Hustler of Culture
Some jerk decided to follow me home from the East Bay and threatened me with violence. I guess I cut him off. I guess. I don’t really know. Scared the shit out of me. Asshole.
Now I’m afraid to get on the road. This is why I take the train.
Last month marked the the 30th anniversary of the Attica Prison Rebellion. On September 9, 1971, the inmates of Attica prison near Buffalo, New York seized the facility with demands for better living conditions and vocational training. At the time, the Attica Correctional Faciltiy gave inmates one bucket of water a week for “showering” and one roll of toilet paper per month.
After a four day standoff, Governor Nelson Rockafeller refused negotiation and sent a strike force of 1,500 state police and national guardsman to the prison yard. In all, 42 people were killed including 10 correctional officers. In the years that followed, the State of New York would send bulldozers into the prison yard to wipe out any evidence of wrongdoing.
At the time, Attica was the worst case of one-day violence between Americans since the civil war. It remains one of the most shameful incidents in the history of American law enforcement.
I think of this now, in this very scray time, in this country I love. I see us giving virtually unchecked powers to law enforcement officials to question, arrest and detain those “suspected” of illegal activity. I see us willing to look at whole swaths of Americans as potential criminals and I’m reminded of Dostoyevsky, a prisoner himself, who said that “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering the prisons.”
I look at how we treat those we suspect of wrongdoing in America, the power we give to those appointed to protect us. And it scares the hell out of me.
One lesson away from finishing Web Traffic School thank God allmighty. I bailed on a movie with my friend Laura for this stupid thing.