#he became an accountant after jail

[rainbowpufflez]

Got around to redesigning an old (now ex) Team Galactic oc

[did-we-imagine]

Gorgeous.

#have fun in superhell andrew tate

[fatehbaz]

Good question:

In the United States, many jails and prisons can and will charge you money for every single night that you spend imprisoned, for the entire duration of your incarceration, as if you were being billed for staying at a hotel. Even if you are incarcerated for years. Adding up to tens of thousands of dollars. What happens when you’re released?

In response to this:

---

So.

You’re getting charged, like, ten dollars every time you even submit a request form to possibly be seen by a doctor or dentist.

You’re getting charged maybe five dollars for ten minutes on the phone.

Any time a friend or family tries to send you like five dollars so that you can buy some toothpaste or lotion, or maybe a snack from the commissary since you’re diabetic and the “meals” have left you malnourished, maybe half of that money gets taken as a “service fee” by the corporate contractor that the prison uses to manage your pre-paid debit card. So you’re already losing money every day just by being there.

What happens if you can’t pay?

In some places, after serving just a couple of years for drugs charges, almost 20 years after being released, the state can still hunt you down for over $80,000 that you “owe” as if it were a per-night room-and-board accommodations charge, like this recent highly-publicized case in Connecticut:

Excerpt:

Two decades after her release from prison, [TB] feels she is still being punished. When her mother died two years ago, the state of Connecticut put a lien on the Stamford home she and her siblings inherited. It said she owed $83,762 to cover the cost of her 2 1/2 year imprisonment for drug crimes. [...] “I’m about to be homeless,” said [TB], 58, who in March [2022] became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the state law that charges prisoners $249 a day for the cost of their incarceration. [...] All but two states have so-called “pay-to-stay” laws that make prisoners pay for their time behind bars [...]. Critics say it’s an unfair second penalty that hinders rehabilitation by putting former inmates in debt for life. Efforts have been underway in some places to scale back or eliminate such policies. Two states — Illinois and New Hampshire — have repealed their laws since 2019. [...] Pay-to-stay laws were put into place in many areas during the tough-on-crime era of the 1980s and ’90s, said Brittany Friedman, an assistant professor of sociology at University of Southern California who is leading a study of the practice. [...] Connecticut used to collect prison debt by attaching an automatic lien to every inmate, claiming half of any financial windfall they might receive for up to 20 years after they are released from prison [...].

Text by: Pat Eaton-Robb. “At $249 per day, prison stays leave ex-inmates deep in debt.” AP News / The Associated Press. 27 August 2022.

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Look at this:

To help her son, Cindy started depositing between $50 to $100 a week into Matthew’s account, money he could use to buy food from the prison commissary, such as packaged ramen noodles, cookies, or peanut butter and jelly to make sandwiches. Cindy said sending that money wasn’t necessarily an expense she could afford. “No one can,” she said. So far in the past month, she estimates she sent Matthew close to $300. But in reality, he only received half of that amount. The balance goes straight to the prison to pay off the $1,000 in “rent” that the prison charged Matthew for his prior incarceration. [...] A PA Post examination of six county budgets (Crawford, Dauphin, Lebanon, Lehigh, Venango and Indiana) showed that those counties’ prisons have collected more than $15 million from inmates — almost half is for daily room and board fees that are meant to cover at least a portion of the costs with housing and food. Prisoners who don’t work are still expected to pay. If they don’t, their bills are sent to collections agencies, which can report the debts to credit bureaus. [...] Between 2014 and 2017, the Indiana County Prison — which has an average inmate population of 87 people — collected nearly $3 million from its prisoners. In the past five years, Lebanon’s jail collected just over $2 million in housing and processing fees.

Text by: Joseph Darius Jaafari. “Paying rent to your jailers: Inmates are billed millions of dollars for their stays in Pa. prisons.” WHYY (PBS). 10 December 2019. Originally published at PA Post.

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Pay-to-stay, the practice of charging people to pay for their own jail or prison confinement, is being enforced unfairly by using criminal, civil and administrative law, according to a new Rutgers University-New Brunswick led study. The study [...] finds that charging pay-to-stay fees is triggered by criminal justice contact but possible due to the co-opting of civil and administrative institutions, like social service agencies and state treasuries that oversee benefits, which are outside the realm of criminal justice. “A person can be charged $20 to $80 a day for their incarceration,” said author Brittany Friedman, an assistant professor of sociology and a faculty affiliate of Rutgers' criminal justice program. “That per diem rate can lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees when a person gets out of prison. To recoup fees, states use civil means such as lawsuits and wage garnishment against currently and formerly incarcerated people, and regularly use administrative means such as seizing employment pensions, tax refunds and public benefits to satisfy the debt.” [...] Civil penalties are enacted on family members if the defendant cannot pay and in states such as Florida, Nevada and Idaho can occur even after the original defendant is deceased. [...]

Text by: Megan Schumann. “States Unfairly Burdening Incarcerated People With “Pay-to-Stay” Fees.” Rutgers press release. 20 November 2020.

---

So, to pay for your own imprisonment, states can:

-- hunt you down for decades (track you down 20 years later, charge you tens of thousands of dollars, and take your house away)

-- put a lien on your vehicle, house

-- garnish your paycheck/wages

-- seize your tax refund

-- send collections agencies after you

-- take your public assistance benefits

-- sue you in civil court

-- take money from your family even after you’re dead

[kittenlittle24]

Courthouse

Request by @schnitzelbutterfingers: Tritter assaulting f!reader after finding out she is House’s weak point and then she just became completely depressed and then House kind of forces out what happened to her

I do apologize, I changed it a bit.

As usual, gif not mine, I adore comments, likes and reblogs

Masterlist

Parking the car, you angrily slammed the door shut before making your way to the detention facility. You paid the clerk the $15,000 bail before leaving to wait outside.

You leaned against the car, foot tapping anxiously, arms crossed. Limping down the stairs at the entrance to the building, a grin on his face upon seeing you.

“I called Wilson!”

“You’re an arrogant idiot.” You told him and entered the car.

You drove in silence, every time he tried to talk, to justify himself you were sure, you raised your hand to shut him.

You dropped him at the entrance to the hospital and waited for him to get out.

“I’ll see you in the office.” You informed him quietly.

He raised his eyebrows in surprise and opened his mouth to say something but instead shut it back up and nodded once before leaving your vehicle.

Later that day House got a call about Tritter who got a search warrant for his house and found a stash of about 600 pills, which of course made Tritter add trafficking to the charges.

Convinced that House is an addict and decided to apply pressure on his co-workers to testify against him.

When Wilson found out House had stolen his prescription pad to write himself prescriptions he came straight to you, he told you he lied, and said he signed them himself, however, Tritter noticed that the signatures didn't match, and as a result his car was impounded and accounts froze.

When the diagnostic team refused to turn him in as well, Tritter decided to go after all of your weaknesses: he went after Cameron by appealing to her love for House, not knowing it was no longer there. He went after Foreman by promising to help his brother get out of prison, and Chase by making it look like he has already co-operated, not that any of you believed that. The only one he has yet to try was you. Which made everyone uncomfortable.

Due to clubbed fingers, House diagnosed the patient with lung cancer, and tests confirmed small cell lung carcinoma, which has metastasized. The patient only had a few months to live. Cameron volunteered to break him the news which allowed you to leave for the day.

You made your way to your car, searching your purse for the keys. You jumped as you looked up and saw Tritter leaning against your trunk.

“Oh good you didn’t forget me, I was insulted.”

He half smiled as he chewed his nicotine gum, “Did you hear that I searched Dr. House’s apartment,”

“I’m aware.”

“Are you also aware of the fact that I found 600 Vicodin pills in his apartment?” Pushing himself to stand upright and fully smiling, “Should I say, your apartment? Found a picture of you and your mom in a drawer on a bedside table. I assume you wouldn’t want your boyfriend to go to jail and lose his medical license. It wasn’t Dr. Cameron that’s in love with him, it’s you. You know that lying to a cop is a criminal offense?”

Crossing your arms across your chest, “You think threatening me will help you convince me to help you put House behind bars?”

“If you don’t, you’ll face the same consequences as your colleagues. Just one phone call away from having your account frozen as well.”

Moving to open your car door, you tossed your purse to the seat next to the driver, “Good thing I went grocery shopping yesterday.” You snarked and entered the car.

“Is he worth your medical license?” He yelled.

Turning the engine on and reversing out of the parking space, you pulled the window down, “I’ll see you in court.” And drove away.

Entering the apartment, threw the keys on the counter, your purse was tossed aside and you walked straight to the bedroom.

House looked up from the piano, slightly confused at your lack of greeting. Marching back to the living room you dropped his pillow and a blanket on the couch before turning to face him, “You’re sleeping here until this mess clears up and you apologize to Wilson.”

You went back to the bedroom and slammed the door shut.

You woke up in the middle of the night, at first you weren’t sure what pulled you from sleep but you did when you felt the bed dipped.

“Get out.”

He laid down and put his arm around your waist, he kissed your shoulder blade.

“Come on, don’t be like that.”

Moving his arm off of you, you pushed the blanket back and sat up.

“Fine, you take the bed.” You said as you left the room.

He rushed after you as fast as he could without his cane, holding onto his thigh.

“Don’t you think you’re being ridiculous?”

Turning sharply to look at him, “Wilson got his car impounded because of you, that’s the only reason I came to bail you out. He cannot write prescriptions, everybody’s accounts are frozen, my license is on the line because Tritter searched the apartment and you don’t give a crap.”

He took a step closer to you, “He threatened you?”

Sighing, you rubbed your hand across your forehead, “Doesn’t matter what he did.“

“He’s a bully.”

“I don’t care House! You caused this mess! I’m going to sleep, don’t come after me because I don’t want to see your face right now.”

Sitting down heavily on the couch he saw his bottle of Vicodin on the coffee table. Reaching, he popped it open, shook two pills out, and tossed them back before lying down and settling to sleep.

After a week of separate sleeping and House and Wilson fighting due to Wilson cutting a deal with Tritter. He was offered to go into rehab, but no jail time. Of course, he believed that Wilson was only cooperating with Tritter to get his practice back.

You unlocked your apartment door, tired and cranky. It was dark and quiet. You assumed maybe your boyfriend used the opportunity you weren’t home to go to sleep in your shared bed.

You shut the door and entered the living room to see House passed out on the floor near his vomit, along with the prescribed oxycodone that he stole from Wilson’s dead patient.

Rushing to his side to check if he had a pulse, he turned his head to look at you with hazy eyes.

Tears streamed down your face as you looked down at him, “I can’t anymore.” You whispered, got up, and left the apartment.

The next day House went to Tritter to take the deal, but Tritter turned him down. Tritter found out about the stolen oxycodone, so he didn’t need yours nor Wilson's testimony to prosecute House.

He came back from court, he stood next to you in the kitchenette. You moved to sit on the opposite side of the table, as far away from him as you could while still being in the same room. House didn’t take his eyes off you the whole DDX. Soon as he ordered tests you were the first to flee the room.

A few days later, following Cameron’s visit the team performed electroshock therapy on the patient. He remembered his name after the treatment, but little else. You let his brother and Amy into the room. He didn’t react negatively, but he didn't recognize them.

The patient was getting better, despite his memory loss. The only side effect was that his voice had gotten higher. Wilson came to see House again and even brought him a new tie for court. House apologized to Wilson because he knew that Wilson was trying to do what he thought was best.

You ran into Wilson in the elevator on your way to the clinic after he came back from seeing House and was on his way to leave work.

“Did you force him into rehab?” He asked.

Shocked you turned to face Wilson fully.

He looked at you slightly horrified, “You didn’t know he was there?”

“Tell me what’s going on.” You demanded.

“House entered rehab voluntarily. A few days ago. I thought you had something to do with it, he said you haven’t been home since the oxycodone fiasco.”

You shook your head just as the elevator doors opened to reveal the hospital lobby and clinic. Instead of going to the clinic, you press the floor for the rehab center.

You found him vomiting in the bathroom, sitting on the floor, and looking miserable. He glanced up at you before lowering his gaze back to the floor.

“Didn’t think you’d come.”

Stepping forward, you crossed your arms across your chest, “Because you told everyone not to tell me you’re here.”

He shrugged once, “Tritter came to visit.” He shared quietly.

You sat down opposite him on the floor.

“Told me, he doesn't give addicts another chance, and even my actions are a lie.”

“You caused all of this.”

He nodded, “I know.”

Getting up, “Good luck with the trial.”

“Will you be there?”

You paused at the bathroom doorway, “I haven’t decided yet.” You said honestly and left.

You got to the hearing as Tritter gave his testimony about House taking another patient's drugs. You sat beside Wilson and he held your hand in silent support. Everyone paused to stare at House as his phone rang, the team (minus you) called House in court to say that the patient’s memories were false. House ignored the judge’s instructions to give up his cell phone and made a smarmy comment to the judge. You rolled your eyes and looked at Wilson in despair. He then left the courthouse and the judge found him in contempt.

On his way out of the courtroom, he noticed you sitting and winched, making you even angrier.

