Queer on Purpose

few days late, but one of my favorite authors died last week...

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 17:41:02 GMT

Octavia Butler, author of such groundbreaking sci-fi works as Kindred and Parable of the Talents, died on Friday after falling outside of her Seattle home and striking her head. Her heroic, uncompromising, and ferociously intelligent voice will be missed. If great and powerful writers attain a certain immortality through the endurance of their works, then surely Butler's abrupt passage signals only the end of her corporeal presence. Butler's obituary on Democracy Now! included this statement from Jane Jewell, of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America:

"She is a world-class science fiction writer in her own right. She was one of the first and one of the best to discuss gender and race in science fiction."

In commemoration of Octavia Butler's life and work, LiP magazine put up a .pdf of an interview conducted with Butler in 2004: http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/octaviabutlerinterview_2004.pdf

Some Kind of Horror Show

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 16:27:47 GMT

Mar 6—Mar 20
BAM’s annual horror fest offers a selection of the lost, the forgotten, or just plain under-seen and adheres to strict rules of horror film-going: see any film where Mimsy Farmer is running scared, Michael Jackson is a zombie, Nicolas Roeg and Jim Henson collaborate, or cats unite to avenge their master. We’ve got ‘em all in 35mm! Featuring a free opening night party on March 6 and a Q&A with director John Landis on March 16.

I'm excited about these and if anyone wants to join me, get in touch...

My Bloody Valentine (1981) 91min Wed, Mar 29 at 6:50, 9:15pm

“There’s more than one way to lose your heart...” As the townspeople in this cheerfully demented gorefest find out, Valentine’s Day is a time to celebrate true love and all its charms...or just run screaming from a homicidal maniac bent on avenging the deaths of coal miners 20 years ago. This is a classic, and rarely seen, low–budget horror film that also inspired the name for the seminal cult band from late 80s Britain.

Innocent Blood (1992) 112min Thu, Mar 16 at 7pm*+
*With Michael Jackson's Thriller
+Followed by a Q&A with director John Landis
› Buy Tickets Directed by John Landis.
With Anne Parillaud, Robert Loggia.

“He’s using a rump-roast as a pillow.” A great American auteur, Landis tells the tale of a French vampire in Pittsburgh with a sex, horror, and comedy mix that’s demented even by his standards. And yes, that’s Dario Argento stroking Don Rickles’ head. For that, Mr. Landis, we salute you! “Teens and genre fans should eat up John Landis’ latest mix of horror and camp comedy. They will ‘ooh’ at the various gross–out scenes and nifty special effects, ‘aah’ at the film’s sensuality and Anne Parillaud's easy nudity, and savor the numerous in–jokes and horror references, from cameos by other goremeister directors to clips from various late–show staples.”—Variety
With Thriller (1983) Directed by John Landis. This is how we want to remember Michael Jackson: as a hideous nightmare beast menacing audiences with his killer dance moves. Last confirmed screening: Laces Roller Rink, Long Island, 1984. This screening is followed by a Q&A with director John Landis

Twisted Nerve (1968) 118min Wed, Mar 22 at 7:30pm*
*Followed by a Cinemachat with Elliot Stein.
Directed by Roy Boulting.
With Hayley Mills, Hywel Bennett.

The first British splatter movie, this controversial thriller reunites the director and stars of the hit comedy The Family Way, but in much darker circumstances. The score is by the great Bernard Hermann, world-famous for the music he composed for Hitchcock’s films, features one of the most haunting whistled tunes since Fritz Lang’s M, and was recently lifted by Tarantino for Kill Bill. Leo Marks, author of the screenplay, also wrote the script for Michael Powell’s masterpiece Peeping Tom. “A compelling study of a warped young psychopath…[Boulting] manages to bring some brooding menace into his direction, woven with some neat dialog and brash humor.”—Variety
A Cinemachat with Elliott Stein follows the screening.

Martin (1977) 95min Mon, Mar 27 at 6:50*, 9:30pm
*Introduced by Mark Morris
Directed by George A. Romero.
With John Amplas.

The thinking man’s vampire movie —or is it? Romero plays with audience expectations and vampire lore in this story of a young man who may or may not be a true bloodsucker; maybe it’s all just in his head? Making great use of Pittsburgh locations, an amateur cast, and his usual black humor, Romero creates a truly unsettling film about sexuality, blood, and the roles we all play. “A dazzling opening sequence…Romero plays fascinating games with myth and reality as he balances traditional vampire lore against medically certifiable psychosis. Fundamentally a quite serious movie, relevant to contemporary personality problems and stresses, but shot through with a wicked streak of black humor…Romero makes stunning use of his Pittsburgh locations to crate a desolate suburban wasteland.” —Time Out London
Print courtesy New Amsterdam Entertainment, Inc. © 1977 The MKR Group, Inc

i think we can all identify with this...

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 15:40:37 GMT

"Cierto Cansancio"

Estoy cansada de las gallinas:
nunca supinos lo que piensan,
y nos miran con ojos secos
sin con cedernos importancia...

"A Certain Weariness"

I am weary of chickens:
no one knows what they are thinking,
and they look at us with dry eyes
and consider us unimportant…

From Harpers

Fri, 20 Jan 2006 15:47:57 GMT

New York Set to Close Jail Unit for Gays

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 16:39:56 GMT

December 30, 2005
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

For at least three decades, gay and transgender inmates had their own housing unit inside Rikers Island's sprawling jail complex. To be admitted, all a new inmate had to do was declare homosexuality, or appear to be transgender, and ask to be kept out of Rikers's main jails.

The idea, city correction officials said, was to protect vulnerable inmates who might otherwise become victims of discrimination or sexual abuse in the rough world of the general inmate population. The only other metropolitan jail to separate gay and transgender inmates is Los Angeles County Jail. Gay inmates there, however, are forced to live separately from other inmates.

But at Rikers Island, gay housing, as it is called by New York correction officials, is about to end. On Nov. 28, the Correction Department stopped admitting new inmates to the unit. In a few weeks, the unit, which still holds about 50 people, will be no longer.

Under the new rules, gay or transgender inmates who want protection from general-population inmates must apply for it in a special hearing, correction officials said. If granted, the protective custody requires inmates to be held in individual cells for 23 hours a day, just as inmates punished for disciplinary reasons are held.

Martin F. Horn, the city correction commissioner, said gay housing was ending as part of a larger reorganization of inmate housing to improve security. The change of policy, he said, will increase jail safety among gay and transgender inmates.

Though originally intended to promote safety, gay housing became a dangerous wing at Rikers because it mixed weaker inmates seeking protection with violence-prone inmates seeking to prey on them, Mr. Horn said. Some inmates who were not gay, he added, would request to be placed in the unit as a way to avoid their enemies in the general population, or to take advantage of a group they perceived as weak.

"It was the only area of the department where inmates could choose where they wanted to live," irrespective of the security classification each inmate receives upon entering the jail system, Mr. Horn said in an interview. "What we ended up with was this housing unit where people were predatory and people were vulnerable. The very units that should be the most safe, in fact, had become the least safe."

The elimination of special housing for gay and transgender inmates has outraged some critics, who say that Mr. Horn's new policy essentially punishes pretrial detainees, who have not been convicted of any crime, for their sexual orientation. It also forces these inmates, their advocates say, to choose between the possibility of being abused in the general population or being locked up alone for 23 hours a day.

