That Burning Smell is Me Thinking…

People are social creatures. Before cities formed, it was natural for people to gather in tribal groups where everyone knew each other. In the age of large cities, people still gather in groups, but they do so in a different way. These new social groups can be a knitting circle, a neighborhood group, a soccer team, a church, a fraternal order, or a political party. Social Scientists refer to these group bonds as social capital–the trust people share when they know one another (Putnam 18-20). Social capital is at work when “your neighbor walks your dog while you are ill, or the guy behind the counter trusts you to pay him next time” (Shirky 192). Traditionally people built social capital through face-to-face contact with others during social activities, now people are starting to reach out to one another in new ways by using cheap and easy communications like the internet and cell phones. As more people communicate more often each day, the world is changing in ways not seen since Gutenberg introduced his printing press.

Lois Weisberg is a prime example of the traditional way to build social capital. In the late 1950s, she found herself hosting three future legendary science fiction writers in her home when an acquaintance of hers, a young writer named Arthur C. Clarke, co-author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, phoned her up while he was visiting Chicago. Lois (she prefers not to be called Mrs. Weisberg) recalls how she phoned a friend in the publishing business who told her, “Yeah, Isaac Asimov [author of I Robot, and the Foundation Series] is in town. And this guy Robert, Robert…Robert Heinlein [author of Starship Troopers and The Puppet Masters]” (Gladwell). She first met Clarke when she decided to go to a science fiction convention in New York on a whim.

People like Lois are what Malcolm Gladwell calls a “connector,” those who have a knack of connecting, or bridging, different groups. She has a habit of reaching out to people outside her group, and through her contacts with many different people, she has built a large network of friends. Lois bridges many different social circles like theatre, she ran a theatre company; publishing, she once ran an independent newspaper; retail business, she started an antique shop after learning the business in flea markets; and local government, she founded Friends of the Parks in Chicago (Levy; Gladwell). Her ability to connect people from many different backgrounds led Mayor Daley to put her in charge of Chicago’s cultural affairs in 1989. As the “creative director of the city,” she is responsible for many creative civic projects including the Department of Tourism, Gallery 37, the International Press Center, and the Cultural Center in the old library building. One of her most well-known and loved projects was the “Cows on Parade” exhibit, in which artists painted fiberglass sculptures of cows that were placed around Chicago in outdoor public spaces (Levy).

At the beginning of his book Bowling Alone, Robert Putman recounts anecdotes about a bridge club in Pennsylvania that broke up because of shrinking participation; a fall off in membership of a local chapter of the NAACP in Roanoke, Virginia; the Charity league of Dallas holding their last meeting; forty marching band uniforms sitting unused in a closet due to lack of interest; and a VFW post in Illinois that could barely pay taxes on their building. Putnam found stories like these repeated all across America. Many of these organizations thought that their declining memberships were a local problem, but it turned out to be a growing national trend. The national membership director of the VFW put it clearly when he said, “kids today just aren’t joiners” (Putman 15, 16).

Before the decline in social activities in America, there was tremendous growth in participation during the 1950s and 60s due to people having more free time. Churches and synagogues were thriving and voter participation was at an all time high after increasing by 1.6% every four years since 1920 (Putnam 16, 17). Community organizations were expecting their memberships to swell in the 1980s when baby boomers reached the “peak ‘joining years’ of their life cycle,” but the opposite happened instead (Putnam, 18). Between the late 1960s and the 1980s, events happened that shook the confidence of Americans; the assinations of Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, an unpopular war in Vietnam, gas shortages caused by politics, the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of president Nixon, and a long hostage crisis in the American Embassy Iran. All these events were brought into American homes through television.

Television has also shown us good events like the Apollo moon landing in 1969, and the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years later. Josh Eisenberg had contemplated getting rid of his TV for several years, but he realized that he was hesitating because he was “afraid of missing something.” His greatest fear was that the day after he disconnected his TV, a big historical event would happen and he would miss it. He believed that television was mostly a waste of time, but he kept watching. After much hesitation, he decided to disconnect his television and internet access in his home as an experiment (Eisenberg 32).

