George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Portland. Chicago. Lafayette Square. The Doe takes a deep dive into justice and the system.

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Justice Narratives - Prison, Wars & the System - The Doe

Justice

I will never forget the first time I walked into a psychological evaluation.

This evaluation wasn't over trauma I was going through or something I signed up for to figure myself out as many do in their 20s. It was because I was finally an eligible candidate to become a police officer. Thinking back, it was strange: I had dealt with anxiety my entire life, and here I was, walking into a psychologist's office for my first time because of a job application, not because insurance suddenly decided that I could pay less than a few hundred dollars for a consultation.

I sat down in front of a male psychologist. He seemed nice enough. I had really only spoken to men for the many law enforcement jobs I had applied for, so it did not feel much different.

I will admit, I am uniquely feminine in my looks. Although I work out daily, I am tall and rest around a thin score of 18 on those otherwise unreliable BMI charts. I love wearing winged eyeliner and letting my hair down. I even did modeling when I was in high school. But I was far removed from that part of my life as I sat in front of this psychologist, ready to tell him how I knew in my heart that I could excel as a police officer in one of the most violent cities in my state. As I spoke with him, everything seemed to be going well, until he randomly stated that I reminded him a lot of his daughter, a high school cheerleader.

I was a 24-year-old woman with a bachelor's degree in criminal justice, a full-time administrative job within the judicial system, I'd worked as an intern with a local district attorney's office and was just months out from completing all of the required training needed in my state to receive a peace officer certification. Yet, I left his office that day knowing I would not be a police officer with the agency to which he reported. After he compared me to a teenage cheerleader, I knew I'd get the dreaded email thanking me for my time and wishing me the best in my future endeavors.

A short few months later, however, I did get hired. I still walked into all of the phases of my application process with my hair down, winged eyeliner and a confident promise to myself that I would not change who I was to get hired at a law enforcement agency. I am thankful every single day that I found an agency that hired me for who I am.

Although I envisioned many challenges related to being a female police officer, nothing in my career has been like I thought it would be.

I am a vulgar individual, so being around a majority police force of men all day (or night, you know, graveyards), was not much of a shock. After all, you may have to occasionally respond to a person running around flashing their private parts at other people, or a person who hasn't been alive in maybe a few weeks. Hence, it's not really a job for a person who is easily embarrassed or sheltered.

It is also a job where humor is essential, as the world is not always kind.

At first, the guys did tread carefully with me. But I did not tread carefully with them, and they warmed up to me. They would often tell me that my outward appearance did not match the comments and jokes that came out of my mouth and, in fact, I think they learned quickly that I would jump into any foot chase, fight or coffee break with my brothers. In turn, they would call me to assist with matters that could use a woman's touch.

There are many of those calls, as sometimes people going through the worst night of their lives want to speak to someone who has the emotional and maternal comfort that many women have to offer. I have laughed with strangers, and I have cried as I held the hand of a stranger. My brothers constantly reminded me that I was worthy, that I was an officer beyond my years and expressed that they were glad to have me as their little sister. 

So, if everything has gone so smoothly for me in working with a majority male police force, where are the issues?

There are a few places in which women still face significant challenges in law enforcement. Many women face hurdles within their own departments, and I am so lucky that is not part of my story: There is a whole world of unfair treatment and career paths that have been covered in the gravel of sexism. I am probably a minority, to be honest.

The first challenge that I can reference, as described above, is getting hired in the first place. Another is that not every person who calls the police believes that women should be in law enforcement, which is a tough pill to swallow. First of all, it is 2020. There have been articles written on women in law enforcement about how they are less likely to use force when engaging in police work. This publication was even referenced by the National Criminal Justice Reference Service in 2005. Yet, here we still are in 2020 with older generations who harbor bias and are reluctant to hire us. People call us to respond to their emergency end up not wanting to speak with us. I'll never forget the calls that I went on where men called me less-than-polite words, one telling me I should be at home cooking for my man, another telling me that he refuses to speak with a female officer.

Another test as a woman in law enforcement is, surprisingly, other women. It is an impressive career to have as a woman, and sometimes women get territorial being the only female on their shift—or being one of only a few in a department. In my experience, women have not always been the most welcoming or guides to the newcomers down this lightly trodden path.

Sometimes, the woman who has already walked that path did not have someone to guide them, and they believe that the next woman must conquer it on her own. And sometimes it's because it builds a woman up to see a newcomer fail. This is not just commonplace in the law enforcement world; it is an issue that women need to work together to understand and resolve across the board.

But female officers are not the only issue.

The other group of women who do not make things any easier for women in law enforcement are police wives. I understand their apprehension as they sleep alone at night while their husband spends the night working with another woman. However, for me, this eventually became a matter of my former modeling photos from social media being exchanged among the wives and communications related to the job not being permitted between my teammates and me unless it was during work hours. In the end, I have somewhat learned to accept this, but it was an emotional challenge for quite some time that did not allow me to feel that "brotherhood" that the guys felt with one another.

The most unique challenge that I can speak to about law enforcement and being female is having children. This has been something that I have become more and more passionate in talking about, as I have had two beautiful children in a short, two-year period of my career.

After dealing with infertility for nearly a year and a half, I was elated to find out that I was pregnant. I cried tears of joy, tears of fear and talked to my babies every night that they were in my belly riding as my patrol partners. My husband, who is also in law enforcement, told me that women he worked with left the street around eight weeks pregnant, while some women I knew worked until the eighth month of pregnancy. I hit about 20 weeks with both of my babies before I decided to hang up my belt and go in for light duty. I faced personal apprehensions about the perception I would give off to my brothers; I was afraid of reminding them that I was, after all, "different" from them. No matter how hard I worked, I also harbored a fear that others would think that I was leaving the street to get out of doing real police work and operating under regular hours.

I was lucky to make it to around 20 weeks on patrol on graveyards with both of my babies, and I could have gone even longer with how late I started to show in pregnancy. However, there comes the point in time where the maternal instinct takes over, and the safety of your unborn child outweighs worrying about how someone else may see you in your job position. That part of being a woman that was hard for me to accept, but there is no one to blame for the fact that some of us are born with the ability to carry children. I got to watch multiple other coworkers, the kinds who don't have the equipment needed to carry children, continue to do what they loved to do on the streets, as I sat in the office doing paperwork. After dealing with infertility, I am in no way ungrateful. Still, it is an odd feeling to vulnerably sit at a desk away from the dangers of the world, while men can continue their everyday lives while awaiting the arrival of their child.

