Prison Labor

Posted on February 17, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

A new story emerged from Boston’s never-ending snow fall yesterday: first there was a call for people to help shovel the MBTA tracks at a rate of $30/hour. Not long after that, came a clarification: the offer was only open to union members.

Then, at last, an additional observation: state prison inmates were also clearing the tracks.

Presumably, with plenty of snow to go around, these inmates weren’t taking any union jobs, but there are still plenty of concerns with this approach.

For one thing, just how much are the prisoners getting paid for their work? The Department of Corrections hasn’t released those details, but with the median wage of state workers coming to a meager 20 cents, I’m going to guess they weren’t paid very much.

I was really taken with the reaction to this news. The comments on Universal Hub offer a pretty diverse range of views, coupled with a somewhat hilarious attempt at citing various acquaintance as sources.

Some people were appalled, calling the use of prison inmates “slave labor.” Others were supportive, explaining that the program is voluntary and that it support re-entry.

And then, of course, there’s that old canard:

These are men who commented crimes and have lost the right to be part of society. In order to be invited back into society they’re being punished accordingly…When you commit crimes and are found guilty you give up some of your basic rights.

But how are we to evaluate these conflicting views?

Well, first, I think it’s important to realize this is not anything new. In 2011, Middlesex County inmates went out shoveling with little fanfare. Suffolk County has operated a Community Works Program for years.

That program has a particularly engaging description, reassuring citizens that inmates are under the constant watch of an armed Sheriff’s deputy and that the end result of the program is quite simply a win–win. The inmates give back a measure of the cost of their incarceration while learning the skills needed to conduct themselves as responsible, contributing members of society and the law enforcement community benefits by breaking the cycle of inmate recidivism.

There’s even a happy logo of people with shovels to be extra convincing.

To be honest, I know nothing about this program, and I don’t have enough information to make an informed decision. But I am skeptical.

Maybe shoveling snow in sub-zero temperatures is more enjoyable than being locked in cage, but that doesn’t seem to be saying much.

Perhaps we should go all Roman and have inmates engage in Gladiatorial combat. After all, that would be a way more interesting way to live. I’d bet we’d volunteers.

But these individual, probably well-intentioned, programs are not my problem. The problem is deeper than that.

Today’s Boston Globe reported that the the idea to use inmate labor “came after Mayor Marty Walsh’s office asked all city departments to more efficiently use their resources.”

Because inmates are resources.

Not people.

And that’s the problem. It’s not a problem specific to Boston or to Massachusetts, but to our whole, national, prison system.

The 13th amendment states:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States

As much as I disagree with the commenter who argued that criminals have lost the right to be part of society, who argued that punishment is the only atonement for their sins, that’s really what this issue comes down to.

I don’t know much about people in prison, but I do know this: they are people.

They aren’t resources to be used efficiently. They aren’t three fifths of a person. They are people.

Living, breathing, feeling, people.

Regardless of their crimes, regardless of their wrongs, regardless of what sins we may see upon their soul – perhaps it’s time we started treating them like that:

Like people.

You Can’t Will Yourself a Better Life

Posted on February 6, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

Years ago, I read this mediocre tween novel about a group of people who enslaved another group of people on a frost planet or something. The privileged group lived in luxury while the oppressed group slaved away in ice mines.

I’m not sure why they were mining ice, but the result was this group of people was always cold. Not just chilly, but perpetually on the verge of freezing to death.

This made them easy to oppress. Not only did the ruling group have the power to quash any rebellion, but the enslaved group was so physically devastated as to be hardly able to rouse a resistance in the first place.

In the end – spoiler alert, but don’t read this book anyway – the oppressed group rallied the power do fight for and achieve equality. The catalyst which allowed them to achieve this momentous feat was when our hero discovered the power was in her all the time.

She and her people could be warm, she discovered. All they had to do was think warm thoughts.

No, seriously. The solution to these people being enslaved for generations was for them to visualize images of fire. Problem solved.

Even knowing this was a fantasy novel, that was always a little much suspension of disbelief for me.

You can’t will yourself to be warm.

In fact, feeling warm in a cold environment is one of the warning signs for frostbite, but I suppose it could also mean your ready to throw off the shackles of oppression.

It’s a nice story. It’s a nice idea that all you need to do is find your inner power and believe in yourself. I believe there’s a story like that about a girl with “magic” ballet shoes. It turns out she could dance beautifully the whole time – the “magic” shoes just helped her believe.

