I love by problem solving, remembering small things that people like and make them happy--like little notes in the margins of our relationships, a silent squeeze on the arm to reach out and connect.

I have a friend who loves by asking if she can send me a recipe for Japanese egg and rice when she knows I'm having a bad time. I have a (cishet) friend who loves by messaging to tell me he's just finished reading He/She/They by Schuyler Bailar. I have a friend who loves by telling me "I love you" openly and as often as possible. Some love by telling you things they won't tell to another living person, some love by going six months without talking but answer in five minutes when you message them at work, and some love by not knowing how to show their love, but never leave you out in the cold when you ask for somewhere to go and a warm fire.

In the United States, many jails and prisons can and will charge you money for every single night that you spend imprisoned, for the entire duration of your incarceration, as if you were being billed for staying at a hotel. Even if you are incarcerated for years. Adding up to tens of thousands of dollars. What happens when you’re released?

In response to this:

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So.

You’re getting charged, like, ten dollars every time you even submit a request form to possibly be seen by a doctor or dentist.

You’re getting charged maybe five dollars for ten minutes on the phone.

Any time a friend or family tries to send you like five dollars so that you can buy some toothpaste or lotion, or maybe a snack from the commissary since you’re diabetic and the “meals” have left you malnourished, maybe half of that money gets taken as a “service fee” by the corporate contractor that the prison uses to manage your pre-paid debit card. So you’re already losing money every day just by being there.

What happens if you can’t pay?

In some places, after serving just a couple of years for drugs charges, almost 20 years after being released, the state can still hunt you down for over $80,000 that you “owe” as if it were a per-night room-and-board accommodations charge, like this recent highly-publicized case in Connecticut:

Excerpt:

Two decades after her release from prison, [TB] feels she is still being punished. When her mother died two years ago, the state of Connecticut put a lien on the Stamford home she and her siblings inherited. It said she owed $83,762 to cover the cost of her 2 ½ year imprisonment for drug crimes. […] “I’m about to be homeless,” said [TB], 58, who in March [2022] became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the state law that charges prisoners $249 a day for the cost of their incarceration. […] All but two states have so-called “pay-to-stay” laws that make prisoners pay for their time behind bars […]. Critics say it’s an unfair second penalty that hinders rehabilitation by putting former inmates in debt for life. Efforts have been underway in some places to scale back or eliminate such policies. Two states — Illinois and New Hampshire — have repealed their laws since 2019. […] Pay-to-stay laws were put into place in many areas during the tough-on-crime era of the 1980s and ’90s, said Brittany Friedman, an assistant professor of sociology at University of Southern California who is leading a study of the practice. […] Connecticut used to collect prison debt by attaching an automatic lien to every inmate, claiming half of any financial windfall they might receive for up to 20 years after they are released from prison […].

Text by: Pat Eaton-Robb. “At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt.” AP News / The Associated Press. 27 August 2022.

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Look at this:

To help her son, Cindy started depositing between $50 to $100 a week into Matthew’s account, money he could use to buy food from the prison commissary, such as packaged ramen noodles, cookies, or peanut butter and jelly to make sandwiches. Cindy said sending that money wasn’t necessarily an expense she could afford. “No one can,” she said. So far in the past month, she estimates she sent Matthew close to $300. But in reality, he only received half of that amount. The balance goes straight to the prison to pay off the $1,000 in “rent” that the prison charged Matthew for his prior incarceration. […] A PA Post examination of six county budgets (Crawford, Dauphin, Lebanon, Lehigh, Venango and Indiana) showed that those counties’ prisons have collected more than $15 million from inmates — almost half is for daily room and board fees that are meant to cover at least a portion of the costs with housing and food. Prisoners who don’t work are still expected to pay. If they don’t, their bills are sent to collections agencies, which can report the debts to credit bureaus. […] Between 2014 and 2017, the Indiana County Prison — which has an average inmate population of 87 people — collected nearly $3 million from its prisoners. In the past five years, Lebanon’s jail collected just over $2 million in housing and processing fees.

Text by: Joseph Darius Jaafari. “Paying rent to your jailers: Inmates are billed millions of dollars for their stays in Pa. prisons.” WHYY (PBS). 10 December 2019. Originally published at PA Post.