The job also requires that we deal with shorter-term issues. Working during a global pandemic has been one for the books.

I work graveyards by choice, and there is usually some hustle and bustle during the night. When COVID-19 finally surfaced in the United States, it is almost as if the world ceased to exist. In my state, when the virus surfaced, businesses shut down and everything started closing early. The majority of people stayed home but I was four months pregnant on patrol. For me, it gave me a personal sense of comfort to know that while the entire world was panicking, I could be around to provide support to others.

Before I went on light duty, my biggest worry was keeping a safe distance from others, and where I would be able to pick up a healthy bite to eat at 2 a.m. My world did not stop, and I was not at home trying to readjust to a "new norm" like everyone else was. Crime does not stop, accidents do not stop, and people needing medical assistance does not stop—not at 12 p.m., and not at 3 a.m. By the time I did decide to go on light duty, the world was still struggling to get PPE out to first responders, and the numbers were rising dramatically. It was time for me to come in and let my baby grow safely.

As I write this, people are wishing harm on police officers across the United States and even threatening police officers' children. I think about my unborn child that was inside of me while I worked during a global pandemic, out of obligation to respond to someone on the worst day of their life, and maybe to stop just one more person in this world from having to be labeled as a "victim" on a police report. I hope to empower my children to be a calm presence for others when the world is in shambles, even if it is just in one person's world.

We need women in law enforcement but they don't often apply for the job. I have realized that while there are many obstacles involved in being a woman in law enforcement, much of the time the struggle comes from within ourselves. Nearly every challenge I have encountered stems from one place, and it is that I seem to care just a bit too much about other people's perception of my gender, and not enough about what I am capable of as a strong woman who knows what she wants in this world. They say that comes with age, and I hope to age like a fine wine.

Insiders

Money

Life as a Female Police Officer in 2020

Cancer season recently passed and as I sit here celebrating my 35 cycles around the sun, I cannot help but reflect on what I’ve learned so far about the complicated, super-racist immigration and “criminal” (in)justice system. I’ve been in and out of jails, detention centers and prisons, and the most critical lesson I’ve learned from being in those spaces is that no cage is capable of healing a human being. The personal transformation that occurs to someone on the inside is due to their resilience and their fight for dignity in a place that was built to forget them.

I refuse to forget. I refuse to make other lives forgettable. 

This time last year, I was planning my first annual justice fundraiser at a nightclub in downtown Phoenix. I’d created it to fund the commissary needs of women inside of Perryville State Prison. At the event, the host of the nightclub not only recognized our table but stopped by to discuss the treatment of incarcerated womxn inside during Arizona’s mass incarceration crisis. It was so powerful, and it was happening at a nightclub in downtown Phoenix.

This year, for our second fundraiser, I want to honor my comrade who has been in prison for over five years now—by sharing her strength and needs from inside, and to use my platform on social media to highlight the violence prisons inflict on our communities, so it can serve as a tool for popular education about criminalization and mass incarceration.

My goal for these events has been to create pathways for our community to discuss mass incarceration.

Incarceration is so stigmatized that even those of us who have experienced it have a hard time talking with one another about the harm that prisons inflict, particularly by separating families. Most of us have loved ones inside but they may be too far away for us to see, or we’re too ashamed, or there are simply too many financial hurdles for us to clear. These are barriers set up by those in power to make the lives of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people harder.

It’s important that we remember everyone deserves to live a life with dignity.

I too have been processed into Perryville, for a DUI, before I was passed on to Immigration Customs Enforcement to face deportation. I too have been funneled into prison through the immigration-to-prison pipeline. My experience led to the modern concentration camp referred to as a “tent city,” where the xenophobic former Sherriff Joe Arpaio brought back the disgraced tradition of prison chain gangs.

In March of 2018, my mom and sister-in-law held my hands as they walked me into hell.

Immigration activists have long reported that ICE relies on algorithms to assess a person's risk level while in custody, determining your bond amount or if you’re even eligible for release at all. The day before walking into hell, my deportation officer emailed my lawyer and told them that the system said I had to be detained again. I had already spent two of the most awful years of my life there, and those memories kept flashing through my mind. My mother looked at me. “I don’t have another two years to give them,” she cried, as she held me and prayed for strength and wisdom from the Virgencita.

Spending two entire years of life in ICE custody was incredibly tough and having to prepare myself and my family to walk into the unknown again was even more difficult. Memories of an ICE box overwhelmed me. I remember asking my sister-in-law to buy me thermals and pack me warm clothes. What other choice did we have? What other choice did I have? I’ve seen ICE break into homes and hunt people down.

Their only purpose is to target, incarcerate and deport. Immigration is a civil matter, but this country is now charging people with felonies for migrating in search of a better life.

“Crimmigration” is the intersection where criminal law meets immigration law. We cannot talk about it without talking about criminalization, a term that encompasses the various ways in which people in positions of power label the migration, movements and actions of certain people and communities as criminal. Criminalization can involve many different aspects, including media narratives, political rhetoric and, of course, the writing, passing and enforcement of criminal laws. How does the legal system deal with non-citizens? How do we deal with these labels enforced upon us by the state? These policies historically are not created or voted on by the community that faces the brunt of their harm.

This strategy is demonstrated through the everyday violent interactions that Black, indigenous and immigrant communities face daily in Arizona. We’re still feeling the harm of Arizona SB 1070, also known as the “show me your papers” law that shook the world when it was passed in 2010. SB 1070 was blatantly racist and xenophobic legislation meant to deport undocumented people by racially profiling entire communities.

We are being haunted by ICE through cops. Phoenix police still have to verify the immigration status of every person they arrest. The state is still criminalizing.

So, now I ask, what is criminal activity? Who is a criminal?

It’s crucial that we think of the shared interest of criminalized citizens and non-citizens alike, as we are building power and relations with one another. The same right-wing politicians and fanatics that push outright racist rhetoric do so through policies and laws that associate immigrants and people with convictions to criminality. Yet it is these politicians and fanatics who are the ones caging children and families at the border just for wanting a better chance at life.