It’s a nice story. But it IS a story. And it is, in fact, a dangerous story.

In the short story American Hijiki, Akiyuki Nosaka recounts his moments from his childhood in post-war Japan. The work gets its name from his experience of an American airdrop of what his family took to be Hijiki – a type of seaweed. They were confused when they tried to eat it, though – as it turns out, it was tea.

But there’s another parable in there which seems relevant. After the war ended, Americans generously air-dropped aid packages Japanese families, who were starving since all their fields had been destroyed. They had been defeated, they had been humiliated, and they had no food to survive. But Americans dropped aid packages.

For weeks at a time they dropped nothing but bubble gum.

They dropped bubble gum to feed these starving souls.

And that, Nosaka says, is when he learned: you can’t get full from bubble gum.

And don’t think he didn’t try. Nosaka details different ways they tried to prepare the gum. Ways they tried to squeeze out the flavor or use the sticks to quell their empty stomachs. But nothing they did helped.

Because you can’t get full from bubble gum.

Just like you can’t warm yourself by thinking about it and you can’t will yourself a better life if you try.

Yes, individuals have agency. They have the capacity to make good choices and bad, and a lot can be changed by a person’s will and resolve. But at the end of the day, context is everything.

No matter how hard you try, you can’t get full on bubble gum.

Gender and Grammar

Posted on February 4, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

I generally feel rather strongly about using correct grammar. I suppose I ought to as a communications professional. But there are a few rules which I continue to break no many how many times I’ve been corrected.

I almost wish I’d kept a running tally, for example, of the number of times I’ve been marked down for noun/pronoun disagreement. That is, for writing sentences such as:

Did your child get their vaccine?

That’s incorrect, you see, because the child is singular while “their” is plural. You could ask about children getting their vaccine, but if your talking to a person with one child, that is not an optimal solution.

Traditionally, the proper approach was to always use “he” when a singular gender was unknown.

But, as others have noted this approach is generally considered “outdated and sexist.” An unknown person isn’t always male, after all.

So then came the so-called gender-neutral solutions:

Did your child get his or her vaccine?

Or, if you’d like to be a little more edgy, you can replace the default “he” to a default “she”:

From each, according to her abilities.

Those were the grammatical suggestions I received growing up, but neither ever seemed quite satisfactory.

“He or she” is just clunky. If you don’t know the gender of the person you are talking about, nobody cares enough for you to spend that much time on it.

Using a default “she” is delightfully subversive, but I personally find it rather stale. It seems to typically be used by men who are trying too hard to prove they’re feminists. That use may have its place, but is generally unhelpful to me.

And, of course, there’s a bigger problem to these solutions: both reinforce a gender binary. Are “his” and “hers” the only gender options?

English doesn’t offer much in the way of genderless nouns, as you might guess from the fact that they would more properly be called “neuter” nouns.

Did your child get its vaccine?

Well, okay, I might say that, but only because I am cold-hearted and childless.

From each, according to its abilities.

Better get ready for the Marxist robot take over.

Some have advocated for the use of newer pronouns, such as ze and xe. Call me old fashion, but I just prefer the simple they.

And better yet, there’s a now a term for this. I haven’t been suffering from noun/pronoun disagreement after all – I’ve just been using the singular they.

This may seem all neither here nor there, but words matter. Words are important.

So I was delighted to see the New York Times recently profile students at the University of Vermont – where the university allows students “to select their own identity — a new first name, regardless of whether they’ve legally changed it, as well as a chosen pronoun — and records these details in the campuswide information system so that professors have the correct terminology at their fingertips.”

Of course, this doesn’t stop the times from trotting out tired tropes of gender norms – saying one student “was born female, has a gentle disposition, and certainly appears feminine.”

But, I suppose, change happens bit by bit. It changes through big movements and upheaval, but it also changes through words and grammar. And so I stand by my grammatical standard:

Regardless of a person’s gender, they can go by any pronoun they want.

Langston Hughes

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

This past weekend was Langston Hughes’ 113th Birthday, a fact which was commemorated in a Google doodle.

A prolific and powerful writer, Hughes wrote in many forms – poetry, plays, fiction and non-fiction.

All his work is remarkable, but I’ve always been particularly taken with his short poems – his ability to express so much with so little. Take, for example, Winter Moon:

How thin and sharp is the moon tonight!
How thin and sharp and ghostly white
Is the slim curved crook of the moon tonight!