The decline in community participation occurred as Americans started to watch more television. People watch TV at the expense of “virtually every form of civic participation and social involvement” (Putnam 228). After unhooking his television and internet access, Eisengerg felt ashamed when his friends would ask him to turn on the TV to watch a show or look something up on the internet. He found himself getting out of the house more, hanging out with his friends, or inviting guests over for dinner; he replaced much of the time that he would have been watching TV with spending time with other people. While he feels that not everyone can follow his example, Eisenberg encourages everyone to go without television at least one day a week. After his “unwiring,” he decided to reconnect his internet access so he can better communicate with people. He still doesn’t watch TV (Eisenberg 32).

It’s doubtful that someone like Lois Weisberg would have been able to establish such a large network of friends if she had stayed at home and watched television. Instead of watching others live a make believe life on TV, Lois lived a life of her own. Eisenberg discovered that when he unplugged his TV.

The November 2006 issue of The New Yorker was published with 4 different covers that illustrate the stark contrast between families celebrating Thanksgiving before, and after, television entered the home. The second cover in the series shows two families in the same apartment. The family in the upper half of the cover, from the 1940s, have just finished their Thanksgiving feast and they look like they are carried away in conversation, except the son who is pushed away from the table reading a comic book. The present day family in the lower half also just finished their feast, but they are all turned towards the TV set watching a football game, except the daughter who is pushed away from the table talking on her cell phone. The next cover in the series follows the present day daughter as she meets with her friends to go eat at a diner (Ware).

Philip Tadros is a serial entrepreneur who is building social capital in a new way by adding a layer of online communications on top of his offline life. He started two cozy coffee shops on the north side of Chicago that are what he calls a “third place”–neither home nor work–where people can work on their laptops, read a book or just talk with others over a good cup of coffee (Crain). Tadros attributes much of the success of his businesses to the easy communication made possible by the internet. Eighty percent of the people he does business with he first contacted online, and he uses the internet to stay in constant contact with them. His coffee shops are also highly reviewed by his customers on websites such as Yelp.com, a popular site where anyone can review local businesses (Tadros). Tadros’ desire is to help others strengthen their “land based” connections with a layer of online social networking, much like he has been able to do in his own life. He decided to start his own social-based website, called MetroProper, combining the elements he likes on social networking sites like MySpace, user-driven news aggregators like digg.com, and the online community feel of Craigslist. His main goal for the website is to create on online coffee shop atmosphere where people can learn about each other so they can have stronger connections offline (Crain; Benkard).

In 1999, Norman H. Nie and Lutz Erbring conducted a survey to find how the internet affects social interaction. They concluded that with each hour spent on the internet per week, social interaction decreased. They also observed that time spent on the internet displaced the time people spent watching TV. When Nie and Erbring did their study, the internet was still a relatively new phenomenon; according to their findings, about half of Americans had internet access (Nie & Erbring). They failed to consider that the internet requires active input from the user, whereas television is passive, only requiring the user to turn it on and change the channel. Whether it is editing a Wikipedia article, sharing photos on Flickr, hanging out on MySpace, or “grown men sitting in their basement pretending to be elves [playing World of Warcraft online]. At least they’re doing something” (Shirky blog). The internet facilitates collaboration, sharing, communication, and group interaction, social things that are impossible through the one-way nature of television.

The most convient and universally used tool for social internaction on the internet is email. People can instantly send, reply to, or forward, any email message to more than one recipient. The “cc:” field and the “Reply All” button have broken down economic and geographical barriers to group discussion and formation in a way never seen before in our history (Shirky 107, 157). Bill Wasik decided to conduct an experiment to see if he could get a group of people to suddenly appear somewhere at the same time, perform a strange act, and disperse as mysteriously as they had formed. The phenomenon became known as flash mobs (Wang). To organize a flash mob, Wasik created a free webmail account, then forwarded a message to 60 of his friends. He encouraged the recipients to forward the message to their friends, starting a chain email. His first successful flash mob was in New York City when 200 people suddenly arrived at a Macy’s department store from different directions, gathered around a rug, and looked at it for several minutes. When sales people asked what they were doing the participants, following instructions, said that they were from a commune and they were shopping for a “love rug” (Wasik).