House came back to find Cuddy on the stand. She told the court that she had the pharmacist substitute placebos for the oxycodone because she was afraid that House would be in a particularly vulnerable state. She even had an inventory report to back it up. Tritter accused her of perjury, but she only held back the inventory report because she didn't expect the matter to go this far, she said and looked at you this time. The judge chastised House and dismissed the charges, not before instructing the bailiff to incarcerate House overnight for leaving the courtroom, and ordered House to return to rehab upon release from jail.

You went with Cuddy and Wilson to visit House in jail. Cuddy, furious that she had to perjure herself, told him that she would be working him harder than ever and left.

Wilson gave him his withdrawal medication, which you figured out was actually Vicodin.

You waited further back until Wilson left, only then you neared the bars separating the two of you.

“Great way to celebrate our one-year anniversary.” You told him.

Sighing, he put his hands on top of yours through the bars.

“It’s just one night.”

“You didn’t even learn anything from what happened, those were still Vicodin and you got your way.”

“No, I got out of jail. Well, sort of at least. I hurt you along the way and I am sorry about that.”

“You should be.”

He chuckled, “I’m sorry.”

Reaching between the metal bars, you cupped his cheek, “You’re going to make it up to me. For the last few weeks as well as being stuck in a jail cell on our first anniversary.”

“Anything you want.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

David Smith at The Guardian:

Losing an election for the highest office is a crushing blow that no candidate forgets. But when the American electorate delivers its verdict next week, the personal stakes for Donald Trump will be uniquely high. His fate will hover between the presidency and the threat of prison.

If he claims victory, Trump will be the first convicted criminal to win the White House and gain access to the nuclear codes. If he falls short, the 78-year-old faces more humiliating courtroom trials and potentially even time behind bars. It would be the end of a charmed life in which he has somehow always managed to outrun the law and duck accountability. For Trump, Tuesday is judgment day. “He branded himself as the guy who gets away with it,” said Gwenda Blair, a Trump biographer, adding that, should he lose, “he is facing a lot of moments of reckoning. He could go to jail. He could end up considerably less wealthy than he is. No matter what happens, and no matter whether he wins or loses, there will be a reckoning over his health. Death, ill health, dementia – those are things even he can’t escape.” The property developer and reality TV star has spent his career pushing ethical and legal boundaries to the limit, facing countless investigations, court battles and hefty fines. Worthy of a novel, his has been a life of scandal on a gargantuan scale.

In the 1970s Trump and his father were sued by the justice department for racial discrimination after refusing to rent apartments to Black people in predominantly white buildings. His property and casino businesses, including the Taj Mahal and Trump Plaza, filed for bankruptcy several times in the 1990s and early 2000s. Trump University, a business offering property training courses, faced multiple lawsuits for fraud, misleading marketing and false claims about the quality of its programmes. In 2016 Trump settled for $25m without admitting wrongdoing.

The Donald J Trump Foundation, a charitable organisation, was investigated and sued for allegedly using charitable funds for personal and business expenses. Trump eventually agreed to dissolve the foundation with remaining funds going to charity. Trump and his company were ordered to pay more than $350m in a New York civil fraud trial for artificially inflating his net worth to secure favourable loan terms. He is also known to have paid little to no federal income taxes in specific years which, although technically legal, was seen by some as bordering on unethical.

[...] He became the first president to be impeached twice, first for withholding military aid to pressure Ukraine’s government to investigate his political opponents, then for instigating a coup on 6 January 2021 following his defeat. He also became the subject of not one but four criminal cases, any one of which would have been enough to scuttle the chances of any other White House hopeful. In May Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records relating to a hush-money payment to the adult film performer Stormy Daniels, making him the first former president to be convicted of felony crimes. Sentencing is scheduled for 26 November (the judge delayed it from 18 September after the Republican nominee asked that it wait until after the election). What was billed as the trial of the century has already begun to fade from public consciousness and played a relatively modest role in the election campaign. Jonathan Alter, a presidential biographer who was in court for every day of the trial, recalled: “I’ve covered some big stories over the years but there was nothing like the drama of watching the jury foreperson say, ‘Guilty, guilty, guilty’ 34 times and Donald Trump looking like he was punched in the gut.” Alter, who describes the experience in his new book, American Reckoning, reflects on how Trump has been able to act with impunity for so long. “It’s a combination of luck, galvanised defiance and the credulousness of a large chunk of the American people,” he said. “Demagoguery works. Playing on people’s fears works. It doesn’t work all the time but we can look throughout human history to political figures and how demagoguery and scapegoating ‘the other’ works.”

Alter, who covered the trial for Washington Monthly magazine, added: “We’ve had plenty of demagogues, scoundrels and conmen in politics below the level of president. Trump has been lucky to escape accountability but the United States has been lucky that we haven’t had something like this before. The founders were very worried about it. They felt we would face something like this for sure.” The US’s system of checks and balances has been racing to keep up. Trump was charged by the special counsel Jack Smith with conspiring to overturn the results of his election loss to Joe Biden in the run-up to the January 6 riot at the US Capitol. The former president and 18 others were also charged by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, with taking part in a scheme to overturn his narrow loss in Georgia. Trump was charged again by Smith with illegally retaining classified documents that included nuclear secrets, taken with him from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after he left office in January 2021, and then obstructing government demands to give them back.

With a such a caseload, it was widely assumed that Trump would spend this election shuttling between rallies one day and trials the next. But the courtroom campaign never really happened since, true to past form, he found ways to throw sand in the gears of the legal system and put off his moment of reckoning.

Or he simply got lucky. In Georgia, it emerged that Willis had a romantic relationship with the special prosecutor Nathan Wade, prompting demands that she be removed. Smith’s federal election case was thrown off track for months by a supreme court ruling that presidents have immunity for official actions taken in office. The classified documents case was thrown out by Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, although Smith is appealing and the charges could be reinstated. Such delays have made it easier to forget just how much of an outlier Trump is. Past presidential brushes with the law consisted of Ulysses S Grant being fined for speeding his horse-drawn carriage in Washington and Harry Truman receiving a ticket for driving his car too slowly on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in 1953. Richard Nixon resigned before he could be impeached over the Watergate scandal and was subsequently pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford. Meanwhile the standard for presidential aspirants has been high. Joe Biden’s first run for the White House fell apart amid allegations that he had plagiarised a speech by Britain’s Labour leader Neil Kinnock. During the 2000 campaign, a last-minute revelation that Republican candidate George W Bush had a drunk driving conviction that he concealed for 24 years generated huge headlines and was seen as a possible gamechanger. Hillary Clinton still blames her 2016 defeat on an FBI investigation into her email server that produced no charges.

For Donald Trump, his run for the “Presidency” is all about avoiding any possible jail time for his indictments and felonies. If he loses, then Trump could be facing more trials and potentially jail time and/or massive fines.

Send Trump to prison, not the White House!

#TrumpForPrison #HarrisWalz2024

[aestheticaltcow]

Family Ties

I love that the fandom sees Carmy as a girl dad who practices gentle parenting. Gentle parenting is a great parenting style, don't get me wrong. Personally, I can see him butting heads with his teenage daughter like he wants her to express herself- but he also knows that teenage boys are weird and would want to protect her at all costs. This was just a thought I had a couple of days ago, and once I started, I couldn't stop. More Dad!Carmy content to come...

A/N: I didn't realize until I copy pasted this from my Google Drive. This was 6 freakin pages. I like longer fics, I'm sorry.

The Bear Masterlist

Carmy was furious. It took a lot of effort for him to ‘gentle parent’ with you when the kids, Grace and Oliver, were little. Now that both kids are in high school, he wishes he had been harder on them. You reassure him that the two of you have great kids, both work hard in school, participate in extracurricular activities, and aren’t afraid to talk to them about anything - he insisted he should have been harder on them, especially when he gets calls from the school about Oliver getting suspended… again. 

Oliver was 15, and Carmy was convinced he was Mikey's reincarnation. Like you had, he did well in school, but he was Mikey in every other aspect of life. He just needed to get his head out of his ass before out-of-school suspension became stints in jail. 

As Carmy walked down the hall to the principal’s office, he saw Oliver sitting on a bench talking to Grace- Grace, his little girl, granted she wasn’t as little anymore. She’s 17 and looked exactly like you when you were her age- except she had gotten his eyes. “Oliver.” Carmy barked, getting his attention. 

Grace looked at her brother nervously. Carmy wasn’t the kind of Dad to ‘approve’ of her clothing, but he’d fight her on it occasionally, especially regarding crop tops and dresses. It came from a place of caring and not wanting his little girl to get hurt, but Carmy could take it too far.

 Carmy noticed Grace turning the opposite way to get away from the Berzatto boys,

“Grace? Shouldn’t you be in class or somethin’?” Carmy questioned; she stopped in her tracks, knowing Carmy wasn’t in the best mood. She turned around and hoped he was too mad, Oliver, to notice the cropped corset she’d worn to school that day. It’s not like she’d worn it to get a guy to notice her; she’d just liked the contrast of its light green color with her baggy jeans, and she was supposed to match outfits with the rest of the dance team that day so he couldn’t be mad at it- especially since he’d encouraged her to join the dance team freshman year. “Someone texted me that Oli was out here- just wanted to make sure no one beat my baby brother’s ass.” she laughed. Carmy shot her his classic ‘I’m your father, I know when you’re lying look’ but shook his head; he was not ready to deal with that. “Put on a sweater.” Grace nodded at Carmy’s casual dislike of her top, “Yes, sir.”

Initially, Carmy was going to let it slide. He knew Grace was 17, she was going to college next year, and he wouldn’t be able to encourage her to make the right decision anymore, but while she was under his roof, she’d live by his rules. You laughed when he brought it up to you that night in bed. “Carmy, she’s a good kid. Gracie has good grades. She has good friends. She works; if she wants to wear a crop top, she can wear a crop top.” Carmy sighed. He saw the point you’d been trying to make with that explanation but wasn’t happy.

Grace hoped Carmy wouldn’t bring up her wardrobe, but unfortunately, she was wrong. Carmy had hired an older brother of one of Grace’s friends at The Bear- that’s how he’d found out about Grace’s non-family Instagram account. She hadn’t posted anything too scandalous; there were some pictures from parties where she was holding a red Solo cup, a few from a dance competition after-party where she’d been wearing something Carmy wouldn’t have allowed her to leave the house in, and of course the soft launch of her relationship. He was seething; you hadn’t known about the account either- you’d heard Grace talk to her cousins about a boy she liked, but the drinking and parties also surprised you. 

“Carmy, you neeeeed to be careful with how you speak to Grace about this,” you emphasized through the phone. Of course, this would come up when you were out of town. “Baby, I’ll handle it.” “Carmen Anthony Berzatto. Do not, I repeat, do not shame our daughter. You can tell her you’re unhappy-” “I’ll handle it.” he hung up, and you knew you’d be walking into a shit storm when you returned home.

“Fuck off, Dad!” Grace screamed as she slammed her bedroom door. To say Carmy mishandled the situation would be an understatement; he stood outside Grace’s door, immediately regretting what he’d said about Grace. He questioned her character; he knew she was a good kid; he wanted to knock on her door and apologize, but Grace didn’t want to hear it.

Oliver sat in his bedroom and heard Carmy and Grace yell at each other throughout the weekend. He laughed when he realized Carmy double-downed on what he’d initially said about Grace ‘not being that kind of girl.’ and how people would ‘never take her seriously’ when he dropped the word ‘whore’ he knew there would be hell when you came home. The front door slammed, and he heard Carmy yell ‘fuck’ and slam a door. He looked out his bedroom window to see Grace running up the street. Oliver sighed and fished his phone out of his pocket; “Oli fuck off.” Grace huffed before immediately hanging up on him. He rolled his eyes and dialed your number. “Hi baby, everything okay?” “Nope.”

The house was antagonistic. Carmy was pissed at himself, you and Grace were also pissed at him, and Oliver managed to sink into the background. The family dinners you’d shared were typically full of conversation and life, but tonight was awkwardly silent. Oliver decided he’d take a crack at making it better, “Uncle Richie got to 100 Instagram followers. He’s pretty excited about it.” no one took the bait. He poked at the chicken on his plate, “Good dinner, am I right?” he grinned, looking around the table. Grace rolled her eyes and stood up from the table, “Grace?” you called after her. She ignored your question and went upstairs. “Well, I think it’s a good dinner- conversation wasn’t the best, but… we’ll get through it.” Oliver tried to lighten the tension in the room, but he inevitably failed, and Carmy told him to go to his room. Oliver obliged, taking his and Grace’s plates to the sink before shuffling upstairs. He walked past Grace’s room on the way. He paused and stood before the door; it was too quiet. He knocked softly before opening the door; she was gone.

“I just don’t know what to say to him. I’m pissed.” Grace vented as she lay beside Eva in the park by her apartment, “My dad was the same way, except he threw my clothes away. My mom ripped him a new one over it.” “Should I accept his apology and move out as soon as possible?” Eva shook her head and laughed at the suggestion. “Gracie, you know what you need to do.” Grace sighed, knowing her cousin was right. She sat up and pushed her hair back. “I’m gonna hide out at Danny’s house. Cover for me?” “Of course. Don’t get pregnant.” 

