THERE'S MORE CHANGE AFOOT THAN THIS WORLD DREAMS OF

It's so easy to slip into despair. Easy to lament and bemoan the seeming fact that nothing changes. What we often mean is that it never changes for those of us who are most vulnerable. It's true that history records similar issues being addressed over and over. But there are often changes taking place right under our noses - for good and for ill. In a New Yorker review of Christian Caryl’s book Strange Rebels, 1979: John Lanchester provided this perspective: At the start of 1978, the biggest country in the world, the Soviet Union, and the most populous country in the world, China, both seemed immovable monoliths of Communist ideology. Iran was run by the Shah, and the aging leader of the clerical opposition, Ayatollah Khomeini, was in exile in Iraq. Afghanistan was under the control of Mohammad Daoud, a French-educated secularist, keen on modernizationa and women’s rights, and the main threat to his autocratic rule came from a different flavor of secularist, those of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, who were Communists. The Iron Curtain seemed a permanent division between the free and the unfree, and the cold War was the dominant fact of global politics. By the end of 1979, all these pillars of a seemingly permanent world order had crumbled or were crumbling. An obscure Polish cardinal, Karol Wojtyla, was now Pope John Paul II, and the galvanizing effect of his papacy on the people of Poland was starting to destabilize the entire Soviet bloc. The Shah had fled into exile, and Ayatollah Khomeini was at the head of Iran’s new revolutionary Islamic government President Daoud had been deposed and murdered, and Islamist Guerrillas had begun the war of resistance to his successors that was to turn into the global jihad that is still with us. Deng Xiaoping had steered China sharply toward its new identity as a capitalist economy. Caryl sees 1979 as a moment of counter-revolution, a swing of the historical pendulum against the trends of the preceding decades. He makes a strong, sweeping case that the year ushered in, as his subtitle puts it, the birth of the twenty-first century. Today the Soviet Union is gone, China is capitalist, Iran is a theocracy, and jihad is the new normal; and all these things began to happen in 1979, which nobody at the time saw coming." From The Critics, a Critic at large “1979 and all that: Margaret Thatcher’s revolution." By John Lanchester. “Caryl’s book 'Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century' asks the question: What if the really important year in recent history was 1979?'" New Yorker, August 5, 2013.

It's so easy to slip into despair. Easy to lament and bemoan the seeming fact that nothing changes. What we often mean is that it never changes for those of us who are most vulnerable. It's true that history records similar issues being addressed over and over. But there are often changes taking place right under our noses - for good and for ill. In a New Yorker review of Christian Caryl’s book Strange Rebels, 1979: John Lanchester provided this perspective: At the start of 1978, the biggest country in the world, the Soviet Union, and the most populous country in the world, China, both seemed immovable monoliths of Communist ideology. Iran was run by the Shah, and the aging leader of the clerical opposition, Ayatollah Khomeini, was in exile in Iraq. Afghanistan was under the control of Mohammad Daoud, a French-educated secularist, keen on modernizationa and women’s rights, and the main threat to his autocratic rule came from a different flavor of secularist, those of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, who were Communists. The Iron Curtain seemed a permanent division between the free and the unfree, and the cold War was the dominant fact of global politics. By the end of 1979, all these pillars of a seemingly permanent world order had crumbled or were crumbling. An obscure Polish cardinal, Karol Wojtyla, was now Pope John Paul II, and the galvanizing effect of his papacy on the people of Poland was starting to destabilize the entire Soviet bloc. The Shah had fled into exile, and Ayatollah Khomeini was at the head of Iran’s new revolutionary Islamic government President Daoud had been deposed and murdered, and Islamist Guerrillas had begun the war of resistance to his successors that was to turn into the global jihad that is still with us. Deng Xiaoping had steered China sharply toward its new identity as a capitalist economy. Caryl sees 1979 as a moment of counter-revolution, a swing of the historical pendulum against the trends of the preceding decades. He makes a strong, sweeping case that the year ushered in, as his subtitle puts it, the birth of the twenty-first century. Today the Soviet Union is gone, China is capitalist, Iran is a theocracy, and jihad is the new normal; and all these things began to happen in 1979, which nobody at the time saw coming." From The Critics, a Critic at large “1979 and all that: Margaret Thatcher’s revolution." By John Lanchester. “Caryl’s book 'Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century' asks the question: What if the really important year in recent history was 1979?'" New Yorker, August 5, 2013.

SEEING FOR MYSELF: IS ALL TRAVEL POLITICAL?

My Travels were not all about politics, though sometimes I only saw the political implications after the fact. I was born a feminist, though it took several decades to know its name. In Seeing for Myself, I relate my longing to see the continent of Africa,my resentment over not being allowed to help the priest serve mass, as my brother did. But my desire to travel was probably fifty parts adventure and fifty percent the romace asociated with babtizing African babies to save them from an eternity in Limbo. When the opportunity arose to travel to Nairobi and to meet feminist activists from all over the world, it seemed my childhood dream had come alive in spades. Before the conference even began our tour guide, Dorothy announced that we could visit a Maasai village, and I was excited.

LEFT OR RIGHT: WHO ARE THE RADICALS?

When I heard that University of Washington students were poised to conduct a “disorientation” for entering students that featured the institution’s radical history I thought that was an oxymoron. Radical and U.W. in the same sentence? Surely, the administration had not engaged in “radical” acts. But then I realized I’d fallen into an Orwellian trap of accepting “radical” as a trait of leftists. More often it is used to smear liberal or moderate leftists. But in the forties and fifties many universities, including the UW, took radical rightwing action or supported it. McCarthyism reigned.
Flash!  It’s 1954. I’m a U.W. student. I’m sitting next to Stull Holt, the chair of the history department, as we listen to members of the “Velde Committee” hearings hurl damaging accusations at university professors among others. Barbara Hartle, an admitted former member of the American Communist Party, has offered up to the committee more than three hundred names of people she alleges are or were Party members.
For weeks I’ve been ranting to Professor Holt about violations of civil liberties, but he just responds with a sigh of resignation, pointing out that throughout U.S. history Alien and Sedition laws had come and gone. These hearings, too, shall pass. I’m not confident of that, given the fact that UW President Raymond Allen has already fired three professors for “suspected association with Communists.”
That kind of radical action threatens the very roots of our freedoms. It pervades the university as well as the rest of America. In 1949 one hundred and three professors signed a letter to the U.W. Board of Regents objecting to the firings. But six hundred of the faculty remained silent. (For more on this topic go to http://historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=1482
Flash! It’s 1966. In a Political Science class discussion, I refer to an article I’ve read in the New Republic. Another student, agitated, shouts at me across the room that I’m obviously a “Commie.” Clouds of anti-civil libertarian notions are omnipresent on and off the campus.

Academic radicalism takes the form of what is not taught.