We, the most impacted people, did not consent to over-policing policies, hyper-criminalization and racialized laws that have been imposed upon us. We continue to deal with police killing people with impunity, and Black lives being snuffed out merely for living at the bloody hands of blue lives.

I’ll never forget getting brutally attacked by a Department of Homeland Security cop after practicing my First Amendment rights. How are police above the law when activists and protestors are seen as enemies of the state?

My favorite part of organizing against the state is, well, all of it.

Dismantling and fighting back against labels. Organizing to defund the police and ICE. Causing an awakening for the rest of the world to witness the cruelties of state-sanctioned violence. Now the whole world is seeing the truth about the awful “peacekeepers” that are supposed to protect and serve us. This is not just about ICE and police—it's about rejecting white supremacy and transforming how we see each other. It is about unlearning the impulse to police one another.

We must reject systems that don't serve those with the greatest needs in our communities: Black people, undocumented people, unsheltered people, those labeled “felons,” those who are trans and nonbinary. We are witnessing how we are actually safer without the police and ICE. We need resources that the state clearly doesn't care about fulfilling: support, food, each other. All of this is part of the new world we are creating.

We didn’t break laws. Laws have broken humanity.

Crimmigration: I Was Detained by ICE for Two Years and I’m Still Fighting the Power

I’ve heard it so many times: “How can you defend those people?” From friends on the right and friends on the left. I hear it from detectives, police, sheriffs, jurors and loved ones. How can I defend “those people”?

I think when we make it about “us” versus “them,” it’s impossible to do what I do. It’s also impossible to reach across that imagined void and hold someone’s hand who is in immense pain.

I’m a public defender and I try to help the helpless.

When I first met Rose, she was accused of stabbing her boyfriend several times. When I first met Matt, he was accused of raping a woman in a beer cooler. When I met Roger, I was told that he stabbed a perfect stranger in a restaurant parking lot. And, if I had only read the police reports, I’d probably agree with you if you said these people needed to be removed from my hometown and locked up.

As it turns out, each one of these beautiful people needed desperately for someone to just listen to them, to see past the district attorney’s allegations.

Rose grew up in Denver but had immigrated to the United States when she was five. If she was convicted of the crime she was accused of, she’d spend between ten to 32 years in prison. She then would likely end up in a federal detention camp before being deported back to a country she never considered home. What was more, her ex-boyfriend was a classic domestic violence guy: smooth, manipulative, abusive. She took weeks to open up to me. She didn’t trust me. And why would she? I have over a hundred cases and would call her the week of her next court appearance. When we met in court she was one of a dozen cases on the docket.

When she did finally open up, there was a world of pain and scar tissue so deep she had lost herself. Before the fight in the kitchen that lead to her charges, the boyfriend had beaten her in the kitchen so many times she had lost count. She recalled one instance when he threw her to the ground in front of her two-year-old son and held her face to the carpet floor with his knee, screaming at her until drool from his mouth hit her face. He left her there quaking on the floor and went out drinking with friends for days without coming home. She remembered lying there for an untold period of time, scared to get up because she’d have to face the reality of what had just happened. She would have to look herself in the mirror, she’d have to go to her crying toddler and lie that, “Everything was going to be okay.”

When we finally went to trial—because the DA continued to insist that she needed to be imprisoned—an expert testified about how victims of domestic violence blame themselves, how they internalize the physical pain and ignore it. Rose broke down crying right next to me. She had never been able to meet with a therapist to explain her pain, the fear she lived with—she had boiled over. No one had ever listened to her.

Matt was also not from the United States. He had walked first, then hitch-hiked, then worked on a boat to get to the border of the U.S. and Mexico. He wasn’t from directly south of the border: He was from much farther away and, at first, I wouldn’t believe his story. But, then, I got his immigration file. He had been taken to an internment camp outside of St. Paul, Minnesota and waited for six months before a judge told him that he could apply for asylum.

In his home country, he had been in a military prison for over a year before being told that he could either be conscripted into the military (to join the civil war) or continue to waste away in prison. And why was he in prison in the first place? For asking political questions, in his government class, in what is the equivalent of a state-run university.

When Matt finally made it through the political asylum process and was released, he was asked, “Where do you want to go?” He had only heard of Denver because a friend of his family had immigrated there. He had no idea where he was going or what was next for him.

Fast-forward a few months: Matt was working in a liquor store where his friends had helped to get him a job. A young woman, who worked at the fast-food restaurant in the same parking lot, loved to come in to see him. At first, it was to flirt. Then, it was to share cigarettes on their lunch breaks. She would bring him food that she had taken from her store, he would bum her smokes and, sometimes, they would sneak a shooter of liquor, laughing while they did. They knew each other well.

When she came into the store to see him the night in question—the night she later told the police that she had been raped—she was on camera asking the store clerk at the desk where Matt was. She went and found him at the back of the liquor store and hugged him and kissed him on camera. She took his hand and led him back to the beer cooler behind the refrigerators full of beer. She later told police that he took her pants off and made her have sex. He explained over and over again that she sat him on a pile of boxes and climbed on top of him; that they used a condom; that he told her that he loved her.

Matt will spend the rest of his life in prison.

I don’t know if there was a gap in the communication between them or if he really did attack her in the beer cooler. But, I know for certain that he doesn’t deserve to spend the rest of his life in prison. I had failed to properly tell his story and a jury didn’t much care for the look of a man—who had come from where he came from—claiming to have had consensual sex with a woman a few years younger than him.

When people ask me how I can defend rapists, I think of Matt wasting away in a prison for the rest of his life. I think of the video surveillance in the liquor store that made it look to me like she had hugged and kissed him and taken him into the beer cooler. I think of how I wish I could have connected with the jury to help them understand. But nobody cared. He was led away in shackles, quickly forgotten by the prosecutor and the judge.

Roger was by far one of the saddest people I had ever touched. The combination of failed mental health networks in our country, limited family resources and a broken education system made it so. Roger was loved: His mother and his sister would come to court to support him. He was semi-homeless; not because his mom wouldn’t let him live with her but because he had mental health issues and would wander off unassisted for times on his own. He’d sleep by a river. He wasn’t really that into drugs. Some of my clients certainly are, but Roger just smoked weed occasionally.