"This is not a change for the benefit of the prisoners, this is a change for the benefit of the administration," said Carrie Davis, a social worker at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in New York, whose clients include former Rikers inmates. "What they're saying is, people who by virtue of immutable physical characteristics are going to be put in 23-hour lockdown," she added. "Does that sound fair?"

Other inmate advocates say the new policy contravenes city regulations and at least one state court ruling. In 1982, the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court, Second Department, ruled, in Schipski v. Flood, that Nassau County's policy of holding protective-custody jail inmates in lockdown 22 hours a day was unconstitutional. The new policy also violates regulations created by the City Board of Correction, a jail oversight agency, that stipulate which type of inmates can be placed on lockdown, said D. Horowitz, a lawyer with the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a Manhattan-based group that represents transgender clients.

Thomas Antenen, a spokesman for the Correction Department, said that department lawyers believed the 1982 case was different because it involved a blanket rule for protective-custody inmates. New York City, he said, assigns protective custody case by case. Hildy J. Simmons, the board's chairwoman, did not return calls seeking comment yesterday.

Matt Foreman, the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said his organization and about 15 others were seeking a meeting with Mr. Horn to come up with an alternative method of separating vulnerable gay or transgender inmates. "Our hope is that this decision can be modified significantly," Mr. Foreman said.

Mexico Ends the Death Penalty

Tue, 27 Dec 2005 15:40:18 GMT

Mexico Ends the Death Penalty

The Corrido of Death Row

By JOHN ROSS CounterPunch Dec 23, 2005

Even as the United States celebrated its 1,000th execution since the
reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, Mexico has finally wiped
its own death penalty off the books. On December 9th, President
Vicente Fox signed off on constitutional amendments that abolished
capital punishment in both civil courts and military codes. Executions
in Mexico have been suspended for decades - the last Mexican to be
executed went before a military firing squad in 1961.

Nonetheless, symbolic as abolition was. Fox's act contrasted starkly
with Mexico's neighbor to the north where a former gang leader turned
peacemaker who had been nominated for the Nobel Prize was executed by
lethal injection December 13th despite pleas for clemency to
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a former action movie star,
from a broad rainbow of social justice organizations and celebrities.
The execution of Stan "Tookie" Williams was followed by that of John
Nixon, 77, the oldest man in U.S/ annals ever to be put to death both
Williams and Nixon went to their deaths proclaiming their innocence.

Despite the long-awaited demise of the death penalty here, Mexico
still has 46 citizens awaiting imminent execution on Death Row. In the
United States.

"The death penalty is the ultimate violation of human rights", the
Mexican president, a devout Catholic, noted in promulgating the
official end of capital punishment here. But with nearly half a
hundred Mexican citizens out of approximately 120 foreigners from 29
countries on U.S. death rows, the Fox government is heavily invested
in legal actions to prevent the executions of its countrymen (there
are no Mexican women condemned to death in the U.S.) in El Norte/

In most cases, non-U.S. citizens on U.S. death rows share one common
grievance they were denied contact with representatives of their
country as guaranteed under the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular
Relations which obligates U.S. authorities to inform foreign detainees
of his or her right to contact the nearest consulate of their country.

Mexicans arrested in the U.S. are routinely kept in the dark about
their Vienna Convention rights, notes Sandra Babcock, a Texas death
penalty attorney who has been retained by the Mexican government in
many capital punishment cases. If they are consulted in a timely
fashion, Mexican consulates in the U.S. can provide legal assistance
for its citizens in trouble with the law, and denying them that right
can result in flawed convictions and in capital cases, even death.

In the past, when Vienna Convention rights have been denied and
Mexicans have later been executed, the U.S. response has been merely
to apologize and argue that the denial of consular contact had no
impact on the final judgment.

By 2003, Fox and his then-foreign minister Jorge Castaneda, were tired
of this song and dance and took the cases of 51 Mexicans on U.S. death
rows who had been denied Vienna Convention protection to the World
Court in the Hague and by a 14 to 1 decision, that tribunal, which
operates under the auspices of the United Nations, called upon
Washington to rectify by reviewing or reopening all 51 cases.

Of the 51 Mexican death row residents whose cases were decided by the
World Court, two had been kidnapped from Mexico by private bounty
hunters and brought to the U.S. to stand trial, a practice explicitly
outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

When the World Court decision was handed down March 31st, 2004,
Oswaldo Nezahualcoytl Torres, a Mexican citizen from Nuevo Leon state,
was only days away from execution in an Oklahoma penitentiary but
Governor Brad Henry recognized the Hague edict (Torres was one of the
51 cases listed) and commuted his death sentence to life in prison
without benefit of parole. Torres was convicted of a murder-robbery in
Oklahoma in which two Mexican citizens were killed he was not the
shooter. Since Torres' commutation, five other Mexicans have been
removed from U.S. death row rosters.

Jose Medillin, 18 at the time of the crime, was convicted of a gang
killing in Houston, Texas and sentenced to death for his part in the
double homicide and rape of two women. Although he repeatedly told
police that he was a Mexican citizen, he was never informed that he
had a right to call his country's consulate in Houston where he could
have enlisted legal defense. Later, his court-appointed attorney who,
purportedly unbeknownst to the court, had been suspended from
practice, called no witnesses on Medillin's behalf at his trial.

This past March, Medillin's conviction was appealed to the U.S.
Supreme court, the first Mexican death penalty case to reach that
august body since the World Court decision came down. Simultaneously,
President George Bush sent a letter to all U.S. governors urging them
to comply with The Hague. "We had the law, we had the president! I had
to slap myself I couldn't believe it," an elated Babcock, who had
successfully represented Mexico before the World Court, told
reporters.

But, ultimately, the Bush order proved to be a subterfuge to blunt the
Supreme Court's hearing of Medillin, the first high court test case of
the applicability of the Hague decision. Instead, Medillin was sent
back to a Texas court for review.

Moreover, the Bush administration moved promptly to pull out of the
optional protocol, which gives the World Court jurisdiction over
Vienna Convention violations the U.S. had actually designed the
protocol and ratified it in 1969.

Since its advent, the U.S. has generally ceded jurisdiction to the
World Court in international disputes indeed, President Jimmy Carter
went to that court for redress under the Vienna Convention after U.S.
hostages were taken in Iran in 1979. But since the court condemned the
Reagan administration for mining Nicaraguan harbors in 1986,
Washington has refused to recognize The Hague's standing in anything
other than Vienna Convention disputes, a jurisdiction the U.S. now no
longer recognizes.

The Vienna Convention has, in fact, been liberally utilized by the
U.S. to protect its citizens traveling in the world. Bush's
abandonment of the protocol provoked the New York Times to issue an
editorial entitled "Travel Advisory", cautioning U.S. citizens abroad
that, in effect, their Vienna Convention safeguards had been retired:
"increasing global hostility towards Americans makes the Vienna
Convention more important than ever."

The U.S. rejection of the World Court as arbiter for Vienna Convention
violations will also prevent Mexico from appealing to The Hague in
future death penalty cases involving the denial of consular contact,
considers Michael Snedeker, a San Francisco attorney representing a
Mexican citizen currently on California death row whose Vienna
Convention protections were not honored.