Flash!  It’s 1968. I’m a U.W. summer school student preparing to teach Washington State History to middle school students in the fall. All teachers of the course must take a university course in that subject. I know that teaching in the Central District will mean I have mostly black students. I want the course to be relevant to them but I’m required to use a particular text book and there’s not a word about African Americans in it. I ask my professor of Washington State history to refer me to some other texts that include the history of blacks in our state. “There weren’t any here,” he says, blithely. Though I have no evidence yet, I’m pretty sure he’s wrong about that. My skepticism is reinforced when I wind up spending most of that summer in the university’s Suzzallo Library pouring over scrap books kept by Negro church ladies’ organizations. I learn how wrong the professor is.
The textbook also excludes information about actions by the Industrial Workers of the World, the radical acts of creating Japanese “relocation” camps, corporations luring blacks from Indiana to Roslyn, Washington to break mine strikes. Nor does the book include more than a sentence about the Chinese exclusion acts or…  well, it simply ignores any part of Washington history that is exciting or that casts a dark shadow over Washington’s political history. All this is supported by the disinformation spread by some of my professors in the history department.
While I try to engage my ninth grade students in our state’s past actions, history is being made nearby when the Central Contractors Association organizes for fail employment opportunities. The group protests the U.W. administration’s failure to abide by federal laws that prohibited racial discrimination in hiring. For more about this, see http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aaw/central-contractors-association
The students who are organizing the current “disorientation” event have their hands full in recovering even a few of the University’s radical actions. And the beat goes on, as current student organizations pressure the Board of Regents to divest the university’s investment portfolio of “all stocks in Big Oil, Big Coal, and all companies comprising the backbone of the fossil-few economy.” For more info, click here:  http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2013/06/13/students-to-regents-uw-should-rid-itself-of-oil-coal-stocks/
After taking this little stroll down memory lane, I’m curious about which of the many radical actions the University tour will relate. The “disorientation” for new students is a fitting way to begin their university education. For more information about historic and current UW students’ political actions see 
http://crosscut.com/2013/06/17/environment/114962/martha-baskin-campus-fossil-fuel-divestment/

HOW THEY LOOKED THEN: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

I wonder whether this lovely building is now rubble

                                        AFGHANISTAN

This poster against abuse of women might have been in the Seattle YWCA in the 1970s or '80s

I interviewed this impressive woman, a candidate for Parliament. She lost the election

This cosmetition lost the lease for her business after NGO personnel contributed to inflationary prices of real estate

Since she no longer had a shop to work in she brought her "shop" to her friend Mitra's house

This is a model for cosmetics

Mitra was an enthusiastic talker, especially about her micro loan, which allowed her to buy a second sewing machine and hire another worker.

The worker is happy too.

These men of "military age" are the staff gathered in our living room

This is what I could see from the burqa I tried on

Looking out my guest house window

Our group with two of our guides

More men of that dangerous age, the kitchen staff

The streets of Kabul were jammed but just a few minutes out of the center of town this was the traffic

Our guest house host, who was also a professor of French literature

School boys. Assuming they have survived the war so far, they are now be of miliatary age

Many girls wore hijab and many didn't

IRAQ
I was not supposed to take photographs without permission of a minder. But one day everyone, including our minder, went to an Internet cafe, while I planned to nap in hopes of curing my bronchial cough. But when I suddenly realized I was alone, I dashed out to the street, and forgot about the rule against photographs. I had a lovely time joking around with these guys, but when I look at them now I find myself worrying about how this "group of men of military age possibly planning to plant an i.e.d. Our war in Iraq is supposedly over yet last month (May, '13) over a thousand people were killed. I keep wondering how many of them are still alive.

SEEING FOR MYSELF BOOK EXCERPTS

SEEING FOR MYSELF: A POLITICAL TRAVELER’S MEMOIR

           

Below, you will find excerpts from my book, with more coming in future blogs.

A WORLD OF WOMEN IN NAIROBI

At the 1985 U.N. conference on women I was exhilarated by the amazing mix of women from all over the world. I was also dismayed by how many U.S. policies women from many countries found oppressive. I felt the same outrage at President Reagan’s support of South Africa, but the number of other dictatorships my government had supported was astonishing. I learned not only about women worldwide, but also the suffering of all people in East Timor, Sri Lanka, Guatemala and other areas where dictators were supported by U.S. policies. Yet women from numerous countries greeted us Americans with warmth. Workshops were crowded but a South African presenter assured us, “there is always room for one more.”

As I tried to keep track of the bold actions women were taking all over the globe, voices in my head vied for attention. Brief exchanges with women I would never meet again segued to comments made in workshops, or to isolated sentences from pamphlets or articles in the Forum ’85 daily newspaper. I tried to absorb it all, but a mental kaleidoscope kept flipping my focus from one issue to another: 

   Flip: “Women must have their own banks,” says a representative of a

U.N. development organization.

Flip. “The West is to blame for most of our problems.” From various sources.

  

Flip: “The National Coalition of Black Gays is not presenting workshops because of fear of oppression. In the U.S. we are members of an undeveloped nation.” 

             Flip: “In Spain homosexuality was made legal in 1979.”

I was able to focus for a while on one remarkable story. In India as early as 1974, the NGO, SEWA (Self-Employed Women’s Association), had started a women’s bank, which made small loans (now known throughout the world as micro-loans) to women in the “informal economy.” The SEWA workers discovered that women could be relied on to pay back their loans and would use the money well. Men, by comparison, were not so reliable and tended to spend money on themselves. The story of SEWA’s beginning was an inspiration. When organizers had tried to get loans, the exchange with bankers went something like this:

Banker: “Give money to poor women? Who aren’t even literate? Don’t be ridiculous.”

Organizer: “Well, let’s see. How about if we give each borrower a picture i.d. card?”

         Banker: “She would still have to sign her name on each loan, and some of these women can’t even do that!”

To learn more or to buy the book, click here:  http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-For-Myself-Political-Travelers/dp/1609440676/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377550659&sr=8-1&keywords=Seeing+for+Mysel

 On the last day of Forum ‘85 my heartbeat was still accelerated by questions and ideas bombarding my consciousness. I stood with women on the lawnthe same lawn where seemingly long ago I had first seen that audacious sign, “International Lesbian Information Service.” Twenty women dressed in the modes of various countries leaned into a tight circle, discussing how to end men’s violence against women. I wondered whether I would be able to sustain my own awareness of the global feminist momentum without the continual stimulus of ideas pouring into my head. I need not have worried.

Undaunted by the enormity of the work ahead of us in turning the gendered world upside down, we were energized by all that we had learned and felt. How could we keep our connections going? And how would we explain it all to those who weren’t there? We quickly came up with the idea of a newsletter. I was excited about that, and suggested that each of us send news to the others. Then someone could collate and forward it all to the rest of us.

That “someone” was the catch. When no one volunteered, I offered to collect and distribute whatever was sent each quarter for one year, if others would take turns after that. We agreed to call our product the International Newsletter Against Violence Against Women.

   

 “IT AIN’T WHAT YOU SAY; IT’S THE WAY THAT YOU SAY IT”

           After driving for six days from Seattle to Guanajuato, Mexico, I was glad to relax and enjoy the bustling streets. I learned that the old tune about “the way you say it” is absolutely right.

Strolling along the narrow sidewalk lined with shops, I was astonished at how many people crowded elbow to elbow on the sidewalks. It seemed that everyone in the city was carrying out the weekly ritual of Saturday night shopping for clothing, food, and all manner of trinkets. They didn’t even jostle each other. Or so I was thinking, just as someone bumped into me. I wondered what sort of person would not even say perdon. I caught a glimpse of skinny man quickly looking over his shoulder at me as he darted past, but I gave only a moment’s thought to him.

