Today is the first day I've felt happy, yes truly happy (despite my concern for the civets) since I don't know when... like ferevah. And do you want to know why? Because it's a campaign year, lovey, that's why. There's no greater show on the planet if you ask me. If you didn't see the Dems face off in their first debate of the year last night, there were some pretty funny moments, like when Dean promised to balance the budget in the "6th or 7th year" of his administration. Or when Kucinich, when told he wasn't very "electable" said "well, I'm electable if you vote for me!"

I eat this stuff up. But even though I would call the American presidential campaign "the greatest show on earth", I'm not so cynical as to believe that the election doesn't change anything. When some Greensters back in 2thou said things to that extent it kinda pissed me off; I mean you gotta agree that we'd be in a different place today if Ole Al was prez (although I'm with you all the way in the whole Clinton-was-the-new-Reagan theory.) Anywho! I digress. But, this is just to say that I'm very excited. Everyday brings something new from now to November. My golden boy from 2000, Bill Bradley, just endorsed Dean today, which is cool I guess. But what is up with Dean, man? Is he crazy or what? I think "pugnacious" is my favorite word for him. He reminds me too much of myself I'm afraid: embittered and impassioned-- he could come off as a leftist wingnut in a national campaign. But as he said last night, "A gaffe in Washington is when you tell the truth and the Washington establishment doesn't think you should have," which is why we get kicked out of all the best parties with all the choice hors d'oeuvres.

Hey, if you want some fun facts, go to the Des Moines Register's page on the Campaign . They have the first caucus so they know what's what. According to them, George Bush has raised close to a 100 MILLION dollars already! YeeHaw! Let the games begin!

Oh also, PollingReport is great. I'm gonna add it to my links. Check it DAILY!

(and btw i stole the above picture from MSNBC. YUK!)

Here is an article I wrote for the IMC in August 2001 when there was a prison convention in Philadelphia. Still has some good facts:

Prisons of Profit: Turning a Buck on America's Incarceration Frenzy

The American Correctional Association has no qualms about defining itself as a businessman's dream: an organization whose main goal is to turn a profit for its members. But unlike most capitalist corporations, the vendors who will arrive this week to hawk their wares are making money off of people who are kept behind bars. "Don't let your company miss out on this prime, revenue-generating opportunity!" the ACA says on their webpage, just after reminding us that nearly two million Americans are incarcerated, with "dramatic increases' forecasted for the years ahead.

Not only does the ACA organize two conventions like this one every year, but it also sells "records of corrections practitioners, buyers, and users" to corporations for direct mailings, "one of the most targeted, measurable and cost-effective ways to sell your products and services to the growing corrections and criminal justice markets." (http://www.corrections.com/aca/)

But the ACA, like any business convention organizer, is only as powerful and profitable as its members. And the vast enterprise of privatization and profiteering in American prisons is growing as fast as the inmate population. A dangerous cycle of incarceration and privatization has been building over the past two decades. With the national annual cost of corrections facilities coming in around the $50 billion mark, prisons and prisoners have become a growth market. And 81% of sales of prison goods take place at conventions like the ACA's.

From products like the B.O.S.S., the body orifice safety scanner, to the Tasertron, a "less-lethal handheld electronic immobilization weapon" there is an increasing number of specialized products designed to restrain and subdue inmates. Besides these control devices, there is also a huge market for general care and services prisoners need, like food, clothes, telephones, and health care. Here as well prisoners' needs are sacrificed to the bottom line of profit. MCI, for example, supplies pay phones to prisons, where the pay-per-call phones make three times as much as payphones on the street, since this is the only way prisoners have of contacting people on outside. MCI installed its phones in Californian prisons through a program called Maximum Security, free of charge to the state, along with 32% of the profits thrown in for good measure. They then went on to charge a $3 surcharge on every call prisoners made. In one state MCI Maximum security was caught tacking an extra minute onto each call. (http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98dec/pris2.htm)

Unfortunately, these are only small pieces of a much larger picture. States are overwhelmed by the cost of incarcerating so many people every year. The current climate of our justice system, namely the enthusiasm for harsh mandatory sentences for non-violent offenders, continues to exacerbate the problem. The story of how these mandatory sentences get tied up with a booming corrections market reveals the systematic classism and racism that dominate American capitalism.

The History of Private Prisons

In 1973, Nelson Rockefeller, then governor of New York State, established the first mandatory sentences for drug offenders in the nation, and saw his prison population explode. At about the same time, governor of California, Ronald Reagan, opened the first privately owned and operated prisons to hold illegal immigrants. Most for-profit prisons are minimum security, so they soon became an ideal solution for housing prisoners who weren't particularly violent. Today roughly two-thirds of our prison population is non-violent offenders.