But, of course, the real heart of his work was around social and racial justice. Hughes has plenty of works which tackle these issues outright – the 1947 ballad Freedom Train, for example.

And yet, there are few works I found as powerful, as poignant, as Lanston Hughes’ simple note, For Selma:

In places like
Selma, Alabama,
Kids say,
    In places like
    Chicago and New York…
In places like
Chicago and New York
Kids say,
    In places like
    London and Paris…
In places like
London and Paris
Kids say,
    In places like
    Chicago and New York…

Legal Observers

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

I recently had the pleasure of going to a Legal Observer training by the National Lawyer’s Guild.

And what, you might ask, is a Legal Observer?

As the National Lawyer’s Guild describes:

The Legal Observer® program is part of a comprehensive system of legal support designed to enable people to express their political views as fully as possible without unconstitutional disruption or interference by the police and with the fewest possible consequences from the criminal justice system.

What’s particularly interesting is that Legal Observers are trained and directed by Guild attorneys, who often have established attorney-client relationships with activist organizations, or are in litigation challenging police tactics at mass assemblies.

Essentially, Legal Observers – who don’t need to be lawyers themselves – serve as part of the legal team for activist organizations and thus have attorney-client privilege . Their role is to objectively document and observe demonstrations and, if necessary, to provide legal support to their client activists.

Additionally, as the Guild adds: The presence of Legal Observers® may serve as a deterrent to unconstitutional behavior by law enforcement during a demonstration.

Trained Observers are added to a distribution list of opportunities and are welcome to volunteer for as many or as few events as they have capacity for.

For information about upcoming trainings, contact your local Guild chapter. The Boston office can be reached at (617) 227-7335.

What Can be Done?

Posted on January 21, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

Faced with the ills of the world it is not uncommon to ask, What can be done?

This may be regret, heaved with a heavy sigh – what can be done?

Or it may be hope, seeking tactical advantage – what can be done?

Either way the question is the same. Whether the problems of the world seem utterly insurmountable or whether scrappy solutions seem effective enough, the question remains: what can be done?

The question itself is arguably disempowering – conjuring images of far-off experts or distant lands. What can be done [by those in power]? The question seems to ask.

In civic studies, we focus on an individual’s agency and on the collective power of people. Instead of asking what can be done, we ask what can we do?

What can be done by you and I? What can be done collectively by anyone seeking solutions to our most challenging problems? What steps can you and I take today, tomorrow, and ever onward to make the world better? What can we do?

The question is a daunting one. Putting the focus on ourselves puts the pressure on ourselves. What can we do?

What can I do?

I could do nothing. An option, perhaps, but a wholly dissatisfying one.

I could do something. A more promising tack, but with many questions in its wake. What something should I do? How much something is enough?

There is no solution, no easy formula, no simple way of knowing that x number of hours or y number of dollars fulfills your moral obligations to your fellow man. So still we are left with the question, what can we do?

You can try to logic your way into an answer – I shouldn’t give so much time that I burn out, I shouldn’t give more philanthropically than is sustainable. But to me those answers always feel hollow.

There is always more work to be done. There is always more I could give.

And then there are the myriad challenges for which I have no solutions. For which I have no knowledge and no real capacity to bring about positive change. Thousands are dying in Nigeria.

What can I do?

The haunting answer maybe nothing.

There are certainly things in this world which are beyond my control. I’ve no powers over life or death, over good fortune or ill. There are times when you have to let go. There are times when there is nothing to be done.

But this doesn’t have to be an icy fate. Even knowing the odds, knowing the challenges, knowing how little power we have in the face of cataclysmic challenges. Even knowing all this we can still pause and ask…

What can we do?

Protest Strategies

Posted on January 20, 2015 by Sarah Shugars

Last week, protesters in Boston shut down 93 in both directions during rush hour. As they explained in their statement, they took this action to “disrupt business as usual” and protest police and state violence against Black people.

And disrupt they did.

But over the last few days, I’ve watched a fascinating debate emerge: was this the best form of action?

There are concerns about safety: at least one ambulance was diverted as a result of the action. There are concerns about precedent: do we want to be telling anyone that the dangerous act of blocking traffic is okay? There are concerns about effect: will this just make people angry, turning them off from really caring about the (important) cause?

And, of course, there are concerns about legitimacy: were the protesters just entitled white people? Did they truly have the buy in and support of Black Lives Matter? Were black people and people of color disproportionally negatively effected by being stuck in traffic? Did they lose wages? Did they lose their jobs? Did the protesters wildly misunderstand their target by calling Medford/Somerville “predominantly white, wealthy suburbs”?