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Pay-to-stay, the practice of charging people to pay for their own jail or prison confinement, is being enforced unfairly by using criminal, civil and administrative law, according to a new Rutgers University-New Brunswick led study. The study […] finds that charging pay-to-stay fees is triggered by criminal justice contact but possible due to the co-opting of civil and administrative institutions, like social service agencies and state treasuries that oversee benefits, which are outside the realm of criminal justice. “A person can be charged $20 to $80 a day for their incarceration,” said author Brittany Friedman, an assistant professor of sociology and a faculty affiliate of Rutgers’ criminal justice program. “That per diem rate can lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees when a person gets out of prison. To recoup fees, states use civil means such as lawsuits and wage garnishment against currently and formerly incarcerated people, and regularly use administrative means such as seizing employment pensions, tax refunds and public benefits to satisfy the debt.” […] Civil penalties are enacted on family members if the defendant cannot pay and in states such as Florida, Nevada and Idaho can occur even after the original defendant is deceased. […]

Text by: Megan Schumann. “States Unfairly Burdening Incarcerated People With “Pay-to-Stay” Fees.” Rutgers press release. 20 November 2020.

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So, to pay for your own imprisonment, states can:

– hunt you down for decades (track you down 20 years later, charge you tens of thousands of dollars, and take your house away)

– put a lien on your vehicle, house

– garnish your paycheck/wages

– seize your tax refund

– send collections agencies after you

– take your public assistance benefits

– sue you in civil court

Oh wait. It’s never been about rehabilitation anymore. It’s always been about trying to extract money from people by any means.

Read those.

Right now.

I’ll wait.

If you don’t want to read, I’ll explain the key bullet points, but please read them afterwords:

This is not “we didn’t protect him enough.”

This is not “the government screwed up some random detail or accidentally let his killer loose.”

The 111th Military Intelligence had a team taking pictures of his balcony during the assassination.

They brought in a Special Forces 8-Man Sniper Team from the 20th.

Memphis Police withdrew their regular protection detail from him.

A jury of 12 people, six black and six white, found the United States Government guilty of conspiracy to commit murder.

YOUR GOVERNMENT. MY GOVERNMENT. THE GOVERNMENT OF, BY, AND FOR THE PEOPLE, SHOT AND KILLED DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING. And the media never reported the case.

MLK was ASSASSINATED. By a government YOU PAY FOR.

I hate those posts where someone tries to pressure you into reblogging. I almost never ask you to reblog.

This shit is important.

Reblog this. I don’t care what kind of blog you have. I don’t care what you normally talk about.

First would come Conquest, riding on a white horse and decorated like a king of old, firing a great bow as he crossed the land. Wherever this bow’s arrows struck, the generals and presidents and kings and ministers were struck with lust for glory earned on blood soaked mud, or bitter rage that swelled to bursting over grievances old and new, or zealous fury born of ideologues that bayed for enemies within and without to be crushed by the weight of crumbling empires. And so the great nations and empires and powers of the Earth sought to subdue one another and their own people. Each sought to one-up the others, to make as many bow to their sovereignty as possible and conquer the hearts and minds of their fellows by whatever means, be they bullet or ballot or bill, through means stained red or glittering gold.

Second would come War, great horn baying and sword held high as his blood red horse crossed the nations and lands of the Earth. Wherever it was heard, the fragile peace enforced by threats and bribes and the competing interests of the mighty broke. In the wake of the second horseman, War bloomed in fields of mud watered by blood of the poor and desperate, the blind and deluded, led by the true believers and the greedy. A million different banners waved in the burning winds, those of empires and those of the conquered, those of rebels and the oppressors, and those of every nation and people of every land. The whole Earth knew the warm embrace of War, and there was not a day where the guns fell silent, until the last round had been fired and the last generals no longer gave orders that were followed.

