Shameless Self-promotion Sunday
Here's a pretty old post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 12 years ago, in 2012, on the World Wide Web.
It’s a rainy Sunday here in Auburn, but neither rain, nor snow, nor gloom of night should stay you from the swift completion of your appointed Shamelessness.
For me, to-day is mostly going to be a day for preparing, catching up, and staying more or less resolutely offline — catching up on some movies, then helping prepare for a yard sale in the afternoon, and then prepping some exciting stuff for the Distro — the latest issues of Market Anarchy and the Anarchist Classics Series, plus a long-needed catch-up on the many titles that have come out since last I updated here about it, plus prepping the Distro’s largest single order to date, destined for Fort Worth, Texas. And you? What have you been up to this week? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about.
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I’m going to watch a bunch of episodes of Vanguard after seeing a pair on globalization and the US prison system. The one on the prison system was very interesting; I didn’t know gangs in prisons tend to form along racial lines (this was California), or that you could have TVs in Solitary confinement (which are little concrete rooms of almost Manning-like condition). Most of the discussion focused on the gangs, and in fact the prison guards were quoted several times saying they don’t really run the place at all, the gangs do and they just “manage” it. I thought the scene where the guard was speculating on which of a group of three would be re-arrested and jailed was odd since he predicted the one who had served 10 years wouldn’t be coming back but the other two that had only been in a few months would be. Like in that movie Shawshank Redemption isn’t it true that most people after being socialized in prisons for 5+ years just can’t reintegrate into society?
Another aspect was the irony in a lot of the reporter’s statements. She frequently mentioned things like prisoners refusing to talk to protect their gang or gangs punishing those who try to drop out of the gangs. But the state does the very same things! Try to be a whistleblower under the Obama administration or try to leave the US army and see how well they treat you! And her shock about prisoners taking orders in a large hierarchy from people “they never even see” sounded the weirdest of all. I’m pretty sure most soldiers and police don’t get to see the heads of their organizations on a day-to-day basis, or the ordinary people in any large business, media, or academic organization for that matter.
The presentation was very establishment in tone, yet I almost felt like a voyeur watching it. She announced herself that the US has 2 million people in the prison system, the largest in the entire world, yet all the news shows talk about is Paul Ryan’s budget plan! One guy was there for years just for drugs! I can’t help but wonder that the people I and others will work with and see everyday know little to nothing about this. I can’t help but wonder how they would react if they or a loved one was put into a California Max prison. I can’t help but wonder how I would deal with it and what effect being isolated, caged, and housed with violent thugs would have on me or a loved one.
I just posted another translation from Jenny P. d’Hericourt, a short essay, “On Woman,” from the first issue of l’Opinion des Femmes in 1849. The fourth issue of La Frondeuse (previously “Black and Red Feminism”) will be a special issue featuring d’Hericourt’s work. The third, which I just completed, focuses on Louise Michel, Paule Mink, and Severine. I’m going to go back and revise the translations from the first two issues once more, and then repackage them under the new title, together with a uniform collection of Joshua King Ingall’s articles from The Woman’s Tribune.
Just finished reading Means of Ascent, the second volume of Robert Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson. Great stuff on so many levels—among other things, what a great example of the kind of ambition that propels people to the top of the state apparatus.