Roger was very inventive and lacked the ability to point his creativity in one direction. In many ways, he reminded me of an innocent child. Roger was a goth makeup fellow. He would dress in all black with white face paint and decorative nonsense hanging all over him. He was also the kid that people in high school would call a “freak.” He is exactly the type of person that would end shooting up a high school like Columbine because the jocks picked on him and treated him like shit.

When Roger was arrested, he looked like a Marilyn Manson stunt double. He donned huge black leather boots with all kinds of silver straps, gloves that had fake plastic claws and so on and so forth. Frankly, if his creativity had been harnessed and he had been shown a path to develop his costume-making abilities, he could have been something really special.

But not Roger. Roger was attacked riding a Razor scooter down an alley by a group of homeless people who called him a “faggot” and a “loser” and so many other terrifying things. He fought back—not well. He isn’t a pugilist, he isn’t very big, he isn’t intimidating in the slightest. The hardened homeless people laughed it off and stole his scooter from him before telling him to get fucked. So, he ran off and then circled back around the building and stabbed one of the men.

Self-defense, perhaps? A jury disagreed and convicted him. They didn’t know the penalty that would be imposed. 46 years. He was 35. A guy like Roger has a life expectancy in prison that is something in the high 60s. You can do that math. District attorneys and judges will claim that he gets out in less than that and will be fine. But, will he? When he does get out, he’ll have no assistance getting back into the swing of things. Hell, he had no assistance before he went in, when he was exhibiting signs of mental health issues, when his family let him wander around homeless.

So, you could ask me how I stand next to people like that. How do you defend those people? I have found that when I sit down across the table from someone in a bind like Rose, Matt or Roger—when the world’s largest incarceration system has put them in the crosshairs—I look for the pieces of them that remind me of my friends, my family and the failings of our community.

I cannot profess to have done a good job with all of my cases. Each of these clients breaks my heart and cuts me to the core. And I have found that when I remove the “us” and “them” dichotomy, I am able to talk to each person and meet them where they are. I have found it to be a privilege to see people and discover a small piece of whom that person truly is. To touch sadness like this is to separate the “us” from “them.” I consider a privilege of the highest order to do so.

Why I Became a Public Defender and Why It’s a Privilege

It’s 2012. Britain is basking in the reflected golden glow of an Olympic Games going off hitch-free. Skyfall is in the cinemas and Andy Murray is conquering the U.S. An account called Very British Problems earnestly begins to tweet out the aggressively apologetic thoughts of: All British People Everywhere. And Boris Johnson is but a wiff-waffing twinkle in the nation’s eye, with some time to go before he’ll foist his bumbling, table-tennis-based hubris onto the whole country. The Guardian would later describe this as the country’s best year of the decade, although to be fair it didn’t have many competitors.

Jump forward to 2020. The United Nations reports that the last ten years of Conservative austerity, designed by chief architects David Cameron and George Osborne, has inflicted “great misery” on the country. Levels of child poverty in the U.K. are “not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster.” Yet with councils and communities on their knees, the people have kept on voting in droves for more of the same. A significant Conservative majority at the end of 2019 confirmed a ten-year lurch rightwards, from the final days of the dying New Labour project to today’s damp squib: a vapid synthesis of all the worst parts of the decade, half-chewed and spat back out in a smart suit and the meaningless Brexit aphorism du jour sprayed abjectly on their forehead.

And with this shift, the twee but politically docile sentiment that propped Very British Problems has been shattered irreparably, all whilst being mined for its riches by the combination of “relatable” best-of books and forgettable Channel 4 adaptations. The account still exists, and still enjoys relative popularity, but it stands apart as a Twitter relic of its time, its satirical format almost wholly surpassed in an internet meme scene staggering in its volatile self-immolatory tendencies.

Today it’s an odd online memorial to a forgotten middle-class folly, an unhelpful resource for any doomed new resident wishing to easily understand the current culture. To accurately reflect the zeitgeist, Very British Problems should really just be a succession of tweets like: “Welcome to Britain: We have cups of tea, gaslighting and a politely fascistic government.”

My situation: I’m currently in the middle of resurrecting a freelance career after being abruptly laid off from my nine-to-five job, left without a furlough by a company who put management’s interests above their lowest employees’ futures. Exhibiting some of those horribly flawed British anachronisms cherished by Very British Problems types, I “puffed out my chest” and “toughed it out” with a “stiff upper lip.” But with scant creative work around, and little other accessible freelancing being commissioned, I’ve had to re-evaluate what time spent “working from home” might mean when there wasn’t work to be had.

In the process I’ve learned that it’s almost impossible to think of time without thinking about work. Everyday phrases like “time off” or “leisure time” imply the existence of a work or occupation that fills the rest. But even this understanding becomes deeply flawed post-COVID-19. Among the changes that a post-pandemic society will undoubtedly usher in are an inevitable acceleration of the already speedy surge we’re seeing towards a completely freelance gig economy. It’s easy to see why.

From profit’s point of view, why prop up a culture that actively encourages time off? Why not simply employ people on cheaper, more competitive “flexible” contracts that disallow the simple satisfaction of switching off in favor of a morale-sapping situation where people hover precariously, waiting to pounce, a 24/7 standby mode of production?

This insecure relationship between work and time can only thrive in a fractured country where socioeconomic divides have dismantled any illusion of unity. Step forward: Britain. Long established dividing lines quickly became tribal blockades in the battlegrounds of Brexit: Tory/Labour, North/South, rich/poor. Newer ones already seem worn out, cheap, soundbitten: Leave/Remain, forgotten towns/liberal metropolitan elite, gammons/snowflakes.

Even in full knowledge of our aggressive ways, we still summon the energy to find new ways of dividing society. The anti-racist marches in support of Black Lives Matter were met by vehement opposition from what the BBC calls “anti-racism critics”—not “racists,” but “anti-racism critics.” A move to a wholly insecure world of work would fit perfectly into the mechanisms of an unsteady, angry Britain.

Often though, the temptation to look twitchily toward times of economic insecurity means that the current situation’s small crumbs of comfort can be overlooked. Friends melancholically remark at how much free time we have now, unable to comprehend the current situation without the presence of a working Other. Obviously, the time to ponder is an elitist privilege older than the class system, but it’s important to look at who is now afforded this privilege.