Across the street a mime was surrounded by a mesmerized audience, and I moved toward the circle of spectators. I watched a tall, slim man in white face, red gloves, and a black suit as he told stories with graceful, expressive hands. The children’s expressions of awe, puzzlement, and sheer delight testified to the mime's talent. I was enchanted with the performance and paid scant attention to a man next to me. I was only vaguely aware that he muttered something incomprehensible in Spanish, I didn’t know if he was talking to me or to himself. When he raised his voice, I didn’t need to understand his words. I knew from his tone that he spelled trouble. Then he shouted at me in an angry tone, so I moved to the opposite side of the circle.

The man followed. He stood too close to me for comfort. I glared at him, and was met with a glassy stare from a pair of eyes that pierced.

To find out happened next, go to the book at

http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-For-Myself-Political-Travelers/dp/1609440676/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377550659&sr=8-1&keywords=Seeing+for+Myself

THERE’S ALWAYS ROOM FOR ONE MORE

          My Todos Santos, Guatemala “home” with a family of eight  consisted of a one-room house with an indoor fire pit that provided heat and fuel for cooking. The floor was of hard packed dirt and there was no electricity or plumbing, yet the family welcomed me so warmly I didn’t miss any of those amenities.

Despite her labors of weaving, and cooking, and caring for the children, Juanita found time to be with me. We were each limited by our inability to speak much Spanish, which together with her shyness and my time-consuming classes, meant we did not talk much. But sometimes we were alone together for a couple of hours, and I learned how to simply be with her; how to let feelings of closeness develop without the need for conversation. That was new for me. Years earlier a man I was involved with had tried to persuade me that talk wasn’t the only way to communicate. I had scoffed at that idea. But I had laid the notion aside, and now I was finally ready to give up some of my reliance on words.

When the time came for me to leave Todos Santos, Juanita and I both felt sad….My bus out of town was over an hour late, and the two of us stood in silence waiting for it. Every now and then I would look at Juanita and her eyes would fill and she would say, "Ahhhh, Ginny..." in a tone of longing. I would smile weakly and touch her arm.

That limbo of waiting and longing was too melancholy for me, and the language of silence this time was too difficult to sustain. So, when a truck pulled up and the driver invited all of us waiting for the bus to ride with him to Huehue, I was relieved to climb into the truck bed. In a few moments I was waving goodbye. Juanita looked very small standing by the road waving back.

SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE, MEXICO

I spent seven winters in San Miguel, which was a stark contrast to Todos Santos. My San Miguel quarters weren’t luxurious. But plumbing and electricity were taken for granted, at least for gringos and middle class Mexicans. And I had plenty of space all to myself.

I soon found a one-room house, complete with the luxury of my own phone. My nearly private garden…included my own jacaranda tree, and the rent was only one hundred and thirty dollars a month. Within weeks in San Miguel, I had acquired a community of friendly relationships. My days fell into a pattern that seemed perfect. I rose at nine or ten, wrote until mid-afternoon, and then attended a Spanish or writing class, or a critique group. In late afternoon I might meander….

To find out more about life in San Miguel ask your library to order it or buy it here

http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-For-Myself-Political-Travelers/dp/1609440676/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377550659&sr=8-1&keywords=Seeing+for+Myself 

A TASTE OF IRAQI POLITICS AND ACADEMIA

By the summer of 2002 President Bush had me worried about the imminent war against Iraqis. I kept asking, “Who are those people,” and I wanted to see them for myself. Friends kept telling me that would be far too dangerous to visit Iraq but in early fall of that year I signed up for a two week trip with a politically oriented group. In Iraq we met doctors who worried about children dying from lack of medicine because of U.S. sanctions. I saw for myself the results of the U.S. war, sanctions and interventions. I met school children shouting “Down with Bush” and university students who said U.S women had “too much freedom.” I had met Rahim at a party in Baghdad and was overjoyed when he invited me to visit his university class. I began the session by asking the students about their current reading:

Rahim’s class was studying Waiting for Godot.  The women were shy and the first students to raise their hands were the two men in the class. But with encouragement, a few brave women spoke up. All the women students were dressed more or less like western office workers, except for their omnipresent scarves, either white or patterned in numerous colors. When I asked whether they saw a connection between Godot and their situation, the class burst out in unanimous laughter.

“We are waiting, waiting, waiting,” someone said.

I assumed that meant waiting for the American axe to fall. I was wary of inviting comments on that threat too soon, but the students soon warmed up and, all fluent in English, they were eager to praise Hussein and criticize the United States:

“I want to express my love of my country and my president. He is an example for the world. We are a great country because of our president.” 

“We have lost a lot and have nothing more to lose. But the U.S. has no right to make us feel so afraid just because someone wants to drive a big car.”

“The sound of bombs makes me feel afraid. It’s now every day, and they make our fear worse.”

“They should leave us alone. We want to live in peace.”

I was surprised by the vehement tones and sharp criticism because our group had met graciousness from everyone we encountered. But they were all able to separate the American government from us American people. The next topic I invited was the only time I heard critiques of American culture:

I asked, “What do you think about the freedom of women in the U.S.?”  Students took turns answering my questions.

           Student: “You have too much freedom.”

     Ginny: “What kind of freedom are you thinking of?” 

     Student: “Freedom should have some limitation.”

     Ginny: “What kinds of limits are useful?” 

     Student: “You need protection.”

     Ginny: “From?” 

   

To learn what happened next, ask for the book at our library or order it here: http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-For-Myself-Political-Travelers/dp/1609440676/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377550659&sr=8-1&keywords=Seeing+for+Mysel

Stay tuned for more excerpts in future blogs.

When I visited Afghanistan in 2005 I was filled with hope that the country would survive the damage done by the horrifying, seemingly endless, warring factions. As I've posted on this blog I often plan to write updates of what is happening there. But, all too often, the news is mostly about murder and mayhem. So I resist writing about it. Now comes an inspiring young woman artist who dares to create street art that inspires me. I'm thrilled to post her work here, to share the inspiration she brings, lighting the streets of Kabul with hope for the future. You can see it here.
http://artradarjournal.com/2013/07/19/art-is-stronger-than-war-afghanistans-first-female-street-artist-speaks-out/http://artradarjournal.com/2013/07/19/art-is-stronger-than-war-afghanistans-first-female-street-artist-speaks-out/

THE POLITICS OF DYING

            My 91 year old beloved friend, Ruth Goodman, died yesterday. Over the last fifty years, Ruth and I had grown even closer and more important to each other than we were in the early days of protesting the Vietnam War together. So my loss is great, but it is mitigated by remembering Ruth’s dedicated activism in several political movements, including the Death with Dignity movement.

            I was privileged to spend the last five days of her life with Ruth, and when I wrote her obituary shortly before her death, she insisted I include the important anticipated fact that, right to the end, she was in control of her death. Below, I have posted her obituary and the letter to newspaper editors that she wrote to be sent after her death. That letter is just one of the ways that Ruth’s dedication to justice lives on.

           When Ruth made her decision about the time and manner of her death, she was following a life-long commitment to acting on principle. It is one thing to say you will take your own life when the time is right. It's quite another to do it. For Ruth the right to die with dignity was as important as other civil and human rights for which she had campaigned. It was my privilege to witness Ruth's steadfast determination to be in control of when and how she died, right to the very end. Here is the letter she wrote to newspaper editors the day before she died:

 "I am a ninety-one-year-old woman who has decided to end my life in the very near future. I do not have a terminal illness; I am simply old, tired and becoming dependent, after a wonderful life of independence. People are allowed to choose the right time to terminate their animals' lives and can be with them and provide assistance and comfort right to the end. Surely, the least we can do is allow people the same rights to choose how and when to end their lives. By the time people read this, I will have died. I am writing this letter to advocate for a change in the law so that all will be able to make this choice."