These are all good questions.

There are, of course, rebuttals to all these points. One blogger, for example, argues: Boston is notorious for its traffic coming to a complete standstill on major thoroughfares. During baseball season, ambulances are routinely prevented from reaching major Boston hospitals in an efficient manner. I wonder whether the people who are attempting to discredit the #BlackLivesMatter protest also speak out against the Red Sox and their fans for blocking traffic?

Those into history can revisit three weeks in 1981 when firefighters, police officers, and others regularly blocked rush hour traffic to protest layoffs – and there were no arrests. Like a Blue Mass Group blogger you might ask: Is it possible that there were no arrests because the police, although charged with trying to keep the roadways open, were basically in sympathy with the protesters? Or have policies regarding when to arrest protesters changed over the years?

These are also good questions.

Everybody has good questions, but but no one has good answers. It’s not that surprising, I suppose – if anyone had designed the “perfect protest” I’m sure we’d all have heard about it by now.

But there is no ideal protest formula, no way of know exactly what is best. Protests are messy, they’re complicated, and most of all, they are controversial.

And that is truly the crux of the matter. The debate isn’t really about how many ambulances were effected, or how this traffic compares to regular terrible traffic.

The real question is: are disruptive tactics good? Do they generate change in ways that other tactics cannot?

I don’t know the answer to that question – no one does – and it’s a great, interesting, rich topic of debate.

Personally, I tend to be conflict-avoidant: I can’t honestly say that I’m prepared to take part in any action which will lead to being arrested. But I’m not convinced that’s a good thing. Perhaps I am wise, perhaps I am a coward. I couldn’t say for sure.

But I will say this: I’m not prepared to judge anyone else for participating in the actions they think are most likely to bring about the change they want to see.

Let’s talk about strategy. Let’s talk about tactics. Let’s discuss what works and what doesn’t work, let’s debate what actions and reactions are most meaningful. But at the end of the day, yes – I stand by the Boston protesters.

I am proud they had the courage to stand up for what they believe. If only each of us could say the same.

Work, Dialogue, and Liberation

Posted on December 19, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

I was struck this morning by this excerpt from Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed:

I shall start by reaffirming that humankind, as beings of the praxis, differ from animals, which are beings of pure activity. Animals do not consider the world; they are immersed in it. In contrast, human beings emerge from the world, objectify it, and in so doing can understand it and transform it with their labor.

Animals, which do not labor, live in a setting which they cannot transcend. Hence, each animal species lives in the context appropriate to it, and these contexts, while open to humans, cannot communicate among themselves.

Animals are “beings of pure activity,” but animals “do not labor.” Only human beings – through their self-awareness, through their naming of the world – only human beings labor and thus transform the world.

Harry Boyte has written extensively about “public work,” an approach which seeks to move civic activity beyond the voluntary sector, to bring work and workplaces into an understanding of active citizenship.

This approach powerfully considers the ability of people to physically and creatively transform their world – not only through their thoughts and ideas, but through their work: through their work imagining, building, and creating something together. This public work, Boyte argues, is the true heart of civic efforts, the core of what it means to live and co-create together.

Freire’s understanding seems importantly related, yet subtly different.

Freire argues that “human activity is theory and practice; it is reflection and action. It cannot…be reduced to either verbalism or activism.”

in many ways, that argument seems near the core to an understanding of public work. To be is not simply to be, to think does not simply imply I am. To be, to think, to exist as a free and conscious agent – this is synonymous with action.

I think. I am. I do.

For the “fully human,” as Freire would say, for the liberated person, these things are synonymous. They cannot be separated.

For Freire, the power of “public work” comes from the connection of thinking and doing:

…the revolutionary effort to transform these structures radically cannot designate its leaders as its thinkers and the oppressed as mere doers….true commitment to the people…cannot fail to assign the people a fundamental role in the transformation process. The leaders cannot treat the oppressed as mere activists to be denied the opportunity of reflection and allowed merely the illusion of acting.

While Freire never uses the phrase “public work,” all this seems very much in line with the views of Boyte and other proponents of the approach.

But Freire adds another piece to the puzzle. For Freire, communication is a critical piece of understanding, it is a critical piece of liberation. In his view, human beings first express their freedom as they name their world. As beings of consciousness, humans recognize the world around them. By naming, they identify themselves as as free beings of agency, with power to shape the world around them.