The younger you are, the less likely you are to die from the virus. But equally, the younger you are, the more likely you are to be in insecure, public-facing work like hospitality, catering or bar and restaurant work. And the more public-facing your work is, the less likely you’ll be back at work soon—and the more likely it is the government will support your employers with some sort of furlough pay. This creates a peculiar situation where the most immediately protected group in society happens to be, for one instant, some of the formerly least secure. Furlough pay, job security and protection against contraction of illness due to age and stay-at-home advice suddenly buys a radical concept in this age: genuinely free time.

I realize now that I’ve been radicalized during lockdown. Or rather, lockdown has afforded me two things I didn’t have in my life before: the luxury of time on its own merits, without financial constraints, but also the added bonus of perspective, not only to come to terms with this radical new concept, but to use it towards revolutionary change by any means.

I truly believe that this is the time to embrace radical idealism while the young have the chance.

Other people agree. Take the recent events in Bristol as a measure. Black Lives Matter protests have forced Britain to begin the long journey towards a proper engagement with its own racist past and present. In Bristol, protestors gleefully pulled down the much-maligned statue of slave trader Edward Colston for a global audience, as video clips of the statue being kicked down the road and dumped ceremoniously into the harbor drew praise and acrimony across the country and around the world.

Despite the how vividly news footage of the 2002 toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue is etched into my childhood memory, the naive British exceptionalist inside of me never thought I’d see the U.K. pulling down its own statues. Neither did I ever imagine that I’d wish I’d been part of it.

When the #RhodesMustFall and Robert E. Lee debates drip-fed into the national discourse, I quickly lost interest, never really entertaining the idea that anything would change. America was too far away; Oxford, Harvard and the other universities too far removed from the public debate and too heavily insured by private interests. But seeing the events unfolding organically in Bristol made me wonder what has changed.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it has to do with time. What’s different now is that there have been three fundamental shifts in the way we experience time during lockdown: the affordance of time disassociated from work, the memory of feeling “productive” suddenly being transferred into the space previously occupied by “working time” and the stretching out of the social media moment into something that can go on for weeks, rather than days or hours.

For many who came out for the 20,000-strong BLM Manchester protests, there was no question of their attendance, despite COVID-19 restrictions being in place. But for others like myself, this was a decision that required a week’s worth of thought, research and debate to weigh up the pros and cons. The old ideologies of productivity and industry have simply transferred into a new embrace of radicalism. COVID has helped me start to understand the seriousness of the situation, to research further into areas I thought would never apply to me, and to be moved to action by organizations outside of my immediate circle. In the background, social media has filled the important gaps in the wake of a disrupted news cycle gives debates time to flare up, sustain and come to a series of constructive solutions. My reappraisal of solidarity—a word I turned my nose up at for so long—is an unexpected surprise, made possible only by a determination to find something good in such dire circumstances.

Those who are able to do so must embrace the spacious, non-for-profit time ushered in by COVID for what it is: a chance to imagine, realize and commit to a future radically different from the present.

I’ve Been Radicalized by the Coronavirus Lockdown

Drugs & Alcohol

Up, up and away! Time to get out of the house with The Doe.

Travel

Stories that can only be told from the land of the free, home of the brave.

American Stories

LGBTQ Voices

Motherhood

Earth Day or any day, let's celebrate our planet. 

Mother Earth

Tearjerkers

The Doe celebrates its authors this Black History Month.

Black Voices

Extra, extra, read all about it! The news-media industry has shifted dramatically over the last decade—heck, within the last two years. Between print journalism, podcasting, social media and infotainment, The Doe turns over every rock in this evolving ecosystem.

Media

Stories of starting over and finding the fresh.

New Beginnings

The ol' nine to five has changed quite a bit in the past couple of years, from working remotely to, well, not working at all. This month we take a look at how cash still does rule in our capitalist society and what the future of business and money might just look like.

Lord help us: They say it's not polite to talk about religion or politics, but—hey—we've already talked politics, haven't we? Prayer's up.

Religion

Digital nomads are all the rage these days, and many find their way to Cusco, Peru. 

It’s a beautiful, complicated city, and I love it. I don’t love how so many of us expats take advantage of the privilege we have as foreigners here and how little we integrate into the local community. 

Many of us move to Cusco speaking little, if any, Spanish. We certainly don’t speak Quechua, the first language of most people who live in Cusco. We make friends with other foreigners and patronize restaurants with English menus. We look down on tourists because we live here, even though we know as little about the local culture as the tourists who only visit for a few days.

Language is not the only thing that separates us from integrating into local communities. We congregate in the bohemian and upscale, modern neighborhoods of Lima, Cusco and other cities. We live in some of the nicest apartments and homes but complain about how poorly they are built. Usually, our neighbors are other expats, and the only Peruvians we interact with in our homes are landlords, house cleaners and delivery people.

I moved to Cusco three years ago but visited Peru several times as a tourist over 10 years before moving. I’ve romanticized the place as much as most foreigners—I’ve been swept up in the Andes' beauty and the Inca's mysteries. But after everything I’ve subsequently learned about Peru’s colonial history, I’m much more cynical about these “mysteries.” They are really just gaps in history where the Spanish conquistadors destroyed as much evidence of Inca civilization and culture as they could. Now I wonder how much my presence in Peru perpetuates the destruction of indigenous cultures and what responsibility I bear.

If you have a job, Peru has a relatively easy path to becoming a permanent resident. The process can take as little as two months. Few of us work for Peruvian companies, though; we prefer to start our own companies and employ each other. Some of us even make up fake companies so we can sponsor ourselves. This usually takes longer than two months, sometimes up to a year. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve heard an expat complain bitterly about how long the paperwork takes. It always makes me wonder how long it would take for a Peruvian to do the same in North America or Europe.

Whether we have a real or a fake job, most expats come to Peru to escape the rat race. There are people from all walks of life in our home countries who move to Peru for inspiration and to be creative. We make art and teach yoga. We write books to publish back home and design clothing few Peruvians could afford to buy. We sell to tourists at outrageous prices while competing with Peruvians who can’t market their products at half the price because they don’t have the cachet of a degree in design from Europe or the language skills to do a smooth sales pitch in English.

What irks me the most are our contradictory and hypocritical views on indigenous culture. Sure, a minority of us take the time to understand and appreciate Peru’s many indigenous cultures. Still, for the majority, connecting with indigenous culture happens in highly contrived ayahuasca ceremonies. Ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic potion made of plants from the Amazon, though, oddly, Cusco, high in the mountains, has been marketed most as the place to try ayahuasca.