Soon, others used the power of organizing flash mobs over the internet for more serious purposes. In Minsk, Belarus, hundreds of protesters, and an opposition leader, were arrested in Oktyabrskaya Square after a disputed election. A blogger, going by the name by_mob on the website LiveJournal, proposed a flash mob in Oktyabrskaya Square. He suggested that the mob should show up and eat ice cream in an attempt to subvert the government crackdown on peaceful assembly after the election protests. The Belarusian authorities also knew about the protest beforehand, and the police were waiting nearby to arrest the ice cream eaters. Others arrived toting digital cameras and posted their pictures on photo sharing websites like Flickr, showing citizens being arrested for the ridiculous crime of eating ice cream. Political bloggers picked up the story, spreading it beyond Minsk and making the the rest of the world aware of their struggle (Shirky 166-171).

Sherry Turkle, a social psychologist and professor at M.I.T., took her daughter on a food and culture tour in Paris. She noticed that her daughter kept her cellphone turned on and felt obligated to answer every call and text message from her friends back in Boston. Her friends “didn’t even really want to talk. ‘They just want to know where you are,’ Ms. Turkle said” (Holson). In Egypt, pro democracy activists use their phones to report their whereabouts for more serious purposes. They send text messages to a website called twitter as they pass through government check points. If one of the activists doesn’t check in when expected, others assume that he or she may be under arrest prompting them to spring into action. They coordinate their search efforts through text messaging, and the internet, to find if and where their fellow activist is being held captive. The Egyptians have been able to pressure their government to release political prisoners because many people knew where and why they were being detained (Shirky 184-186). More recently, Egyptian workers protested their economic hardships by organizing a general strike through forwarded text messages on cell phones (Slackman).

The power of instant social communication is also changing the face of American politics. Barack Obama has effectively used the internet as an organizing, fundraising, and communication tool in his bid for the Democratic nomination. His website is used as a tool to make it easy for anyone to get involved with an email signup, a donation button, and easy to find links for information about his policy positions and getting involved as a volunteer. In a daring move, Obama made his calling list available on his website letting anyone with a little spare time place calls to potential voters (Obama; Carson). Traditionally, volunteers needed to go to their local campaign headquarters to make campaign calls. Obama’s campaign understands that people don’t always have much time to volunteer. By providing the online phone banking tool his campaign collapses the time and cost barriers of participation.

In another bold move, Obama delivered a speech, on March 18, 2008, that was specifically crafted to be devoid of ten or fifteen-second “sound bites” that can be easily replayed repeatedly on television news programs. To better understand Obama’s thirty-seven minute speech, filled with nuance and complex ideas, a viewer has to watch it in its entirety, or at least in chunks of several minutes. Knowing that many people would want to see the video for themselves, Obama posted the video directly onto his website and on video sharing websites. Within a month, the speech had been viewed almost 5.5 million times on the video sharing website YouTube alone (Alter).

Barack Obama’s campaign is not the first to extensively use the internet. In 2003 Howard Dean was the first major presidential candidate to use the internet for organizing and fundraising. Dean realized the internet’s potential when he attended a meeting in New York set up through a pioneering social networking website called Meetup.com. By the end of 2003 Dean had become a serious contender for the presidential nomination through numerous small campaign contributions and grassroots support on the internet (Wolf). His campaign was ultimately unsuccessful, but it demonstrated that with the right candidate, the internet can be a powerful tool for changing the way people participate in politics.

Scott Heiferman founded Meetup.com after he read the book Bowling Alone. He wanted to create a website to help bring people together face to face (Shirky, 193). Meetup, which today boasts over 3 million participants, inspired Howard Dean to create his online organization tool called Deanspace, which reminded Gary Wolf, writing in Wired magazine, of “a political movement that eerily recalls the cracker-barrel debates and the torchlight parades that characterized presidential campaigns of the distant past. Before television, politics was a type of active recreation” (“About Us”; Wolf).

People are communicating more than ever before resulting in a faster changing world. When Gutenberg introduced the movable type printing press, it became faster and easier to spread ideas through the printed word. In many parts of the world the result was a shift in power from religious leaders and governments, to the hands of common people as more people exchanged information and ideas. Now, the printed word is shifting from paper to the electronic realm where distribution happens in the blink of an eye, once again changing the way we communicate, and the balance of power.

