this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2024
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Cuz its fucking killing me.

I'm an educator, and every day I go in and try to help people at their lowest points turn things around. And every day I have to watch them be abused by the pigs and admin, or get shortchanged by our schools need for higher numbers of graduates. I thought I fuckin hated cops before. As a tankie, I thought I was used to The Weight of Being Objectively Correct All The Time. Lemme tell ya, you don't know the half of it.

The Inmates haven't had AC or Heat in their dorms for years. Nobody is exactly sure when it died, but the nicest estimate is 3 years. Interestingly, its the same for the education building. If you go up to admin though, well, that's a perfect 71 degrees, every day of the year. There was money set aside to fix it early this year. Somehow that got spent on cutting down all the nearby trees, right before summer. They said it was because it was too easy to hide contraband, but it just so happened to make things quite a bit warmer all around the facility. A coincidence, I'm sure.

Bugs and other vermin also had quite an uptick recently. Surely it had nothing to do with the fact their homes (the trees) are gone. Just keep a fly swatter nearby, and if a snake gets through the cracks, well you can always call security.

Luckily! We've got a top-notch lab, at least as far as prisons go. Photoshop 7! Adobe Acrobat! And....computers. They exist. They're not really good enough for the decade old programs, but technically they do run. And! its only twice a month when they'll do an unannounced "refresh" of a random computer, without warning. All that means is that they're going to wipe windows, do a fresh install, refuse to install the things we actually need (like PS7) and also not save any of the students' work. Sure hope I'm caught up on grades.

Don't worry though, I've got all day to teach. Unless there's a lockdown for unspecified reasons. Yeah, sure, those unspecified reasons usually end up being "Captain [REDACTED] didn't want to walk outside more than once", and yes, sometimes that means they cut my class short because of it, but other than that. Its not like I have to hear them talking about which inmates they'd fuck, or hear them curse an inmate out to their face for an untucked shirt, or watch these pigs get walked out in handcuffs when they eventually do fuck (rape) an inmate or bring in drugs, or see the black eyes of my students who said the wrong thing. Did my student sleep in? Or are they in medical with bruised lungs? Who fuckin knows.

I nailed the interview for this job because I told a story about teaching my daughter. I wasn't even really "teaching" as much as I was just playing with her, totally absorbed in her current interests (dinosaurs, of course). Her love of the subject meant I didn't really need to do anything. Just be there, as she told me "tee tops. three horns on head. steg-so-saurus, spikey tail!" She makes things so easy. My students here are the same way. They have a drive. They want to be there, every day, and most days they have to literally fight a cop to do it.

So I guess I'll be there too.

At least until it kills me.

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Jesus, that's harrowing. Those poor fucking inmates.

You're probably the best part of those poor fucks day. I have huge respect for you.

Pigs get the wall, I knew they were bad, but holy shit. No words.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 months ago

I was looking for the Fury Road gif where max gives a little thumbs up as shit is falling to shit around him, so you gotta settle for this reply.

Thank you, owl. Means alot.

[–] [email protected] 60 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Once again, the department of corrections giving the shaft to the parts of the department that are actually corrective

[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 months ago

I've never been more appalled by a human's actions than meeting with the deputy warden, a woman of color, as she regularly okays and covers for the actions taken under her watch. If I'm honest, it might be one of the more radicalizing things I've seen in my life.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I have nothing but respect for you walking into the fucking snake pit every day to try to help people. Do it as long as you can do it, but get the fuck out of there when you're at your limit. We've all got a limit somewhere and you're not going to fix the problems you're witnessing on your own. Trying to tough it out beyond your limits on principle will just grind you into nothing eventually.

Some day, you can come back with friends. If you know what I mean. meow-hug

[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 months ago

Here's hoping!

I try to pepper in as much theory and....well I dunno how to put it. "Progessive thought"? I guess, without totally showing my hand, but lets be real, my students are smarter than every cop in the place and know what i'm saying even when i'm not saying it.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 35 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I appreciate the sentiment, but please don't. I've never felt more disgusting in my life, and I was an addict for a long time. Not to denigrate my fellow addicts or anything by comparing them to cops and the cop-adjacent

[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 months ago

rat-salute

Thanks for doing it, prison abolition is one of the things I still feel most strongly about from my anarchist years. I've worked with books thru bars, but haven't spent much time in jails.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Enormous respect for your work. I don't know if this will help or not, but a lot of what you say tracks with things I've heard from Chris Hedges about his work teaching in prison. I have some qualms with some of his politics, but I always have understood him as a really genuine person with some kind of emancipatory politics at the heart of his world view. Him speaking about his prison teaching taught me a lot about the realities of the mass incarceration system in the US in my shift from left-lib to commie over the last decade.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 months ago

I am so sorry that you have to bear witness to that, and that any of those people have to be subject to that absolutely vile abuse and trauma. I work with homeless folks and I don't have to bear witness to the majority of things they have been put through in their lives, just hear it mostly and even then it's so hard to take. And just having firsthand experience with these systems, watching the way they just grind people down can make someone so fucking cynical and bitter. I feel like it takes a unique kinda person to stick it through and try to stand beside folks and offer some reprieve or support or when you can get away with it be angry with them.

Idk what else to say but you're doing good work and I appreciate you cuddle

[–] [email protected] 29 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 months ago (1 children)

america is insane, they literally just don't consider inmates as actual people, just cattle to beat up when they're frustrated

fucking crazy

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

This is why regardless of whether or not a prison actually participates in the generation of for-profit prison labor, I still call it a slave pen, and its wardens slave drivers. I genuinely believe most Amerikans who believe in 'tough-on-crime' bullshit that keeps carceral slaves being made deserve a bullet, if not all of them. We live in a society that normalized slavery FAR past what the Confederates ever dreamed.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

can you nsfw tag this

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Are you able to document any of this, or is it a no pictures on the inside sort of policy?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

Can't even bring my phone in, let alone a camers