After Regan became President, the Drug War took over American consciousness. Not only mandatory sentences, but the "Three Strikes" rule came into pl
ay
.

Penalties and sentences for possession of certain substances soon came to reflect deep racial differences in the justice system. For example, sentences for possession of crack cocaine, used mainly by African Americans, are five times longer than the charges for a similar amount of powdered cocaine, which is mostly used by whites. This trend has become so extreme that today the ratio of blacks to whites in prison in 6 to 1. (http://www.lindesmith.org/library/)

As the prison population grew, so did the private prison industry. Private prisons today hold about 100,000 prisoners, about 5% of the total population, yet the largest of the corporations who own these prisons turn a pretty profit and are heavily invested in on Wall Street. The Corrections Corporation of American, a multinational business that operates prisons in Puerto Rico, Australia and the United Kingdom, has been called a 'theme stock" for the nineties. (http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=852)

As with the military industrial complex, many of the leaders of the private prison industry are former government big-wigs, blurring the line between national and private interests. Wakenhut Corrections, the second largest private prison operator, was founded and headed by George Wakenhut, a former FBI agent. Wakenhut has worked closely with the Federal government for years, selling its private security services at home and abroad. Its annual profits exceed $1 billion dollars, and its board of directors includes a former head of the FBI, a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, a former CIA director, a former CIA deputy director, a former head of the Secret Service, a former head of the Marine Corps, and a former Attorney General. (http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98dec/pris3.htm)

It should come as no surprise then, that these corporations established a great deal of influence on national security, on investors, and on public opinion. They pour thousands of dollars into lobbying for influence in state and national policy. They also court the press relentlessly, keeping consciousness of private prisons high in the public's mind.

These private prisons operate on the principle of good old fashioned American capitalism. Prisoners are commodities, and the buying and selling of them is the business. The national average cost per day for holding one prisoner is about $43 dollars. Private prisons will bid for prisoners by undercutting each other, asking for $39, or $35 per day to house the state's inmate. This profit mongering results in lower standards of living for the prisoners, as the costs of housing and supporting them gets whittled down to the bottom line.

Supporters of private prisons endorse them as being a good source of labor for communities, especially in rural areas, where jobs are scant. Yet the conditions that rank and file employees are forced to work in are also reflective of purely corporate interests. Whereas in state-run facilities guards are unionized and provided with a retirement fund, private guards are underpaid, prevented from organizing, offered fewer benefits, and are frequently understaffed and overwhelmed. Private prison guards receive little training and preparation for a high-stress job. The combination of these factors often leads to higher levels of violence in private prisons; prisoners against prisoners, prisoners against guards, and guards against prisoners. There are also continuing problems with escapes and riots. In one year at a Bobby Ross Group private prison in Montana three people escaped and one was murdered. "We really hate to lose a customer," a lawyer from the group said.

But the prisoners are not so much customers as they are commodities. Because private prisons are businesses and not state-run organizations, there is no controlling authority to oversee what happens to them. And since private prisons bid for prisoners, a nation-wide trade in inmates has developed, called bed-brokering. States with too many prisoners literally sell them to states
with
room i
n th
eir prisons. This has strange but devastating side-effects, for example one Bobby Ross Group prison in Texas, the Newton County Correctional Center, was Hawaii's third largest prison. This means that prisoners are even further detached from their families and homes. Guards feel no sense of responsibility or accountability in dealing with another state's inmate. And amongst prisoners, already divisive cultural differences often result in violent conflicts.

To transport inmates between states, prisons will subcontract another security firm to drive them across country. Again, the employees of these organizations are often not sufficiently trained or prepared for the job. Inmates who get on the van in one state may be forced to go along for the ride as the bus traverses the country, picking up more people. Sometimes they may spend as much as a month on the road. Again, assaults and escapes are common. (http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98dec/pris2.htm).

Prison Labor

Private prisons will turn a profit on a prisoner even if he spends every day in solitary confinement, but another aspect of the privatization of prison is prison labor. White bread American corporations like Microsoft, Victoria's Secret, TWA and Starbucks have all used prisoners as laborers. A state-subsidized organization called UNICOR employs about 20,000 prisoners nationwide making everything from military uniforms to office furniture. Inmates are paid about $40 per month for their labor.