Bush's request to the states to conform to the World Court decision in
favor of the 51 Mexicans met with disdain from Texas governor Rick
Parry, the President's successor in that statehouse. In insisting that
the decision did not apply, Parry argued that Texas had not signed the
Vienna Convention. The governor was merely reiterating a previous
position taken by Bush's lawyer and clemency officer Alberto Gonzalez,
now the U.S. Attorney General. Bush and Gonzalez signed off on more
than 30 death warrants including those of three Mexicans, while they
occupied the Texas governor's mansion.

The execution of Mexicans in U.S. prisons incites much anger here.
After Governor Bush presided over the death of Irenio Tristan in 1997,
residents of Tamaulipas, Tristan's home state, lined the roads
chanting, "Bush! Asasino!" ('Bush Is A Killer!') as the coffin rolled
by on its way to a final resting place. In 2002, Fox canceled a visit
to the Bush ranch in Crawford Texas after Governor Parry declined to
intervene in the execution of still another Mexican, Javier Suarez.

Defending Mexicans in capitol punishment cases before U.S. courts can
be a frustrating responsibility. When Babcock won the release of
Mexican citizen Ricardo Aldape after years on death row at
Huntsville's notorious Walls, he returned to Mexico and was killed
within a week in an automobile crash. Babcock has said that she is
sometimes chastised by prosecutors for taking the appeals of Mexicans
who have been convicted of murder. One government attorney boasted
that he worked "for my country and my president", insinuating that
Babcock was unpatriotic.

For Michael Snedeker, who is handling the appeal of Tomas Verano Cruz,
an indigenous field worker from the impoverished outback of San Luis
Potosi state convicted of killing a police office, the logistics of
locating witnesses who can provide mitigating evidence are xomplex and
often involve multiple visits to the defendant's hometown. "The
Mexican government has been more than helpful in facilitating the
gathering of this information - for Mexico, the death penalty is a
moral issue."

Another frustration for death penalty lawyers working with Mexican
inmates is that even if they do rescue their clients from execution,
like Oswaldo Torres, they often wind up buried alive under sentences
of life imprisonment without benefit of parole. The author of this
article has been unable to ascertain just how many Mexicans commuted
from death row or plea-bargained by lawyers into unappeasable
sentences have been salted away in U.S. prisons for the rest of their
natural lives - but legal observers venture that there could be as
many as a thousand such inmates. The "buried-alive" syndrome is "the
next frontier" in these capital cases, suggests Snedeker.

Through all of this legal tragedy, one thread runs like a long,
nagging corrido (Mexican border ballad): Innocence. Recently, reporter
Lies Olsen of the Houston Chronicle revisited the 1993 execution of
Ruben Cantu by the state of Texas. Cantu had been convicted in 1984 of
murdering an undocumented Mexican worker on San Antonio's crime-ridden
south side when he was 17, a case that appeared to be a typical
"Cholo" (young Mexican-American) murder-robbery of a hapless migrant
worker for the few bucks Jose Gomez had been able to pull together to
send to his family back home in Mexico. Cantu's family was also from
Mexico but he was born on the U.S. side of the border.

Now Juan Moreno, who survived the attack but was grievously wounded,
says he was coerced by San Antonio police into fingering Cantu. Then
an 18 year-old new arrival from Zacatecas, Moreno was threatened with
deportation unless he identified Cantu there was no physical evidence
tying the accused boy to the murder. Olsen has since recounted how San
Antonio police sought to frame the young Cantu after he was involved
in a pool hall shooting of an off-duty officer. In an open letter to
"the people of San Antonio" before he was executed, Cantu insisted he
was being railroaded.

Ruben Cantu was a troubled, taciturn teenager. His alibi for the night
of the killing? He had been up in Waco stealing a pick-up truck. When
offered his last meal in the death house in Huntsville, Ruben ordered
bubble gum.

Olsen reports that his request was denied.

Wanna be a Prison Tycoon, kids?

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 20:00:09 GMT

For the low price of $19.99, you can have your own prison warden
simulation game! This is for real.

"Private prisons have become the new growth industry. You will construct
and run an efficient rehabilitation facility with nothing but money on
your mind. There's no escaping under your watchful eye as you oversee
every detail of prison life."

--from the game description.

http://www.valusoft.com/products/prisontycoon.html

Ugh.

My smelly secret

Thu, 13 Oct 2005 20:30:55 GMT

I had to sneak Vega into work today. He's under my desk chewing on the biggest, smelliest dog toy I could find. My office mate knows, but no one else does. The little guy just better not pee on the carpet or the jig is up. He's really getting waaay too big for me to cart him around town this way, but I don't know what else to do.

Smuggling a 30 pound dog in a duffle bag in and out of this building will be my biggest accomplishment this week.

OHNY

Tue, 04 Oct 2005 16:22:30 GMT

This weekend is Open House New York, one of my favorite fall activities. Oct. 6th also marks the beginning of architecture week. They are doing a series on sustainable designs in NY and I'm dying to check out the Octagon on Roosevelt Island. Last year I only got to do Brooklyn sites, but they were amazing. I visited the Pratt Power Plant, a few of the Pratt mansions, the tombs in Green-Wood Cemetery, the abandoned small pox hospital on Roosevelt Island, and climed to the top of the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Arch at Grand Army Plaza. I highly recommend getting to see as much of this stuff as possible if you have time.

This year I'm excited about:

• Grand Central Terminal: Special architect-lead tours will reveal the renovation process, history and hidden secrets of this Beaux-Arts gem.

• The High Line: Plans for this abandoned elevated railway which weaves through the far West Side include constructing a public promenade, as well as housing for cultural institutions, art galleries, businesses, restaurants, entertainment venues, and new residences.

• Museum of Modern Art’s state-of-the-art Conservation Lab: The public will be able to see for the first time the special procedures, equipment, and storage used for restoring priceless works of art.

• The Octagon & Lighthouse Park:</b> The first municipal lunatic asylum in America is currently undergoing renovation as the lobby and amenity spaces for a new apartment building.

• Fresh Kills: 760 acres of America’s largest former landfill host open waterways, wetlands, unfilled lowland areas and wildlife habitat. Onsite tours will identify new areas specifically targeted for park improvement and public access.

• Astoria Pool: The engineered underpinnings of this vast 330-foot Art Deco pool makes it a modern marvel, and its original details reflect the artistry associated with the W.P.A. era..

• MTA Substation: One of a series of historic substations designed by Heins & LaFarge, William Barclay Parsons, McKim, Mead & White, 1901-1904 to generate the power required to operate the subway.

• High Bridge Water Tower: Once a water pressure equalizing structure, this Neo-Gothic tower located over the Harlem River will be open for tours up the winding iron stairs to broad vistas at the top.

For more information about OHNY Weekend 2005, including opening dates and hours for featured sites, visit www.ohny.org or contact info@ohny.org.

Faster Flipper, Kill KILL!

Wed, 28 Sep 2005 14:20:24 GMT

36 bottlenose dolphins, trained in attack-and-kill missions by the US Navy, have gone missing after their compound was breached by Hurricane Katrina. The dolphins, trained to shoot "terrorists" with toxic dart guns, may now pose a threat to divers and surfers in the area.