“Gracie girl? Can I come in, honey?” you asked outside her door, but there was no response. “Baby, please?” you asked again. “She’s not home,” Oliver said, walking past you to the bathroom. “What do you mean she’s not home?” he shrugged. “I guess she snuck out after dinner.”. You pinched the bridge of your nose in frustration before walking into your and Carmy’s bedroom, “You have to fix this, Carmen.” you scolded in your best mom voice he’d heard a thousand times, granted it was typically directed at one of the kids. “Baby, how can-” “Carmen. If you ever want to be inside me again, you’ll fix this.” Carmy leaned back against the headboard; he didn’t think something like this could be fixed. 

“Oh, hi, Grace.” Danny’s mom greeted her when she realized she was sitting on the couch with Danny. “Hi, Mrs. De Luca.” she smiled back, “How are you, sweetheart?” Grace shrugged at the question, “Been better.” “Oh, I’m sorry, Grace,” she frowned before turning her attention to her son “Danny. I need you to take Annie to school tomorrow morning, okay? I’m doin’ an overnight.” Danny nodded in acknowledgment. She smiled again and quickly ran out of the house, leaving Danny and Grace in the living room and Danny’s sister Annie upstairs, tucked into bed. 

“So. What’s goin on with you?” Danny finally asked. He wasn’t mad that she’d come over unannounced, but it was obvious that Grace had been crying. Grace shrugged at the question, “Guess I just wanted to see you.” Danny scoffed. “Grace. Com’ on. You only come over on weeknights when you’re upset.” “Do not.” Grace challenged, leaning into his side. “I will tickle it out of you, baby. You should just tell me what’s up.” he insisted, sitting up slightly. Grace groaned and sat up, bringing her knees to her chest. She told him that she and Carmy were fighting about her ‘secret online life that everyone can see’ and how ‘she’s not that kind of girl,’ so why was she pretending to be? She was hesitant to include the part where Carmy had called her a whore, but as she looked at Danny’s sympathetic face, she couldn’t hold back. “The house is awkward- Oli tried to make a joke out of it, but it was just so fuckin’ annoying. I’m just disappointed in myself… he’s never mad at me, Danny.” Danny nodded. “I get that. What me to beat him up for callin’ you a whore? You know I will.” Grace rolled her eyes. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”

Carmy sat outside on the porch smoking when he saw headlights coming in his direction; it was almost 2 in the morning. He sighed and took a final puff before ashing his cigarette. He assumed it was Grace, and he was correct. He heard her say her goodbyes to whoever dropped her off and waited for her to come up the driveway. “Hi, Grace.” he greeted, his lips pulling into a tight line due to their growing awkwardness. “Dad,” she responded, crossing her arms over her stomach. “Where were you?” “With Eva.” Carmy nodded. “Can I talk to you?” Grace shrugged and moved closer to Carmy. “I want to apologize, Gracie. I shouldn’t have said that about you. You have a good head on those shoulders- but I don’t want you to get hurt. Girls who posted stuff like that online when I was 17… you know what happened. Rumors and shit- I just don’t want people doin' that to you.” he explained, scratching at the back of his neck. Grace nodded, taking in what he’d said. “I understand, but I’m not a little girl anymore, Dad. I can handle myself; if I can’t, Danny has my back.” Carmy nodded, “We good?” he asked, looking down at Grace. He smiled when he saw her pulling her sleeves over her hands like when she was a little girl and felt uneasy. “We’re good.” Grace agreed. Carmy brought her into a lazy hug and kissed the top of her head. “I love you, always.” Grace smiled and hugged Carmy back, “I love you too, Dad.”

As the two went inside, Carmy remembered something she’d said, “Who’s Danny?” Grace stopped and looked up at Carmy cautiously. “Uh… he’s my- my boyfriend…”

[ms-hells-bells]

Because senator Kamala Harris is a prosecutor and I am a felon, I have been following her political rise, with the same focus that my younger son tracks Steph Curry threes. Before it was in vogue to criticize prosecutors, my friends and I were exchanging tales of being railroaded by them. Shackled in oversized green jail scrubs, I listened to a prosecutor in a Fairfax County, Va., courtroom tell a judge that in one night I’d single-handedly changed suburban shopping forever. Everything the prosecutor said I did was true — I carried a pistol, carjacked a man, tried to rob two women. “He needs a long penitentiary sentence,” the prosecutor told the judge. I faced life in prison for carjacking the man. I pleaded guilty to that, to having a gun, to an attempted robbery. I was 16 years old. The old heads in prison would call me lucky for walking away with only a nine-year sentence.

I’d been locked up for about 15 months when I entered Virginia’s Southampton Correctional Center in 1998, the year I should have graduated from high school. In that prison, there were probably about a dozen other teenagers. Most of us had lengthy sentences — 30, 40, 50 years — all for violent felonies. Public talk of mass incarceration has centered on the war on drugs, wrongful convictions and Kafkaesque sentences for nonviolent charges, while circumventing the robberies, home invasions, murders and rape cases that brought us to prison.

The most difficult discussion to have about criminal-justice reform has always been about violence and accountability. You could release everyone from prison who currently has a drug offense and the United States would still outpace nearly every other country when it comes to incarceration. According to the Prison Policy Institute, of the nearly 1.3 million people incarcerated in state prisons, 183,000 are incarcerated for murder; 17,000 for manslaughter; 165,000 for sexual assault; 169,000 for robbery; and 136,000 for assault. That’s more than half of the state prison population.

When Harris decided to run for president, I thought the country might take the opportunity to grapple with the injustice of mass incarceration in a way that didn’t lose sight of what violence, and the sorrow it creates, does to families and communities. Instead, many progressives tried to turn the basic fact of Harris’s profession into an indictment against her. Shorthand for her career became: “She’s a cop,” meaning, her allegiance was with a system that conspires, through prison and policing, to harm Black people in America.

In the past decade or so, we have certainly seen ample evidence of how corrupt the system can be: Michelle Alexander’s best-selling book, “The New Jim Crow,” which argues that the war on drugs marked the return of America’s racist system of segregation and legal discrimination; Ava DuVernay’s “When They See Us,” a series about the wrongful convictions of the Central Park Five, and her documentary “13th,” which delves into mass incarceration more broadly; and “Just Mercy,” a book by Bryan Stevenson, a public interest lawyer, that has also been made into a film, chronicling his pursuit of justice for a man on death row, who is eventually exonerated. All of these describe the destructive force of prosecutors, giving a lot of run to the belief that anyone who works within a system responsible for such carnage warrants public shame.

My mother had an experience that gave her a different perspective on prosecutors — though I didn’t know about it until I came home from prison on March 4, 2005, when I was 24. That day, she sat me down and said, “I need to tell you something.” We were in her bedroom in the townhouse in Suitland, Md., that had been my childhood home, where as a kid she’d call me to bring her a glass of water. I expected her to tell me that despite my years in prison, everything was good now. But instead she told me about something that happened nearly a decade earlier, just weeks after my arrest. She left for work before the sun rose, as she always did, heading to the federal agency that had employed her my entire life. She stood at a bus stop 100 feet from my high school, awaiting the bus that would take her to the train that would take her to a stop near her job in the nation’s capital. But on that morning, a man yanked her into a secluded space, placed a gun to her head and raped her. When she could escape, she ran wildly into the 6 a.m. traffic.

My mother’s words turned me into a mumbling and incoherent mess, unable to grasp how this could have happened to her. I knew she kept this secret to protect me. I turned to Google and searched the word “rape” along with my hometown and was wrecked by the violence against women that I found. My mother told me her rapist was a Black man. And I thought he should spend the rest of his years staring at the pockmarked walls of prison cells that I knew so well.

The prosecutor’s job, unlike the defense attorney’s or judge’s, is to do justice. What does that mean when you are asked by some to dole out retribution measured in years served, but blamed by others for the damage incarceration can do? The outrage at this country’s criminal-justice system is loud today, but it hasn’t led us to develop better ways of confronting my mother’s world from nearly a quarter-century ago: weekends visiting her son in a prison in Virginia; weekdays attending the trial of the man who sexually assaulted her.

We said goodbye to my grandmother in the same Baptist church that, in June 2019, Senator Kamala Harris, still pursuing the Democratic nomination for president, went to give a major speech about why she became a prosecutor. I hadn’t been inside Brookland Baptist Church for a decade, and returning reminded me of Grandma Mary and the eight years of letters she mailed to me in prison. The occasion for Harris’s speech was the annual Freedom Fund dinner of the South Carolina State Conference of the N.A.A.C.P. The evening began with the Black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and at the opening chord nearly everyone in the room stood. There to write about the senator, I had been standing already and mouthed the words of the first verse before realizing I’d never sung any further.

Each table in the banquet hall was filled with folks dressed in their Sunday best. Servers brought plates of food and pitchers of iced tea to the tables. Nearly everyone was Black. The room was too loud for me to do more than crouch beside guests at their tables and scribble notes about why they attended. Speakers talked about the chapter’s long history in the civil rights movement. One called for the current generation of young rappers to tell a different story about sacrifice. The youngest speaker of the night said he just wanted to be safe. I didn’t hear anyone mention mass incarceration. And I knew in a different decade, my grandmother might have been in that audience, taking in the same arguments about personal agency and responsibility, all the while wondering why her grandbaby was still locked away. If Harris couldn’t persuade that audience that her experiences as a Black woman in America justified her decision to become a prosecutor, I knew there were few people in this country who could be moved.

Describing her upbringing in a family of civil rights activists, Harris argued that the ongoing struggle for equality needed to include both prosecuting criminal defendants who had victimized Black people and protecting the rights of Black criminal defendants. “I was cleareyed that prosecutors were largely not people who looked like me,” she said. This mattered for Harris because of the “prosecutors that refused to seat Black jurors, refused to prosecute lynchings, disproportionately condemned young Black men to death row and looked the other way in the face of police brutality.” When she became a prosecutor in 1990, she was one of only a handful of Black people in her office. When she was elected district attorney of San Francisco in 2003, she recalled, she was one of just three Black D.A.s nationwide. And when she was elected California attorney general in 2010, there were no other Black attorneys general in the country. At these words, the crowd around me clapped. “I knew the unilateral power that prosecutors had with the stroke of a pen to make a decision about someone else’s life or death,” she said.

Harris offered a pair of stories as evidence of the importance of a Black woman’s doing this work. Once, ear hustling, she listened to colleagues discussing ways to prove criminal defendants were gang-affiliated. If a racial-profiling manual existed, their signals would certainly be included: baggy pants, the place of arrest and the rap music blaring from vehicles. She said that she’d told her colleagues: “So, you know that neighborhood you were talking about? Well, I got family members and friends who live in that neighborhood. You know the way you were talking about how folks were dressed? Well, that’s actually stylish in my community.” She continued: “You know that music you were talking about? Well, I got a tape of that music in my car right now.”

The second example was about the mothers of murdered children. She told the audience about the women who had come to her office when she was San Francisco’s D.A. — women who wanted to speak with her, and her alone, about their sons. “The mothers came, I believe, because they knew I would see them,” Harris said. “And I mean literally see them. See their grief. See their anguish.” They complained to Harris that the police were not investigating. “My son is being treated like a statistic,” they would say. Everyone in that Southern Baptist church knew that the mothers and their dead sons were Black. Harris outlined the classic dilemma of Black people in this country: being simultaneously overpoliced and underprotected. Harris told the audience that all communities deserved to be safe.

Among the guests in the room that night whom I talked to, no one had an issue with her work as a prosecutor. A lot of them seemed to believe that only people doing dirt had issues with prosecutors. I thought of myself and my friends who have served long terms, knowing that in a way, Harris was talking about Black people’s needing protection from us — from the violence we perpetrated to earn those years in a series of cells.

Harris came up as a prosecutor in the 1990s, when both the political culture and popular culture were developing a story about crime and violence that made incarceration feel like a moral response. Back then, films by Black directors — “New Jack City,” “Menace II Society,” “Boyz n the Hood” — turned Black violence into a genre where murder and crack-dealing were as ever-present as Black fathers were absent. Those were the years when Representative Charlie Rangel, a Democrat, argued that “we should not allow people to distribute this poison without fear that they might be arrested” and “go to jail for the rest of their natural life.” Those were the years when President Clinton signed legislation that ended federal parole for people with three violent crime convictions and encouraged states to essentially eliminate parole; made it more difficult for defendants to challenge their convictions in court; and made it nearly impossible to challenge prison conditions.

Back then, it felt like I was just one of an entire generation of young Black men learning the logic of count time and lockdown. With me were Anthony Winn and Terell Kelly and a dozen others, all lost to prison during those years. Terell was sentenced to 33 years for murdering a man when he was 17 — a neighborhood beef turned deadly. Home from college for two weeks, a 19-year-old Anthony robbed four convenience stores — he’d been carrying a pistol during three. After he was sentenced by four judges, he had a total of 36 years.