There is some disagreement about how much of affect prison labor has on other labor markets both in this country and internationally. Christian Parenti agrees that 'politically and ideologically' it’s very important but not necessarily an incentive for locking people up. He quotes a Navy source who says Unicor's "product is inferior, costs more and takes longer to procure." Parenti also states that without the subsidies UNICOR receives from the government, they would go under. In 1999, UNICOR made about $281 million.

On the other side of the debate, Eva Goldberg and Linda Evans write in an article called "The Prison Industrial Complex and the Global Economy" (http://www.prisonactivist.org/crisis/evans-goldberg.html) that "the growth of the prison industrial complex is inextricably tied to the fortunes of labor. Ever since the onset of the Reagan-Bush years in 1980, workers in the United States have been under siege. Aggressive union busting, corporate deregulation, and especially the flight of capital in search of cheaper labor markets, have been crucial factors in the downward plight of American workers."

Whether or not prison labor is an actual competitor with other labor markets seems to matter less than the perception that it is. Certainly American wages have been driven down by forced competition with cheaper markets. And UNICOR states that its program "makes a significant contribution to our nation’s economy by lowering the cost of producing domestic goods in the face of increasing foreign competition."(http://www.unicor.gov/about/partners.htm)

These facts become most disturbing in light of the fact that recidivism, the rate at which people commit more crimes and return to jail, is closely tied to whether or not the person can find employment. For example, one study showed that the rates of youth violence were roughly the same for both white and black men between the ages of 16 and 18. After the teen years, two things become clear; one, most of these men stop committing crimes. Of those who do commit more crimes, twice as many are African American. The significant exception is black men who are employed; their rates of recidivism are comparable to whites. (http://www.lindesmith.org/library/)

Clearly there is a connection between employment and incarceration. Denying people jobs and living wages contributes to the frustration that leads to drug abuse. And keeping people out of legitimate labor could be said to encourage finding alternate means of support in a black market trade
like narco
tics. What
is perh
aps most frustrating is the connection between the loss of jobs to foreign markets, which creates the conditions for crime, which in turn lead to incarceration and forced labor. American prison workers would then be competing on the same level with Third World economies, to which they'd lost potential jobs in the first place.

Parenti writes, that "the answer in the 1990's is clear: racialize poverty via criminal codes, such as drug laws and mandatory minimum sentences that disproportionately affect poor people of color. Then lock up as many people as possible for as long as possible. In this way criminal justice regulates, absorbs, terrorizes and disorganizes the poor."

These are just a few of the facts and factors surrounding the prison-industrial complex. Please follow these links and read the articles mentioned here. As far as solutions to these problems, our first steps would be in abolishing mandatory sentences and private prisons. But these are only the symptoms of the deeper diseases of poverty, racism, classism, and multinational capitalism. Until we break out of those prisons, none of us will be free.

Desert Storm chess set, by E. Howard Kellogg, Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina, ca. 1991
Gift of Mr. Kellogg
Wood, plastic, tile, 2 x 20 1/2 x 20 1/2 inches

In August 1990 Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait to gain possession of its rich oil fields and access to the sea. In retaliation, the United States mounted Operation Desert Shield, condemning Iraq and gathering international support for economic embargoes. When Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, refused to budge, President Bush ordered the U.S. military into battle, launching Operation Desert Storm in January 1991. Victory came swiftly, and by the end of February, Iraqi troops were surrendering by the thousands. Polls showed that a stunning 89 percent of Americans approved of President Bush's actions.

With a nephew held hostage in Iraq during Desert Storm, Mr. Kellogg found comfort in making this battle in miniature. After Iraq's defeat–and his nephew's release–he sent it as a gift to the President.

From the National Archives Exhibit Tokens and Treasures: Gifts to Twelve Presidents

Okay so this journal entry is partly for me and partly for people like me who may be searching on the internet for a sentence like "Help! Everyone thinks i'm a lesbian", or "women with hairy underarms" (which I'm telling you now doesn't turn up exactly what I would call self-help pages (although many viewers clearly help themselves to themselves while viewing pictures of hairy womens' *anything*!)) This is going to be a Michael-length ranting journal, so make yourself comfy, gentle reader.

Anyways, first things first, I have nothing against being a lesbian. Fuck! I wish I was a lesbian! Boy I'd be getting some booty then. From both men and women! (More on that later...) I've mentally tried being a lesbian. I like to look at women, sure, but more in our women-worshipping-society way. I both want IT and to be IT (too much Lacan anybody?) I've even hooked up with women and been turned on by it. But not all the way... I guess I would say the same thing some gay women say about being with men, it's nice but something is missing. It just isn't what I want.

Okay, so gay-bashing motives mostly dispelled, let's move on to the evidence.