Works Cited

“About Us.” Meetup.com. 28 Apr. 2008

Alter, Jonathan. “Adios, Sound Bites & Fat Cats.” Newsweek. (28, Apr. 2008) 19, Apr. 2008.

Benkard, Andrew. “Phillip Tadros - Dollop Coffee Co, Metroproper.com.” New York Times Small Business Summit Center. (Dec. 2007) 5, Apr. 2008.

Carson, Jon. E-mail to the author. 16, Apr. 2008

Crain, Brendan. “Community 2.0 and the Built Environment: Phil Tadros Interview.” The Where Blog. (18, May 2007) 5, Apr. 2008.

Eisenberg, Josh. “I Give Up: One Brave Soul Unplugs From TV and the Inernet - and Lives To Tell His Tale.” UR Chicago, April 2008. p. 32

Erbring, Norman H. Nie and Lutz. “Internet Use Decreases Social Interaction.” Opposing Viewpoints: The Internet. Ed. James D. Torr. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2005. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. City Colleges Of Chicago. 1 Apr. 2008 .

Gladwell, Malcolm. “Six degrees of Lois Weisberg. ” The New Yorker  11 Jan. 1999: 52-63. 30, Mar. 2008.

Holson, Laura M.. “Text Generation Gap: U R 2 Old (JK). ” New York Times  [New York, N.Y.] 9  Mar. 2008, Late Edition (East Coast): BU.1. New York Times. ProQuest. Cosgrove Library, Truman College, Chicago, Illinois.  1 Apr. 2008 

Obama, Barack. Home page. 1 Apr. 2008

Putnam, Robert. Bowling Alone. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody. New York: Penguin Press The, 2008.

Shirky, Clay. “Gin, Television, and Social Surplus” Here Comes Everybody Blog. (26, Apr. 2008) 26, Apr. 2008.

Slackman, Michael. “In Egypt, Technology Helps Spread Discontent of Workers.” The New York Times [New York, N.Y.] (7, Apr. 2008) 7, Apr. 2008. Online Edition.

Tadros, Phillip. E-mail to the author. 20, April, 2008

Wang, Jennifer. “Mobbing the Scene.” Yale Globalist Website. (March 2007) 2, Apr. 2008

Ware, Chris. “Thanksgiving—Conversation.” and “Thanksgiving—Family” The New Yorker 27 Nov. 2006. Cover.

Wolf, Gary. “How the Internet Invented Howard Dean.” Wired. Issue 12.01. (January 2004) 7, Apr. 2008.

“The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilization of any country.”

-Winston Churchill

Background
If the United States is supposed to be land of the free, how do we account for the fact that we bear the distinction of having the most prisoners, and the highest rate of incarceration, in the world? About 2.2 million people are being held in prisons and jails in the U.S., which makes up 25% of the world’s prisoners in a country that holds 5% of the world’s total population. When broken down to a ratio of population, the United States imprisons nearly 740 people per 100,000; that works out to about 1 out of every 136 people (Young 2007). By contrast Libya, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, China and Pakistan, countries whose rulers were rated in 2005 by Parade Magazine as the world’s worst dictators, have far lower reported rates of incarceration; the lowest is 57/100,000 in Pakistan and the highest is 207/100,000 in Libya (Fraser 2007). Other western democracies such as France, Germany, and England and Wales have 93, 98 and 140 per 100,000 respectively (Snacken 2006). The only European countries that rival America’s incarceration rates are Belarus and the Russian Federation with 554 and 595/100,000 (Snacken 2006).

