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• Sunday, March 23, 2008 08:37 AM

  If it really is slavery, tomreedtoon, then let's put Eliot Spitzer to DEATH, seriously

  Like poverty doesn't disempower or desensitize people. LIke poverty doesn't enslave people. Right.

  There are WAY too many people locked up in this country. In Salon we see endless gnashing of teeth over the poor prisonoers in Guantanamo, and the poor prisoners in Abu Ghraib.

  Not one DAMN word here about all the human beings we've locked in steel cages in THIS country.

  You want to lock every one up? That makes you the slave master, buddy.

  And to accomplish your violent incarcerationist dreams -- you have to destroy the dreams of the poor for social mobility.

  In order to pay the salaries of all those prison guards you'll need to accomplish your dream, you're going to have to fire a lot of teachers and cut off health care for poor children.

  We are doing that in California RIGHT NOW. The prison budget is growing like a cancer, and we're having to lay off teachers and cut health care for the poor to afford it.

  So the dreams of social mobility for the poor are being destroyed in California RIGHT NOW by people such as yourself.

  This is happening NOW.

  Our society is putting way too much money into violent and coercive means of social control.

  I am a LIBERAL -- which means I do not believe that you can build a better world through violence and coercion.

  Your solution to the violence and coercion of prostitution is to subject everyone to the violence and coercion of prison.

  So you just want to solve violence with violence.

  Good luck doing that. That's how we've been handling drug addiction.

  Have the violence and coercion of prison solved the drug problem yet?

  Call me when it does. If the world is still around by then.

  —Silenced Read Silenced's other letters
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