Ayahuasca ceremonies are led by Peruvian shamans for foreign clients, though I have also seen foreigners market themselves to lead the ceremonies. Regardless of the actual training or knowledge of the shaman, thousands of tourists every year naively pay hundreds of dollars for an “authentic” ayahuasca experience with a shaman. Those of us who are critical of ayahuasca shamans and ceremonies have our own kind of elitism to contend with. Who are we to say that a Peruvian who leads an ayahuasca ceremony isn’t authentic? Who are we to judge a Peruvian who is using the knowledge they have to sell an experience to tourists? Whether that’s an experience hiking in the Andes or taking ayahuasca in the Sacred Valley, who are we to judge what is and isn’t authentic for Peruvians in their country?

The debate I hear from expats always frames indigenous practices around authenticity, which is problematic in so many ways. The word “authentic” itself is troublesome, according to Curiosity magazine. “The meaning of authentic is ‘of undisputed origin; genuine.’ But, like ‘real,’ anything can be authentic in a way. ‘Authentic’ can also come across as condescending.” Unfortunately, that condescending tone is what comes across the most when I hear expats decry ayahuasca ceremonies as inauthentic. 

So many of us move to Peru because we are inspired by the country, the history and the culture. We say we are in Peru to learn Andean spiritualism and connect with the Pachamama, a Quechua word that can be translated as “Mother Earth.” We claim to value Peruvian culture, but only if that culture fits our idealized image of indigeneity. As soon as people profess to be Catholic, we turn away and say that they aren’t authentic.

I’m not trying to paint myself as innocent in all this. I scammed the immigration system with a fake business. I do ayahuasca ceremonies in the Sacred Valley, near Cusco, because I don’t like the heat and the bugs in the jungle. I visit Andean communities and feel disappointed when I see signs of the church. Of the other four apartments in my building, only one has a Peruvian living in it, and she’s married to a guy from Europe.

I pat myself on the back because at least I speak Spanish. I have a few Peruvian friends, but my expat friends far outnumber the locals. I like to think that I’m less hypocritical than the average expat in Peru, but I know that the way I live still perpetuates a classist, racist society. Peru’s political and societal structures are still based on the colonial system set up to exploit the poor and extract wealth from the country to benefit foreign investors. 

Nothing I do in my daily life combats any of that. I rationalize that it’s not my country. Who am I to tell Peruvians how to change their government? At the same time, I’m benefiting from a system that was built for people like me to take advantage of indigenous people.

If I were to return to North America, I would label myself progressive. I would say I was an anti-racist and look for ways to actually practice that. I would want to make a difference. In Peru, which also has a system built on racism, I shrug my shoulders and say that it’s not my place to change their society. 

I see police and security guards hassling indigenous women who come to Cusco to sell their textiles in the streets. I see light-skinned Peruvians barking orders at darker-skinned workers in restaurants and hotels. I know that there is much more abuse and racism that I don’t witness, simply because of how cut off I am from the local community.

Is my privilege that different in Peru? Do I not bear some responsibility for using my privilege to be anti-racist and work towards equity, regardless of which country I happen to live in? Does being an expat give me any kind of pass, or am I just being a hypocrite like everybody else? I don’t have all the answers, but I know I’m not blameless in the face of inequality and racism. It’s time I step up and say something.

The Expat Privilege: I'm a Digital Nomad Who Moved to Peru

I am a woman about to embark on her role as a prison officer in a female estate, who sees my position as an opportunity to help some of the most vulnerable members of society. Locked away from families and society, prisoners often lose faith in humanity and do not see the point in living. It terrifies me to think of officers punishing prisoners when imprisonment is punishment enough. To the best of my capability, I would love to regain their trust in humanity and authority figures. 

Whilst I will be trying to help inmates conquer certain addictions, I will be harboring my own addiction. I even have a support network to help me battle it, but prisoners are cast away from any support they may have on the outside. Today, I was assigned my key worker, a prisoner who I will mentor. She is a drug addict who has been put on methadone as part of the transition period away from substance abuse. During my motivational speeches about combatting addictions, lingering at the back of my mind will be the blatant truth: Addictions are almost unbelievably challenging to combat, especially as other prisoners catalyze and surge each other's addictions. 

While I will be trying to help inmates stop reoffending and abide by the law, I will continue to break the law myself. I break laws knowing that white and pretty privilege will diminish my chances of getting caught, but many prisoners have experienced the opposite.

In this respect, I believe that I am abusing my power.

But I’m going to change. So I wanted to reflect on my experiences with law enforcement.

I was 19 years old, reeking of immaturity and insecurity, completely out of my depth at a party with a group of older boys who were about to pick up cocaine. Staring at my watch, I mustered some excuse about driving home for dinner. Seven Coronas down, I forced myself to believe this was a good idea. I needed to drive to my godmother’s house to safety. So I called her, trying to sound as sober as possible, and revved the engine.

Ten minutes later, I crashed into a wall on the bend. Fight-or-flight mode was triggered in my body, and the adrenaline pushed me to keep driving across the field and out a gateway. I kept driving until I hit another wall, then drove backward to destroy another wall. On my third wall, fumes and alarms were exploding out of the car, attracting the neighbors. A man dressed in his nightgown started shouting and called the police. I started guzzling any water I could find in and out of the car, even puddles. The police arrived at this remote location in the countryside two hours later. With extraordinary luck, I was bang on the limit when breathalyzed. My license and criminal record were clean.

Now I’m 23 years old, fresh from part one of prison officer training. I use my typical method when confronted by a train conductor without a ticket. Yes, that’s right, I have lost my wallet so have no identification to give you, but you can send the fine in the post. So I give them my fake name with my fake address and fake number. But Swiss German train conductors do not tolerate lawbreakers and will actively seek them out. Part of their role is to march suspects with potential fraudulent identities over to the police station in Zurich Hauptbahnhof. 

I am pounced on by the conductors around 15 minutes away from the station. So I have oodles of time to consider and devise an escape. Part of me thinks they are just threatening me and they won’t actually take me to the police. I’m not sure if this is sheer positivity or naivety. Part of me considers running away as soon as we get off the train. But as we disembark, I’m surrounded by four tall and presumably fast-paced men and women.