America hasn’t always had such a high prison population. From the 1940s until the early 1970s, the incarceration rate in the U.S. hovered around 100/100,000 (Young 2007). Since 1973 the prison population has been growing and, despite a decrease in crime rates that began in the early 1990s, continues to rise today. A combination of factors has led to a sevenfold increase of prisoners over the past 35 years in the U.S. In the early 1970s, Richard Nixon declared war on drugs. Thinking that prison would be a deterrent to those who might consider using or selling drugs, government officials started imposing harsher sentences on drug offenders; simple possession of two joints landed people behind bars for several years. Politicians playing to the fears of the populace, due to rising crime rates, started taking a “tough on crime” stance, which led to harsher penalties and longer sentences. Anti-crime hysteria prompted many states to pass reforms like truth-in-sentencing laws, mandatory minimum sentencing, “three strikes and you’re out” laws, and re-instatement of the death penalty, leading to prison overcrowding and, eventually, construction of more prisons (Barker 2006). Some states couldn’t to afford costly prison construction, so private companies like Corrections Corporation of America and Wackenhut have stepped in (Pullman & Asquith 2006). With privatization, prisons are now becoming a profitable industry. If citizens decide to reduce the prison population by half, there could be stiff resistance by those whose livelihoods depend on the “tough on crime” approach to law enforcement.

To put it simply, we are putting more people in prison than ever before, keeping them there longer, and making it difficult for them to re-establish a normal life upon release, causing many to return.

Racial Disparities
It becomes apparent, when examining the disparity of incarceration rates between Blacks and Whites, that racism is alive and well in America. In his testimony before the Joint Economic Committee on October 4, 2007, Harvard University professor Bruce Western stated that, “young black men are now more likely to go to prison than to graduate college with a four-year degree, or to serve in the military” (2007). He goes on to say:

The large black-white disparity in incarceration is unmatched by most other social indicators. Racial disparities in unemployment (2 to 1), nonmarital childbearing (3 to 1), infant mortality (2 to 1), and wealth (1 to 5) are all significantly lower than the 7 to 1 black-white ratio in incarceration rates. (2007)

Mississippi, a state that was at the center of the civil rights struggle in the 1950s and 60s, has built no new 4-year colleges or universities in the past 50 years, yet 16 new correctional institutions have been constructed since the 1990s, six of them private (Price 2006, quoted by Pullmann & Asquith 2006). In his book, Merchandizing Prisoners: Who Really Pays for Prison Privatization, Byron Eugene Price includes a graph showing that, “by 2017, there will be more Blacks in prison (an estimated 2 million) than Blacks enslaved in 1860 (1.9 million)” (Pullman & Asquith 2006). Over 40 years have passed since Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, and the passing of landmark civil rights legislation. But looking at the contrast in incarceration rates between Black and White Americans, we seem to have a long way to go before we become a nation that, “judges a man not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character” (ML King 1963)

Consequences
Stratification of criminals had led to the rapid growth of a lower caste of untouchables in America who are, “somehow irretrievably evil, fundamentally different from law-abiding people” (Mallory 2007). While in prison, many inmates lose their jobs, their homes, and contact with family and friends (Shepherd 2006). Many ex-prisoners have trouble finding jobs upon release because employers are reluctant to hire them, so many of them fall back into old habits which eventually land them back into prison.

What Can We Do?
There are some things we can do now that would be a starting point for a new direction towards restorative and reductionist policies. The first is to offer treatment, instead of jail, for non-violent drug offenders and the mentally ill. The second is to establish meaningful re-socialization programs for ex-prisoners.

Drug Offenders
Four out of five drug arrests were for possession in 2005, the remaining being for sales (Webb, 2007). Treatment would keep addicts out of a punitive system, and restore them to a productive life sooner than simply locking them up. James B. Jacobs suggests that we could cut the prison population by at least 25 percent if we legalized, “mind altering drugs or perhaps just marijuana” (2007). There is also a growing movement to decriminalize, or outright legalize, marijuana in the United States which has led some states to decide to allow patients access to medical marijuana, despite being against federal law; California is the most famous example. Does it make sense to lock up doctors who are prescribing a substance that has been proven to alleviate the suffering of their patients? Should we lock up the patients too?

Mentally Ill
Starting in the 1950s, many state-run mental institutions were closed down in favor of community-based care, which was shown to be more effective. The current problem with the community-based system is that it was never adequately funded, effectively denying care for many patients, especially those who can’t afford hospitals and doctors. Now the mentally ill make up about 1 out of 6 people held in prisons across America (Frontline, 2005). If we fully commit to a community-based mental health care system, possibly as a part of the presently proposed health care reform, patients would be able to recover faster, return to a normal life sooner, and ultimately stay out of prison.