This is so fucked up.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1577753,00.html

win some, lose some

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 16:05:03 GMT

My weekend was interesting, I found a puppy and lost a girlfriend.

More later, I have to run home to walk Vega even though he doesn't quite get this whole peeing outside business.

Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases

Mon, 29 Aug 2005 03:26:06 GMT

A is for alphabetes, a kind of lung disease
Nearly epidemic in the New York demi-monde.
The unaware Vanessa broadcast with every sneeze
A cloud of viral letters in a classic Garamond.

B is for the booksores familiar to the reader
Who inherits a propensity for a nose pressed to the gutter.
Were scarely less unslightly than the ones upon his mother.

C is for cruditis, a vegetarian complain
In which peculiar polyps grow in circular arrays.
On radishes and carrots Bette would feast without restraint
Despite the strange resemblace to the growths upon her face.

D is for dentruff on the collars, scarves, and ties
Of those who every time they chew misplace a tooth or two.
Bruno, always spitting up a cuspidal suprise
Once lost all his teeth at once inside an amour fou.

E is for eraserrhosis, a degenerative afliction
In which the whole identity is forced into remission.
Pamela was convinced that her existence was a fiction
And edited herself into a pocket sized edition.

Disorder in the American Courts -- you have to laugh ...and then work for change

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 14:38:06 GMT

These are from a book called Disorder in the American Courts, and are
things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now
published by court reporters that had the torment of staying calm while
these exchanges were actually taking place.

______________________________
ATTORNEY: What is your date of birth?
WITNESS: July 18th.
ATTORNEY: What year?
WITNESS: Every year.
_____________________________________
ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you
forgot?
_____________________________________
ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.
______________________________________

ATTORNEY: How old is your son, the one living with you?
WITNESS: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which.
ATTORNEY: How long has he lived with you?
WITNESS: Forty-five years.
_____________________________________
ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that
morning?
WITNESS: He said, "Where am I, Cathy?"
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in
voodoo?
WITNESS: We both do.
ATTORNEY: Voodoo?
WITNESS: We do.
ATTORNEY: You do?
WITNESS: Yes, voodoo.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his
sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
___________________________________
ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: Uh, he's twenty.
________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Would you repeat the question?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Uh....
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a
deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on
dead people?
WITNESS: All my autopsies are performed on dead people.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go
to?
WITNESS: Oral.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an
autopsy on him!
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Huh?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for
a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you
began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and
practicing law.

Spread the word

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 18:00:52 GMT

Does anyone know anyone looking for a place in Brooklyn?

There's a room opening up in my house in Fort Greene in early September, probably around the 12th, flexible move in date. We're pretty close to Pratt, BAM, that creepy Broken Angel House, and the best Salvation Army in New York. Um, and also the C at Lafayette, the G at Clinton Washington, and the N,R,Q at Dekalb.

It's a sublet through February, but an extension is likely. It's a decent size- about 12 feet by 8 or 9 feet, with a huge closet and a window facing the (usually quiet) street. One roommate has his own bathroom, so they'd only have to share a bathroom with me. It'll also be furnished with the basics: a full bed, dresser, bookshelf, and a night table. The rent is $550 and it would be pro-rated for September, depending on the move in date. We're also asking a $500 security deposit.

The rest of the apartment is pretty nice, with a washer, hardwood floors, a terrace and a full kitchen. Lj_Julesal and LJ_jogabtrfly have seen it and can back me up here. The common space is pretty large. It's home to a drum set and there is band practice every Sunday.

The person would be sharing the apartment with me and my roommate Tim. He's a nice fella, an actor and a green market worker who keeps odd hours and does a mean Mick Jagger impression. For those of you who only know me in text, I'm real easy to get along with in real life. I keep a regular schedule working at a non-profit during the day and have various commitments at night.

We're just looking for someone nice, sociable, clean, politically aware and queer friendly. I'd love to find someone through a friend, rather than craigslist, so I can hold them accountable. Not really. But if you help me find someone I'll bake you cupcakes, type your praises over live-journal, or give you first dibs on any weird shit my old roommate leaves behind.

Should Roe Go?

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 01:16:28 GMT

by Katha Pollitt
From z-net magazine

Should prochoicers just give up and let Roe go? With the resignation of Sandra Day O'Connor, more people are asking that question. Democratic Party insiders quietly wonder if abandoning abortion rights would win back white Catholics and evangelicals. A chorus of pundits--among them David Brooks in the New York Times and the Washington Post's Benjamin Wittes writing in The Atlantic--argue that Roe's unforeseen consequences exact too high a price: on democracy, on public discourse, even, paradoxically, on abortion rights. By the early 1970s, this argument goes, public opinion was moving toward relaxing abortion bans legislatively--New York got rid of its ban in 1970, and one-third of states had begun to liberalize their abortion laws by 1973. By suddenly handing total victory to one side, Roe fueled a mighty backlash (and lulled prochoicers into relying on the courts instead of cultivating a popular mandate). In 1993 Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg caused a flurry when she seemed to endorse this view: Roe, she declared in a speech, had "halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction and...prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue." It's not an insane idea, even if most of its proponents (a) are men; (b) think Roe went too far; and (c) want abortion off the table because they are tired of thinking about it.

But of course, if the Court overturned Roe, abortion would not be off the table at all. It would be front and center in fifty state legislatures. According to What If Roe Fell: The State-by-State Consequences of Overturning Roe v. Wade, a report published this past fall by the Center for Reproductive Rights, abortion rights would be at immediate high risk in twenty-one states, moderate risk in nine and "secure" in only twenty. Short of a takeover by the Taliban, it's hard to imagine abortion being banned outright in New York or California or Connecticut. But it is equally hard to imagine liberal abortion laws passing in the Deep South, Utah or South Dakota. And when you consider that Florida, Tennessee, Minnesota and West Virginia are listed as "secure"--all states that have seen recent antichoice victories and increasing Republican strength--you can see how volatile the abortion map could quickly become. Overturning Roe would definitely energize prochoicers and wake up the young featherheads who think their rights are safe because they have always had them. That's why some staunch prochoicers have "Bring it on!" moments: "Overnight," writes Susan Estrich in a recent syndicated column, "every election, for every state office, would become a referendum not on parental consent or partial birth abortion, but on whether regular old middle-class adult women could get first-trimester abortions. When you think about it that way, you have to ask: What could be better for Democrats?" Estrich rejects the thought, because--something the boy pundits forget--criminalizing abortion, however briefly, means many, many women would suffer atrociously.

The trouble is, getting rid of Roe would energize antichoicers too.

Even in prochoice states, they might be able to win spousal notification requirements, bans on "partial birth" abortions or even on all second-trimester procedures except to preserve life and health. A national consensus on abortion might or might not develop over time, but any such would not likely be as permissive as Roe. Meanwhile--and possibly permanently--fortunate women in antichoice states would fly to New York or Los Angeles or Chicago, and the less lucky--the poor, the young, the trapped--would have dangerous, illegal procedures or unwanted children. It would be a repeat of 1970-73, when women who could get to New York--but only they--could have a safe, legal version of the operation that was killing and maiming their poorer sisters back home.