Most of us came into those cells with trauma, having witnessed or experienced brutality before committing our own. Prison, a factory of violence and despair, introduced us to more of the same. And though there were organizations working to get rid of the death penalty, end mandatory minimums, bring back parole and even abolish prisons, there were few ways for us to know that they existed. We suffered. And we felt alone. Because of this, sometimes I reduce my friends’ stories to the cruelty of doing time. I forget that Terell and I walked prison yards as teenagers, discussing Malcolm X and searching for mentors in the men around us. I forget that Anthony and I talked about the poetry of Sonia Sanchez the way others praised DMX. He taught me the meaning of the word “patina” and introduced me to the music of Bill Withers. There were Luke and Fats; and Juvie, who could give you the sharpest edge-up in America with just a razor and comb.

When I left prison in 2005, they all had decades left. Then I went to law school and believed I owed it to them to work on their cases and help them get out. I’ve persuaded lawyers to represent friends pro bono. Put together parole packets — basically job applications for freedom: letters of recommendation and support from family and friends; copies of certificates attesting to vocational training; the record of college credits. We always return to the crimes to provide explanation and context. We argue that today each one little resembles the teenager who pulled a gun. And I write a letter — which is less from a lawyer and more from a man remembering what it means to want to go home to his mother. I write, struggling to condense decades of life in prison into a 10-page case for freedom. Then I find my way to the parole board’s office in Richmond, Va., and try to persuade the members to let my friends see a sunrise for the first time.

Juvie and Luke have made parole; Fats, represented by the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia School of Law, was granted a conditional pardon by Virginia’s governor, Ralph Northam. All three are home now, released just as a pandemic would come to threaten the lives of so many others still inside. Now free, they’ve sent me text messages with videos of themselves hugging their mothers for the first time in decades, casting fishing lines from boats drifting along rivers they didn’t expect to see again, enjoying a cold beer that isn’t contraband.

In February, after 25 years, Virginia passed a bill making people incarcerated for at least 20 years for crimes they committed before their 18th birthdays eligible for parole. Men who imagined they would die in prison now may see daylight. Terell will be eligible. These years later, he’s the mentor we searched for, helping to organize, from the inside, community events for children, and he’s spoken publicly about learning to view his crimes through the eyes of his victim’s family. My man Anthony was 19 when he committed his crime. In the last few years, he’s organized poetry readings, book clubs and fatherhood classes. When Gregory Fairchild, a professor at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, began an entrepreneurship program at Dillwyn Correctional Center, Anthony was among the graduates, earning all three of the certificates that it offered. He worked to have me invited as the commencement speaker, and what I remember most is watching him share a meal with his parents for the first time since his arrest. But he must pray that the governor grants him a conditional pardon, as he did for Fats.

I tell myself that my friends are unique, that I wouldn’t fight so hard for just anybody. But maybe there is little particularly distinct about any of us — beyond that we’d served enough time in prison. There was a skinny light-skinned 15-year-old kid who came into prison during the years that we were there. The rumor was that he’d broken into the house of an older woman and sexually assaulted her. We all knew he had three life sentences. Someone stole his shoes. People threatened him. He’d had to break a man’s jaw with a lock in a sock to prove he’d fight if pushed. As a teenager, he was experiencing the worst of prison. And I know that had he been my cellmate, had I known him the way I know my friends, if he reached out to me today, I’d probably be arguing that he should be free.

But I know that on the other end of our prison sentences was always someone weeping. During the middle of Harris’s presidential campaign, a friend referred me to a woman with a story about Senator Harris that she felt I needed to hear. Years ago, this woman’s sister had been missing for days, and the police had done little. Happenstance gave this woman an audience with then-Attorney General Harris. A coordinated multicity search followed. The sister had been murdered; her body was found in a ravine. The woman told me that “Kamala understands the politics of victimization as well as anyone who has been in the system, which is that this kind of case — a 50-year-old Black woman gone missing or found dead — ordinarily does not get any resources put toward it.” They caught the man who murdered her sister, and he was sentenced to 131 years. I think about the man who assaulted my mother, a serial rapist, because his case makes me struggle with questions of violence and vengeance and justice. And I stop thinking about it. I am inconsistent. I want my friends out, but I know there is no one who can convince me that this man shouldn’t spend the rest of his life in prison.

My mother purchased her first single-family home just before I was released from prison. One version of this story is that she purchased the house so that I wouldn’t spend a single night more than necessary in the childhood home I walked away from in handcuffs. A truer account is that by leaving Suitland, my mother meant to burn the place from memory.

I imagined that I had singularly introduced my mother to the pain of the courts. I was wrong. The first time she missed work to attend court proceedings was to witness the prosecution of a kid the same age as I was when I robbed a man. He was probably from Suitland, and he’d attempted to rob my mother at gunpoint. The second time, my mother attended a series of court dates involving me, dressed in her best work clothes to remind the prosecutor and judge and those in the courtroom that the child facing a life sentence had a mother who loved him. The third time, my mother took off days from work to go to court alone and witness the trial of the man who raped her and two other women. A prosecutor’s subpoena forced her to testify, and her solace came from knowing that prison would prevent him from attacking others.

After my mother told me what had happened to her, we didn’t mention it to each other again for more than a decade. But then in 2018, she and I were interviewed on the podcast “Death, Sex & Money.” The host asked my mother about going to court for her son’s trial when he was facing life. “I was raped by gunpoint,” my mother said. “It happened just before he was sentenced. So when I was going to court for Dwayne, I was also going for a court trial for myself.” I hadn’t forgotten what happened, but having my mother say it aloud to a stranger made it far more devastating.

On the last day of the trial of the man who raped her, my mother told me, the judge accepted his guilty plea. She remembers only that he didn’t get enough time. She says her nose began to bleed. When I asked her what she would have wanted to happen to her attacker, she replied, “That I’d taken the deputy’s gun and shot him.”

Harris has studied crime-scene and autopsy photos of the dead. She has confronted men in court who have sexually assaulted their children, sexually assaulted the elderly, scalped their lovers. In her 2009 book, “Smart on Crime,” Harris praised the work of Sunny Schwartz — creator of the Resolve to Stop the Violence Project, the first restorative-justice program in the country to offer services to offenders and victims, which began at a jail in San Francisco. It aims to help inmates who have committed violent crimes by giving them tools to de-escalate confrontations. Harris wrote a bill with a state senator to ensure that children who witness violence can receive mental health treatment. And she argued that safety is a civil right, and that a 60-year sentence for a series of restaurant armed robberies, where some victims were bound or locked in freezers, “should tell anyone considering viciously preying on citizens and businesses that they will be caught, convicted and sent to prison — for a very long time.”

Politicians and the public acknowledge mass incarceration is a problem, but the lengthy prison sentences of men and women incarcerated during the 1990s have largely not been revisited. While the evidence of any prosecutor doing work on this front is slim, as a politician arguing for basic systemic reforms, Harris has noted the need to “unravel the decades-long effort to make sentencing guidelines excessively harsh, to the point of being inhumane”; criticized the bail system; and called for an end to private prisons and criticized the companies that charge absurd rates for phone calls and electronic-monitoring services.

In June, months into the Covid-19 pandemic, and before she was tapped as the vice-presidential nominee, I had the opportunity to interview Harris by phone. A police officer’s knee on the neck of George Floyd, choking the life out of him as he called for help, had been captured on video. Each night, thousands around the world protested. During our conversation, Harris told me that as the only Black woman in the United States Senate “in the midst of the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery,” countless people had asked for stories about her experiences with racism. Harris said that she was not about to start telling them “about my world for a number of reasons, including you should know about the issue that affects this country as part of the greatest stain on this country.” Exhausted, she no longer answered the questions. I imagined she believes, as Toni Morrison once said, that “the very serious function of racism” is “distraction. It keeps you from doing your work.”

But these days, even in the conversations that I hear my children having, race suffuses so much. I tell Harris that my 12-year-old son, Micah, told his classmates and teachers: “As you all know, my dad went to jail. Shouldn’t the police who killed Floyd go to jail?” My son wanted to know why prison seemed to be reserved for Black people and wondered whose violence demanded a prison cell.

“In the criminal-justice system,” Harris replied, “the irony, and, frankly, the hypocrisy is that whenever we use the words ‘accountability’ and ‘consequence,’ it’s always about the individual who was arrested.” Again, she began to make a case that would be familiar to any progressive about the need to make the system accountable. And while I found myself agreeing, I began to fear that the point was just to find ways to treat officers in the same brutal way that we treat everyone else. I thought about the men I’d represented in parole hearings — and the friends I’d be representing soon. And wondered out loud to Harris: How do we get to their freedom?

“We need to reimagine what public safety looks like,” the senator told me, noting that she would talk about a public health model. “Are we looking at the fact that if you focus on issues like education and preventive things, then you don’t have a system that’s reactive?” The list of those things becomes long: affordable housing, job-skills development, education funding, homeownership. She remembered how during the early 2000s, when she was the San Francisco district attorney and started Back on Track (a re-entry program that sought to reduce future incarceration by building the skills of the men facing drug charges), many people were critical. “ ‘You’re a D.A. You’re supposed to be putting people in jail, not letting them out,’” she said people told her.

It always returns to this for me — who should be in prison, and for how long? I know that American prisons do little to address violence. If anything, they exacerbate it. If my friends walk out of prison changed from the boys who walked in, it will be because they’ve fought with the system — with themselves and sometimes with the men around them — to be different. Most violent crimes go unsolved, and the pain they cause is nearly always unresolved. And those who are convicted — many, maybe all — do far too much time in prison.

And yet, I imagine what I would do if the Maryland Parole Commission contacted my mother, informing her that the man who assaulted her is eligible for parole. I’m certain I’d write a letter explaining how one morning my mother didn’t go to work because she was in a hospital; tell the board that the memory of a gun pointed at her head has never left; explain how when I came home, my mother told me the story. Some violence changes everything.

The thing that makes you suited for a conversation in America might be the very thing that precludes you from having it. Terell, Anthony, Fats, Luke and Juvie have taught me that the best indicator of whether I believe they should be free is our friendship. Learning that a Black man in the city I called home raped my mother taught me that the pain and anger for a family member can be unfathomable. It makes me wonder if parole agencies should contact me at all — if they should ever contact victims and their families.

Perhaps if Harris becomes the vice president we can have a national conversation about our contradictory impulses around crime and punishment. For three decades, as a line prosecutor, a district attorney, an attorney general and now a senator, her work has allowed her to witness many of them. Prosecutors make a convenient target. But if the system is broken, it is because our flaws more than our virtues animate it. Confronting why so many of us believe prisons must exist may force us to admit that we have no adequate response to some violence. Still, I hope that Harris reminds the country that simply acknowledging the problem of mass incarceration does not address it — any more than keeping my friends in prison is a solution to the violence and trauma that landed them there.

In light of Harris being endorsed by Biden and highly likely to be the Democratic Party candidate, I thought I would share this balanced, understanding of both sides, article in regard to Harris and her career as a prosecutor, as I know that will be something dragged out by bad actors and useful idiots (you have a bunch of people stating 'Kamala is a cop', which is completely false, and also factless and misleading statements about 'mass incarceration' under her). I'm not saying she doesn't deserve to be criticised or that there is nothing about her career that can be criticised, but it should at least be representative of the truth and understanding of the complexities of the legal system.

[princessbrunette]

I’m really bored and i’m thinking about your blog, so here’s some more animal readers for you incase you’re looking for some new ideas.

fox!reader: she’s a pouge of course, sly and cunning but she can be shy and timid like an actual fox, lowkey a kleptomaniac, been arrested several times on account of shop lifting. Loves jean skirts, and baby tees, and a pair of wedges on her feet. She’s uses tears as a weapon.

I can also see her with pouge rafe, they’re not friends exactly but they know eachother (maybe they grew up together) one day she overheard him talking about how tight money is at the moment, and so she shows up to his house with thousands of dollars in a bag and holds it out to him all sweetly like “i got this for you.” And he’s all wide eyed like “where the fuck did you get all this from?” and she’s like “it was sitting in suitcase at barry’s house and no one’s name was on it, i got it for you.” all innocently and now he’s an near hyperventilating, snapping at her “you’re gonna get both of us fucked up.” and she gets teary eyed like “but i got it for you 🥺”

She meets john b when he catches her stealing one of his chickens (like foxes do, except she doesn’t want to eat it, she wants it as a pet) She tries to hide the chicken under her shirt when he catches her, & johnb’s like “do you…have one of my chickens?” scratching his head all confused and half asleep cs its 10 in the morning, and she’s like “….no.” even as the chicken is literally freaking out under her jacket, stomps her foot when he tries to retrieve his chicken and tells him that “you don’t need them all! you already have so many!” and he just like “they’re literally mine though….” and she starts crying, until he gives her an egg. then probably runs away without saying thank you cs she’s scared he might take it back. Johnb tells everyone about it later and literally no one believes him.

or maybe even regular look rafe. She’s Always getting into trouble with him because she think “no” means “find a way to do it yourself.” it’s a slow and grueling process for him, breaking her out of her sneaky habits, i mean he literally met her when she pickpocketed him at a party she snuck her way into, (he did not like that told her “oh your ass is going to prison now.” and had to literally chase her down when she tried to make a run for it. she ended up crying and he let her go.)

met jj in an over night holding cell at the county jail, after she was picked up for…breaking and entering (in her defense she saw something shiny through the window and had to have it) jj thinks it’s cute when she tearfully confesses why she’s there, so he takes her under his wing and introduces her to the pouges (she’s instrumental in the search for gold cs she’s so smart and knows how to manipulate people into getting what she wants.)

