#basic dignity

I like my job. I work for the city cleaning up homeless camps (so I call them campers). I clean up human waste and toxic materials and pick up trash.

A few days ago I was waiting for some campers to move sites when a guy started stumbling at me, cold and disoriented. I caught him and told him to lean on me. He started crying into my shoulder and I asked if I could hug him. He nodded into me and I held him for a moment. He eventually pulled away and I got him to look at me, "Hey, I dont know you, man, but I love you, ok? I hope you have a good day and things get better for you."

I want to use some money from my wages to keep hand warmers to give out to cold people and put together some survival bags.

No one should ever feel humanity colder than their fingers.

👜 Ivy Gorgon's Community Care Kit Loadout:

(All low-cost, high-impact)

Our most essential nature is complete dignity. It is not the dignity of a dinner party, it is the dignity of a tree, a mountain or the moon. There is nothing that can tarnish the dignity of the moon, because the moon has no self. When we develop a sense of self, an ego, our dignity is not tarnished either, but it can be obscured. Instead of attaching our dignity to our basic nature, we attach it to our thoughts and behaviors. Once we do that, our dignity becomes contingent on other forces beyond our control. We start making distinctions between what is dignified and what is not dignified, and we lose ourselves in the process.

‘When you appreciate yourself, you realize that you don’t have to feel wretched or condemned. You don’t have to artificially puff yourself up either. You discover your basic dignity, which comes along with gentleness. You have always possessed this, but you may never have recognized it before.’

‘When you appreciate yourself, you realize that you don’t have to feel wretched. You don’t have to feel wretched or condemned. You don’t have to artificially puff yourself up, either. You discover you basic dignity, which comes along with gentleness. You have always possessed this, but you may never have recognized it before.’

Decades (or more) in solitary confinement for access Facebook is simply preposterous; and to put it on par with crimes like Rape, and Murder denigrate the victims of an actual crime. This is a flawed (borderline illegal) practice that needs to end.   

From the EFF:

Back in 2012, the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) made “Creating and/or Assisting With A Social Networking Site” a Level 1 offense [PDF], a category reserved for the most violent violations of prison conduct policies. It’s one of the most common Level 1 offense charges brought against inmates, many of whom, like most social network users, want to remain in contact with friends and family in the outside world and keep up on current events. Some inmates ask their families to access their online accounts for them, while many access the Internet themselves through a contraband cell phone (possession of which is yet another Level 1 offense).

Through a request under South Carolina’s Freedom of Information Act, EFF found that, over the last three years, prison officials have brought more than 400 hundred disciplinary cases for “social networking”—almost always for using Facebook. The offenses come with heavy penalties, such as years in solitary confinement and deprivation of virtually all privileges, including visitation and telephone access. In 16 cases, inmates were sentenced to more than a decade in what’s called disciplinary detention, with at least one inmate receiving more than 37 years in isolation.