Re-socialization
A prisoner’s re-entry into society can start the moment he enters the gates, but instead it is usually carried out at the last moment as he is released and placed under the supervision of a parole officer. Attitudes and skills that help a prisoner navigate the social structure of prisons are usually not desirable traits on the “outside,” re-socialization should be a necessary part of a prisoner’s sentence if prisons want to live up to the title of “correctional facility.” Of the 780,000 current parolees, over one-third are expected to return to prison, many for technical violations (R King 2007). An effective way to reduce the prison population would be to prevent prisoners from returning by launching an effective program to prevent recidivism.

A Cause for Optimism
In a reaction to the alarming rate of incarceration, 22 states have taken steps through parole and probation policy changes, or sentencing reform legislation, to reduce their prison populations (R King 2007). The growing prison crisis also hasn’t escaped federal lawmakers. On October 4, 2007, the Joint Economic Committee held a hearing, chaired by Senator Jim Webb (D-Va.), called “Mass Incarceration in the United States: At What Cost?” which examined the growing prison population and the costs not only in dollars, but in our humanity.

Afterword
My interest in this subject started when I was arrested for drunk driving in 1998 and sentenced to 2 years probation, 80 hours of community service, a driving class, a substance abuse class and individual substance abuse counseling. After serving 8 months of my sentence, completing my community service, classes, and many hours of counseling, I was arrested for driving on a suspended license. I informed my probation officer about my arrest, and my substance abuse counselor was trying to convince her to keep me out of jail because of the great progress I had made. Our efforts failed and I was arrested at my home for violating my probation in February 1999; I served 4 weeks in jail. I will never forget what one of the guards said regarding several of us who were there on probation violations; “you guys don’t belong here.”

Works Cited

Vanessa Barker. “DELIBERATING CRIME AND PUNISHMENT: A WAY OUT OF GET TOUGH JUSTICE?” Criminology & Public Policy 5.1 (2006): 37-43. Social Science Module. ProQuest. Truman College Library, Chicago, Illinois. 26 Oct. 2007

Ronald Fraser. “Pa. prisons outpace those in Pakistan, Libya and China. ” Philadelphia Tribune  [Philadelphia, Pa.] 3  Aug. 2007,6A. Ethnic NewsWatch (ENW). ProQuest. Truman College Library, Chicago, Illinois. 29 Nov. 2007

James B Jacobs. “Finding Alternatives to the Carceral State. “ Social Research 74.2 (2007): 695-699, 712. Research Library Core. ProQuest. Truman College Library, Chicago, Illinois. 26 Oct. 2007

Martin Luther King Jr. Speech. Addressing crowd at the Lincoln Memorial (a.k.a. “I Have A Dream”). Washington, D.C. 28 Aug. 1963

Ryan King. “Changing Direction: State Sentencing Reforms 2004-2006 (Feb. 2007). “Federal Sentencing Reporter 19.4 (2007): 253. Law Module. ProQuest. Truman College Library, Chicago, Illinois. 26 Oct. 2007

Jason L Mallory. “Mass Incarceration, Democracy, and Inclusion*.” Socialism and Democracy 21.1 (2007): 97-122, 197. Social Science Module. ProQuest, Truman College Library, Chicago, Illinois. 26 Oct. 2007

“The New Asylums.” Frontline PBS. WGBH, Boston. 2005

Olivia Pullman, Christina Asquith. “Prison Instead of Princeton.” Rev. of Merchandizing Prisoners: Who Really Pays for Prison Privatization? Diverse Issues in Higher Education 23.16 (2006): 45. Education Module. ProQuest. Truman College Library, Chicago, Illinois. 27 Oct. 2007

Joanna Shepherd. “THE IMPRISONMENT PUZZLE: UNDERSTANDING HOW PRISON GROWTH AFFECTS CRIME. “Criminology & Public Policy 5.2 (2006) 285-298. Social Science Module. ProQuest. Truman College Library, Chicago, Illinois. 27 Oct. 2007