The blatant class and racial unfairness of this disparity, in fact, was one of the arguments that pushed the Court to declare abortion a constitutional right. If Roe goes, that same disparity will reappear, relabeled as local democracy. And I'm not persuaded that the right to abortion will ever be the norm in, say, the South, where the religious right is strong, antiabortion sentiment is high and the political culture is inbred and hostile to women. Even now, there's only one abortion clinic in Mississippi, and the promised prochoice masses--the "regular old adult middle-class women"--have yet to arise.

How to totally dig your own thing: lessons for everybody.

Thu, 02 Jun 2005 16:45:23 GMT

I think the truth is that maybe I have been just a little bit tired. And when you're tired, it just makes you want things. Like, another world, in which to live everything that you aren't able to live right now just as yourself, because you're a little bit too tired. You kind of want a whole parallel reality, where you have enough energy to enjoy all of the moments that you can't quite manage to savor right at this second.
Oh yeah, a dreamworld.

So, that's me, looking at the stranger walking down the street who is wearing the why-didn't-I-fucking-think-of-that outfit, and making a little bit of extra space for myself, in the form of a dream existence, in which I get to be her. Just a little extra territory.

I have to admit, part of me is secretly glad when I notice somebody else partaking in this same kind of dirty fantasy. A friend who plays excellent music leaned over to me during a dinner party recently and confessed a bit of self doubt, because other people in the room, musicians, were talking about recent perks, having gotten a song in a movie, things like that, and I guess those offers hadn't been made to him yet. I was so surprised and sort of charmed that he told me about his feeling, because just a few days before I had been watching him play music, and watching how completely entranced all three hundred people in the room were while they watched him, and in my mind, this friend had it totally made. From where I sat, on the outside, he certainly did.

Outside versus inside.

I guess that there is a big way, in which you really don't want to have to realize that the person you are idolizing is a real person with an entire body full of nearly unbearable agonies, just like yourself. Realizing that sort of dampens the fantasy, right?

I used to live across the street from the Safeway. Sometimes in the morning I would go over there to get a can of fruit cocktail or some english muffins, and often times, an hour later, I would find myself mystifyingly still standing there, in the magazine aisle, staring like a zombie at the pages of US Weekly. It's a pretty great feeling, in a certain way, to stare like that. To have most of the atoms of my body sucked out of me and hovering in the air above myself and the magazine, marching in little dotted lines back and forth between my googling eyes and the shape of Mischa Barton's torso in a filmy yellow dress. The photo and I are working together at that magazine rack to create a brand new world where neither of us have to do anything more than just stand there and dream. And if I just stay standing like that, and don't attempt any tricky maneuvers like trying to live my own life, the perfect other world can stay intact.

Looking back on what I just wrote, it seems like I've described pretty much the big picture of how things work in the United States. You work forty hours a week, and when you're done with that all you want to do is watch someone else do something else, somewhere else.
Depending on your kink, you have a variety of options. You can watch somebody gorgeous be really successful in great clothes and getting laid. Or you can watch somebody sort of normal try to succeed and maybe totally fail miserably. A rainbow of variations differing according to how much you'd really want to be that other person, or how much their pathetic life makes you feel better about your own. Whatever, it's all pretty similar when you are just laying there like an emptied out container with vacuum holes for eyes.

The only problem with indulging in what we'll call the >>fantasy ogle<< is that you can't actually stay in that position forever. At some point, you have to turn the page, or turn off the record player, pay for the fruit cocktail, and spend at least a small second by yourself inside of the lonely realm of your own physical mass. It can be a rough transition.
Stepping back into my own empty shell, hearing myself echo all around, and noticing all of the untended corners in there, it can be a real shock. If I've been gone for a long while, you know, really hung up on some very distracting crush (as potentially captivating as any photo of a starlet's youthful frontside, I wager), or just too addicted to the first season of the L Word, the whole atmosphere of myself can actually be really pretty unappealing.

But that sucks, because, uh, I am really all that I have.
My extensive kingdom of space, on the inside, where nobody can ever really come to visit me. The more I check it out, the more huge it seems to be in there. Gigantic cavernous warehouses. Filled with strange odds and ends. Weirdly, all that space often makes me want to just get out of there. It can be too much to work with. It gets dusty so fast. I drop a glass jar full of water on the floor, and I just have to leave the house until it all dries, because-- wet glass? How do you even sweep that up?
I literally do this in my house. Then I need to find some other place to go hang out.**

So, yeah, I don't know exactly where we got out of sync this month, me and me. Before the water fight, after the second airplane ride, sort of during the second night where I didn't get quite enough sleep?

Okay, probably the real reason, reason number three, for why I didn't write my blog in the past month, is that I haven't felt like I had much inside worth sending out.

Me and myself are pulling it all together for March, though. We lay on the bed under a pile of blankets to keep us weighted down to the here and now, and crack up a little bit while remembering things that happened. Getting things into order. Taking it slow, I'm doing some work to convince myself that it's good right here. I coax myself to calm down, and not get too overwhelmed by all my things piled up on the floor.

I will maybe get one of those long stretchy ace bandages, and wrap it in an x shape around my torso and back and chest underneath of my clothes, and do some kind of big embroidery on it that says, "WHERE IT'S AT". And never let anybody see it.

Can't this be what they teach you in school for all those years?
"How to totally dig your own thing: lessons for everybody."

** Note:
Let's talk about reading books as another place to be. This, I am finding, is a happy medium between f.o. (fantasy ogle) and solitarily confronting the lonely reverberations of oneself. I think the reason for this is that, in reading a book, it's actually your job to make it all up, the book needs you to make it real inside of yourself. It won't ever get to live anywhere else. Reading, for me, is different from obsessing over Hilary Swank's shoulders, because, with the obsession, somebody out there in the world (Ms. Swank) really is getting to wear those things around, or getting to kiss them. And in the ogle, underneath of it, I am always being subtly pricked by the awareness that the fabulous shoulders wearer isn't me.

But, Lolita, on the other hand-- once you make up her face and her voice and her ankles, I think she's all yours. You can actually take her around inside of your lonely spaces with you.

from http://www.thetouchmefeeling.com/ by khaela maricich

REAL ID: Amnesty is NOT coming

Tue, 10 May 2005 17:25:56 GMT

REAL ID:
Amnesty is Not Coming.
By Subhash Kateel and Aarti Shahani
(Caribbean Life, Front Page: May 3, 2005)

For the past decade, every church service, cultural festival, and
immigration forum has talked of the coming amnesty. Unscrupulous
immigration attorneys have promised that for $2,000, they can "get you
papers." And well meaning community leaders have tried to dispel myths
and spread the real news: amnesty is NOT here.

But the latest news gets worse. Not only is amnesty not here. It is not
coming. Every week we here of the "new immigration law." This week it
seems like one actually will pass. But this law is not the one we had
hoped for. It's the one we feared.

REAL ID, the worst anti-immigrant law in a decade, is being negotiated
between the House and Senate this week. If passed, the bill would strip
immigrants of such basic needs as a driver's license; end the
Constitutional right to habeas corpus for the first time since the Civil
War; empower private police forces to enforce immigration laws; prevent
people fleeing persecution from gaining asylum here; and increase deaths
at the border.

