Above photo:
Living in a Liberal and progressive utopia…
where same sex couples can safely walk the streets holding hands,
where the crosswalks are painted with rainbows,
where, “What are your gender pronouns?” is an introduction question, and
where ‘black lives matter’ signs lean in the window of every other storefront.
Now I come to wonder how progressive liberals feel about incarcerated lives.
I’m from Michigan, which in comparison is a much more conservative region of the country. Prior to moving to Washington I’d never had an open homosexual or person in transition in any of my friendship circles, I had not been introduced to anyone with that identity. During my time as an orientation leader at UW I was able to meet an incredible guy that I would have never met in Michigan as a feminized homosexual male. I’m sure these identities exist in the state that I’m from, but because it was not as open of an area for these type of lifestyles when I was growing up these weren’t identities that I ever had the opportunity to come into contact with. As a demonstrator and human rights activist, you would think that my message in support of striking prisoners would be well received in area welcoming to people often unwelcome in other parts of the country: homosexuals, immigrants, trans people, people of color and other marginalized groups. Here it would seem as that going out into the streets and a place that seemingly so open-minded would not at all be difficult. You would think that people would be running towards me seeking information about how to lift prisoners up off of the ground of their oppression. You would think that all of the businesses with the black lives matter signs leaning against their window would be intentional about including the black lives that were being abused behind bars. You would think the people that fought to get the cross walks painted rainbow would want to bring that same feeling of Hope and persistence to their incarcerated brothers and sisters. Think again.
Racists Exists Everywhere, They’re Just ‘Nice’ Here
Racists exist everywhere in this country because along with racism, it is comfortably maintained by our culture. The old white couple that I met during a demonstration were the nicest yet most offensive racists I’d ever met. Racism is like an invisible venom here, it penetrates deeper because you didn’t even think it would bite. I was approached by a couple during a noise demo outside of the King County Correctional Facility that had just exited the facility and were curious about why we were outside. They told us that they were missionaries that went in on a regular basis and volunteered to pray with the men and women who are incarcerated there. After thanking them for their service to caged communities, I began to explain to them the inhumane conditions that prisoners were living in and the changes that they want to see in their environment in order for their rights to be protected. The elderly white man cut me off to yell at me, “Do you even know what it’s like in there? Have you even ever been in a prison?” I responded to him calmly, “Yes I volunteer on a weekly basis. I’ve also visited friends and family in prisons and I regularly communicate with the incarcerated individuals about the conditions that they’re forced to live in.” I wanted to express that I’m not doing this out of an ignorant or uneducated place; the work that I’m doing is informed by the conditions directly from the people who are living in those conditions. Instead of allowing me to go on, the man, with his wife standing silently by his side, proceeded to talk at us about how we were missing the entire perspective. He went on to tell us that of a hundred of every group of races that there were always going to be a group of bad people. His comments were irrelevant as he attempted to validate the way that people were being treated on the inside. He used the rationale that there will always be ‘bad people’ to belittle the abuse and oppressive conditions that prisoners were in. I was no longer interested in having a conversation with this individual however my comrades were, so I proceeded to videotape the conversation knowing that these missionaries were living in their imaginary world. Perhaps they were genuinely unaware of the violent agenda of the state that they were pushing through their ‘volunteering’. It’s sad to see that there are people who actually volunteer in the system and still fail to see it’s innate problems. Perhaps because they believe that these people just deserve this type of treatment or they’ve been witnessing the abusive prison world for too long to realize that they’re desensitized to the abuse of humans, the abuse of black and brown humans.
Once the conversation was over and the elderly man begin to walk away, his wife stepped up to one of the other black women at the noise demo with her face just a centimeter away from hers. I heard her speech begin with. “I know you’re probably a very nice young lady…” At that point we stared her down as she talked. It was as if these white people just wanted to have an audience for their misinformed opinions. What they fail to realize is that their perspective is not missing in any way. Their perspective is the dominant one that black and brown young people are force-fed as they are growing up in American society. We’re force-fed the idea that American prisons are for bad people who did bad things and deserve to be there. We are force-fed that idea while our own friends and family members are jailed and killed at the hands of the state at exponentially disproportionate rates. We are force-fed the idea that they must have been bad people and that we’re most likely going to turn out to be super bad people who deserve to be mistreated and abused. We are forced fed this illusion that America Safety depends on our discomfort. In this liberal Utopia these delusions persist because they are hidden under friendly smiles and missionary titles. In the same way that slavery is harder to fight because of its modern day nuances, racists are harder to detect in liberal ‘progressive’ spaces. Here where we think everyone is open minded and accepting somehow we’ve let the racists slip by.