Sonja Snacken. “A Reductionist Penal Policy and European Human Rights Standards. ” European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research  12.2 (2006): 143-164. Law Module. ProQuest. Truman College Library, Chicago, Illinois.  29 Nov. 2007 

Jim Webb. Statement. “Mass Incarceration in the United States: At What Cost?” Opening statement before the Joint Economic Committee. Washington, D.C. 4 Oct. 2007

Bruce Western. Testimony. Testimony before the Joint Economic Committee. Washington, D.C. 4 Oct. 2007

Malcolm C Young. “SPECIAL INTERESTS, PRINCIPLES, AND SENTENCING REFORM IN AMERICA.” Rev. of: Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalzation of Almost Everything (Gene Healy ed., Cato Inst. 2004). Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 96.4 (2006): 1509-1531.  Research Library Core. ProQuest.  Truman College Library, Chicago, Illinois.  29 Nov. 2007 

According to the Oxford American Dictionary, privacy is, “the state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people; the state of being free from public attention.” With cameras everywhere watching us, databases holding information about us proliferating, and governments listening to our telephone conversations and reading our email without our consent, we live in a time where there is no more privacy, according to the dictionary definition. Our every move can be observed and scrutinized by a group of mysterious watchers for many reasons. We have accepted more surveillance in order to feel safe and minimize property crime. Corporations keep track of our consumer behavior, at the expense of our privacy, so they can market their goods and services more effectively.

When people go to the grocery store, they are being watched from the moment they enter the parking lot until they leave. The cameras are there not only to prevent shoplifting, but to allow marketing people to observe customer’s movements so they can determine how to more effectively arrange the store in order to persuade the consumers to buy more stuff. If the consumer pays with a debit or credit card, the store can keep track of how often they visit, what they buy and whether or not they use the store’s discount card. The government can subpoena the store to find out if anyone is buying combinations of certain household items that can be used to make a bomb, or find out who bought a copy of a subversive magazine they planted on the rack.

Anyone’s movements can be tracked through security cameras, debit card transactions, mobile phone records, electronic toll tags, email logs, or plain old fashioned stalking. In the movie Enemy of the State, Richard Dean, played by Will Smith, is hunted by the NSA using sophisticated technology. It seems like a Hollywood fantasy, but those with access can abuse surveillance technology in the same way. If the government decides that you are their enemy, then they can freeze your assets, and find you very easily by pinging your cell phone.

The only way to achieve the state of complete privacy is to live in a remote location, severely limit contact with other humans, and not engage in activities that would attract too much attention. But humans are social animals by nature, so complete privacy is not possible if one decides to interact with others. As people engage more with society, they must sacrifice a little more privacy until the last area of complete personal privacy is ones own thoughts.

Everyone, from a hermit who lives in the woods to the President of the United States, has a private and a public life. The extent of a hermit’s public life may be rare glimpses as he is chopping firewood or shooting a squirrel for dinner. President Bush, on the other hand, seems to live under the watchful eye of anyone in the world who cares to observe. Most people would think that the hermit has more privacy than the president, but the hermit may have less due to the fact that he doesn’t have a team of people carefully crafting his public image and guarding his personal information. With a little persistence, one could gather enough personal information about the hermit to find out where he went to school, what his ex-wife’s name is, or how much much money he makes each year. A little more digging can reveal what movies he likes to watch and what magazines he reads. Meanwhile, our president has the capability to practically disappear, and re-emerge serving Thanksgiving dinner in Iraq, thanks to the diligent work of his staff and the Secret Service to keep his movements secret.

Whatever is written down, entered into a computer or spoken is no longer private. As long as there is ubiquitous surveillance technology and invasive law enforcement, there will be no privacy. As long as people are suspicious of one another and live in fear, privacy will continue to erode until we are all forced to live completely transparent lives. The only way to take back our freedom is to turn the cameras around and watch the watchers.

Today is May Day. International Worker’s Day.

I usually try to wear a red shirt to show my solidarity with the workers, but I looked in my drawer and I realized I donated it to the People’s Music School clothing drive. So I wore a black long sleeve t-shirt instead.