RUTH GOODMAN OBITUARY

Ruth Goodman has led a life of resistance to war and a commitment to the environment and social justice. Her family fled Eastern Europe at the turn of the last century to escape war and anti-Semitism, and she grew up in a union household. In 1940 Ruth married Henry Goodman, and found a job in the shipyards. As a clerical worker, Ruth was paid $20 dollars a week, and when she discovered that welders made $1.25 an hour she joined the wave of women's participation in wartime industrial production.

After the war, Ruth and Henry moved to Washington State, where Ruth gave birth to two sons, Michael and Dean. Soon she joined the American Friends Service Committee in organizing annual peace marches, and picketing the Boeing Company in protest of their manufacturing aircraft used in the Vietnam War. 

In 1966, worried about their two sons being eligible for the draft in a few years, Ruth and Henry left the United States to settle in Vancouver. But Ruth's activism didn't stop. She and Henry offered U.S. draft resisters a safe haven in their home and Ruth volunteered at the War Resisters' support office.

Ruth's participation in political campaigns was not confined to international issues. Through her personal experience of two illegal abortions in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Ruth developed a heightened awareness of the importance of a woman's right to reproductive choice, including abortion. Her strong belief in the right to legal, safe access to abortion led her to be among the first volunteers for the Everywoman's Health Centre, an abortion clinic.

Ruth's commitment to justice remained strong to the end of her life. She has been a staunch advocate of the Death with Dignity social justice movement. True to her principles, with the support of her children and a host of devoted friends, at the age of ninety-one, Ruth chose to end her life on Februrary 2nd, 2013. She is survived by Michael Goodman and his partner Sharon Sjerven, Dean Goodman and his wife, Janna Levitt, as well as grandsons, Henry, Eric and Gabriel Gooman.

To carry on his parent's commitments to justice, Michael Goodman has established the Ruth and Henry Goodman Fund for Social and Economic Justice. Instead of flowers, donations may be made to that organization. http://ruthandhenrygoodmanfund.com/.

THE WAY IT USED TO BE - BUT IS NO MORE

These rules aren't relics of the eighteenth century. It was a big advance for girls to be permitted to play baseball at all. I know it wasn't centuries ago because i was in high school when these draconian rules came into play.

Women obviously have a long way to go before the patriarchs and their supporters move over to make room for equal rights, but to evaluate the tasks ahead we ought to take a look back at how far we've come, just since I was a girl, for instance. Click on the link, and you'll see what I mean."http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/voices-in-time/a-l..."

IRAQIS I SAW FOR MYSELF

Fatah was a graduate student at the University and her professor invited me to interview her so it was a rare opportunity to spend an hour alone with a very articulate Iraqi woman. She worked hard to be polite to me, but her fury kept rising to the surface."Iraqis," she said, "are very proud of their country. ..We have a right to have our country. To be safe. To live in peace.... We had to rebuild everything and now they want to destroy it all again...."   

This girl's photo was posted along with many other memorials to adults and children who had rushed to a Baghdad shelter, where U.S. missiles killed 400 noncombatants. It is now a kind of museum of horror.

Here I am with children outside their school

On our one trip to the market, I often fell behind the others so I could take pictures, and this charming girl took it upon herself to see that I caught up with the rest of the group. She is probably about nineteen years old, and I often think of her, wondering whether she's still alive.

The hotel lobby manager, Abida, and I struck up a friendly relationship. One day the elevators didn't work and she locked the door to the stairs because the children played in the stairwell inappropriately. I worried about a U.S. bomb hitting the hotel and no one being able to get out. We laughed when we saw the irony of that.  

We saw an number of children in the hospital, who nearly all looked as bewildered or frightened as this girl. We were told that they were likely casualties of depleted uranium and the problems were exacerbated by the twelve years of sanctions that often applied to crucial medicines.

This is one of the lucky mothers whose baby was born normal, not deformed as were many of the others

We are told not to worry. There will be “no boots on the ground.” We are told there is no contradiction between that promise and the assertion that “all options are on the table.” Yet the drums of war beat louder and louder and I hold my breath. 
Wondering who will be next, I think about the Iraqis I met in 2002, six months before American boots landed on their ground. “What are the chances,” I wonder, “that the locals who treated me with generosity and warmth are still alive. Were they wiped out by an i.e.d., while buying mangos at a market? Maybe a suspicious “pattern” of gathering with friends got them targeted and assassinated by a U.S. missile or drone? With the war on Iraqis and Afghanistan not over yet, haven’t we seen enough carnage?

As I write this, the news tells me my government is supplying weapons to Syrian rebels. (Apparently, that means more weapons, because the administration has already been sending some weapons there.) I long to see the people of Syria for myself. I worry especially about the men “of military age.” I imagine they look a lot like the guys I talked and laughed with at the Afghan guest house and on the streets of Baghdad.

            Here are photos of some of the men, and women and children I met on those trips and wrote about in Seeing for Myself.

IRAQ 

"Military age" men playing board game on the street

The rest of my group had gone to an Internet Cafe, and I took the rare opportunity to go out on the streets alone. "A couple of boys noticed my video camera...and started mugging for it. They giggled excitedly. Older boys joined us, then a few grown men. Soon we were all laughing at our inability to speak each other's language.
SfM page 204 

School boys chanting "Down With Bush!"

Our group was surprised when we visited a school and found the entire student body greeting us with signs and chants of "Down With Bush; Down With Bush! These children must now be of a "military age" - if they are still alive.

SPEAKING OF AGE

“You’re not old,” I was told, not for the first time, by a friend in his 50s. I had just begun to explain how a situation looked from my perspective as an old person, when he protested my use of the dirty word “old.” From the near-panicked look on his face, you’d have thought I’d begun to describe a sexually transmitted disease at a sedate dinner party. To many 50-year-olds the very word “old” may, indeed, seem as unnerving as “gonorrhea.” But avoiding the word will not enable us to deny our way out of the last stages of life. Even a tummy tuck, hair graft or a dose of Viagra won’t enable us to jog through our 60s and 70s without becoming old on the way. 

            Once you hit 60, some people, including age mates, may refer to you as an “elder,” a term of respect that assumes you’ve been acquiring wisdom, rather than, year after year, stubbornly practicing mistakes, as some of us do. “Older” inexplicably implies you are not really old yet, and is meant to blur the naked truth of the stage of life you have reached. But a glance at a basic grammar book will tell you the suffix “-er,” a comparative adjective, means “more so,” not less so.  So why do “tall-er,” “fat-ter,” “young-er” and “smart-er” designate more than the root word without its suffix, while “old-er” is meant to imply you are less old? If the question confuses you, that probably means your head is on straight. 

If, at 62, instead of using the euphemism “senior,” you bluntly ask for an old person’s discount at a movie theater, the clerk may greet the request with a puzzled frown or nervous giggle. A recent professional publication referred to it’s theme as the “autumn of life,” meaning of course, the life of the old.  Okay, along with the autumn leaves, our arches and jowls fall, and some of us are more vulnerable to the vicissitudes of aging bodies and minds.  But, like stalwart oaks, many remain both resilient and sturdy, even in the “winter of life.”