REAL ID was passed by the House, as part of the military appropriations
bill for the war in Iraq. The Senate did not include REAL ID in its own
military spending bill, as some Senators reasoned that it would be
corrupt to slip through such a sweeping anti-immigrant law. But when both parts of Congress came together in a closed conference committee to resolve their differences, REAL ID was re-inserted. This move follows a historical
pattern, in which elected officials tack controversial legislation onto
appropriations bills in order to side-step public debate. That's exactly
how anti-immigrant legislation passed in 1996. Now we are in the exact
same position, with REAL ID supporters gaining momentum. Advocates in
D.C. believe that the bill's passage is nearly certain.

REAL ID was the brainchild of Congressman James Sennsenbrenner, a
Wisconsin Republican with an incoherent track record. During the Terry
Schiavo ordeal, he championed her parents' right to get a federal judge
to reinsert the feeding tube. Yet when it comes to the rights of
immigrants, he is fighting fiercely to ensure that no immigrant can go before a federal judge to challenge their deportation (exile) from this country.

His attack on immigrants goes further. Should REAL ID pass, it would:

1.. End habeas corpus for immigrants in deportation. For the first
time since the Civil War, an entire class of people (namely noncitizens)
would be barred from this Constitutional right to seek justice before a
federal judge when facing a punishment as severe as life exile.
2..Prohibit states from issuing drivers' licenses to millions of immigrant
who cannot demonstrate that they are here lawfully. Untrained DMV agents
would have to rely often on racial profiling to make the decision of
when to give a license. This provision, opposed by motor vehicle
associations, would cause chaos on our roads, and force immigrants into
driving without license and uninsured.
3.. Give bounty hunters unprecedented powers to arrest immigrants, and increase public reliance on privately owned bail bond companies to police our communities.
4..Effectively bar people from winning asylum in the U.S., by setting
unnecessarily restrictive standards for people fleeing dictatorships and
persecution.
5.. Give the Secretary of Homeland Security the power to
waive all laws that he feels might interfere with building border
barriers, leading to further deaths at the border.

Republicans are not the only ones to blame. Advocates and journalists
across New York have been writing and calling Senators Clinton and
Schumer, trying to get a public statement. But these politicians have
been deafeningly quiet at a moment that we need them most.

Already in the United States, immigration laws have taken away our most
basic rights. Without REAL ID, we could say that this country is
developing Immigrant Apartheid: that is, deepening the legal, economic
and social divides between citizens and noncitizens. Already our community
members are afraid to fight for the minimum wage, or go to school, or
put their address on a form, because of their status.

We as immigrants live in a different America from the one displayed on
FOX TV or CNN. Last Friday the Spanish daily El Diario had a front-page
picture of a woman whose lips were sewn shut with thick black thread.
She was not the victim of Abu Grahib. The headline explained, "she bound her
lips in protest." Her teenage son, who came to the US as an infant, was
now being exiled to Mexico because he has an old deportation order. No
elected official would help her, and so she underwent this torture out
of desperation.

It is the responsibility of our elected officials to reverse the laws
that are causing so much pain to millions of families here. It is a crime for
them to make these laws worse. REAL ID is about to pass - but the
President has not yet signed it. Groups around the country are calling
the White House comment line at 202-456-1111 to say "NO to REAL ID." Please
join these final efforts to defend the human rights of immigrants.

Subhash Kateel and Aarti Shahani are co-founders of Families for Freedom
(FFF), a multi-ethnic defense network for immigrants facing deportation.
You can reach FFF at 212-898-4121.</lj_cut>

Fear of the Gay Gene!!!

Fri, 06 May 2005 16:52:43 GMT

Gays To Be Banned As Sperm Donors
by The Associated Press

Posted: May 5, 2005 5:00 pm ET

(New York City) The Food and Drug Administration is about to implement new rules recommending that any man who has engaged in homosexual sex in the previous five years be barred from serving as an anonymous sperm donor.

The FDA has rejected calls to scrap the provision, insisting that gay men collectively pose a higher-than-average risk of carrying the AIDS virus. Critics accuse the FDA of stigmatizing all gay men rather than adopting a screening process that focuses on high-risk sexual behavior by any would-be donor, gay or straight.

"Under these rules, a heterosexual man who had unprotected sex with HIV-positive prostitutes would be OK as a donor one year later, but a gay man in a monogamous, safe-sex relationship is not OK unless he's been celibate for five years," said Leland Traiman, director of a clinic in Alameda, Calif., that seeks gay sperm donors.

Traiman said adequate safety assurances can be provided by testing a sperm donor at the time of the initial donation, then freezing the sperm for a six-month quarantine and testing the donor again to be sure there is no new sign of HIV or other infectious diseases.

Although there is disagreement over whether the FDA guideline regarding gay men will have the force of law, most doctors and clinics are expected to observe it.

The practical effect of the provision — part of a broader set of cell and tissue donation regulations that take effect May 25 — is hard to gauge. It is likely to affect some lesbian couples who want a child and prefer to use a gay man's sperm for artificial insemination.

But it is the provision's symbolic aspect that particularly troubles gay-rights groups. Kevin Cathcart, executive director of Lambda Legal, has called it "policy based on bigotry."

"The part I find most offensive — and a little frightening — is that it isn't based on good science," Cathcart said. "There's a steadily increasing trend of heterosexual transmission of HIV, and yet the FDA still has this notion that you protect people by putting gay men out of the pool."

In a letter to the FDA, Lambda Legal has suggested a screening procedure based on sexual behavior, not sexual orientation. Prospective donors — gay or straight — would be rejected if they had engaged in unprotected sex in the previous 12 months with an HIV-positive person, an illegal drug user, or "an individual of unknown HIV status outside of a monogamous relationship."

But an FDA spokeswoman cited FDA documents suggesting that officials felt the broader exclusion was prudent even if it affected gay men who practice safe sex.

"The FDA is very much aware that strict exclusion policies eliminate some safe donors," said one document.

Many doctors and fertility clinics already have been rejecting gay sperm donors, citing the pending FDA rules or existing regulations of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

"With an anonymous sperm donor, you can't be too careful," said a society spokeswoman, Eleanor Nicoll. "Our concern is for the health of the recipient, not to let more and more people be sperm donors."

However, some sperm banks, notably in California, have welcomed gay donors. The director of one of them, Alice Ruby of the Oakland-based Sperm Bank of California, said her staff had developed procedures for identifying gay men with an acceptably low risk of HIV.

Gay men are a major donor source at Traiman's Rainbow Flag sperm bank, and he said that practice would continue despite the new rules.

"We're going to continue to follow judicious, careful testing procedures for our clients that even experts within the FDA say is safe," said Traiman, referring to the six-month quarantine.

The FDA rules do not prohibit gay men from serving as "directed" sperm donors. If a woman wishing to become pregnant knows a gay man and asks that he provide sperm for artificial insemination, a clinic could provide that service even if the man had engaged in sex with other men within five years.

However, Traiman said some lesbian couples do not have a gay friend they know and trust well enough to be the biological father of their child, and would thus prefer an anonymous donor.

Dr. Deborah Cohan, an obstetrics and gynecology instructor at the University of California, San Francisco, said some lesbians prefer to receive sperm from a gay donor because they feel such a man would be more receptive to the concept of a family headed by a same-sex couple.

"This rule will make things legally more difficult for them," she said. "I can't think of a scientifically valid reason — it has to be an issue of discrimination."