As they escort me to the police station, I realize I’m at the end of my tether. They run the fake identity through the system, confirm my lie and start threatening huge fines and potential prison time. I give them my real identity and pay the fine. They are all staring at me in disgust—the last employment they expect from me is their own field of employment. I feel utterly humiliated. I, too, am a law enforcer, just a hypocritical one.

These experiences, coinciding with my training, have forced me to think carefully about my role in justice, criminality and law. 

As citizens, we are forced to trust law enforcers. Even after multiple crimes from gross abuse of power by enforcers, like the murder of George Floyd and the rape and murder of Sarah Everard, we still do not have a choice. Recent studies show that “more than 1,000 police officers and staff accused of domestic abuse are still serving in law enforcement.” So unsurprisingly, many Black people do not feel protected or safe around the police. Many women, including myself, now feel threatened when approached by a policeman in London. But without law enforcers, society would collapse into anarchy. But with law enforcers who break the laws, what do we expect? Anarchy.  

Now, let’s go into prison. Nearly half of U.K. adults will reoffend within a year after their release from prison. This statistic stems from multiple reasons: gangs, limited employment options for ex-criminals, addiction and low self-esteem, to name just a few. But a common thread that weaves through all these issues is a mistrust of people, particularly people of authority. Often, this mistrust can develop even more in prison from the officers themselves. 

A prison officer is bullying an inmate with verbal and physical abuse. The “infallibility” of that officer means that they can act this way unpunished. When prisoners see officers abusing their power, and maybe thriving off their position of “superiority,” it can generate anger and abandonment of hope. The prisoner will inevitably leave prison thinking that the justice system is unjust, which often leads to reoffending.  

Now, I am not a law enforcer who murders or bullies, but I’m still part of the problem. Imagine an inmate locked up in prison for theft discovering that I, their officer, steal on a regular basis. They would feel angry, violated and diminished. What hope or incentive do they have to stop? Thinking that you can get away with these activities with luck? Or worse, knowing that the reason I have not been charged for stealing may well be my white privilege? 

The soft crime that I commit abuses the system that everyone has to believe in: that law enforcers obey the law. It sparks such anger in people because those who act above the law make a mockery of the system most of the public has to oblige by. Look at the public reaction to Boris Johnson’s lockdown parties and Prince Andrew walking free following pedophilia accusations. Pure fury.

I can no longer play a part in this injustice, so I am going to try to be a law enforcer who obeys the law. For so many years, I have assigned my impulsive behaviors, like stealing, to a lack of free will. But it’s time to confront this addiction. It is my duty to tackle it. If can’t, how do I expect my inmates to? And if I do not obey the law, then why should they have to obey me? 

I Am a Law Enforcer Who Breaks the Law

It’s my home country, a place where I was born and where I was destined to be, where I want to be. I want to stay here.

I stand by my own words. Even after Russia invaded my home, I chose to stay and prepare for the worst while suffering from depression, anxiety and constant fear of cruise missiles hitting my apartment.

I see my country changing really fast, adopting new laws and initiatives and, despite the war, prospering.

Society is changing too. Most Ukrainians are now volunteering, helping the army as best as they can and getting their voices heard in the future of Ukraine. Our society is so united now that Ukrainians gathered $20 million to buy three Bayraktar TB2 drones in a matter of days. This really goes to show how unified Ukraine is now.

Ukrainians are ready to take part in leading the path to democracy. The Ukrainian government actually listens to the people’s demands and petitions. Even more, citizens of Ukraine are finally experiencing the true value of democracy: Making an impactful change that will affect Ukraine in the future.

Ukrainians are ready to tackle controversial topics as well. Gun laws became a priority in modern political discussions, especially after the Russian invasion. The strongest argument was that if most Ukrainians owned a gun, the invasions wouldn’t happen at all or be stopped with defensive and active patriots.

We the people are changing. And with us changing, the world around us changes too.

But some Ukrainians are staying the same. This is what scares me the most.

When I was 16, my friend asked me to film his fight with a guy under the overpass where no one could see us. Though I hesitated, I agreed. In a blink of an eye, we were surrounded by a larger group of dangerous men, demanding a monthly payment to stay safe from their punishment.

They left us, but my friend dealt with it his own way. This was the moment I discovered that he was a youth gang member, and so was that guy who threatened us. If I wanted to stay safe and never be harassed by the other gang, I should join him, he told me.

I was cornered. I couldn’t walk around my district without the constant fear of being harassed and beaten up. Plus, I was stressed out with this situation. I didn’t want to pay or get my family involved in this, so I agreed.

Right from this moment, I was involved in gang wars.

Youth gang wars aren’t the same in Ukraine as in other countries. No drug dealing, for example, although I have heard rumors of leaders of said groups being drug dealers. Gang wars are about the territory and the influence over it.

It’s a terrible thing for a young man from a poor family to have to resolve to forcefully join the group to stay safe. I still felt disoriented and in danger even after joining the group, but they somewhat gave me a sense of belonging. It’s a primal instinct for a man to be in a group of like-minded people, but it’s a group full of toxic masculinity, false ideals and aggression.

A driving factor for joining was the fact that I’m also a bisexual. I had times when I could go out with boys and have a great time but also receive strange looks, or people would quietly discuss my strange behavior. I wanted to be able to defend myself, but being alone wasn’t going to cut it. I needed a group that I could trust myself to. And I chose the wrong people for it. I had to lie, pretend I was not who I really was and play the role of the “bad guy.” I didn’t like it, but I thought this was the only way to be secure.

Living in a homophobic family was one of the factors too. When I confessed to my mum, she felt shocked and strictly told me to not share this with anybody else, especially my father and grandpa, who do not tolerate same-sex relationships. It was the feeling of constant danger surrounding me. I didn’t feel safe anywhere. Even my family could be against me if all of them discovered the truth. Again, it’s the rebel attitude that made an impact in my teenage years. My family was against me for showing my identity? Buzz off then; I will commit to the group of absolutely disgraceful people who aren’t my friends but I want to feel like having friends.

Do I think it’s society’s and family’s fault that a guy like me joined a group of bad people to stay relatively safe? I’m not so sure, but these are factors that played a huge role in my teenage years.