When will we begin to view old age as a stage of life that needn’t be an embarrassment, that is neither wholly good nor bad, but a mix of delights, losses and complex challenges?   When will we recognize that to lose our clear sight, short-term memory and even the capacity to walk unaided is not a matter for shame or secrecy?  That it is not somethinglike death in this cultureto be whispered or referred to only in euphemistic language?  Sure, anxieties, aches, pains and new losses make their appearances.  But we might cheerfully bid farewell to stresses on the way up the career ladder or worry over what the neighbors will think.  Those losses can clear the decks, so we can do as we please for a few years. 

In recent decades many oppressed groups have burst out of socially imposed closets.  We can join those who have re-claimed descriptors such as “queer,” “Black,” or “African American.”  It’s time to stop fooling around with words meant to deny the existence of the last phases of life.  It’s time to boldly re-claim the solid, reality-based status implied in that venerable word: “old.”

A slightly modified version of this article was published in Prime Time.

THE BACK STORY: THE GARTERS OR THE BOMB?

SEATTLE-KING COUNTY JAIL: LESSONS LEARNED

THE BACK STORY:  THE GARTERS OR THE BOMB?  

1964 Bangor Missile Base

In the introduction to Seeing for Myself, I wrote about my role as “on-the-ground director of what in 1968 was the biggest peace walk the local American Friends Service Committee had ever mounted.”

Alongside the band, Country Joe and the Fish, I stood on the back of a pick-up truck, directing the crowd to take their places. I was armed in the super-respectable uniform I always donned for political demonstrations: a black double-knit skirt with matching top, two-inch heels and hose, a faux fur black hat, and a long string of fake pearls. If I was going to be called a “Commie,” I would be a properly attired, ladylike Commie.

The rest of that story didn’t make it into Seeing for Myself, but if it had, it might have been titled, “What to Wear to a Revolution”–or, at least, “What to Wear When Committing Civil Disobedience.” In the early 1970s I still dressed “like a lady” for demonstrations, including one at the Bangor Missile Base to protest the mounting of nuclear warheads on submarines scheduled to be housed there. A couple of dozen of us activists had gathered at the entrance to the base to support three members of our group who would try to enter the base illegally.

The three men approached the gate, attempting to enter the grounds. But guards immediately moved in, tackled the protestors, carried them a few feet away from the entrance, and unceremoniously dropped them onto the dusty ground. Clunk!  We supporters collectively winced. Our colleagues, of course, were trying to commit an illegal act of trespassing but, did the guards have to be so rough? Were our friends hurt? Evidently they were not. They picked themselves up, slapped the dirt off their clothes, and with quiet deliberation, headed once more for the gate.

I was impressed with the men’s fortitude. But the warheads were obviously as much a threat to women as to men. The campaign against their installation was my cause as much as the men’s. So, why, I wondered, had none of us women been willing to take the risk of disobedient action? I ruminated about that, as the men continued determinedly walking toward the entrance, where guards intervened and dumped them on the ground again. I shuddered with each thump, and my discomfort grew. My body twitched with the urge to join the three, and for a moment I thought I would do exactly that.

Then an image kicked in. A couple of newspaper photographers were present, and they would probably be delighted to take a photo of a woman being dumped on the ground. In my mind’s eye I could see it clearly. A guard would grab me, my skirt would hike up, and–oh, no! My garters would show. A camera would click. There I would be, garters and all, on the front page of the Post Intelligencer, “in front of God and everybody.”

It was much later that I asked myself, “So, you would rather risk nuclear bombs than the embarrassment of a pair of garters exposed?” Apparently the answer was “yes!”

I EXONERATE MYSELF

            By 1976 nuclear warheads had been installed in Trident submarines at Bangor Missile Base, and activists at the pacifist center called Ground Zero mounted another nonviolent resistance action. Though I had never forgiven myself for my previous cowardice, I was still not willing to go beyond the role of witness to others’ civil disobedience. A couple of dozen activists were committed to the symbolic act of cutting the barbed wire fence that surrounded the base. I knew it was the right thing to do, but I wasn’t ready to commit civil disobedience. My previous self-imposed demonstrators’ dress code was no longer warranted; the days of garters holding up hosiery were long gone―for many of us feminists, anyway. So if that had ever been a worthy excuse, it surely wasn’t this time. I wore a comfortable Mexican dress and sandals. No hosiery. No hat. No string of pearls. But my attire wouldn’t matter anyway, since I had no intention of committing disobedience.

            This time several women were among those determined to symbolically destroy part of the Bangor base fence. I watched them and a few men approach the fence, and cut just enough of the barbed wire to enter the premises. If my body could have talked, it would have said, “This time I can’t just stand here, perfectly safe, while others risk arrest.” My body reacted before my mind. I walked away from my group of supporters and headed toward the fence. Someone handed me a pair of clippers, and I joined the others in cutting just enough of the wire to create a hole I could step through.

In planning the action the group had followed the usual principle of openness by informing the base commander of our intention to enter the base. Now, as we crossed onto the sacrosanct military grounds, we were intercepted by a patiently waiting guard who pulled our hands around to our backs and placed plastic handcuffs on our wrists. Next we were steered to a paddy wagon, and taken to jail, where we spent the night.

Finally, I had exonerated myself from my previous failure to stand up for my beliefs in a meaningful way, and I laughed as I said, “This time, I would even have risked having my garters photographed, if I thought it would contribute to a tiny possibility of stopping the threat of Trident submarine bombs.” A few weeks later I was sentenced to sixty days in jail for destroying government property. 
       
      SEATTLE-KING COUNTY JAIL: LESSONS LEARNED:LEARNING THE ROPES

As a jail inmate I hadn’t expected to encounter an unwritten rule about proper female attire. When I checked in at Seattle-King County Jail I had to submit to an exam to prove I wasn’t carrying any contraband. In a crisp tone, a middle-aged admitting matron alerted me that she would have to lift my shirt. I nodded in compliance. But the moment she hiked it up, she snatched her hand away, as if from boiling water. All but shrieking, she gasped, “You have no bra.”

“Well, no,” I said, “I stopped wearing a bra years ago.”

            So far, I had learned what to wear to a demonstration, and now I would learn what to wear to jail. My stay there would teach me additional lessons.

            The phone is brought to each cell in the women’s jail for an hour twice a day. Each prisoner has ten minutes each time to contact the outside world. That may not sound too bad. But if you divide the time between lover and child, for instance, the time will whizz by so fast it feels like just seconds. Or you might use several precious minutes dialing your parole officer or lawyer, only to endure six minutes of busy signals and operators who put you on hold as if you had all the time in the world. Such disappointments can build up so much frustration that it sometimes spills over in a two- or three-minute call to the people you most care about. When you reach them, you might unintentionally rant about the problem of reaching a lawyer, and then listen to their interruptions with suggestions, such as, “Why don’t you call early in the morning before court starts?”

You try not to be surly. You try not to say, “Because I don’t get the phone unless they feel like bringing it. Don’t you think I have sense enough to figure out that’s the best time get him?”

The father of your child comes on the line. He complains about how hard it is to work and take care of the children all by himself. He says he’s afraid of losing his job, and you say to yourself, “I‘m using my precious phone time for this?”

