A Corgi Paws Around

I get a lot of versions of this question, and I answer it seriously every time, because it’s both important and not important at all. Anyone who asks respectfully gets my whole ass answer.

It’s just not really about that. My job isn’t about defending the idea of hurting someone else. It’s about stopping the state from inflicting further hurt, torture, pain. It’s about pushing back for some fairness against a monumentally stacked system. And it’s about stuff that’s normal human stuff that counts as crime for some reason.

Yeah, it’s hard to do a sex abuse case. Sometimes the images stick around and it bothers me. But honestly? Mostly those cases have real plausible theories of innocence or they’re cases that I will lose because the evidence is there, and the question is not whether the perpetrator will go to jail but how long.

Those cases are so rare, though. I get so much pointless bullshit. Felony of a teen taking mom’s car without permission. Two kids that try to break into a car and get so scared by the alarm that they run away. Trespassing on dad’s house because his new girlfriend wants you to stop coming around. It’s just human stuff, and the violence of the state is not necessary or helpful.

I also reject the idea of punishment completely. The state has a responsibility to stop people from hurting other people again. But inflicting pain doesn’t do it, we know this by now. So I argue for mercy and for real solutions to real problems. I’m here to build a future, not get caught up with doing violence to someone because of the past.

So yeah, sometimes it’s hard, but mostly my conscience is dead clear: I’m not responsible for the crime. The damage has been done. I want to start the healing process, and I want it for everyone involved. When that’s not possible, I just want to tell the authorities they don’t get to just Do What They Want.

The more I do this job, the more I am a genuine pacifist who is against violence in all forms, and actually I don’t see a contradiction between that and what I do for a living. State violence is a pervasive evil that tears apart families, communities, and countries, and it’s far more damaging and awful than any individual crime. The average prosecutor has more blood on their hands than a serial killer, but it’s invisible: people who died in jail, who froze to death on the street, who were shot in a drug deal. Their violence begets violence.

When I get blood on my hands, it’s because I put my hands over the wounds and try to stop the flow. I’m okay with it.

As someone who had to drop out of school many years ago and could never finish despite my many attempts and had to be hospitalized for my disorders more than once, this is yet another way that conservatives are kicking down on the most vulnerable in society.

After all, there is no hate like Christian love.

Because of this, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop taking commissions, so… now I’m opening another slot. Because I have no choice.

If you can please hire me to draw for you, DM me. I’m sorry to even be asking.

children are not your property that you can do whatever you like with.

giving birth or impregnating someone or adopting doesn't give you some inherent wisdom that means you can never fuck up.

and you shouldn't have the right to abuse or neglect or misinform a child just because you have legal guardianship of them.

a staggering amount of parents view their children as their property and see advice as someone trying to take away their "deserved" control.

Oh they're not happy.

CANCEL IT IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY

For my non-Canadian followers, please share this petition and hopefully this will further the reach to other Canadian users on this platform. It is abominable that any company in this country help or in any way facilitate the unconstitutional and dehumanising acts that ICE has done. In my city of Vancouver, we have been protesting and boycotting Hootsuite, a social media platform that has a $2M USD contract with DHS providing them with social media services from 2024 to 2029. Hootsuite claims they don't use tracking or surveillance with their tools, but the mere fact that they have chosen to work with the violent group in whatever social media capacity, despite previously *turning down* a contract with them back in 2020, is egregious.

Jim Pattison Group is a enormous conglomerate also based in Vancouver, owned and run by one man, Jim Pattison. Pattison previously considered selling an industrial building in Virginia to ICE for them to use as another "holding and processing facility," or more accurately, a goddamn concentration camp, but because of backlash he reversed that decision. Thank fucking god for that, but that does not mean he won't consider it again in the future. In Ontario, ICE ordered 20 armoured vehicles from a Brampton firm called Roshel to the tune of $7.3M USD. Canada should not be arming a violent group that has shown itself to be nothing more than a racist group of masked kidnappers and power-tripping thugs that has violated the rights of US citizens and violated numerous court orders.