She met pope when she quite literally walked up to him while he’s doing work for his dad, points at his shark tooth necklace and says “can i have that?” and he gives it to her cs he’s super confused and also why not, she’s cute and she looks like she might start sobbing if he says no) and then it became a thing that she asks for something of his every time she sees him, he doesn’t know what she’s doing with all his shit, but it’s fine.

she’s cute and so me, so i’ll let you decide which of the boys she would be with!

this is sooooo good !! i think moony writes a fox reader but im not sure how similar this is !!!!! i love her being a klepto and i think she works great with pogue!rafe !! both very rough n tumble but fox still has that sweetness to her n rafe very clearly doesn’t. all her interactions with the pogues are so fun too — this is a 10/10 🩷🩷

[just-dreaming-marvel]

Are you team cap or iron man?

woah, loaded question lol

I believe that there were better ways to go about it from both sides.

I'm going to answer this with mostly Captain America Civil War in mind.

So here we go... (good luck)

I believe that Steve was incredibly selfish as soon as Bucky became involved and dragged people down with him. (Steve's actually a really selfish guy if you actually look at everything, but that's a whole other rant...)

I believe that Steve was too emotional and wasn't thinking fully since Peggy passed and Bucky became involved. He couldn't see past himself.

I believe that Tony signed the Accords due to all the guilt and he was honestly trying to make things better.

I believe that if they had ALL signed the Accords, they would have been able to negotiate and get the Accords amended over time as problems arose.

I believe that if they had all signed the Accords, the United Nations would have come to realize the mistake they made in the Accords and either amended or dissolved. Instead, Thanos came and the United Nations were still too busy hunting down the fugitive Avengers! (Ross, I'm looking at you...)

I believe that if they had ALL not signed the Accords, they would have been able to negotiate and figure out a new plan together with the governments. Though, I do believe that this way would have gotten them all in jail together at one point. (Can you imagine? All of them in Raft together? What chaos would that bring? Ross would have definitely retired after that.)

I believe that Steve didn't have any right to keep Tony in the dark about the truth about how Bucky killed Howard and Maria. (Like, when did he find out? How did he find out? Did Sam know too since he was helping search for Bucky? Did Natasha, Maria Hill, and Nick Fury know the truth? I hate them all if they knew and kept it from Tony.)

I believe that Ross was so against the Avengers, that he helped push the Accords and offered to be the one to break the news. I believe that he purposely reached out to Tony first, knowing that Tony felt all the guilt from every incident, and knew that he could get him to sign it. (Ross is the real bad guy here. He is the worst.)

I believe that Steve was right to not want to trust the government. (Who would after the fall of SHIELD?)

I don't believe that Tony fully trusted the Accords or the government, but understood that it was a step to making things right.

I believe that the Avengers should be held accountable and kept in check. (Even Tony agreed and he was the one to create Ultron!)

I believe that if Steve had gone to Tony before the airport incident with proof that it was a setup, things would have been different.

I believe that if the Civil War hadn't happened, Thanos would have been defeated in Infinity War.

I believe that Steve's viewpoint of everything being black and white (right or wrong), is not a good way of viewing things and caused a lot of this.

I believe that Steve doesn't feel enough guilt for the damage he and the other Avengers have done.

I believe that Tony feels too much guilt for the damage he and the other Avengers have done.

I believe that locking them in a room together until they figured it out, would have solved the issue. (Seriously, Natasha, why didn't you do this?)

I believe that Steve fully took advantage of Sharon and should have looked after her. She had to be on the run, alone, and then never got pardoned. (He also only kissed her because she was related to Peggy.)

I believe that in a real world scenario, Tony is the most correct in his believes. (Can you imagine if the Avengers were real and New York got demolished every other Thursday? Like, what would insurance look like? You cannot tell me that people would still be living in New York if the Avengers were real. Or living any place that constantly gets attacked like that.)

BUT after all that, I am Team Iron Man. Tony Stark is my main man and has successful character development. He truly changed where Steve remained selfish (to the point where he left!).

If you decide to respond to this, please be kind. We all have the right to our own opinions.

(I added this to my opinions masterlist...)

[coryothesub]

I became obsessed with Billie Eilish's "the diner" and now I couldn't stop thinking about what Coryo would be like as the stalker described in that piece of musical art.

Although it took me a million years to get around to writing this, I absolutely love this ask because it finally gave me the opportunity to explore a darker side of sub Coryo. I know the boy's unwell but I still love him sm, poor poor baby!!! Also the ending is a bit sad, but it's not as half as tragic as the initial version that I had planned for this story

nsfw / mdni / stalker!sub!coryo / dom!reader / toxic relationship / a bit of violence / nothing more I can think of

Your phone buzzed again and it made you jump a little. You had the late shift at the diner that you were working at so you had to stay after closing time to do some cleaning and deal with the accounting. 

You knew you could easily get fired for that but you had already had three shots from the vodka bottle and now you were about to take the fourth. It would be fine. You would replace the missing vodka with water and no one would notice. You really needed this after all. After finding out that he had been released from jail today. Would he actually obey the restraining order? The chance was slim to none.

You had met him right here, six months ago. 

“Coriolanus Snow,” he had introduced himself, flashing a big white teeth smile at you.

You would be lying if you said you didn't have a little crush on him when he started coming here. He was tall and handsome, always well dressed, his angelic face was neatly surrounded by his platinum blonde curls and those icy blue eyes, you felt like you could drown in them easily.

He started coming every day, and your coworkers had already nicknamed him “Coryo” on those occasions when they didn't call him your boyfriend. He was always charming and polite, he never overstepped your boundaries. Until he did…

You gave him your number yourself and then the messages started to arrive. Thousands of them. In his mind you two were in a relationship. You were his girlfriend, his fiancee, mother of his future children. He kept asking you about the wedding, had you already chosen the dress, what color it would be, what was your favorite flavor for the cake, whether you preferred a live band or a DJ.

“Coriolanus, this needs to stop!” one morning you hissed through your teeth while taking his breakfast order. He didn't seem to even hear you, he just kept talking about your beautiful life together and how you should stop working at the diner since he was able to provide for you.

You had told your boss numerous times that you couldn't work like this, and after many pleas he finally ordered the security guard not to let Coryo in despite the regular revenues he was bringing to the establishment.

Starting from that day he was just standing outside. Looking sad and confused, large tears running down his cheeks when he managed to catch your look through the window.

Then he was also standing outside your house. Your nearest grocery store. The bar you frequented with your friends. Until one day you found a vase full of fresh white roses. In your bedroom. There was no card, but you knew it was him. It happened again next week, and the week after that…

Why didn't you call the police? You did, numerous times, but the thing was that Coryo had never laid a finger on you. You couldn't prove that it was him who kept leaving the roses in your house. And standing on public land outside someone's property wasn't considered a crime.

The officers just brushed off your concerns and suggested you to change your number. But what about changing your workplace? And your home address? And even if you did all that, what if he found you anyways?

“How’s my queen doing today?” He approached you one day when you were getting inside your car after your shift.

“I just wanted to tell you that our wedding will happen on December 13. Since you didn't respond about the dress, I chose it and ordered it to be delivered to your house.”

“Coryo, please, just stop!” You lashed out at him, not being able to contain your emotions any more.

“We’re not in a relationship! We never have been! Just leave me alone!”

“I don't understand…” he looked puzzled and miserable. “But what about the wedding?”

“The wedding is canceled!” you decided to play along just as much as it would hopefully get to his deranged mind.

“No, wait, you have to explain…” for the first time ever he grabbed you by the hand, his blue eyes cold and filled with primal rage. Cold shivers ran down your spine. Could he actually be able to physically hurt you?

“Are you okay, Miss?” Some guy was just getting out of the car near you. “Is he bothering you?”

You felt too scared to even open your mouth and the stranger could probably sense the dread running through your every bone.

“Hey buddy, just let her go, okay?”

“Is this him?” Coryo yelled at you in jealous rage. “Is this the guy you’re sleeping around with? Is this the reason you're canceling the wedding?”

“Man you have clearly lost your marbles,” the helpful stranger tried to stand between you two. “Just go home and sleep off whatever you're on right now, okay?”

The next few moments were a total blur for you. The sound of a fight, screams, blood, someone calling the police. That poor guy ended up with a broken jaw. He pressed charges and Coryo was finally arrested.

You were still a bit salty that it didn't happen because of your complaints. But at least you got a restraining order. And he was out of your life. Or so you thought.

Earlier that day you had found out he’d got out on bail. Accompanied by an order to get a mandatory psychiatric treatment. But you suspected a psychiatrist wouldn't be the first person he’d look for.

After taking another shot you went to the toilet and messaged one of your friends asking to pick you up. It took all your willpower to ignore the countless messages from an unknown number until the last one came in. It was so short that you managed to see the whole text during the short moment while the notification popped up on your screen.

“I'm here, queen.”

Your heart dropped. What were you supposed to do? Call the police? But what if he was bluffing? What if “here” meant some other place? What if it wasn't even him? You had a new number, he probably did too, you had no proof unless you went out there to check.

You took a deep breath and opened the toilet door. The guest hall was empty and quiet. You couldn't see any people or vehicles outside in the parking lot. You let out a deep sigh of relief. And then you saw it. A single white rose laying on the counter.

Before your panic managed to kick in, you heard a familiar voice behind you. 

“You look so beautiful, my queen.”

You turned around and faced the man before you. Nothing much had changed, he had got a bit skinnier and apparently they had buzzed off his hair in jail. But his baby blue eyes had that same desperate glow.

“H-how did you get in?” You took a step back almost unknowingly.

“I let myself in through the kitchen door,” Coryo replied, he sounded chillingly calm. “My cellmate was a burglar and he taught me a thing or two about locks.”

He made a few steps closer to you and you could feel his hot, unsteady breath on your face. You just froze in place, afraid to even move.

“They let me out today, you know…”

“Yeah,” you replied in a nervous, high pitched tone, taking a quick look at your phone. “I figured that from the 453 messages you sent me today.”

The corner of Coryo's lip curled up in a small smile. 

“Yeah, it was quite a challenge to find out your new number, I had to pay someone and I spent every last dime I had left after paying that 250 000 dollar bail. But I memorized it right away, now I can reach from anywhere any time… I shouldn't have done that you know, but I just couldn't resist. I had to see you one last time.”

That last sentence hit you like a rock. One last time? What the hell did he mean by that? Did he have some insane murder suicide plot in his mind? You realized that you should have called the police when you had the chance, but now it was probably too late. He would just grab that phone right out of your hand.

“C-coryo?” You said, voice trembling. “Are you going to hurt me?”

His eyes widened at your question, making you fear that you had fetched him the idea even if it hadn't been on his mind before.

Suddenly he sank to his knees in front of you, hugging your leg with his cold, slender fingers. His grip wasn't too tight, but you were petrified nonetheless.

“I would never lay a finger on you, my queen,” he looked up at you, his blue eyes clear as day. He sounded so genuine that you felt a pang of embarrassment from your own suspicious thoughts. But could you really blame yourself? He was your stalker who was clearly breaking the law right now.

“What do you want then?” You asked quietly, looking down at the young man at your feet.

“I just want to tell you… I need you to know that now I understand. I know you didn't cancel the wedding because of that guy or anyone else. I know it was my own actions, my own devotion, which didn't let me give you enough space. I have nothing left. No money, no friends, no dignity. My love for you is all that I have…”

You heard his voice cracking and large tears were streaming down his face, falling on the floor beneath you. He looked so defeated, so miserable, so pathetic. It was incredibly sad. But also kinda arousing. You hated your own body for the thoughts that were currently running through your head, but it didn't seem like a taboo any more, it was almost like an act of charity…

“Shhh, Coryo…” you whispered, your hand gently caressing his buzzed head.

He swallowed thickly letting out a few more sobs and you felt his lips touching your knee. His touch was so soft and delicate, the warmth of his lips mixed with the cold tears still running down his face.

“Please,” he looked up at you again, his eyes red and glossy. “Please, I need you. I have completely destroyed myself by falling under your spell, but I still need you so badly…”

Your thumb traveled down his forehead, gently caressing his cheek and somehow you found yourself pushing it into his warm wet mouth, his eyes closing immediately and his lips suckling on your digit blissfully.

He was looking at you with a silent plea and you nodded quietly, giving him the long awaited approval.

Coryo let your thumb out of his mouth with a silent pop and started planting soft kisses above your knee. You let out a small gasp as his lips traveled up your thigh. It was no point denying how much you liked it, the wetness in your panties would eventually give you away.