“Let me speak to Sally,” you say abruptly, knowing you’re hurting him but hoping your ten-year-old will cheer you. You want to salvage something from these minutes you waited for all morning. The clock ticks away your time and your cellmates are telling you your time is almost up as Sally is being called and you hear her casual, “Just a minute. I have to see what Mr. Spock says.”

Doesn’t she know the seconds are ticking away?  Can’t she understand that you are more important than Star Trek?  No. No, of course not. Even most adults can’t seem to grasp how it feels to cram everything you’re feeling and planning and experiencing into this scrap of time. They all seem to talk in slow motion. They use too many words to say too many trivial things. By the time they get ready to say the important things, like whether they talked to your parole officer, arranged for your mother to take care of the childrenor “I love you.” Long before you’re ready, it's time to hang up.

And talking to the children is especially frustrating.

“What are you doin’, Honey?” you ask in your most cajoling voice.

“Nothin’. “

“Playing?”

“Yup.”

“What are you playing?”

“Oh, nothin’,”

“Well, are you…”

Can’t she understand that this is no time to play Twenty Questions? You try to suppress your anger and explain that you have to hang up. And then, with a cell-mate reaching for the phone or the matron warning you that the whole cell will be deprived of the phone next time unless you hang up immediately….Then your child starts a barrage of questions: “When are you comin’ home?”  Where’s my pink shirt?  Why are you in jail anyway:”

You get out a few quick sentences rat-tat-tat: “I can’t talk to you. I have to hang up.” You hang up feeling angry, frustrated, hurt, guilty and wondering why you called at all.

THE INMATES

You don’t have to go to jail to know that it infantilizes and dehumanizes people. But it helps. Sixty days in King County jail helped me understand things I felt I knew about people in jail and what it does to them. Eighteen or fifty, everyone here is called “girl.” Matrons defend the usage by saying, “Most of them are girls. They are just so immature.” And it’s true. Most of the inmates are scarcely out of their teens. The primary crime the inmates are charged with is prostitution, though a few inmates have committed credit card forgery. Prostitutes, it should surprise no one, tend to be especially personable.

T affects an ultra-nonchalant shuffling walk that emphasizes her full hips. She carelessly tosses her curly hair, with its orange-peroxide tips, over her shoulder. She has a style and a humorous way of coping that draws people to her. She entertains us with tales of escapades in Job Corps, of police entrapment, and of her wonderful, kind, loving man whom she will keep happy forever. She is making him a satin heart-shaped pillow embroidered with one of Erica Jong’s poems. We can almost imagine this couple as every girl’s first long-term romance until she reminds us she has only known the guy for one week prior to coming to jailand that he has three other prostitutes in his stable.

After entertaining us at length T talks about her childhood. “My dad used to always say, ‘I could retire on the money you girls could make.’ He and my brothers used to agree to take me to the store if I’d do stuff.” It is clear to all o f us what the “stuff” was. But no one asks how this connects with her life-style, or whether hurt, shame or grief lie hidden under her amusing story-telling voice. It is the mode in jail to accept your fellow prisoners’ statements at face value.

E is a truly classic beauty, a natural blond who has the wit not to dilute her innocent blue eyes or creamy young skin with make-up. She is one of the few prisoners who speak middle-class “standard” English. She seems unaware of her ambivalence toward the parents she describes as “good people, who take in foster children.” I wonder what it is like for them for E to be incarcerated for prostitution when they perhaps dreamed of their Golden Girl walking down the aisle in white.

When the cell is unlocked, E alternates games of solitaire with pacing up and down the hall. But then she pauses to talk about her “hopelessly square” mother and her parents’ righteous anger after each of the runaways that began at thirteen. “How dare they send the police after their own daughter!” At eighteen, she feels she has cut her ties with her parents forever.

E has just come into jail, and her restlessness begins to dissipate. Awkwardly, she kneels on a bench, then curls into a near fetal position, and I have the urge to rock her. She is so sure she will be bailed out by her man within a couple of hours that she doesn’t even get her bed ready for sleeping. When the telephone is brought to our cell we let her have it first so she can call him. It is a drama I hear re-enacted many times listening to other women. Her voice is a soft blanket flowing thorough the wires to envelop her man in comfort. From the one sided conversation, we learn that he is having trouble raiding bail money for her. He could use the Eldorado she bought him, but the bondsman would take the key, and his life would be very inconvenient without transportation. E coos her understanding of the problem. She tells him she has faith that he will think of something. Along with my cellmates, I resist voicing my opinion that she had better not count on him, but E gets the message anyway.

Two days later, her man comes with the bail. She says to us silent skeptics, “See?  I knew he’d take care of me.”

M, in contrast to other inmates, disapproves of prostitution. She turns up her nose in disgust at any sexual behavior other than intercourse for the purpose of “having babies.” After almost two months in jail waiting for trial, she is one of the more obviously troubled inmates, anxious about what will become of her, confused by guilt and resentment. As nearly as anyone can tell, her crime grew out of a momentary whim to coerce an acquaintance into giving her money. As her story unfolds, she reluctantly says she did threaten the woman if she refused to give her money.

But M never expected to be caught, and even if that happened she couldn’t imagine being charged with anything more serious than extortion. She never imagined being charged with armed robbery or kidnapping, which is what’s happened. She is a tiny woman, whose short hair, angular body and open expression give her an impish, boyish look. Each time M tells a new arrival about the charge, the newcomer hoots in disbelief at the idea that this girl Peter Pan could be physically or psychologically capable of such a crime. The new people assume some bizarre miscarriage of justice has taken place. One or two other black women say it’s a prosecutor’s racist plot. They persuade M that she must have a bad lawyer and she ought to fire him. M says little but seems to go along with that assessment.

Over the next few days something like the truth gradually surfaces. M admits some of the accusations and seems mainly upset, and alternately embarrassed or outraged, about what the charges are called. They do not fit her image of herself. She passes around a sheaf of legal papers, asks if we think the prosecutor has any kind of case. I say, “It looks pretty bad to me.”

“I know,” she says, and I’m surprised she agrees so readily. We talk over the fact that it will be M’s word against several witnesses. She spends most of that afternoon in uncharacteristic silence on her bed. Within the next twenty-four hours she decides it is, after all, not the lawyer’s fault that the prosecutor won’t lower the charge, and that she won’t fire him. She comes close to deciding to plead guilty if the prosecutor will ask for a shorter sentence.

Then D comes into the cell. She reads the charges and is outraged.

“That woman says you told her you had a gun? Now why would you do a foolish thing like that? She says she was scared of you? All ninety pounds of you? Who would believe her?”

C joins in and soon the case is being constructed all over again that M has been framed, victimized, mistreated by an incompetent lawyer, and in fact she has committed no crime at all. C elaborates on the situation. “It is all the fault of that white girl (the victim) who came around just to find a black man for herself. Then her parents found out what she was up to and she had to make up this story so they wouldn’t know she was messin’ with Niggers.” (Though it is now standard usage to avoid that word, substituting “the N word,” I have chosen to keep the language used here by the inmate, as well as below by me in the original version of this article.)

I am privately angry at these women who, posing as M’s friends, contribute to the clouding of her sense of reality. I know they see themselves as supportive, but surely they cannot help her this way. Still, I have to weigh the fact that I’ve never experienced similar circumstances. I’m not constantly flirting with incarceration. My persistent search for the voice of realism rests on the idea that if I know what’s happening I can do something about it. In jail, that doesn’t hold true. I soon begin to learn the limits of my personal power. What I don’t pick up quickly, the matrons soon teach me.