Thu, 05 May 2005 13:14:29 GMT

Somewhere in my abdomen
is a sac of warm caring,
a bladder of emotional nutrition
distended with the urge
to burst
and engender another's heart.

Will Self.

Sigh...

Tue, 03 May 2005 20:54:55 GMT

Assata Shakur Bounty Increased to $1 Million; Added to Terror List
$1M reward for Chesimard gets bounty hunter’s attention
By WAYNE PARRY
The Associated Press

EWING, N.J. - Joanne Chesimard just got a whole lot more attractive to
Louis Faccone.

The Woodbridge man, who makes his living tracking down wanted
fugitives, was at a press conference Monday in which the reward for
Chesimard, the killer of a New Jersey state trooper, was upped to $1
million.

The move came on the 32nd anniversary of the slaying of Trooper Werner
Foerster during a traffic stop in Middlesex County. Chesimard was
convicted of the 1973 killing, but has been on the lam since supporters
broke her out of a state prison in 1979.

She has been living in Cuba under the protection of Fidel Castro’s
government for most of that time. Garden State officials have failed to
pressure Cuba to hand over Chesimard, 57, who goes by the name Assata
Shakur.

“I’m going to jump on it,” said Faccone, who most recently tracked
down and hauled in John Forrest, a fugitive ticket broker who stiffed
customers for hundreds of thousands of dollars before fleeing to
Cancun, Mexico.

Faccone earned $100,000 for that capture last September - one-tenth of
what he stands to make by finding the Black Liberation Army radical.
He’s already making preparations. He says he has a two-man team already
in Mexico that could be deployed to Cuba on short notice after
receiving good information about where Chesimard is located at a
particular moment.

“My guys can get in there in the middle of the night by boat from the
Florida Keys,” he said. “If we can get to within a 3-mile radius of
where she is, I feel confident we can get in, grab her, get on a boat
and get her out.”

That’s exactly the sort of response State Police Superintendent Col.
Rick Fuentes is hoping for with the higher reward.

“Bounty hunters do this all the time,” he said. “That’s their stock in
trade.”

There’s one important catch, though: Chesimard must be brought back
alive. If she is killed in a capture attempt, the reward dies with her.

“The goal is to bring a fully functional, no-assembly-required
fugitive back home to New Jersey so she can finish out her term of
imprisonment,” Fuentes said.

Foerster responded as backup when another trooper had stopped
Chesimard and two companions for a faulty tail light on the New Jersey
Turnpike in East Brunswick. Shots soon rang out and Foerster was hit.
As he lay on the ground, authorities said, Chesimard took his gun and
fatally shot him.

Her brother-in-law was killed in the gun battle and another man was
arrested. Clark Squire is serving a life sentence in a Pennsylvania
prison and was denied parole last August.

Although she had long been on the watch lists maintained by federal
agencies such as the FBI and the Bureau Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, Chesimard’s name was added Monday to the FBI’s wanted list
of domestic terrorism suspects.

“Anyone of the mind-set that would execute a police officer once they
were on the ground” is dangerous enough to be considered a domestic
terrorism threat, Fuentes said.

The money from the United States Justice Department was personally
approved by Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez.

“It both sends and reinforces a strong message that the passage of
time does not diminish the intent and energy of the State Police and
FBI to bring this fugitive to justice and to serve out her ordered term
of imprisonment,” Fuentes said

Making abstinence fun!

Tue, 26 Apr 2005 21:30:16 GMT

Abstinence Only.com
A celebration of non-penetration.

http://www.abstinenceonly.com/

I might replace my pledge for a celibate spring with a healthy interest in faith fucking.

Keep It Simple, Stupid

Fri, 11 Mar 2005 18:46:55 GMT

Parole Reversal

A surprisingly simple fix for our dysfunctional prison system.
Bradford Plumer
March 07 , 2005, Mother Jones

To understand much of what's wrong with America's criminal corrections
system, look no farther than a day in the life of a typical parole officer.
He works, most likely, in a small, cramped office in the middle of an old,
dilapidated neighborhood, earning much less than the average police officer
or prison guard. An ever-growing pile of caseload files, for men and women
released early from prison to serve out their sentences on parole, sit
stacked on his desk-in parts of New York City, some officers handle a
mind-boggling 200 cases at any given time.

Now consider the cases. As a condition of their release, all parolees must
observe strict behavioral standards-no drug use, no associating with other
known felons, hold a job or be actively looking for one, maintain a
permanent address, come on time to all parole appointments-or they risk
going back to prison. And yet many parolees have never achieved goals like
these at any point in their lives: on average, 80 percent have a history of
drug or alcohol abuse, 14 percent have reported suffering from some mental
illness, and 12 percent have experienced periods of homelessness prior to
their arrest. Nor do they receive much help: once released from prison, the
parolees have meager access to employment or job-training programs, most of
which have fallen prey to state-budget crunches over the past decade, and
their case manager has no way of requesting more funds from the parole
agency for drug treatment, job training programs, or even additional
officers.

Inevitably, of course, the infractions start piling up. A missed
appointment. A smoked joint. Another missed appointment. A speeding ticket.
What does the officer do? Few agencies want to give a parolee a second
chance after a failed drug test, on the off-chance that that person will go
off and commit a crime. The public outcry, after all, would be deafening.
Meanwhile, the agency is under constant pressure to reduce costs and keep
under budget. It costs a fair bit for an officer to check up on a parolee
who just missed an appointment-and that might be merely one among hundreds
of cases on his or her desk. On the other hand, it costs the parole agency
nothing, nothing at all, to send the parolee back to prison on a technical
violation. No one complains. No one asks questions. The prison system has a
virtually unlimited budget. Who wouldn't make that choice?

Of all the problems with the U.S. criminal correction system, why should anyone bother paying attention to parole agencies? Surely, one might say, the problems go much deeper than that. There are the raw numbers: The United States locks up a greater percentage of its population than any other
country on earth. Or the inequity: 1 in 3 black males, and 1 in 6 Hispanic
males will spend some time in prison over the course of a lifetime, compared
to 1 in 17 white males. Recent social research has described the vast and
largely detrimental effects of high incarceration rates on local
communities: children lose fathers and/or mothers, families fall apart, and
while ex-prisoners often find it difficult to find jobs and re-enter
society. Meanwhile, state budgets are feeling the strain: between 1988 and
2001, the corrections system was the only government function that grew as a
percentage of state budgets-swallowing money that could have been used for
education, or infrastructure, or public assistance. All of this would be
worth it, of course, if the all-devouring prison network actually reduced
crime. But the evidence on this score, while still subject to dispute, is
admittedly slim.

To see where parole fits into this picture, consider a 2002 Department of
Justice study on recidivism, the largest ever undertaken, which found that
51.8 percent of criminals end up back in prison within three years. (There's
not a lot of solid data on recidivism, but it doesn't appear that this
number has dropped at all since a previous study done a decade before.) Of
those, over half (26.4 percent) are sent back not for criminal behavior, but
for violating a technical condition of parole-a missed appointment, a failed
drug test, not landing a job. In many states, as many as a third of all
prison admissions each year result from decisions like that of our fictional
parole officer described above.