His buzzed head dove under your uniform dress and you felt his warm soft lips on your inner thighs. Damn it, this felt too good.

Coryo tugged at the waistband of your panties, he seemed to be hesitating for a moment but the way you were pressing your thighs together not to give away your treacherous wetness seemed to convince him and he pulled your panties down slowly, revealing your wet cunt to his eyes.

You heard a soft gasp, the blonde boy sounded as if he had encountered something unspeakably wonderful just before his mouth attacked your pussy with insatiable hunger.

Your whole body shivered as he started planting wet kisses along your folds. Your wetness surely encouraged him and you felt his lips wrapping around your clit and sucking hungrily, while his tongue danced around your sensitive bud, causing a soft whimper to escape your lips.

“Oh Coryo,” you moaned his name, desperate for more sensation. “You”re good, so fucking good at this.”

He could hear a mix of surprise and sheer desire in your voice and it encouraged him to try even harder, sliding his tongue inside you and starting steady movements that simply drove you wild.

“Oh fuck, don't stop!” You moaned, grabbing his head instinctively and pushing him against your wet cunt, looking for a deeper contact. 

You looked down at his growing bulge, intrigued by how prominent it was. You’d always thought he must have been some creepy incel whose dick probably didn't work, but apparently everything was more than alright there.

Coryo kept tongue-fucking you, humming blissfully against your sensitive area, the soft vibrations sending you into sweet oblivion.

You were almost there, but it didn't feel right. You had already come this far and now you needed him all. You stepped back, making him whine at the loss of contact and tilted his chin up, pulling him back to his feet.

The boy looked simply delicious, desperately catching his breath, his face glistening with your juices. You grabbed his chin and looked deeply into his icy blue eyes.

“I need you to fuck me!”

Coryo was staring at you in disbelief, his brain clearly trying to process what you were asking. He was taken over by fear. Afraid to deceive that one person that he unconditionally adored.

“N-now?” He stuttered. “I don't know, I-I…”

“C’mon,” you gazed upon him with a shit eating grin, sitting back on one of the tables and opening your legs for him, putting your hungry little cunt on full display.

“I thought this was what you always dreamed of… Now don't be a little coward that throws it all away just when we've come so far huh…”

Coryo seemed to be waking up from his stupor, lustful glimmer filling his eyes as he glanced down upon you. It almost seemed like his baby blues had got a few tones darker while he was taking in the tempting sight.

He exhaled nervously and stepped closer to you, scrambling to undo his belt.

“C’mon, baby boy,” you leaned closer, grabbing at the outline of his rock hard cock and palming it through his jeans. “Mommy needs you so badly.”

He pulled out his dick, making you bite your lip at the sight. The boy was way above average, his cock was so long and handsome. Your pussy clenched around the empty nothingness from the sight alone.

Coryo lined himself at your entrance and slowly pushed himself in, watching your reaction carefully. You were almost touched by the caring expression on his face.

“Oh, Coryo, you're so big,” you moaned out, feeling his massive cock stretching you out.

“Are you comfortable?” The blonde man asked, securing your waist in a tight grip. 

“Uh-uh, just keep going!” You instructed, watching his face filling with amazement at how easily your impossibly wet cunt took his impressive length.

Coryo kept moving at a steady pace, watching you with sheer adoration. He couldn't believe that he was actually fucking you right now and it made you feel so damn good.

You enjoyed each and every of his thrusts, throwing your head back and letting out a series of small moans and whimpers.

“Faster!” You commanded breathlessly, pushing your hips towards his pelvis, desperate for more friction. Coryo's lips radiated a blissful smile as he kept watching you, his look wide-eyed and full of adoration.

He was now pounding you relentlessly enjoying the sounds you were making and the feeling of your tight wet walls clenching around him.

“Oh my goodness, such a good boy!” Your praises sounded like music to his ears as you rolled your eyes back feeling the velvety tip of his hard member hitting your sweet spot repeatedly.

Coryo groaned deeply lost in his own immense pleasure, lewd sounds you both were making filled the empty room.

“You're so perfect,” Coryo mumbled between moans and gasps, while you were meeting each and every of his thrusts eagerly, aching for your release.

“I love you,” he whispered, looking so damn genuine and vulnerable that you pulled him close instinctively, pressing your lips together in a passionate kiss.

He kissed you with pure hunger and despair, whispering ridiculous love confessions against your lips. Along with his relentless thrusts it brought you over the edge and you came all over his cock with a desperate moan, your cunt clenching around him.

It almost seemed like it was too much for him to take and he exploded in an earth shattering orgasm, filling your cunt with a load of hot cum. His eyes bursted into tears, his whole body was trembling in your arms.

You pulled him in a tight hug, pressing his head to your chest as you felt his movements slowing down gradually..

“I love you, I need you, fuck, this was so perfect,” Coryo’s fragile frame was shaking as he sobbed into your uniform dress, completely dazed by his own pleasure.

“It's alright baby,” you hummed. “I'm here, I'm holding you, it's okay.”

It took a good minute until he calmed down and wiped his nose with his hand. You watched him zip up his jeans as kept glancing over at you with a teary look. You couldn't quite put your finger on it, but there was an eerie feeling lingering in the air.

“Thank you, my queen!” Coryo pressed another soft kiss to your lips. 

“I guess you're truly mine now,” a weird little smile crossed his face. 

You nodded faintly, starting to realize what you’d just gotten yourself into.

“And I'm always yours,” he said, caressing your cheek gently. You leaned into his touch, basking in his unconditional adoration.

Coryo took a few steps back, then walked over to the front door and let himself out. You watched him as he walked under the dim lights of the parking lot and then disappeared into the darkness.

You pulled your panties back up and grabbed your things, picking up the white rose from the counter almost instinctively and breathing in its alluring scent. You started to realize that you had probably just made the biggest mistake of your life. But for some reason it didn't feel wrong at all. 

You grabbed your keys and decided that you were gonna think this through tomorrow. Or at least after you’d receive an overjoyed text from Coryo.

But that text never arrived. You didn't hear from him again. And so did no one else in your town. Rumors started circulating after a while and you heard all kinds of stuff. That he had moved away. That he had taken his own life at a remote place and his body would never be found. Maybe he had found another object for his obsession. Or maybe he was finally happy somewhere far away, at least you hoped so.

You had no idea. But sometimes under the cover of darkness you opened your journal and looked at the single white rose that you had dried almost like a weird talisman. And then you couldn't help but think about that strange night at the diner. And about the young blonde man with icy blue eyes, secretly hoping that someday somehow you would see him again.

[minetteskvareninova]

How Would I Put This For My Non-Slovak Mutuals

Slovakia is going to have elections (premature, I should note, because Matovič is an idiot, see bellow) and by God I am stressed. Our options are as follows:

Progresívne Slovensko (Progressive Slovakia) - They are the, well, progressive party of the Slovak political spectrum. Which means they are the only fucking party that supports the LGBT movement with any consistency. Most of their other proposals are also relatively reasonable; they are interested in protecting the environment, want to improve the sorry state of Slovak healthcare, fight the corruption and so on. Their only two issues are the fact that their leader, Martin Šimečka, is a fucking nerd with the charisma of a wet noodle, and the fact that everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone, even people who theoretically should be on their side on account of not being bigoted Putin-loving dipshits, hates them for absolutely no reason. Well, except for their large preferences, probably. They are the most successful party, or second most successful (depends on how the elections pan out) after...

SMER - Sociálna demokracia (DIRECTION - Social Democracy; yes I know SMER is also short for something but I'm too lazy to look it up right now) - Hoo boy. These guys. How would I even start to explain the sheer amount of baggage these guys carry...? SMER has been in power in 2008-2012 and 2012-2020. And it was a fucking shitshow. Between massive corruption and widespread mismanagement of public resources, you can't help but wonder how the fuck did these people last one term, let alone three?! Don't let the Social Democracy thing in their name fool you, these people aren't really social democrats, they have no ideology beyond getting more votes and avoiding jail. Their leader is Róbert Fico, a literal antichrist whose corruption scandals would make for an exceptionally thick encyclopedia. This man is able to sell his soul to the devil for money and power, but since the devil seems kinda unavailable, he figured Putin is the next best (worst?) thing. His latest strategy for gaining more support is leaning into the fanatical Putin-loving, EU and human rights hating crowd, which in our country is depressingly large. Another memorable personality is Ľuboš Blaha, a tankie extraordinaire whose favourite meal is the sole of Volodya's boot and a steady diet of bathit conspiracies. Remember when Blaha engaged in casual atrocity denial around Bucha, because Pepperidge Farm and Minette's blog remember. https://www.tumblr.com/minetteskvareninova/680859499810177024/this-war-is-horrible-and-itself-would-be-enough

Hlas-SD (Voice-SD) - Most progressives in Slovakia have high hopes for these people. I don't. They are an offshoot of SMER, whose leader Peter Pellegrini has mostly held the line with Fico, but at least seems spineless enough to betray him if it happens to be advantageous enough. They don't really have any kind of concrete politics (most of their program is a vague "we'll make things better" kind of stuff), but at least they don't actively spread hate, so in that way they are able to climb over the low bar that is their mother party. Still, how are these people in the third place of every pre-election survey I will never know. I guess Pelle is just that sexy or whatever.

Obyčajní ľudia a nezávislé osobnosti (Ordinary People And Independent Personalities) - They have been the ruling party since 2020 and much like with SMER, it was kind of a shitshow, just in a different way. Their leader Igor Matovič is less corrupt (mind you, not NOT corrupt) than Fico, but more than makes up for it by being kinda stupid and also a horrendous drama queen whose antics prematurely ended two cabinets, his and Heger's. Tenderly nicknamed "Matelko", he became known for his "atom bombs" of ideas, such as giving out prizes in a lottery that people join by getting vaccinated. Y'know, to increase vaccination rates during the height of COVID-19 pandemic. That's why this whole thing had to be televised, complete with "call to collect your prize" type of deal. For what it's worth, he at least made attempts to fight the corruption of the previous regime; he did it badly, as is his way, but nonetheless. "Independent personalities" here means a bunch of small parties that joined them in this election, because they would have no chance otherwise. They are a pretty diverse bunch, meaning their ranks include, among others, an infamous bigot and fanatical anti-abortion activist Anna Záborská, but they also made my bae Jaroslav Naď a defence minister, so that kinda balances it out. I wouldn't hate it if they managed to get into parliament, I'll tell you that much.

Slododa a Solidarita (Freedom and Solidarity) - Considering Matelko profiles himself as an anti-corruption crusader, you'd think Róbert Fico is his nemesis. You'd be wrong. Fico unfortunately loses that prestigious title to one Richard Sulík, leader of SaS, who is... Eh? Like, he's competent in the questions of economy and in general not in the worst tier of Slovak politicians, but also, he's as much of a libertarian as is possible in our part of the world (which si to say, he's not as bad as an average American libertarian, but still engages in, for example, casual climate change denial) and constantly feuds with Matelko. Again, I don't hate him, but we could do a lot better.

Kresťanskodemokratické hnutie (Christian-Democratic Movement) - They are surprisingly not as bigoted as their name would suggest, but that's because here in Slovakia we are used to levels of homophobia and transphobia that would boggle the mind of an average non-fundie American. They come off as relatively reasonable, but only because one can't help but compare them to Putin kissasses like SMER, SNS and Republika. Which brings us to...

Slovenská národná strana (Slovak National Party) - You know, Stupidest Slovak Politician is a tough contest, so my respect to anyone who is able to win it as decisively as Andrej Danko. This man is like Róbert Fico, if his spirit animal was a sheep instead of a fox (and I say it as someone who has experience with sheep, those motherfuckers are ungodly stupid). He simped for Putin before it was cool, when that particular fanclub was just him and Blaha. He doesn't seem to be able to speak his mother tongue and his constant malaproper speech is the source of many a meme. Which, yes, means that him getting into parliament would be pretty funny. On the other hand, all that fun would probably be somewhat spoiled by the fact that he's ALSO super corrupt, not to mention, y'know, conspiracy-spreading Putin simp and bigot. He also cites Viktor Orbán as his actual, honest-to-God role model. So, an all-around cool dude that I am very happy might be in the next parliament (if Fico wins the election, because naturally these two get on like a house on fire). /s

Republika (The Republic) - I can't believe SMER legit isn't the worst mainstream Slovak party, but I mean, at least they aren't actual neonazis? I mean, Republika does its best to hide their affiliations, but because their leader, Milan Uhrík, is in competition for the second stupidest Slovak politician (the first place, as stated, firmly belonging to Danko), they don't do a particularly good job of that. I mean, Republika is the product of a schism within ĽSNS, who were already infamous for their idiocy (besides, you know, barely disguised fascism), so figures. Milan Uhrík in particular is the man whose most important contributions to Slovak culture were sitting in the European Parliament doing fuck all (did I mention that like most bigots, he also shits on EU constantly?) and the "I am not a historian" meme. Basically, because of the blatant fascist sympathies of his party, including worshipping Jozef Tiso, he was asked to condemn the crimes of the First Slovak Republic (which was basically a Nazi puppet - yeah, Ukrainians aren't the only nation in this region with a shady past, go figure; not that it prevents some people, including Uhrík himself, from spreading the "denazification" bullshit). Uhrík's answer? "I am not a historian". Since then, he has been given several options to revise this opinion. He never took any of them. His agenda is also truly something to behold, like I've never read something as profoundly dumb as the pamphlets where they present it. They don't seem to be as successful as ĽSNS, but that's unfortunately because their schtick was stolen by SMER with the good chunk of their electorate. Still, SMER might actually take them into their coalition, because like goes with the like even if the "like" is bigotry, and lest we forget, there is no God.