THE MATRONS

My sister-prisoners agree that some matrons are “nice” and others “mean.” Most of us agree that S is one of the worst. It has surprised no one to learn she has had a career in the armed services. She barks orders, and we don’t know from day to day what those orders will be. For weeks we inmates have broken a rule by spiriting extra blankets into our cells for protection against the cold steel benches and the light weight cotton uniforms. S has pretended not to notice. Then one day she suddenly “reminds” us of the rule that each person may have only two blankets. She strips the beds of extras and we’re left to shiver. Or she suddenly decides that the cards and pictures we have taped to the bars must come down. They are our only break from the monotonous green, and the one way we can express our individuality.

G has an opposite style. She fancies herself every inmate’s chumwhen things are going her way. She seems to see herself as a self-sacrificing rescuer who loves young people. She has a house full of children and has taken in the neighbor’s too. She talks about sponsoring prisoners at the state prison so they can get out sooner. G puts so much energy into being Best Liked that she becomes outraged when someone questions that image. Like a melodramatic parent, she seems to be saying, “Look at all I have done for you…worn my fingers to the bone, and this is the thanks I get.”

When we are waiting for the phone to be brought to our cell, tension is high. A timer in sometimes available to help us divide the time fairly, but it is kept in the booking room. So one day we ask G to bring it with the phone to our cell, which she has often done for us. But this day she refuses, saying, “My advice is just to be considerate.”

“But,” I quietly point out, “we have no way of knowing whether we’re being considerate or not.”

The Best Liked persona disappears as G turns righteous, and screams: “I don’t have to bring the phone. You should be grateful I give it to you at all. And if you can’t behave better than that, I might just decide to only let you call your lawyer.”

W is one of the rare matrons who allows nothing to ruffle her. She argues that the poor and non-white can improve their lives with a bit of self-discipline, and refuses to acknowledge that racism does significant damage to people. Yet she relates to each person in a warm, fair way. She admits that some of the rules are senseless, and she bends them when she can. She also knows when she is being conned and chooses to set clear limits, rather than to punish afterward.

Several matrons are blind to certain of the prisoners’ activities, perhaps because they don’t want the trouble that might follow a confrontation. Matron F enters our cell and L and I become nervous because our cellmates R and N are in the shower-toilet area, behind a sheet draped across the opening. They are obviously up to something secret. It would not be at all unreasonable to guess they are shooting a little heroin, and later I learn that they were doing exactly that.

R peeps over the sheet and explains to F that she is washing N’s hair. F doesn’t question the fact that R isn’t in the shower. She chats a few minutes and goes on her merry way. Soon she returns and finds the same scene. R talks even faster this time, rattling on about her crocheting, while F sits patiently on the bed waiting, perhaps unwittingly, for her to finish shooting up. She is the same matron who tells us, “Everything is all right,” one night when the cellblock is thick with tension.

Physical attacks are uncommon but a woman has been beaten up. The scuttlebutt is that more of the same is being planned, and after lights out, we are all locked into our cells. Everyone seems to feel anxious and helpless. Matron F believes cell #604 is secure. But prisoners have put paper in the door jamb so they can open it at will to admit the inmates in #605, who are planning another attack on a woman in #604. F tells us, “We know the door to #604 was open, but it’s locked now.” As she says that, one of my cellmates looks through our tiny window and sees an inmate in #604 open the door.

The matrons set a tone which has a great influence on how prisoners feel about themselves and each other. The system, however, requires that even the best matrons contribute to the demoralization of everyone locked behind bars. The background of clanging, yelling, rattling, banging, radio music and TV chatter that goes on from six in the morning to ten-thirty at night is the only thing I find truly difficult to endure.

But I see no signs of it bothering the matrons. Their job is challenging at times, though it’s not steady hard work. Often there is plenty of time chat with each other in the booking area, though inmates are discharged and others check in, at unpredictable times. Sometimes the jail is too short-staffed to efficiently handle booking new people, coping with hostile or violent prisoners, and battling a computer that scrambles information. At such times matrons will often stay away from prisoners and their barrage of requests and questions: “Please open the window.” “Will you call the nurse back here?” “What time do we get out of the cell?” “Please get the radio now.”  “Is there ‘rec’ today?”

The matron may cope with this verbal gauntlet with a casual, “sure, just a minute,” which may immediately be forgotten. Or with “I don’t know,” delivered as if the question had only the remotest connection with the matron’s job. The prisoners may be reduced to passive waiting, or to shouting like clamoring children and banging on doors to obtain “minor” legitimate conveniences that through frustration have taken on immense importance.

THE SYSTEM

No matron can compensate for our lives confined in cages; for the arbitrariness and punitive aspects of the rules; for the lack of adequate health care, or for the deadly sameness of each day. Matrons and nurses often respond with equal indifference to minor complaints and requests for essential health care. Women are sometimes deprived of medicine for ulcers or asthma. They can’t get medically sound diets for gout or ulcers. One woman brought directly from a car accident is not examined until, hours later, she collapses onto the concrete floor.

My first impression is that jail time is easy. Women immersed in street life meet old friends, cousins, aunts, friends of friends, and at times a cell will sound almost like a class reunion. I am surprised to find myself a participant in that, when a couple of new women arrive and are assigned to my cell. Suddenly, their laughter and loud whoops reverberate throughout the jail, and they shout in amazement, “Miz Crow! What are you doing here?” (My name was Crow then.)

 Other cell mates gather around, puzzled. A few years earlier, as a social work intern, I had persuaded a judge that these two women, F and N were ready to reform their lives of prostitution and should be let out of jail. I join in the hilarity and say, “What are you doing here? I got you out of jail!”  Everyone finds this situation spectacularly funny, and it certainly breaks up the boredom of the day.

The old hands often go to bed immediately upon arrival, staying there most of the time for three or four days as if it is the only rest they are likely to get for a very long time. But eventually, all fall into the jail routine: a little TV and reading, a lot of gossiping, casual complaining and waiting. Waiting for the next meal, waiting for the cell to be unlocked, for the phone, for recreation, church services, health clinic. We wait for commissary night, for Sunday visitors. For the mail, the lawyer, the bail money, the trial, the sentencing. Waiting for the nurse to make rounds in the faint hope of relief from pain or from the sleepless nights or from the anxiety of not knowing where the “old man” is, whether the children will be placed in a foster home, or an eviction notice served. We wait for anything at all to break the monotony of life in what feels like a cage.

Certain social class privileges operate to reduce some of the tedium of the daily routine, and I am one of the beneficiaries. One of my lawyer friends visits me, not just on the designated Sunday hours, with it’s strict timing and awkward exchanges through a thick window. She shows up whenever it is convenient for her, presents her lawyer credentials and we are admitted to a comfortable spacious room to chat for as long as we please. She hasn’t had to lie because the matrons assume she is my attorney for my case, not just a friend who happens to be a lawyer.

What passes for a schedule can change without notice or reason and being told we can expect the phone, the cell being unlocked or an exercise opportunity is of little or no value. There is no way to know for sure whether it will happen at the announced time. The opportunity to plan one’s own time would be a tiny bit of autonomy in a sea of powerlessness.