Third to ride would be Famine, riding a black horse and wearing a dark suit. He carried with him scales and ledgers and tablets of glass and lithium and steel, with which to tally the crops and medicines and fuel and water and shelters and to set the prices accordingly. Wherever the jealous and greedy and hoarders kept the necessities of life locked away from those who needed them, the third Horseman’s tread could be heard. In the wake of the dark horse came the hoarding of the world, the people left to freeze and starve and die so the great treasures of the kings in all but name would appreciate in value and could be speculated upon, great gambling games with the assurance of golden parachutes while the rest lacked even the barest of safety nets.

Fourth to ride would be Death, upon his pale horse, bringing the end with him. Most of the last horseman’s work was to be done by his fellow riders. Disease, violence and bloodshed and starvation wracking the Earth in the wake of the other riders. Last would be the Reaper, come to take his harvest and close the curtains, or so many believed. For was it not the end of days, the end of the world? How could any go on after all the misery inflicted on the world these many long years? But Death did not ride out to claim the lives of humanity in one final cleaning of the slate. There were deaths, but the great ringing of bells that tolled across the Earth were not for the people of the world, nor were they for the Earth itself. Death came for an era, for a system, for a way of thinking, for the world-that-was.

On top of that, Instead of donating our old unwanted stuff to places like Goodwill, which wildly mistreat their workers, Buy Nothing lets me donate things directly to my community, without the risk that the sorters at the thrift shop will just throw things in the trash. I've passed along open things of hair care products that I didn't wind up liking but that had nothing wrong with them. I've passed along snacks we didn't like, pet food we didn't wind up using, and all sorts of perishables that would have otherwise gone right in the garbage.

My local group even has regular meetups where people bring all their stuff at once, and it's like a giant garage sale where everything is free.

As I went walking that endless bread line My landlord gave me a 2-week deadline And Labor Action ran a better headline: “This land was made for you and me!”

This land is their land, it isn’t our land From the plush apartments to the Cadillac car land From the Wall Street office to the Hollywood star land This land is not for you or me

So take your slogan and kindly stow it If this was our land, you’d never know it So let’s get together and overthrow it ‘Cause this land was made for you and me

And then in the middle:

There's hiding and there's finding, we'd say. And he'd say it was hide-and-seek, not hide-and-give-UP, and we'd all yell about who made the rules and who cared about who, anyway, and how we wouldn't play with him anymore if he didn't get it straight and who needed him anyhow, and things like that. Hide-and-seek-and-yell. No matter what, though, the next time he would hide too good again. He's probably still hidden somewhere, for all I know.

As I write this, the neighborhood game goes on, and there is a kid under a pile of leaves in the yard just under my window. He has been there a long time now, and everybody else is found and they are about to give up on him over at the base. I considered going out to the base and telling them where he is hiding. And I thought about setting the leaves on fire to drive him out. Finally, I just yelled, "GET FOUND, KID!" out the window. And scared him so bad he probably wet his pants and started crying and ran home to tell his mother. It's real hard to know how to be helpful sometimes.

A man I know found out last year he had terminal cancer. He was a doctor. And knew about dying, and he didn't want to make his family and friends suffer through that with him. So he kept his secret. And died. Everybody said how brave he was to bear his suffering in silence and not tell everybody, and so on and so forth. But privately his family and friends said how angry they were that he didn't need them, didn't trust their strength. And it hurt that he didn't say good-bye.

He hid too well. Getting found would have kept him in the game. Hide-and-seek, grown-up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to be sought. Confused about being found. "I don't want anyone to know." "What will people think?" "I don't want to bother anyone."

Better than hide-and-seek, I like the game called Sardines. In Sardines the person who is It goes and hides, and everybody goes looking for him. When you find him, you get in with him and hide there with him. Pretty soon everybody is hiding together, all stacked in a small space like puppies in a pile. And pretty soon somebody giggles and somebody laughs and everybody gets found.

Medieval theologians even described God in hide-and-seek terms, calling him Deus Absconditus. But me, I think old God is a Sardine player. And will be found the same way everybody gets found in Sardines - by the sound of laughter of those heaped together at the end.

"Olly-olly-oxen-free." The kids out in the street are hollering the cry that says "Come on in, wherever you are. It's a new game." And so say I. To all those who have hid too good. Get found, kid! Olly-olly-oxen-free.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)  dir Rian Johnson