Martha X: The Radicalization of Martha Stewart
I tell myself that reports of police brutality are exaggerated and I'm overreacting to my parent's pre-civil-rights paranoia; the country has changed since then. But it is there again, on the way to work, a story in the paper. There will be another in a couple of months. A black suspect was shot off a roof by an officer, a psychotic black man ran towards the police with a hammer and was shot to death, a black man pulled out a toy pistol and was blown away. I blame the black men for being shot because it's easier than feeling powerless. Why the hell was he on that roof anyway, didn't he know he was in New York, it was late at night and he was black? Didn't that man know better than to be black and psychotic? We tell ourselves that if someone is in prison it is because they deserve to be there. If there are human rights violations we say, "Prison isn't supposed to be a picnic." If rehabilitation is requested and denied we say, "You should have thought about that before you got arrested." Like the fabled Bermuda Triangle, people go to prison and disappear from the face of the earth. It will be easier to go to work this morning if I believe that everyone who is in prison belongs behind bars because he is a bad person who needs to be punished. I don't have to consider the lack of education and training, substance abuse, heartbreak and rage that all contribute to crime, that prison construction is a lucrative business venture, and some states have built prisons to revitalize their economies. That it costs the same amount of money a year to maintain an inmate as it would to pay for a year's college tuition. It's hard to enjoy a Saturday picnic with your kids if you know that an imprisoned mother will have to wait years to have the same picnic with her own; convicted for the bad checks she wrote trying to feed them or for defending herself or the children from an abuser. For black men who want to experience the American dream but, exasperated with the limited opportunities racism affords, only see the possibility of success realized through crime, prison exists as an inevitability. And contrary to the hardened criminal image that most of us have, there are "regular" people who are truly bewildered about how they ended up in prison, having gone from too few schools, to even fewer options, a direct route laid from their birth to their jail cell with the precision of Amtrak. [more]