Police Exist to Intimidate, Not Support
During the noise demo we were visited by officers multiple times. On one instance, a police car parked outside of our group of demonstrators for about 5 minutes with its lights flashing before exiting the vehicle. Prior to this, police cars had been passing by our group every ten minutes since the time we began the noise demo. After exiting his car, the officer approached us. I had yet to meet this officer however other demonstrators had as our group had been at this location multiple times throughout the week. They inquired as to whether or not he was able to read the materials that protesters gave him earlier in the week. “No I’m sorry I haven’t gotten to it yet” he said, I along with the others were shocked. We could not believe that a police officer responsible for serving and protecting our community did not take the opportunity to educate himself on why community members were out protesting in the middle of the night outside of a jail. We asked why he hadn’t gotten around to it in the week and along with other excuses he said, “My family comes first”. I’m sure that there was time during his shift to read these materials before he got off work. The pamphlet that we gave him was a simple booklet that’s probably been passed out to hundreds of individuals at these solidarity events around the country. The paper includes the list of prisoners’ demands and multiple ways that an individual can support striking prisoners. We didn’t expect this officer to completely change his opinion about the reason why prisons exist in the United States. We did however expect this officer to be curious and even caring enough to want to inform himself about the conditions of prisoners and their demands in response to being handed this pamphlet by protesters. We didn’t even ask this officer to go home and do research on his own, we gave him the smallest two pages of material to read and he completely refused it. We handed him the materials again after expressing our disappointment. He took it and while he seemed like a nice guy, we could easily see through the facade. He was so blinded by his task as an officer to come and intimidate us out of the space we were in as protesters that he didn’t even concern himself with why we were organizing and why prisoners were organizing.
It’s a sad and dangerous reality that officers have become figurines with titles rather than human beings with compassion and concern. I was glad to have left the incident alive, I was one of two blacks out of the group so I felt pretty safe surrounded by advocates but even in a liberal utopia police officers exist to intimidate and not to support people. Had this officer been a true servant of his community we would not have had to beg him to read our pamphlet. He would have been interested enough to ask on his own and passionate enough about the community to have done additional research. A true servant of the community would have been eagerly prepared with questions the next time he came in contact with the same group of protesters.
Support for Formally Incarcerated Folks
If you didn’t think that mass incarceration affected Washington then think again. At every single action we had in Seattle, we were able to meet formally incarcerated individuals. On two occasions, two people [both black men] told me that they had just gotten out. They were excited to see people protesting outside in solidarity. It’s an incredible thing when you’re able to lift someone’s spirit and you weren’t even expecting it. On one occasion a woman, Mama G, came up to my partner and I in tears. She’d just gotten off of the phone with her daughter incarcerated in New Mexico. She told me that her daughter who’d grown up in foster care was in the wrong place suffering from addiction now surrounded by women with much harsher crimes. In tears she should me about another one of her children, her son who was also incarcerated and had grown up in foster care. She was so pleased to see that there were people fighting on the outside for her children. “Can you believe I was behind a bench crying and then I looked up and seen you!” It was as if she’d seen a pair of angels holding up a prison strike sign.
We fail to remember that many of the people living, working, shopping and studying alongside us can easily be direct products of the criminal justice system as a loved one or as someone whose formally incarcerated. In both instances, a lot of time is spent investing into an institution that stole from you, your life or your loved one’s life. In both situations you’re forced to come to term with the reality of unfair and abusive circumstances and biased opinions against you, in many cases for a lifetime. The greatest part of demonstrating in Seattle was that I was able to come face to face with the victims of the criminal justice system, faces that everyone else fails to see, and show them that they are loved, cared for and supported. I was able to show them that they’re not alone in their struggle and that there is a team of supporters standing behind them.
[Free] People Must Stand up for [Incarcerated] People
When I was in college I watched a video as a part of a class that changed my perspective as an activist. In Detroit I’d never seen any white people protest in solidarity with suffering people of color. After the slaughter of three black males back to back during a season of our nation celebrating freedom and Independence, I saw a video that showed a large group of white people protesting the treatment of black people in our country. This simple opened up a part of my mind that had never been opened before. The fact that there were actually white people who recognize that they hold a set of privileges that weren’t awarded to every person in our society and that there are white people that have a desire to use those freedoms in order to liberate those suffering from oppression around them. It takes a brave and strong individual to choose to relinquish the conveniences of their life to lay down theirs for the benefit of others. But isn’t that exactly what what privileges are for? Isn’t that what freedom is for?
We are not only free for ourselves and we don’t hold our privileges for ourselves only. As many freedoms as we’re able to consume, it should be our life’s mission to make sure that those who don’t hold those privileges will be closer to being able to as a result of our action. The benefits of living in a seemingly liberal Utopia is that there are people here prepared to be called out. The consequences to living to a liberal, progressive ‘Utopia’ is that the call has to be loud for some reason people realize that something is wrong. People think just because they have a sign in the window that they’re actually doing work. People genuinely believe that just because they didn’t personally turn the key in the lock that they’re not involved in mass incarceration. It’s essential that people realize that there are a lot of roles being played in order to maintain the complexity of this system including: the choice to shop at the businesses profiting from the system, the choice to be complicit in the silencing of incarcerated individuals and the choice to vote against prisoners’ interests who cannot vote. These are all roles that we must highlight especially when we enter public spaces, it is our duty as supporters of prisoners to acknowledge our role and help others acknowledge their role in the persistence of the mass industrial complex in order to effectively destruct it from the inside out.