In a new book, Downsizing Prisons, Michael Jacobson offers an innovative
approach to reducing the strain on America's overcrowded prisons: namely, by
fixing the dysfunctional parole systems in states around the country. Having
first worked in New York City's Budget Office, Jacobson became Commissioner
of the New York City Departments of Correction and Probation in 1995, and
saw firsthand how difficult it would be to reform the prison system-and at
the same time, how wholly necessary.

As an ex-bureaucrat, Jacobson understands a key reality: When it comes to
crime control, sensible policy rarely wins out. Experts and academics may
agree that state correctional policies are misguided, and they may even
reach a wide consensus on alternative rehabilitation methods that work, like
"community policing" or college degree programs in prison. But laws are
usually influenced by public outrage and horrifying anecdotes, like the
murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, which led to California's "three strikes"
sentencing policy. Moreover, prison growth has a powerful constituency:
private prison contractors and the mighty corrections unions may not agree
on much, but they both have a keen interest in keeping prisons expanding
indefinitely, and lobby accordingly. State legislators, for their part, know
full well how the budget game is played, and realize that in times of
budgetary belt-tightening, any proposal to invest more money in prisoners-no
matter how well-intentioned or far-sighted-while schools and health services
are being cut, is the surest way to lose one's seat. Radical change becomes
nearly impossible.

Nevertheless, Jacobson argues that the recent wave of state budget
crunches-the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently tallied state
deficits at a whopping $190 billion over the past three years-may have
created an opening for more incremental reforms. (Indeed, even the Montana
state legislature, typically one of the "toughest" on crime, recently vowed
to rethink its prison budget.) It's also worth noting that since September
11, crime has largely faded as a hot-button issue among voters, according to
a Pew Survey released last month, and polls show that Americans no longer
value a "tough on crime" stance quite so much as they once did. Even
President Bush, in his 2005 State of the Union address, paid lip service to
"prisoners' rights" issues such as special training for public defenders, a
stance that would have been political suicide just ten years ago. The
foundation for a new order has been laid, and the most practical place to
start, Jacobson argues, is with parole agencies.

One number should immediately jump out at any would-be reformer. The cost,
on average, of supervising one person on probation or parole is about $200
per year, as compared to $20,000 for keeping that same person behind bars.
And yet prisons continue to get the lion's share of state funding. Moreover,
it's much easier for state governors to reorganize parole agencies-which
answer primarily to the executive branch-than to ram changes in sentencing
policy through legislatures. So why does the current system persist? In
conversations with state legislators around the country, Jacobson noticed a
simple pattern: politicians simply "do not recognize that technical parole
violations are costing their states so much money." Yet differences among
state parole policies can be stark. In Mississippi, for instance, 83 percent
of parolees successfully complete parole, whereas in California, the success
rate is a mere 21 percent. It's no surprise, then, that a whopping 58
percent of all new admissions to California prisons are parole violators,
versus 14 percent in Mississippi.

Jacobson argues that discrepancies like these can't be accounted for by the
sorts of criminals found in each state, or even discrepancies in funding
among parole agencies (California actually spends far more per parolee), the
difference lies purely with "policies, procedures, and organizational
cultures." So what actually works? Jacobson knows better than to lay out his
Platonic ideal policy. Hence, he doesn't advise states to eliminate parole
supervision altogether, as some have proposed-it's too politically risky.
Nor does he think, realistically, that legislatures can get away with
investing millions more in drug treatment and job training, even if that
makes sense.

Instead, he proposes several relatively easy changes that can make a real
difference. For starters, states should front-load existing parole resources
into the first several months after release, since "parolees tend to violate
quickly." The money can be focused on early-transition programs, and after
the first year, when chances of success increase, monitoring can be reduced.
Also, more sophisticated risk instruments (formulas like those used by
insurance companies) can help offices predict which parolees will need more
supervision than others. Jacobson argues that "incarceration should be a
decision of last resort" for parolees, and technical violations ought to be
met with incremental sanctions, rather than automatic prison time. Finally,
he notes, states will see more parolees succeed if they reduce many of the
barriers prisoners face upon reentering society. Felons should not be barred
from voting, nor ex-prisoners prevented from securing jobs or receiving food
stamps, college loans, or other public assistance.

What makes proposals like these so exciting is that they're mostly quite
boring. That is, they're precisely the wonky, technocratic, yet ultimately
realistic, sort of proposals that can actually pass. Indeed, Jacobson writes
the last quarter of his book almost exclusively for state policymakers,
offering step-by-step suggestions for navigating the complexities of
budgetary reform. In California, for instance, he suggests that legislators
put a "cap" on the length of time that technical parole violators stay in
prison. The savings here-up to $190 million-could then be partially
reinvested in drug treatment and employment training, with the rest freed up
for non-corrections programs. Likewise, if California sent fewer technical
parole violators back to prison immediately, the state could save up to $750
million. Again, a portion of this money could be reinvested in
community-based programs for ex-felons, thus further improving criminal
rehabilitation programs, while the rest could be spent elsewhere. What's not
to love?

Jacobson's book comes at exactly the right time. State legislatures around
the country are currently debating various ways to reduce their prison
populations, from reducing sentences for non-violent offenders (in Montana)
to increasing funds for prisoner rehabilitation (in Massachusetts) to
expanding private prisons (in Georgia). As yet, however, only a few
states-most notably Texas-have begun looking more carefully at one of the
easiest and most sensible places to start: the overburdened parole agencies
that are filling prisons with technical violators. As Leighton Iles, the
director of a new and Jacobson-esque probation program in Fort Bend, Texas,
told a local paper: "What we are doing here is a simple concept. Simple
works."

Bradford Plumer is the assistant editor of MotherJones.com.

Release Date: 3/4/2005

Ain't that the truth

Tue, 01 Mar 2005 21:19:59 GMT

This Poem Hates by Nikki Giovanni

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 21:49:56 GMT

it’s like when you squeeze your eyes shut real tight because you really think it is important to get sleep and stay asleep so that you can wake up refreshed but you actually wake up as tired as when you lay down and then you think that maybe something is wrong with the whole damn thing and you can’t exactly figure it out...

but mostly what bothers you is that you begin to understand rage and a pure hatred and why people drive as crazy as they do and why people are as short-tempered as they are because you feel this oppressive stress that says no mater what you do it will be wrong...

sad as it is there are people who ask the law to help and the law is very clear that it only helps those who have the money to purchase the necessary equipment so that the games can go on in style and that is a very discouraging feeling to know that all you are is asking for a level playing field and to recognize that the game is stacked against you so YES it does push you to an edge that as you peek over you know something is very wrong that no one listens to you and no one ever knows you are standing there talking so the papers say the riot was rice or heat or a cop but the riot is all day everyday and no one pays any attention to you and all you are asking for is a chance to present your side of the question...

it’s like you understand that you just don’t matter and this poem whines because a moan is far too sophisticated and a scream is far too rational so this poem whines and whimpers and is afraid and whishes things didn’t always have to be like this.

This poem Hates.

"You really wear defeat well..."

Tue, 15 Feb 2005 21:08:10 GMT

I've been on too many bad dates lately and it's starting to seriously depress me.

Life is such that I've been eagerly awaiting going to H & R Block to file my taxes in hopes of a decent return. I really need a computer at home (I lost the other one in the post break up custody battle)and my cell phone is slowly loosing all of it's functions and fucking with me in the process. It constantly tells me I have messages when, in fact, there are none. It's just damn cruel.