Early nurse’s aide collected blood. The patient to the right of me moaned all night begged mercy. Still dark. The usually pleasant semi-noise of pre-dawn amplified to unpleasant by the wheeling of stretchers and machines; insistent patients buzzing the nurses’ station. I was not clear enough to know exactly where I was in terms of life’s journey as I waited for the sun, but it sure as hell wasn’t Egypt.
It’s the 25th, and I am thinking about my buddy Jacob. He’s 25, riddled with PTSD, Battle of Fallujah, Marines, young spirited, radicalized at boot camp and then in country. It was a big scam, but one that ate at his heart. Scam, lie, bullshit war, and now, another year goes by, and the Gitmo madness of our cognitively sapped politicians, intellectuals, rot-gut CEOs and media moguls.
Plantman was welcomed to the building by a sharply dressed Official of the CGC.
“Welcome to The City Government Complex,” said The Official. “Important personages wish to avail themselves of your renowned horticultural techniques before you undertake the odious task of attending that miserable little…specimen of Accused.”
“You know secrets of The City?” asked Plantman.
“Secrets? What secrets?” answered the Official.
Inside The City Government Complex (CGC), The Accused languished in his vault. His Last Request: to see his beloved African Violet, Rose, tended by Plantman.
This request created a host of difficulties. Officials were bound to honor the request, but none would allow Plantman to enter the CGC without tending their plants too. Long day ahead. Plantman arrived early, before protesters gathered for and against the execution of the Accused. Rhetoric, megaphones, home-made signs.
Through its provisions, Public Act 436 establishes a new form of local government, previously unknown within the United States or the State of Michigan, where the people within local municipalities may be governed by an unelected official who establishes local law by decree.
– Complaint for Injunctive Relief, Phillips et al. v. Snyder, U.S. District Court for Eastern Michigan
As a preface here, as I have done many times as my role as writer for DV, I have to default to the local, as in, where you see fault lines and bright lines in a local situation, you can pretty much make the larger microcosmic statement about many things for a state, region, country, culture, what have you.
The School to Prison Pipeline has been written about many, many times, and my hat goes off to some of those writers:
The ACLU has it on its radar: **
Wherefore, as becomes Catholic kings and princes, after earnest consideration of all matters, especially of the rise and spread of the Catholic faith, as was the fashion of your ancestors, kings of renowned memory, you have purposed with the favor of divine clemency to bring under your sway the said mainlands and islands with their residents and inhabitants and to bring them to the Catholic faith.
– Inter Caetera Papal Bull issued by pope Alexander VI on 4 May 1493, granting Spain dominion over the western hemisphere
I’m used to feelings of rage and nausea whenever I open a “news” paper – which is something I usually do only once a week; and I only do it then because The Times’ Saturday edition has a good puzzles page, and it also provides the TV listings for the following week. I most certainly do not do it for what should be the main purpose of a newspaper – providing good information about the world around me.
No legal issue arises when the United States responds to a challenge to its power, position, and prestige.
– Dean Acheson , 1962, speaking to the American Society of International Law
So, in Washington, the defeat of I-522, the genetically modified organisms, i.e. food, labeling initiative has been aided and abetted by, well, they call it a “war in the media” with the armies of the corporations launching frontal, rear, aerial, underground, cyber and Madison Avenue assaults. So, the “media” are the balancers and arbiters of justice.