I stayed with the group until the ninth grade. I don’t know how many times I went back home all bruised up, tired and sometimes drunk. I saw people fighting for fun, having a false sense of territory that doesn’t even belong to them and running from adult responsibility.

But the last straw was when I had to see a particular video a group leader sent us. He used to share videos of “highlights” of our members to the group chat. In this video, some of the members of this group were harassing a group of boys and girls chilling in the park. They were dressed in LGBT apparel, like colorful wristbands and rainbow shirts. They were being yelled at, called slurs and even beaten up because of how they dressed.

The same fate would happen to me if people knew I’m bisexual.

I waited until the end of spring, convinced my mum to enroll me in college and took out all of the documents from my school. I said bye to the environment I was used to and stepped out to new challenges awaiting me.

I managed to wipe out all of the social media, buy a new phone number from my saved up money and start life anew.

The guilt had never left me, so I started volunteering for those in need. Donating money and blood were the things I did regularly while keeping up with my college curriculum. I did this out of my heart. I wanted to change and become the better person that I was before.

Then, the war happened. I moved with my parents to our grandparents' home in a rural area out of fear of a cruise missile hitting our flat. I contacted my friend who happened to be a co-founder of a volunteering organization, and she needed people to handle media inquiries, such as writing posts, making announcements and helping people navigate the services that volunteers provided.

Our country, our society and the people in it united under the most important tasks: help each other, support the army and make Russians leave our land. We started doing this as soon as the war started knocking on our doors. Two or three months prior to the invasion, I saw Ukrainians establishing training military camps where civilians learned valuable skills like how to shoot, reload and apply first-aid help.

In the beginning of February, no one talked about the LGBT community, women’s issues, ecological problems and other social and economic struggles that Ukraine was facing. On the 24th of February, people were caught off guard and organized themselves really quickly. Everybody made a truce and started preparing for the worst. No matter who you were, you were needed. Left wing, right wing, straight or LGBTQ+, man or woman—the whole thing didn’t matter. Everybody was included in the fight for freedom.

Don’t get me wrong, Ukrainians are still united more than ever. It’s a nice thing to see.

But some far-right groups in Ukraine, managing Telegram groups, are still pushing the agenda that the LGBT community is still a problem in Ukraine. They can’t forget times when Pride parades were a thing to oppose and they would harass the people participating in them and call participants names. They would associate the movement with Russians, theorizing that they were leading these parades to disrupt our society and weaken it.

Ukraine has a great opportunity to join the EU family and make every civilian live like in a European community with all of the values democracy brings us. Same-sex marriages are a great way to start. European countries showed us the value of freedom for every person to speak up and do what they want to, meaning that same-sex marriages apply to these core principles of a free society.

Yet the Ukrainian government is planning to issue a law under which people can buy short firearms, like pistols.

I feel hesitant. It’s a great law if it’s done properly. I think that every person has a right to defend themselves in the face of danger, let it be a rapist, burglar or a Russian soldier. But I know the people who will buy these guns the moment the law is accepted. I talked with them. I dealt with them. I drank with them. And they’re terrible people. And you can’t let terrible people own a firearm.

It comes to the point where I need a gun to defend myself from the same bad people I had dealt with. In fact, most LGBTQ+ members will have to own a firearm to defend themselves as well. I don’t want this to happen.

Society chose to let the government consider this law.

Within Diia—a government-owned app where you can store your documents—the interior minister, Denys Monastyrsky, introduced an in-app questionnaire to Ukrainian citizens. He wanted Ukrainians to voice their opinions and choose how they want to see the firearm law. 1.7 million Ukrainians voted, and 59 percent chose to have a Second Amendment type for the law. But only for pistols now. After the voting, Monastyrsky claimed that Ukrainians are ready to own firearms for self-defense. But he missed Ukrainians who voted otherwise. In the modern world of democracy, you can’t appeal only to one part of the voters. You also should appeal to the other half of the voters who wanted a different outcome.

I’m only hoping that the Ukrainian government is responsible enough to write the law as best as they can to prevent multiple cases of gun violence and murders. But it still means I will have to buy a gun to protect my loved ones from those who were my teammates a long time ago.

Ukraine Is Changing, Yet Stays the Same

The riot was minor, over before it even started. The correctional emergency response team had been in the dorm and put many of the participants’ chests on the concrete before any real harm could be done. Adding to the misery of the beatings, the men caught outside their cells were unable to rest their heads on the floor—broken toilets had flooded the dorm with three inches of water.

Locked down inside my bottom-range cell, I had rescued my clothes, books and legal papers from the lowest locker shelf before the water could reach that high. Watching the filth wash in through the door, I resolved that finding a cell on the top range was my next priority. A few days later, when the punishment lockdown was ended, my bunkie and I paid Kenny a pack of tobacco to scrub out the cell while we sat in on a card game, gambling in the common area. 

Kenny was one of those unfortunate types of which the world has many. Being young, pale, redheaded and mentally challenged did not make him special. Being convicted of arson and sentenced to 20 years as a teenager did. There are no breaks given on an arson charge. Kenny would serve every day of that sentence in the worst place on Earth as best he could. 

Before I had ever met him, he had survived being an abused child in prison. Now, a step up the ladder, he was a sock washer, a do-boy available for any job for a couple bucks. But he had gained an internal radar that warned him of who were the most dangerous of his fellow prisoners. Most of the time. In my quest to improve my real estate situation, I was overheard on the upper range asking Bird if anyone was short (due to be released soon), thus freeing up a bunk. 

“This bunk is available,” Bird’s cellmate, DD, offered. “If you can get me in the cell with Kenny." 

"I might be able to do that,” I replied. “You'll cover reasonable costs?”

I was new to prison. Having turned 26 in a rural county jail with a fresh life sentence at the end of an outlaw biker lifestyle, my two years in the prison system were still part of a learning period. It was the beginning of 1991, and the only homosexuals I knew were the obvious, the flamboyant and the dying. That someone could be gay and not be one of those three was beyond me. So when DD stated his terms, I assumed he just wanted the do-boy housekeeper.

Kenny shared a cell with my bunkie's friend, Li’l Rick. The value of anything is how badly the buyer wants it, and if Li’l Rick thought I wanted this badly, it would cost a lot. The next time Li’l Rick visited, I suggested, "You and bunkie here are pretty tight; why don't you and I just swap cells?"

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