A Place for Some Writing…

  • All About JPay: the Parasitic Corporation of NY State Prison

    All About JPay: the Parasitic Corporation of NY State Prison

    So, as promised, JPay. If you don’t know what that is, then you don’t know anyone in New York state prison.  Just like the outside world, the type of life a person can live in prison has a lot to do with money. Not their money, though, or at least not money they control. DOCCS, the agency which…

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  • Laws, Rules and Directives in New York State Prisons

    Laws, Rules and Directives in New York State Prisons

    They alternate between banal and completely outrageous, separated only by anodyne index numbers. The Directives that rule in New York State prisons have a lot to tell us.

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  • Greens and Blues

    Greens and Blues

                A few days ago, I went with some colleagues to visit clients who are incarcerated at Sing Sing prison. Despite the tightly controlled atmosphere, one can reliably expect the unexpected at this sort of thing, and we worried the corrections officers (CO’s) would be more on edge than usual. Our visit came less than twelve…

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  • Surplus and Abolition

    Surplus and Abolition

    Some months ago, a friend of mine gave me an article from Endnotes. It explains a weird and controversial feature of capitalist economic systems in a way I found very convincing. But its scope is much larger than what I need it for here, so I’ll try to give the best summary I can.  The…

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  • American Revolution

    American Revolution

    This article is the third and final of a multi-part series about the West Virginia Mine Wars. The first article can be found here, and the second here. Much of this research and writing was part of some academic work, though many of my favorite details had to be cut to meet those pesky word-counts. Nevertheless,…

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  • Redneck Radicals

    Redneck Radicals

    This article is the second in a multi-part series about the West Virginia Mine Wars. The first article can be found here. Much of this research and writing was part of some academic work, though many of my favorite details had to be cut to meet those pesky word-counts. Nevertheless, I wanted the opportunity to…

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  • Company-Owned Americans

    Company-Owned Americans

    This article is the first in a multi-part series about the West Virginia Mine Wars. Much of this research and writing was part of some academic work, though many of my favorite details had to be cut to meet those pesky word-counts. Nevertheless, I wanted the opportunity to tell as much of the story of…

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  • Likable but ultimately annoying

    Likable but ultimately annoying

    I have thoughts about many things. The things I have thoughts about sometimes escape my teeny tiny little brain, and so I needed a place where I could put them on the internet for everyone to see and criticize. From there, I designed a hackish website with images stolen from the so-called public domain and…

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