Contemporary penal institutions are not often the penitentiaries themselves,
but, are immersed within communities, manifesting in social welfare programming
Drawing a Picture on the Shreds of American Greenbacks
It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; . . . the individual who has not staked his or her life may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person; but he or she has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness.
— Georg Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind (New York, 1967), p. 233
What does it mean to be a wounded warrior? What does it mean to have spent time in the US military, even for a short stint? What does it mean to be on the streets and a veteran to boot? What does it mean to barely survive in a country with no single payer option, one that turns a loved one’s old age into a living hell, an economic nightmare; one with for-profit respite, or retirement homes or hospitalization and hospice services that keep the top echelon rolling in the money and the middle managers under the gun to cut more costs and raise more fees . . . where the frontline staff who do the bathing, bedpan cleaning, cooking and certified nursing assistance are under the constant cloud of precarity in the workplace and are “receiving” poor wages that necessitate sometimes two other jobs to barely not make ends meet?
This one paycheck away from the poor house or from calamity is real, and has been for decades, even though it is being…