Why people think I'm Queer, in three parts:

Exhibit A: My Body
1) I'm proudly zaftig: tall, broad, and plentiful. I don't excercise as an activity in itself. If I move (run, walk, bike) it's to get places, if I lift it's to move things. Anything else and I might as well admit I'm a rat on a wheel.
2) Okay, so this should be number 1. I'm hairy. Not circus freak hairy, but just as hairy as my body (maybe even *your* body) would be if left to its own devices. I think this is important because my body grows that hair for a reason. And my society tells me to shave it off for a ton of reasons. Like to make me look pre-pubescent, like a sexless, powerless child. To "remind" myself (read "convince" myself) that my body is nothing like a man's, not as strong, not as hearty, not as virile. Yes, my hairy pits are sexy (apparently to many "freaks" out there on the internet (maybe not so freaky, just the ones willing to go against what culture represses)) and they should be. They are the sign that I am a sexually mature human female capable of reproducing and otherwise contributing my physical strength (and strong physical scent) to the world.

Women are expected to fight our bodies all the time. Fight the fat, fight the hair, the shape, the color, everything. It's pretty convenient. Instead of society fighting our power, we do it ourselves. Talk about internalizing your true social status. I'm supposed to repress everything naturally feminine about my body, just like the world represses the Feminine in the culture at large (anyone who doesn't agree with this thesis about the continued oppression of women need only email me at holly@elmwoodstrip.com for an update on 21st century "feminism". Sorry to be cynical. But Brittany has liberated us right back to the status of temple prostitutes.)

Exhibit B: My Clothes and Attire
This may be the one where I'm willing to admit some of the responsibility. Even my "women's" clothes are suspiciously unisex. Can I be blamed if high-heels give me headaches? What about
corset-style red-sequined cleavage dresses that leave me more breathless than the fellas? Yeah, sure, if it's Halloween (that's funny if you know me.) Honestly "ladies" clothes are expensive, uncomforatble, too delicate to last through more than a year of continued wearing (the true test for any self-repecting article of clothing.) And what about pockets, huh? Ever wonder why women's pants have no pockets? What woman needs to carry the keys to Her own home, Her own car, Her own money. Oh yeah, only Single women and, you guessed it, dykes! (don't confuse this with a conclusion that all women with pockets in their pants are gay... i'm just riffin' here, but) Think about it... (mwah hah hah ha!! (maniacal paranoid laughter))

Ex
hi
bi

t
C:
My language
As this journal entry can attest to, I don't pull punches when it comes to speaking my mind. Why would I? Everyone has a right to have their hair-brain opinions aired (you are reading this internet journal post after all, so you must agree on some level.) We especially deserve to be heard if our ideas aren't really that hair-brained, or if no one has ever had them and stated them in quite the same way. I'm not going to pretend I'm not smart just to make some lame-ass Y-chromo feel better about himself. Last I checked that wasn't my purpose on this planet. It's all about consciousness-raising baby, for me, for you, pour tout le monde. And language is the only way we have to do it.

So what triggered this rant? Well, of course the not-so-sexual sexual act... I finally, after months and months, hooked up with some boy for a temporarily stimulating interlude. He's not nearly warped enough for me, god bless 'em. He thought the fact that I have a $13 fake black Poe-style raven with real feathers perched in my bedroom was "grim". Well, duh! And he never even really got in touch with my hairy nature, heavens forfend. I think he would have shreiked and kicked me under the bed with the rest of the dust kitties. Anyways, enough about the personal stuff. Here's what was so weird: right up to the point where we were hooking up, he confessed, he was convinced I was gay. He said he wouldn't have flirted with me, danced with me, invited me up to his apartment, if he thought I was straight. At the same time, he said he felt like a creep for hitting on a lesbian. Okay, so he seems like he's about as complicated as I am, granted, and conflicted too, but what's a girl to do, oh what's a girl to do...

Anyways, I have drawn my own conclusions. I think that straight people everywhere owe a great debt to same-sexers for breaking down gender roles for all of us. I don't think Lesbian women make their bodies more like Men's, I think they let their bodies be what they are naturally, Women's, Wemyn's, whatever-- just theirs. They follow their instincts not only with sex, but with gender. Pudgy, skinny, short, fat, tall, spiky, kinky, slinky, ghetto-booty, blue-veined boobies, why can't we all just get along and love the coochie?

wee hoo, this sure is quick! so quick in fact that at the beginning of this message i had to pee pretty bad and i still do but its so quick it really doesn't matter. before in order to generate this much content i would have pissed myself by now! so thanks to you paul. my days of wet spots and plastic seat covers are over!
--off to the lou...