This power of communication has important implications for the value of deliberative dialogue as a tool to transform, as a tool of liberation, as a tool of action.

Dialogue with the people is radically necessary to every authentic revolution, Freire writes.

Sooner or later, a true revolution must initiate a courageous dialogue with the people. Its very legitimacy lies in that dialogue. It cannot fear the people, their expression, their effective participation in power. It must be accountable to them, must speak frankly to them of its achievements, its mistakes, its miscalculations and its difficulties.

And make no mistake, this dialogue isn’t “just talk.” For Freire, this dialogue is the embodiment of action:

Let me emphasize that my defense of the praxis implies no dichotomy by which this praxis could be divided into a prior stage of reflection and a subsequent stage of of action. Action and reflection occur simultaneously…Critical reflection is also action.

The revolution is made neither by the leaders for the people no by the people for the leaders, but by both acting together in unshakeable solidarity. This solidarity is born only when the leaders witness to it by their humble, loving, and courageous encounter with the people. Not all men and women have sufficient courage for this encounter – but when they avoid encounter they become inflexible and treat others as mere objects; instead of nurturing life, the kill life; instead of searching for life, they flee from it. And these are oppressor characteristics.

Some may think that to affirm dialogue – the encounter of women and men in the the world in order to transform the world – is naively and subjectively idealistic. There is nothing, however, more real or concrete than people in the world and with the world, than humans with other humans – and some people against others, as oppressing and oppressed classes.

Millions March Boston

Posted on December 15, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

On Saturday, I went into Boston. A rare occurrence for someone who rarely leaves the four square miles of my home city.

But I went into Boston for Millions March Boston.

A day of anger and sadness. A day of action. A day of reflection.

I went into Boston because black lives matter.

Media reports say one thousand people were there. Twenty three people got arrested. But it was hard for me to tell. I was lost in the throng of the crowd.

There were more police officers than I knew what to do with.

I have been to many protests. I have been to many rallies. I’ve seen men with assault rifles guard the streets during the Boston DNC. I have never seen so many police officers.

I was surprised.

I didn’t feel that threatening.

The officers were dressed to make a statement. They were dressed for battle. In full riot gear with long, threatening batons and bright green vests. They stood still. Unmoving. Some revolutionary version of the British Royal Guard.

I know people who are police officers, but these police officers didn’t feel like people.

I wondered what they were like in real life.

We marched to the Nashua Street County Jail. A jail which houses 700 pretrial detainees.

We stood chanting in the street while inmates beat on the windows.

I wondered who was in there. I wondered what they were accused of. I wondered if they’d ever seen something like this.

And I wondered what they were like in real life.

The Moon Is Down

Posted on December 11, 2014 by Sarah Shugars

Periodically, along with other Tufts faculty and staff, I am asked to share a short book recommendation.

This time I recommended The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck. It’s one of those books I never seem to own because every time I get a copy I immediate give it away. I’m a big fan of Steinbeck, who, as a California native, I consider Steinbeck a “local boy.” This is one of his few books which doesn’t take place along the dusty plains of Salinas, but it may just be my favorite.

Here is the recommendation I submitted:

Published in 1942 and distributed illegally in Nazi-occupied France, this novel tells the story of the military invasion of a small, northern European town. Under cover of darkness the town is taken by surprise in a swift and bloodless maneuver. Wanting nothing more than a simple life, the townspeople initially accept the suppression of their democratically elected officials and consent to military rule. In the hopes of maintaining the town’s submission, military leaders seek to be benevolent in their rule. But a surface of civility masks a deeper oppression. As winter sets in, relationships begin to fray and the absence of democracy is more deeply felt. Steinbeck expertly details the motivations of townspeople and invaders alike, illustrating how subtle and insidious oppression can be. A tale of oppression and resistance, the Moon is Down inspires resisters everywhere to push for a truly free and democratic society.

There’s one line I really love in the book – [Spoiler Alert] – though since I never actually have a copy, I am left to rely on my memory and can only paraphrase here.

At the moment when it truly crystallizes for the townspeople that they are oppressed, when they realize just how much they have lost their freedom, Steinbeck writes:

It was as if a cry went through the town: Resist. Resist today. Resist tomorrow. Resist. Resist. Resist.

Civic Studies

An intellectual community of researchers and practitioners dedicated to building the emerging field of civic studies

Category Archives: Justice