Three days from now is the anniversary of the Haymarket Riot of 1886. I think I will go there to see if people are commemorating on Friday. It is sad to see that many of the reforms that these people died for now ring hollow. Now, over a hundred years later, we are slipping back to where we were in the late 1800’s when the robber barons and monopolies ruled the land.

I know many people in the rest of the world are baffled by what the United States has been doing for the past 6 years, many of us in the United States are baffled too. It has been difficult to get to the truth of what has happened, because our news media has been effectively muzzled by our government and special interests. Up until recently, the foreign press has reported important stories that either didn’t show up in the mainstream American press, or were buried when they did. Now the American news media, emboldened by the recent shift in the political landscape, has finally started to directly challenge the president’s policies; some of us feel like it may be too little, too late.

Americans have become better informed because of “fake news” comedy television shows, like The Daily Show, that report the news more accurately than real news programs. As a result they have become increasingly disgusted with the country they have inherited, and turned out in force to the polls during an “off year” election to return control of congress to the Democratic party. The next generation of Americans is starting to take control of their country now and are not waiting for their parents to give it to them.

It will be only a matter of time until the current fragile economic system, being desperately propped up by sleight of hand, will come crashing down. Our manufacturing jobs are mostly gone; most of the goods we buy are manufactured in another country. For 70 years, GM sold the most cars; Toyota just surpassed GM in number of cars sold worldwide. The United States has been a technological leader for many decades; but that is now slipping due to climbing high school drop out rates, and universities turning out fewer mathematicians and scientists. Right now the only thing propping up the U.S. economy is the fact that oil is traded in U.S. dollars. The rest of the world can easily decide to trade oil in Euros (like Iran and Russia want to do) within the next 5 years, and the subsequent collapse of the US economy may be a just small speed bump to the rest of the world.

Many of us want to salvage what we can to keep our country united. We are hoping that the current congress will reign in the president long enough for us to elect a new president; one who will guide us wisely and soberly into the future. But many of us are resigned to the fact that we may have to wait and build something new from the ruins of a collapsed empire.

Gosh, Mr. Bush, I am a little confused here. On the one hand you have been saying that we have been making progress in Iraq and the recent troop surge has been going great. Then you are faced with a bill from congress that has a timeline for troop withdrawal, on the condition that you determine that progress is being made, and you are promising to veto it.

I don’t get it. Why do you want to prolong this war? We are tired of it, we want it to end, and most of us aren’t even directly fighting it. We are tired of hearing about our men and women getting killed because of your bungled war plans. Mr. Bush, end this war, admit your mistake, repent and be saved.

You said this new military spending bill, “…would say to the Iraqis, ‘Don’t do hard things necessary to achieve our objectives,’ and it would be discouraging for our troops.”

When you say “our objectives,” exactly who’s objectives are you talking about? Iraq’s? Yours? I think you are not listening to the Iraqi people, they want us out. They don’t care about your objectives.

Right now they are in the midst of a civil war, and we are only making it worse by prolonging it with our current occupation. Many folks I talk to agree that as soon as we pull out, the place is going to explode in a bloody power struggle, so let’s stop postponing the inevitable. Let’s stop getting our soldiers killed and wounded in someone else’s war.

Also, the discouraging thing for our troops is extending their tours and not providing them with adequate support in a war without end. I believe that if our troops are given a timeline for withdrawl, it would boost morale.

Another thing you said, “An artificial timetable of withdrawal would say to an enemy, ‘Just wait them out.’ ” That is precisely what we are doing with you, Mr. Bush.

I would like to announce that the “political fast” I have been observing for the past year and a half is now officially over.

When I started the political purge, I went so far as to get rid of all the political books and videos I had; I even deleted all of the political posts on my blog (see August 6, 2005).

I gave up on politics because I was saddened by how much my country became polarized politically. It clouded my thinking. I realized that I had to set aside my interest in politics, at least for a while, to concentrate on personal growth. For a while I even toyed with the idea of becoming politically neutral and not sharing with anyone, except those close to me, how I voted in elections.

I decided recently that I want to study History and Political Science. There’s no denying that I am a political junkie and a history buff. That’s the way God made me and I will stop trying to go against my nature.

So I will again, from time to time, freely post about political things. Also remember, dear reader, this blog is for me. If I make you think, that is a bonus.