In for a penny, in for a pound my grandmother used to say. There is no one more paranoid about jail then I am. I have seen a lot of things that still make my hair rise just remembering. I have spent the last years of my life pretending not to be the survivor I am.
I am writing this diary to pimp Bob Sloan's prison diary work which is excellent. His diary today should be read by everyone because you have to know what you are up against.
Go read his diary and if you remain interested in picking around my garbage it is below the fold. His diary is Insourcing III, Corporate Wheel of Profit Rolls On Bob Sloan diarist. I do not know how to link. Someone wonderful can do it right away as a comment. Pretty Please.
The first time I went to jail I was 17 and six months. I ran away from home or my mother and brother. My brother was beating me unconscious with my mother's consent. And my mother was seducing my boyfriend and when I was told about it and broke up with him, she had my brother beat me.
I have spent a lot of time in therapy and studying psychology because like a lot who become therapists --- I was there for more of the hair of the dog that bit them.
I had been living with my best friend and her teacher mother for six months. I paid these people nothing. They did not have a lot either. But they gave me food, shelter, spiritual support and we were not the same faith, and let me use their car to learn how to drive which I put a lot of dents in.
My family is the height of southern family dysfunction which I have seen across all economic levels. IMHO, much of the problems of southern marriages are based on the idea that the man is the king of his castle and everyone is his property. At the time, this happened it was legally true. In the south, there is huge male anger that this is no longer true.
My father had been sent to Germany when the Berlin Wall went up and at that time no dependents were allowed to go. Neither of my parents cared I was gone until I went to the military chaplain and asked for my part of my father's pay be paid to me directly and told the story. Always remember that for the dysfunctional it is all about power and money to make you feel better or in control. But it never happens. The walking wounded are never healed by inflicting more pain or achieving more power. But it is their favorite illusion.
My mother came over to the house and tricked me into getting into the car with her to have a meeting at the base with the chaplain. After getting in the car, I discovered this was not true. It was rush traffic hour in downtown San Antonio. As soon as she slowed down, I jumped out of the car.
I have always been stupid like the dems and tried to reason with crazy people. She followed me and I let her catch up and she ripped all of my clothes completely off. Someone called the police and I got put in their squard car and taken to juvenile detention because then it was a crime to run away from home regardless of what they were doing to you. There I was body cavity searched etc. and placed naked and alone in a cell for 12 hours. I was pretty hysterical.
I find that I am about to delete this and just remembering still affects me. So I am compromising and stopping. Let just say at 65 I can still get very upset just allowing myself to remember to write it.
The point of this is not the terror, the point is at that time by law I was just property and short of killing me my parents could do any damn thing they wanted. They considered this their right and they went to their deaths feeling and believing this.
The next time I went to jail I was 26 and it was the fourth of July. I was stopped on the Bay Bridge back from my job at Treasure Island as a cocktail waitress at the NCO Club. I was wearing the uniform of hotpants. It was a routine traffic stop. Turned out there was a warrant for my arrest for welfare fraud and perjury.
Stripped searched, mug shot, the whole nine yards. Why? Because when my husband left me and went to Chicago this son of rich republicans and father a general refused to pay child support etc and said go on welfare that is what I pay my taxes for and I should get something back.
I went on AFDIC because I had no choice at the time. For about three years I was on and off. Meantime, the state of California wrote my husband and asked was he paying child support to which he said yes. They didn't ask for proof, checks, etc. They just had a warrant issued for my arrest. I was not convicted because he was not paying child support but because he was making car payments he considered that child support.
Try to get a job with an arrest record of fraud and perjury because that is all it reads. The reality is that anything nutty and slutty will follow you forever and no one is interested in the story or the justice of it. Anita Hill knows that her obit will have the story of public hair on a coke can. The one valid person who could have stood by her had nothing to say until she retired. And it depends on who you are and what you believe about how you are treated. When it comes to public office ethics, I can see no difference between Vitter and Clinton but that it not how is played.
I have legally changed my name etc. over all this and the only reason I can even go there is that I have no heirs. But if I am to propose any solutions with any seriousness it requires the courage to be transparent as to who I am. The leaders we need are the wounded healers who happen to be leaders. Even though I am the victim, I have a lifetime of ingrained feelings of shame because this just happened to me.
Again, like the Rollins case, that Roger Schuler wrote about when a republican is done with you --- you are worth nothing. Like Meg Whitman, telling her maid she was part of the family for nine years and firing her and being totally unwilling while making millions and millions to pay a few thousand bucks to make her legal.
In 1997, a cop reared ended a car that had stopped because a horse from my property had escaped out on the road. I had not owned the property for 24 hours nor did I know the people had abandoned the horse and I had not taken possession. That cop demanded at first 1000 dollars from me and then five thousand. I refused to pay because he was going too fast and following too close and by law I owed him nothing. I never heard from the guy who stopped for the horse because he did not hit the horse. I cannot tell you how many encounters I had with the police in Santa Clarita because I would not pay this cop. I felt damned if I did and damned if I didn't.
30 days after passage of the Patriot Act some really bad tenants on my property I was trying to get rid of---called the cops and said I threatened them with terrorist tactics. I was almost 60, short, fat, dumpy, and have no record of physical violence. I can have a bad mouth but not with the cops. It is almost dark. I have 20 acres leading to the Los Angeles National Forest. I hear them go back to their car and call for backup and they are going to arrest me for being a terrorist!
I slip out the back door and run back through the property and up the hills to a my friends at a neighboring kennel. I am not going any where with out witnesses. It takes them about two hours to figure this out. The cops come but they do not arrest me and I spend the night there and call a minister to come and get me and take me to the police station so I can get this cleared up. The two people I am trying to remove my property had just been released from a mental hospital but I had no idea of that when I allowed one of them--the woman to move in.
My life like the dems, especially the good ones like Finegold and Grayson,is that no good deed goes unpunished. One of the things I learned from the diary about Miranda was how nasty some people even on this site can be. Thus, I keep telling myself just do the right thing for the right reasons and learn from what happens.
Because of the patriot act every American is liable to jail almost at any time they want to call it. and we have seen it. Arrested for videoing cops. Killed or tased for not being ABLE to obey immediately. Kids sent to juvenile jails for judge kickbacks. Making it a crime to masturbate in your own bedroom because your school is video taping you. We have seen it all on this site. Prison for profits --- get the picture now.