I decide to stop playing the waiting game, their game, and to get onto my own schedule. I find in the library a novel so good I can concentrate fully despite the radio, TV, yelling clanging. I settle down on the bunk bed and start reading. For ten minutes I’m delightedly engrossed in someone else’s life, and I’m feeling good about doing what I choose to do.

But, Clang!  The cell door is flung open, forcing me to shift my attention. The pleasure of choosing for myself how I will spend my time is suddenly muddied by opportunities offered by the system. With the cell unlocked, I can walk in the hall for exercise, take a bath, use the pay phone to call a friend long distance. I can visit other inmates in their cells. None of those items are on my list of desires right now, but if I am to do anything at all outside the cell, this is my last chance for an unpredictable number of hours. If I resolutely stick to my own schedule and not theirs, I will be deprived of all those out-of-cell “freedoms.” The system of arbitrarily locking and unlocking cell doors seems designed to foster helplessness and dependency.

Grudgingly, I put my book aside and go out to the booking area to call my friend in Tucson. This may be the only opportunity for a couple of days or longer, so I’m surrendering to the power of the system again. Matron Y doesn’t look up from her paper work. I adjust my attitude to avoid sounding as if I’m begging or demanding. I ask, “Is it all right if I use the long distance phone?”

“Why do you need it?” she asks. I hesitate, trying to think of what answer she wants. I feel a sudden empathy for my former students who were wedded to the Right Answer technique of dealing with teachers. I had scrupulously encouraged them to use their reason to arrive at answers that made sense to them, but they persisted in coming up with whatever they imagined I wanted them to say.

            In my usual life I would have explained to Y that she had no right to invade my privacy and that phone regulations should be posted. In short, I would try to make her understand that even prisoners have rights. But in the jail world my rights are both dubious and limited. More to the point, I’m willing to give Y the answer she wants if I can figure out what that is. I hear myself mumbling about “calling someone who’s writing something…uh, well… never mind, it’s too complicated.” All that’s missing is a shuffle.

            My “explanation” is quite incomprehensible. But Y is satisfied that it is not a frivolous call, not for pleasure. Matron S is the only one who says it out loud, but the unwritten rule does seem to be, “You are here to suffer, and if you are indulging yourself in pleasure, then we cannot allow it.”

I surreptitiously glance about and dial “collect” to reach my Tucson friend. I am circumspect because this call is probably not “legitimate.” I instinctively hunch down, so that matrons at their desks won’t notice me. I’m soon talking to my friend, and we’re laughing together. But then I see a matron coming in my direction, and I surprise myself by immediately cutting short my laughter and looking down at the floor, as if I might become invisible..

I have always looked people directly in the eye. Is this how people become “shifty-eyed, untrustworthy, criminal types”? I think of the stereotypical southern black person studying his shoes when a powerful white person speaks to him. I recall white girls in the ghetto school where I taught telling me why they avoided eye contact with certain black students. It was a useful survival technique, and I thought I had some understanding of how they felt. Yet, I had thought it would be worth the price for them to work out a straightforward way of dealing with a difficult problem. Now in the jail I discover that trying to seem invisible is a small price to pay to avoid having a phone call cut short.

I’m learning something about an economy of scarcity, too. Whether the scarce commodity is phone time or blankets or healthy, tasty food, the problem is not so much that there is not enough, as that I have no control over getting more of whatever it is. So I take what I can get, whether or not it is something I want at the moment. Only once do I turn down an offer with a polite, “No, thank you.” That’s on my second day in jail when a trustee offers me an extra milk, and I realize just too late, that I should have taken it for later or for someone else.

I begin to understand why my cellmate tried to help me out on my first commissary night by trying to convince the matron she shorted me on stamps. I begin to see why prisoners “borrow” stamps or cigarettes no matter how many they have stashed away. It amazes me that there is apparently very little intra-prisoner stealing.

I have learned to value the virtuosity of invented reasons for using the pay phone for “emergency” situations. And I understand why there is an endless parade of sickness scenarios whenever the nurse arrives with her wares. I know, now, why that results in the nurses doing so well at protecting themselves from the “con” that they have stopped believing pain is real. All that is part of the motivation for the jail’s constant gaming–to get as much as possible, as soon as possible of whatever is available. There isn’t much of whatever it is, but there may be even less tomorrow.

But there is more to it than that. On the most superficial level, the gaming is fun, even for me. I would normally do almost anything to avid being manipulative. But with no other entertainment or challenge available, gaming becomes attractive. For instance, “double-scrub” day is a weekly event. Every Wednesday we are directed to scrub walls, bars, toilet and sink, as well as to put out of sight nearly everything not in use at the moment. Then our cells are inspected and “forbidden” materials such as extra blanket or books are likely to be removed.

            An argument sometimes takes place over dealing with this and other demands of the matrons. There are the “good Niggers,” the obedient people who try to ask for virtually nothing, which would risk the indignity of being turned down or ignored. They try to anticipate and comply with every demand. This method is almost hassle-free. It results in few confrontations and it is possible to enjoy the illusion that one is acting autonomously.

            At first, anyway, I belong to the principle-upholders’ school of “bad Niggers” who say “there’s no good reason the matron should object, so I’ll ignore the rule until someone insists I do it differently.” Some in this category gripe to the matrons about what is unfair, and the matrons generally act as if they are registering those complaints, even when they are shouted in anger. It is as if they consider it normal for us “girls” to be a little bratty. I am more likely to explain why I think a rule is unjust and unnecessary, or a violation of my rights. My manner, which I strive to make respectful, seems to irk them more that the teenage style of antics of other inmates.

A third way to cope is to con. To my surprise, there comes a time when, to ensure that I’ll be warm enough, I fold two blankets together to look like one. Next, I feel as if I have made a significant change in philosophy when I start gaming the system on “double scrubbing day.” I fill the scrub bucket with water and Lysol and bring it to the cell, not to use, but so the matron will believe we’re obediently “double-scrubbing.”

            After about six weeks I’m surprised to realize I have evolved from a “principle-upholder” to a “Bad Nigger,” and then to a “con artist.” I wonder how long it would take for this form of adaptation to become permanently embedded in a person’s character. As a civil libertarian, I am irrationally surprised that no one here shares my concern for the importance of a jail “constitution”–a clear set of rules and routines posted along with penalties for infractions. I persist in asking questions such as, “Where is it written that I can’t use the extra mattress as a pillow?” “How can I be expected to know how much time I’m allowed to spend with each visitor?”

The other prisoners more often insist that writing the rules might make things worse. The matrons might feel obliged to enforce them. And after a couple of weeks, I have learned the games to play with each matron, and have accumulated a stack of books. Though that is against the rules, there has been no repercussion but a half-hearted, “You’re not supposed to have more than two books in your cell,” I realize that I will be grateful if no opportunity arises to stand up and fight for my principles, and perhaps lose little advantages I have gained.

            And so, despite unhealthy, bad tasting food, body tension that comes from having nowhere to sit but the bunk or the backless, cold steel bench, jail time comes to seem not so bad. I am eager to be home in my own bed, yet feel sad at leaving my cellmates.

Many of my jail mates are nineteen or twenty, and the young seem endlessly adaptable. But at what cost! Cultivating passivity, dishonesty and dependency are unlikely foundations for “reform” or for effectively taking charge of their own lives.

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