Don, the only difference is, it is thee or me who would be picked up. If we have the largest population in jail, either we are such a corrupt awful place we have to lock everyone up, and we need to take stock, or... well, we... just might be... a... police state. Just because you don't feel likily to get jailed... I don't think you are naive, more the shame. You might re-read Gunnar Mydal on White American reaction to racism... the desire to hope it away, accept that these things happen, but they are really not important... see the injustice of other nations as being much worse, and yet, the staggering number of your brothers and sisters in prision seems to be just so much print on a paper. While we are on the subject of travel, and I have done a bit in my day, I would ask if you ever have been inside an American jail like Rykers, the pit of dispare. The shear size alone is awsome, add to it meeting extended families who recomend you speak to their sister, brother, brother in law, all in this town behind bars. I've been places in America you might visit. But, I assure you, visiting those places without the expectation of possibly winding up there does not do much for the soul. Living in a racially integrated part of the city wont do it for you Don, live in the part of an American city where there are few middle class whites, live in a project building where basic American rights are set aside... live in the communities described in the times artical above about the criminalisation of poverty... Hell, here in the happy hippy dippy East Village we are as economically and racially diverce as we can get, and as a result, you can think America works. Come with me to do a school concert in Bed Styvestaunt or worse. Do it the way I do, take the subway there, walk, get to know the place, the bars on the school windows with no airconditioning in the summer where it gets over 90 in class and the only airconditioner is in the principle's office... that is race in America, not some well ajusted community where middle class Black Americans are your neighbors, but I would suspect some of them might be able to show you the American police state in their lives all the same. Knowing about something, and understanding it are very different things, Don. And yes, the American people need to be lectured until we begin to understand the security state, the police state, the loss of basic rights in this country of potential due to the use and abuse of fear, of apathy, in the end as you see in the cost to jail all these people, we all pay the price... Freedom is not free, it does not take foriegn wars, it takes vigilence and care, and a people willing to speak up in the face of state evil.
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