Setting Prisoners Free

Sometimes it's hard to choose which word is most appropriate: It's ironic! It's hypocritical! It's mean! It's unequal! It's unfair! It's blatant discrimination! It's classic bullying of the poor and disenfranchised! It's traumatizing an already traumatized people! It's how the power of money and gentrification takes pleasure in blatantly squashing those without money or assets! It's demoralizing! It's mass incarceration in action! It's kicking someone in the face who's already been knocked down repeatedly! What is this photo and what am I writing about?  This brief illustration and the photo sums up what I was trying to articulate in my last post:   "The Punishments Do Not Fit The Crimes!"   In that post, I attempted to illustrate how those experiencing homelessness are criminalized! I attempted to show, through my observations, how unfair and unjust it can be! I attempted to illustrate how ...

In part 1 of my "It's Political"  thoughts, I wrote about how our men’s shelter abruptly ended in 2004, causing a lot of trauma among my friends experiencing homelessness. I wrote about how my eyes were opened when I witnessed firsthand all the corruption and deception. I also witnessed the ugliness of many wealthier neighbors, who rallied together with the sole purpose of making the “homeless problem disappear”. By seeing all this blatant bullying by those with power, and by also feeling dismayed, it caused me to ask how I should react as a human being and a follower of Jesus.  This post continues out of that writing!  My new position took me more into the neighborhood and I also started visiting some people I knew in Cook County Jail. As a result, I started seeing more of what was really going on . I’d noticed so much already, but with this change, I started seeing and studying how enormous and shocking the disparity is. I saw firsthand how America’s infamous “w...