, they simply covered the ditch with dirt. Since then it has been discovered that the non-operational Magna Ditch has poisoned the surrounding soil with a number of toxins, including arsenic. Since the ditch was never lined, the arsenic and other nasty chemicals leached into the encompassing soil, expanding the contaminated area an even greater distance. Local, State, and Federal governments mandated a remediation clean-up of the area at the expense of Kennecott. The clean up efforts in this area have thus far been, at best, a failed sham, and at worst, a total environmental and human catastrophe. Greedy, profit-driven KUCC only dug up a small percentage of land—areas they considered the most arsenic-contaminated. However, they left large regions of land untouched, that to date, still contain unsafe levels of arsenic and other chemicals.
Currently, my two brothers live within the area where the old drainage ditch is. They have received confusing KUCC mailings ranging in explanations; that there was “no threat of arsenic,” that there was a “threat” to my brothers' property, that they will clean up arsenic from their yard, and that they will not be coming by after all. Neither of my brother's dare to have a backyard garden to grow food, and both are continually worried about the adverse affects the arsenic may have on their pet dogs. My niece and other neighborhood kids play daily in the contaminated front yards. Arsenic-poisoned soil is no longer merely a side effect of war and poverty stricken regions, but now another element to the constantly expanding horizon of American suburbia.
It's time for a Day Break
If the thought of back yard gardens and playgrounds being tampered with poisons is frightening to parents, local residents can now turn to none other than RTG's Kennecott for relief. With the world's largest mine forecasted to only last 10-20 more years, Kennecott has turned to Suburban Sprawl as their solution to rid themselves of the somewhat tampered 80,000 acres surrounding Bingham Mine.
Flying their well deserved Eco-sustainable flag, one of RTG's newest subsidiaries Kennecott Land (KL) has taken on the largest corporate initiative in history to tackle residential planned development. With an ammunition of words such as “community”, “open”, “green”, “sustainable”, “wildlife”, “green”, “trees”, “plants” and more “green” than a flu ridden Kermit the frog could ever spit up, Kennecott Land has a master plan that cannot be rivaled.
Kennecott's plan is to build more than 162,000 homes, luxury condos, and apartments. The plan also includes a college campus, industrial areas, business offices, retail spaces, 105,000 new jobs, a minimum of 100,000 trees, a ski resort and much more. Of course it makes complete environmental sense to have more jobs than trees in any given area. They expect their development to aid in expanding the
The first community development Daybreak® (yes it is trademarked) is already being built in this aspiring plan to permanently scar
To make up for the number of real wetlands that mining has earlier destroyed, they have created this 85-acre, 250 million-gallon man-made lake. In typical green-wash fashion, this lake is not an actual wetland, but created for human recreational use only. This creation has thus far resulted in the transportation of 35 million cubic feet of soil, 25,000 tons of rock, and will require an annual 255 acre-feet of water each year. The water to refill the lake is stolen from
Kennecott may be dabbling in community construction projects, but their main focus, as always, remains in mining. Just as a magician uses sleight of hand, so does the world's greenest mining company. RTG's cheap parlor tricks have been used to successfully confuse and evade, in the last two years alone, while Kennecott Land has been busily building their Eco-image in the Salt Lake Valley, KUCC has been even busier, placing over 70 mining claims on newly acquired county open-spaces.
Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got
So it seems yet again Wal-Mart has found itself in some very dirty dealings. Rio Tinto, their partner in crime, not only profits off the unmitigated destruction of complete bio-regions but also the health and lives of humans who also share the region. With this entire point aside, and in typical green-wash, guilt-free consumer fashion, Love, Earth® jewelry will no doubt become a corporate success for both Wal-Mart and Rio Tinto. Sure there will be more articles, reports, documentaries, and maybe even a lawsuit or two attempting to show both of these corporations for the scum that they really are, but in the end Wal-Mart will still win. See, as long as we (whoever that “we” might actually be) allow these multi-national corporations to define our reality, and as long as we allow them to have a “person-hood,” a power that not only supersedes our own human-rights but also threatens our children's future and the greater future of the earth and everything that inhabits it, we lose.
They dig virulent holes, systematically destroy mountain lands, harass and kill workers, and all the while, we still lose.
So what's the point?
Halfway through this article I asked myself, what's the point? What is the point of informing people about Wal-Mart's deceptive practices when we all live in a capitalist society dependent on what Wal-Mart stands for: power and greed? Why even attempt to challenge the horrible practices of Rio Tinto and the rest of the corporate mining industry when the truth of the matter is, we are a culture that needs its copper, steel, coal, silver, and gold, and we will do whatever it takes to get it. We can read articles while pondering the extensive destruction of everything and everyone, but at the end of the day we still feel powerless and so we do nothing. So, at what point will we realize that our grandchildren and their children may not be able to survive among the wastelands that we are currently proudly stockpiling in the name of progress?
For too long we have been able to slip a price tag on anything we wanted, and perhaps now is a good time to stop valuing things in such a constrictive manner. We are fractured addicts, born from broken families, so that when we grow up all we want is want. So we try our hardest to replace the shattered communities we never had. We are told to focus on the good, and soon we lose focus of anything tangible or meaningful. We fiercely participate in the amazing race to convert our old television's before the screen goes to snow, or we gladly take opportunities to work overtime to mortgage our lives out for new ones, all in hopes that when the big digital switch comes, instead of just turning the fucker off, we will get the clarity, the validation, that we have spent our lives chasing.
Or we could start something new. We could support those groups and individuals currently dedicated to stopping the destruction of every remaining ecosystem. We could replace that 18-carat engagement ring and the 20 tons of waste it creates with a simple, “I Love You.” We could build real alternatives to a culture hell bent on profiting off our children's future.
Writing articles is not going to save or stop anything, but what comes out of these articles might. Don't be afraid of finding a starting point, just look around. I mean really: look around. Starting points are everywhere.
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