Sme rodina (We Are Family) - *sigh* Do I have to? Okay. Sme rodina is yet another conservative party, completely unlike EVERY OTHER PARTY THAT EVER GAINED ANY TRACTION IN THIS COUNTRY PLEASE GET ME OUT OF HERE. Ahem. Its leader Boris Kollár is a businessman who gained something of a memetic status in Slovak showbusiness by being a massive whore and having a fuckton of illegitimate children (the current count is I think 12?). Something of a Slovak Herschel Walker. And just like Herschel Walker, he, the avowed conservative that he is, has been accused of paying for abortions of one of his ex-girlfriends. Which is just a reflection of this guy's general moral consistency. To put it simply, Boris is the biggest Slovak whore. If Fico asked him to join his coalition, you bet your ass he would. He also has associated with people involved in organized crime (just like Fico) and sexted a fifteen year old drug addict. Because, as their billboards state, Sme rodina "protects children". Needless to say, I can't fucking stand this dude just as a person; since he seems to want to be an Isekai hero, I hope he gets hit by a truck.

Demokrati (The Democrats) - They're fine. Their leader is our former short-term prime minister Eduard Heger, whose only flaws were being hopelessly naive and letting Matelko get away with shit he should not have gotten away with. Any people that might be OK with them already vote for Progresívne Slovensko, but maybe they will get enough votes to be eligible for parliament? Maybe??? Their chances aren't high to be honest, but what do you know, miracles do happen.

[mithliya]

Sorry i just want to put it out there... toppdyke moved to youtbe. She ended up in with some ... Interesting... women (GC not feminist) and they've only just found out her tumblry past and I think it's about to be another huge shitshow. I'd been wondering if this would happen eventually after I realised VF555 is toppdyke a few months ago and ! It's happening!

crazy reading accusations that toppdyke/vf555 was in some kind of threesome with a slightly twisted female and astf's boyfriend ngl and crazy that toppdyke admitted the boyfriend was there but she did not have sexual contact with him (but I guess he was at the very least watching?!?? which,,, idk i think thats fucked up. some straight man should not be watching women having sex considering how men are about lesbian sex. but two radfems being involved in that is even wilder to me)

but also I knew about the ASTF situation as it was unfolding long ago bc toppdyke told me & asked me to keep it a secret back then (ig its no longer a secret) and its funny hearing how ASTF is like changing up the story now. she was thirsting after toppdyke while her boyfriend was in jail and I Guess they actually dated for a bit (even tho when toppdyke n i were talking, she was clearly conflicted n not willing to be some 2nd choice of some woman with a boyfriend again. so i guess sth happened to change her feelings there) after toppdyke n i lost touch. ASTF seemed to be misleading TD and it seemed like they were not a good fit whatsoever & last I heard from TD, they had become enemies again. i guess they then became lovers after that then became enemies a 3rd time and now ASTF is posting my very old posts on TD to get her cancelled? fhdshfd

in regards to ASTF's claims which involved my old post, for the record: TD/VF555 was not run off of radblr for having been with significantly younger women. i was one of the few people who actually seemed to take issue with that on here. her blog kept getting termed and then a straight conservative "radfem" on here "exposed" TD for "being a fauxbian" by pointing to some old account on a site called shybi from over 15 or so years ago. TD got termed again and when she remade she kept things lowkey.... until getting termed again. eventually she moved onto youtube bc she was tired of being termed ig, but she was never actually chased off of here. im sure ASTF knows the real story and is purposely twisting things to make it seem more ~scandalous~ tho

[drearygenie]

psychoanalyzing paralyte (my favorite kinnie)

(i do have kyborg week's day 3 but ill post it tmr)

(obvious spoilers for up to the very end of infinights)

prattle is obviously pretty neglectful of luce, because his priority was always boulderay

even when he reached out to luce after she left, it was for the sake of boulderay. he couldnt care less that she had a life outside him. also the fact that they meet in the sangrianite mines, meaning he's already distrusting her power. then why does he want her to be mayor? he figures that AHEm can shape her into a perfect mayor (he did it for brink, meaning he was already trained to teach people how to turn into leaders). what matters is that prattle would rather put the lives of luce and all the innocent people working in the mines than trust his daughter not to hurt him (i dont say himself because he's already dying from the sangrianite).

and after Luce has her big tantrum(i only bully her because i kin her), prattle asks her to help these random people become diplomats even though she herself wouldve likely done a better job. so Luce thinks he still doesnt trust her to do that job right. that makes Luce bitter.

so she fucking steals prized artifacts from the countries boulderay is supposed to ally with !! and mayor prattle, does he care that his daughter just committed a crime? NO ! he cares that a crime was committed and now he has to clean up after it. if he had ANY faith in her, if he believed that she had potential to change, he wouldve held her accountable. but why would he? shes not his problem. shes a threat to boulderay and everything will blow over once she dies.

she doesn't care about prattle's well being either. i mean, she knows he's dying and she put locked him up into a cold prison. hes just a weird delusional old man to her. and when she executes her plan, the people who she was supposed to count on, the infinights, rejected her. (ik this isnt chronological shh) and this is where she parallels her father. as soon as they stopped listening to her, the infinights became tools. they are pawns that if she plays right, can be used in her favor. but you know, i think she still was rooting for them somewhat (grisleve, ifykyk).

so when she went to jail, was she remorseful? NO! so the big money: why was she doing all this?

easy. she didnt want to be a leader. she didnt want to help people. she wanted to prove Prattle wrong. she wanted to prove that she could do what he did and better. little miss luce "im here once again to save everyone's ass" prattle built herself a savior complex with her insecurity.

and what i found super interesting was her character arc. because she obviously didn't become a more moral person. (murder, still believes she's a great leader, still using her gloves, etc). what changed about her was her motivation. she stopped believing she needed to prove prattle wrong.

ok ill stop projecting now

[justforbooks]

Yahya Sinwar

Hamas leader who plotted the 7 October attack on Israel that triggered war in the Middle East

Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who has been killed by an Israeli patrol in the Gaza Strip at the age of 61, was the principal architect of the attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 that killed 1,200 Israelis, kidnapped 251 hostages, and propelled the Middle East into its greatest peril since the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

The overall leader of Hamas after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in July 2024, he was its key strategist before and after 7 October, Israel’s most wanted man and the ultimately pivotal Hamas figure during ceasefire negotiations. Though presumed to have been hiding for most of the year within Gaza’s vast tunnel network, he was killed alone in a ruined apartment in Rafah, according to the Israeli military.

Despite repeated vows by Israeli leaders to assassinate him during their devastating retaliation for the 7 October attack, and after what Israel announced was the killing of his close collaborator Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’s military wing, in July 2024, Sinwar was the last survivor of the three Hamas leaders against whom the international criminal court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, sought arrest warrants for suspected war crimes.

Sinwar first came to prominence in 1985 when Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder of the organisation that would become Hamas in 1987, put him in joint charge of an armed internal enforcement agency known as al-Majd.

He missed direct participation in the momentous Palestinian events of this century’s first decade, including Hamas’s election victory in 2006, the subsequent imposition of an international boycott, and its armed seizure of full control in Gaza in 2007, because he was in jail. In 1989 he received four life sentences for orchestrating the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers and the execution of four Palestinians suspected of cooperating with Israel. According to his interrogators, Sinwar admitted without remorse to personally strangling one victim with his bare hands.

By a historical irony, he was among the 1,027 prisoners released in 2011 by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to free a kidnapped Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. The exchange reinforced Sinwar’s belief that such abductions were needed to release Palestinian prisoners. During his 22-year incarceration he assumed a commanding role among Palestinian inmates and tried at least twice to escape. Jail, he later said, had been turned by militants into “sanctuaries of worship” and “academies”. He learned fluent Hebrew, studied Israeli politics and society, and by his own account became “a specialist in the Jewish people’s history”.

Sinwar was born in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. His father, Ibrahim, and his mother had been forced to flee Majdal, now Ashkelon, as refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. He would tell fellow inmates in prison, said one, Esmat Mansour, that he had been heavily influenced by conditions in the impoverished refugee camp, with its daily humiliation of queueing for food. He was four when Israel overcame Egypt in the six-day war of 1967 and took control of the Strip. He attended Khan Yunis senior school for boys and then the Islamic University, graduating in Arabic language. Sinwar was active in student organisations fusing Islamism with Palestinian nationalism after the perceived failures of the secular PLO. He was briefly detained in 1982 and again in 1988 after Israel’s discovery of al-Majd weapons.

An autobiographical novel he completed in prison in 2004, called Thorns and Carnations, describes the protagonist Ahmed sheltering with his family during the 1967 war, only to find their dreams of Palestinian liberation shattered by Israel’s victory; Ahmed becomes an Islamist after a cousin convinces him of the religious concept of the waqf – the God-given Muslim land from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean. Infatuated with a young woman, Ahmed ends the relationship – chaste in accordance with strict Muslim custom – because in “this bitter story” there was “only room for one love”: for Palestine.

Also in 2004, Sinwar had a brain tumour removed by Israeli surgeons, detected by a quick-thinking Israeli prison dentist (and later intelligence officer), Yuval Bitton, who had Sinwar rushed to hospital. Over multiple conversations in jail before and after this life-saving episode, for which Bitton was warmly thanked by Sinwar, he recalled the prisoner telling him: “Now you’re strong, you have 200 atomic warheads. But we’ll see, maybe in another 10 to 20 years you’ll weaken, and I’ll attack.”

After his release, Sinwar was elected to Hamas’ political bureau in 2012 and, in what was seen as a shift towards its militarist tendency, to the faction’s Gaza leadership in 2017, replacing Haniyeh, who subsequently succeeded Khaled Mashal as political bureau chief. Hamas was losing popularity after two wars with Israel, in 2008-09 and 2014, and Gaza’s deep impoverishment by the blockade imposed by Israel (and Egypt) since 2007.

Sinwar seemed at times to adopt a relatively pragmatic approach. No ally of Mashal, he worked to restore relations with Iran that Mashal had ruptured by opposing Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, in his repression of a popular revolt. But he did not demur when Mashal published a (for Hamas) innovative 2017 document which, without recognising Israel, or abandoning its aspiration for the whole land, indicated it would meanwhile accept a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders – comprising the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

In 2018 Sinwar conspicuously appeared at the Great March of Return, a series of unarmed mass protests at the border barrier. Increasingly organised by Hamas, to the chagrin of some civil activists who had devised them, the protests seemed briefly to offer some alternative to armed insurgency, despite the lethal gunfire against them by Israeli troops. Sinwar even wrote (in Hebrew) to Netanyahu, proposing a long-term truce.

But a turning point came in 2021, when Sinwar and Deif are thought to have begun planning for what became the 7 October attack. By then, the 2020-21 Abraham accords between Israel, the UAE and Bahrain had reversed the Gulf countries’ refusal to recognise Israel unless the Palestinians secured a state. How far this – and the fear in 2023 that Saudi Arabia might imminently follow suit – dominated Sinwar’s thinking is unclear. But in his 7 October speech praising Sinwar and Deif for the attack, Haniyeh excoriated the Arab states for seeking “normalisation” with Israel.

Sinwar reacted defiantly during Ramadan in May 2021 when police raided the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, after clashes in the city between Palestinians and rightwing Israelis. When police did not leave the compound by a Hamas-set deadline, Gaza militants fired 150 rockets, Israel responded with airstrikes, and there was a short but intense 11-day war. Sinwar warned that Hamas, whose rockets had reached deeper into Israel than before, had enacted a “general rehearsal” for what would happen “if Israel tries to harm al-Aqsa again”.

Less conditionally, in December 2022 Sinwar addressed Israel at a Gaza rally: “We will come to you, God willing, in a roaring flood. We will come to you with endless rockets, we will come to you in a limitless flood of soldiers.” Hamas would name the 7 October attack the “al-Aqsa flood”.

So secretive was its planning that Sinwar kept its timing and scale – though apparently not that something was being prepared – from most of the Hamas external leadership. Western intelligence agencies also believe he did not confide his intentions in advance to Iran or its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah.

According to a June 2024 Wall Street Journal report, Sinwar described the huge Palestinian losses in a wartime message to Hamas leaders in Qatar as “necessary sacrifices”. In another, on the seizure of women and children as hostages, but without clarifying whether he was referring to Hamas fighters or others who joined the attack and its accompanying atrocities, he said: “Things went out of control … People got caught up in this, and that should not have happened.”

