Entitlement

This morning I went to the fifth of six discussions of Michelle Alexander's brilliant study of US society, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. It examines the so-called "War On Drugs" as a system of injustice designed to imprison black men. This system is working very well indeed. It is doing what it was created to do.

Alexander demonstrates that laws in the US "insure that the vast majority of convicted offenders will never integrate into mainstream, white society. They will be discriminated against, legally, for the rest of their lives--denied employment, housing, education, and public benefits. Unable to surmount these obstacles, most will eventually return to prison and then be released again, caught in a closed circuit of perpetual marginality" (186).

This afternoon I passed a luxury car about the size of a tank. In its window I saw the sticker that is the subject of today's blip. It's easy to see who doesn't want change.

Change is at hand. As surely as spring has come, as surely as the trees are blossoming, as surely as the earth rolls, change happens. I will be part of it or die trying.