My dear friend DougR:
I am not surprised you are involved in folk music, as another said, there is not one point of view in the working class or our music, and in fact, there is very little class conciousness among we working class folk singers in the US in some communities. I read with interest your thoughts on the prisons and constitution. I don't agree that folks who don't agree can't have successful conversations. The posts on Ireland show it takes time to develop understanding, and we should not give up using our shared membership in the working class music community to further the understanding of the culture of the music and our international community.
Now as to happy prisoners or unhappy prisoners... When I was in law school a good friend and fellow progressive, was the ex-deputy commisoner of prisons in NY under Dave Dinkins. There were alot of our fellow students who were into the notion that prisons were full of bad people who had to be punnished. We who have worked with those people feel otherwise often, so we took an intire Cim Law clas to Rikers Island as a project of the Lawyers Guild. We hoped they would notice that 99 percent were minorities and 99.999999999 percent were members of a sub working class, and that they would understand that there is a conection between oportunity, skin tone, and punishment for crimes that send white folks of the upper classes to the Betty Ford center, not to Rikers. Unfortunately, most missed the point. The prisoners did not look like them, and although we recieved a warm welcome from the prisoners, the students found them frightning and did not understand. They were happy these people who were not like them were behind bars and safely put away.
I don't expect you to understand without personal experience, but tell me - if it is not class and opportunity, why do our prison populations look the way they do, is it eugenics? I don't think so, or the crime rate would be a constant, rather, it goes up and down with the degree the ecconomy gets good enough to accomodate even the people who are not loved by the majority community. No, I don't think we need punishment in the US, we need freedom and fairness.
Keep talking friends
Larry