Though he told hostages he met in the tunnels that they would be protected and exchanged in a prisoner release, one 85-year-old peace activist, Yocheved Lifshitz, freed in the week-long ceasefire in November, said she had challenged Sinwar on whether he was “not ashamed to do such a thing to people who have supported peace all these years. He didn’t answer. He was silent.”

In 2011 he married Samar Abu Zamar, and they had three children, the fate of all of whom is unknown. Sinwar’s brother (and close ally), Mohammed, is still being hunted by Israeli forces.

🔔 Yahya Ibrahim Hassan Sinwar, politician, born 29 October 1962; died 16 October 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[obsessedwithpedritoofc]

Nᴏᴛ Iɴᴛᴏ Bᴏʏs (Jᴀᴠɪᴇʀ Pᴇñᴀ)

ℙ𝕒𝕚𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕘: Javier Peña × Male Reader.

𝕎𝕠𝕣𝕕 𝕔𝕠𝕦𝕟𝕥: 2,4 k.

𝕊𝕦𝕞𝕞𝕒𝕣𝕪: You had been working for Escobar from the United States until he told you to move to Colombia. It was then when you met him, and he put your world upside down with a single look, and a couple threats.

𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕟𝕘𝕤: angst, violence, mentions of death, mentions of killing, drugs, mentions of alcohol, mentions of unholy things (such as brothels), mentions of war, 80s typical homophobia, swearing, no physical descriptions of reader, no use of Y/N. (lmk if i missed any).

𝔸/ℕ: sorry for breaking your hearts, writing angst is my thing. promise next one is gonna be WAY less angsty. enjoy <3

𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓

It had happened. You had told yourself it wouldn't. But it had. And you were so fucked up.

You had known Javier Peña for several months. With the war against the drugs and the cartels going, everyone knew everyone. That was something you learned fast when you moved to Colombia. The very day you arrived, you were already being tracked by everyone in town, including the kids. Still, you tried to keep it on the low.

You had moved to Colombia as an order from your boss. Of course, and like everyone else was in that time, you were involved in drug activities, and were working for the Medellín cartel from the United States. Your job was as simple as keeping track of the extradited drugsters that got to the States from the cartel and visited them once in a while, informed them of the current situation in the cartel —of course, in secret code so the cops wouldn't get any of that information—, and you kept sending money into their bank accounts for whatever purposes they wanted to give it when they got out from jail or whatever. At least it had been as simple as that, until your boss, Pablo Escobar, ordered you to move to Colombia. As you had heard —from Escobar himself, the news and all the rumors—, the war against drugs had gone to another level. You assumed that was why Escobar wanted you in Colombia, perhaps looking for that extra backup you could give him and his men when they fucked up. Whatever it was, you just did what you did best: obey without questions. And the day right after Escobar told you to come to Colombia, you were already unpacking your luggage in your new appartment.

Of course, and as you expected, you had received orders that very day. Your new job consisted of organising the drug deliveries and make sure the were done just in time, and counting the money in case someone had to go take care of the fuckers that tried to trick Escobar. Soon, you were involved in most of his important plans, too. He had said that it was an... ascension for doing your job well. 

That's how you became one of his right hand men, too. You became as close to him as Quica and Limón, who you also became close to. Soon enough, the three of you were eating, drinking, partying and getting high together when Escobar didn't need you. You even went to brothels together every now and then, when you had a night to rest from all the drug war thing.

It was one of those nights in a brothel when you had met him for the first time.

You saw him walking out of one of the brothel's rooms, still fixing his belt over his pants and with a lit cigarette positioned between his lips. 

Those so good-looking lips.

You stood staring at him for a couple of seconds, checking him out. He didn't seem to notice you looking at him until he got out of the brothel, when he glanced at you for a moment. That little glance was enough to make your heart flutter. You hadn't given it much importance then, and just continued your night at the brothel with some random girl.

Or at least you hadn't given it much importance until you met him again.

It was another one of your free nights. That time, though, you had decided to give Quica and Limón some space for themselves at the brothel while you just went to some bar and had a drink. You didn't have much time alone with yourself since you came to Colombia, and you wanted to spend some time relaxing and having a chat with your inner thoughts. But it turned out, that night you weren't able to spend alone time either.

The same man you had seen getting out of the brothel some weeks ago sat next to you at the bar. He called you "the guy that was looking at him when he got out of the brothel", which was kind of embarrassing. Though you didn't give much importance to anything about that conversation either when he got out his DEA agent badge and said that he knew who you were. Of course you were scared at first, he had the authority to take you to jail or even extradite you right there and then. 

But he didn't.

Instead, he tried to convince you to help him stop the drug war. He named some of the men he and his partners at the DEA had lost those last years because of the war against the Medellín cartel, and he numbered all the innocent deaths and every battle they had to fight only so it could result in more innocent people dead. Then he threatened you, saying he'd send you back to the States as one of those extradited drugsters you had been working for not so long ago, if you didn't help him. He knew you were close to Escobar and his other right hand men, and he wanted to get from you as much information as posible.

You felt some pity for the man. He seemed a bit desperate, asking someone as you to help him get Escobar. And you felt bad because of how he looked when he named all the people he had lost because of his stupidity and desperation to do so. And you didn't want to be extradited either —death didn't scare you, but going to a jail in the States did.

So you agreed.

You started giving Peña every information he asked from you. You told him everything Escobar and his family and men did, everywhere they went, all of their plans... You gave him all the information you had access to, which was basically all of it. And after some time of being his informant, you saw how much danger you were putting yourself at. Way too much danger to risk your life just for the money Peña gave you in exchange for all the information.

That's how you realized you weren't just doing it for the money anymore. You were doing it for him.

And it was weird. It hurt.

You met him every free night you had to update him about everything going on. And that's just how it worked: you met, you gave him the information, and he headed off to get more of whatever other intel he could gather from someone else, who were usually sluts from some fancy brothel he liked. Seeing him going to see and fuck one of those sluts he called informants made you jealous, something you couldn't believe.

It kept going like that for a while, though soon, Quica and Limón started to suspect. You weren't as close to them as you had been before the night you talked with Peña. You kept telling them it was fine, that there was nothing wrong and you were just having a bunch of bad days. And it seemed to work.

Until one day, Escobar called you so he could have a private chat with you.

He said Quica and Limón had told him about you being off, not present, and distant with them. He said you were not focused on your job anymore. And he said that you were taking many breaks to go to the bathroom, and way too many free nights. Unfortunately for you, he was joking when he said he blamed it on some girl you were spending time with.

And then, he threatened you.

It was official. Your life was in serious danger. Your own boss had threatened you.

That night you went home shitting your pants. For the first time in the many years you had been working in the drug business, you were scared. And it was all his fault.

You pulled your phone out and messaged him, telling him you needed to see him and talk to him immediately. He showed up in your house shortly after, giving you a hurried "Is everythin' okay?".

"We have a problem. I have a problem and if we don't do something, so do you", you looked at him with a mix of anger and fear.

"Okay, okay, calm down. What's wrong?"

"Quica and Limón know. Escobar knows. And he said he'd kill me if I don't go watching my back from now on", you saw him looking at the ground with a slight frown on his brow, as if he was thinking of what to do.

"Alright, we do have a problem", was all he said.

"You gotta fucking help me, Peña".

"Fine, uh...", he thought for a couple of seconds. And for a moment, it seemed like he had an idea. "If you can wait a couple days, I'll get you a passport to the States or somethin'—".

"Are you fucking kidding me? I'll be dead before you can get the passport. And he'll have men in the States to kill me when I get there anyway. I can't go back", you sighed, trying to find a solution for yourself.

"Stay at my place, or Steve's. His wife can help you. We'll protect you".

"Oh, will you? 'Cause really, I love the way you've been protecting me as your informant. You've protected me so fucking well that my boss found out about me and even my own friends want to end my life now", you spat at him. "So yeah, you've been doing a great shit job at protecting me, Javier".

That moment, your world seemed to stop. Peña looked at you with a mix of anger and shock —though it seemed more angry than anything else. It was then that you realized that you had, for the first time, called him by his name.

"Peña", he said with a stern expression.

"Really? After all this, you're mad that I use your name?", you sighed. You were actually nervous —even scared— about what would happen now, since he seemed more serious and angry than anything you had ever seen on him. "Look, just—".

"You don't get to call me that. What made you think you could?", he gave you another hard look.

"I don't know, it just came out—".

"You don't get to call me that".

He stood looking at you with his eyes burning with anger. You had never been so afraid of how someone looked at you —not even with Escobar— until that very moment. And you were even more afraid knowing that it was Javier Peña.

"I'm sorry", was all you said, trying to match his seriousness. "I didn't think you'd be this mad".

He walked up to you all silent and still looking angry as hell. Your heart was beating pretty fast at the sight of how he towered over you, making you feel weak at the knees.

"No way", he smiled sarcastically. "I'm gonna tell you somethin' and I need you to pay attention, boy", you gulped at his words, scared of what he would say. "You're not one of those whores I fuck to get info from. You're doin' this for money, and I'm doin' this to save the goddamn country. You wanna fuck a big man, go get him yourself at a brothel, I'm sure you'll find one that wants to stick his dick inside a little boy like you".

That crossed your limits. Your blood started to boil, and you heart was beating so fast you'd swear you felt it break at that very instant.

As you watched him walking to your door, you turned around to face him and gave him an even harder look than the one he was giving you before.

"So the great fuckboy Javier Peña leaves once again, heading off to one of his brothels to fuck whatever slut he can find tonight!", you said with an exaggerated, dramatic tone. "You know, it's so fucking sad seeing how you stick to one night stands because you're afraid to start feeling something. And it's sad that you're pushing away the only person that will probably be the only one to feel something for you that's not desperation to get fucked by you, just because you're not into boys", you spat out, being at the very verge of tears. "So go on, have another night of fun with a girl that's gonna fucking pretend she wants you just for your money and your big boy dick, while the only person that actually wants to be with you cries because you broke their fucking heart!".

When you finally got to breathe again, you came to realize just how much you were crying. And meanwhile, Peña was looking at you with his emotionless expression.

"I'll try to get you that passport as soon as possible", were the words he ended the silence with, and then he left.

The weight of your conversation hung in the air for the rest of the night. It was something you weren't going to forget easily. Of course you had imagined something like this would happen if you talked with Peña about your feelings for him, but you didn't expect him to be so rude and hard. Though, thinking about it, that was right what you would expect from anyone else. At the end of the day, you were a man that had fallen for another man, in the 80s.

You just were so dumb to think that Peña was different, that you could've had a chance. But of course, you didn't. And you didn't know why —knowing it was this way for everyone else—, it had hurt you that much.

And so, there you were, curled up in your bed as you cried to the thought of him silently, letting your pillow muffle your quiet sobs and get soaked by your non-stopping stream of tears. That night again, you thought of how much you hated Peña for being so heartless, so selfish. And so brave, so handsome, so hot, so perfect, so... Peña.

And you thought about how much you hated yourself for having helped this man, knowing that all he gave you in return was a broken heart and some money you didn't want. You knew he was a dangerous man, but damn, had you fallen hard for him. And damn, did you hate yourself for it.

That night, you cried yourself to sleep thinking about all this. You wished you hadn't moved to Colombia. You wished you didn't have anything to do with drugs or the cartel. You wished you didn't know Javier Peña. And you wished you weren't so in love with him.

[remembertheplunge]

Soup packet integration

“Still he lifts the mallet, still he may draw the sword, still he might speak out for a cause he knows is right”

July 19.     From: A Year With Hadiz: by Daniel Ladinsky

(My margin note to the above: July 19, 2017)

Zoe wrote that I have abandoned the people of my class for the people of the street and of the jail. This is wrong for her. I lift the mallet of a touch of the soul. It’s soup packet integration. 

I had an  E unit meeting with Charles last night in the Stanislaus County Detention Center (jail) .

Charles told me during my visit with him in the jail that he had offered a new E unit inmate soup packets. The new guy was untrusting and turned Charles down. The next day, the new guy asked Charles “Do you still have those soup packets?”Charles still had them and gave them to his new friend.

After being released, his new friend wrote to Charles and put money on Charle’s books.

End of entry

Notes: 7/19/2024

From March of 2017 until late October of that year,  I became pretty heavily involved with having encounters with the homeless. The encounter could involve giving them a bag containing food, socks and toiletries. On some occasions, I let the homeless man stay in my house with me for days or for  a few weeks. I also was continuing to see my clients in the local jail. I’m a criminal defense attorney. I had told my sister Zoe about my homeless encounter  and jail adventures. She wrote me a letter expressing her disapproval. 

Something as ordinary as soup packets can be valuable when you are in jail. They come from the commissary. You have to have money on your account , or, on your books as it is referred to by those in jail, in order to obtain the packets from the commissary.. When Charles (not his real name) offered his soup packets to the new inmate, that was actually a significant gesture of friendship. Which, his new friend acknowledged when he was released by writing to Charles and putting money on his books. The men had an encounter. Both were healed by the gesture of the other.

And, so was I when I had the above mentioned encounters with the homeless and the jailed the experiences healed me from the damage done by the culture of comfort.