Backstory

Since being in high school myself I've known that I've wanted to be a high school teacher. Some people must wrestle for years with where they fit into the scheme of working life, but for me it's been crystal clear since high school and college. A small, memo-sized slip of paper on the side board in my trig teacher's classroom was what started it all for me.

"Anyone who's interested in teaching, see Mr. Montgomery -- there's a program you might want to get into," said my trig teacher.

I got the paperwork from the school counselor and duly began the process of form-filling and essay writing. An interview and some essays later I found myself declared one of only twenty finalists for the Academy of Educator Scholars (now the Golden Apple Foundation) in its second year of awarding student sponsorships.

With plans for indefinite career service firmly in mind I basked in the glow of society attention and flashbulb fame -- citywide publicity came with the package, and, as the program -- known for its teacher awards -- continued and expanded with each passing year the mere mention of the Foundation's name evoked an instant acknowledgement and a ready imprimatur.

The Foundation's pact included the automatic repayment of college loans with five years of teaching completed. Networking was effortless as we Scholars were ushered around Chicago schools when we weren't in the company of Golden Apple award-winning teachers.

A month after graduation an improbable and fortuitous encounter happened on the North Side with a mentor teacher, Mr. Odis Richardson. I was walked right into a history teaching position at the historic Du Sable High School, on the city's South Side, where I had previously done a summer internship through the Foundation program.

My initial two-plus years of history teaching and chess coaching were challenging, time-consuming, and woefully under-resourced, but with spates of rewarding moments. Commuting on the El between my garden apartment in Edgewater -- shared with a girl-friend companion from college -- and the school's neighborhood in Bronzeville was trying, occasionally relieved by carpool rides from colleagues who also lived north.

Skill and reputation developed slowly, but by the time I started my third year I was feeling more settled-in and at-home. I had moved closer to the school, too, at that point, now a mere five-mile bus ride away from a South Loop apartment. That's when my position was terminated, in the spring of '97, throwing the remainder of my career and life into disarray, to date.

No satisfactory justification was given -- merely a bureaucratic note about two history positions being closed, which the Chicago Teacher Union rubber-stamped.

Immediately traumatized and disenchanted I eventually decided to shift gears and parlay my school-introduced and self-taught knowledge of computer graphics into some professional use. Contacting graphics placement agencies I managed to scrape by in following months and years, gaining some insight and experience in professional graphic production work at various temporary placements in and around downtown. I used my 'downtime' to experiment and develop my own creative process as the technology and software matured -- keeping a working system remained a constant high priority. I took software where I could find it, aided in '99 by the advent of the digital subscriber line (DSL) for my apartment, and spent thousands on hardware to ride the crest of the wave as best I could.

My political work, through the International Socialist Organization, came to a halt soon after being cut loose from Du Sable, as non-political, false charges of "sexual harassment" were levelled against me by the branch of the organization I had worked in, but never by the woman I had made the acquaintance with, having met and gone out once with her after an ISO event.

Dwindling income finally forced me out of the apartment after five years, in 2000. I grumbled loudly as I stumbled to my parents' place, all the time carless and constantly restricted in life activities. My increased downtime coincided with a wave of protest events that were challenging world-trade organizational conferences like the WTO, IMF, WEF, and others -- a friend I knew through politics took me in as she moved to an ample, lengthwise apartment atop a bakery in Humboldt Park. Picking up a bit of work here and there I managed to earn enough to again scrape by, using my "free" time to direct my involvement to co-found the Chicago Independent Media Center. It began as a combination of established protest movements in Chicago combined with the online, open-publishing, digital media journalism that covered the protests at the World Trade Organization in late '99. Ad hoc groups of activists reported on protests in Chicago and at protest locales around the country as they happened.

I filed reports from Chicago, Cincinnati, Quebec City, New York City, and Philadelphia, also doing photojournalism and audio/radio reports as the requisite technology fell into my budgetary range. The trump card of September 11, 2001 -- not executed by the alleged band of "hijackers" by the way, as the government-based, racist conspiracy theory goes -- ended the protest momentum. Soon thereafter relations with my roommate host became strained, for financial reasons, and I decided to scoot. Again I had to vacate my space, only to have matters complicated with a brief, semi-welcome, monthlong stay at the Stone Soup co-op due to my mother's decision to keep the family door closed. The gratis month expired, and my parents got a call from the co-op, which quickly facilitated the move at that point.

Classified ads yielded nothing, and some cold-calling brought a smidgen of graphics business while at my parents' place, from December of '04 thorugh July of '05. Calling high schools yielded an invitation to teach history at a new school, the New Millennium School of Health, one of four small schools in the Bowen high school building in the South Chicago neighborhood.

I took the opportunity to move to a nearby area, into a tall high-rise building in South Shore. I knew the area from bike rides south along the lake, and relished the chance to live in the neighborhood.

Feeling much more in stride professionally, I took advantage of the now-mature computer technology and the school's photocopier to customize the history curriculum I taught to the school's sophomores and freshmen. I provided feedback in the form of regularly posted, coded grades, and spent the bulk of my after-hours salaried time grading papers.

My personal life reverted to dating an old flame from previous times, and I travelled by train and bus to and from her place in Pilsen. The principal, while generally conscientious, breezily glossed over my expertise and work -- preferring to nit-pick -- and remitted a critical-and-worse evaluation of my teaching. Eventually she railroaded me out of the position by February, and I later found that my termination carried a wholesale ban on teaching anywhere in the Chicago Public School system -- actions which are entirely unsupportable and shameful. The entire faculty was unresponsive to appeals for assistance as well, and the Chicago Teachers Union again facilitated a hasty departure.

Soon after, while on unemployment, I befriended a neighbor in the building who had contacts among some local public schools. She eventually landed me a position teaching 6th grade at a nearby elementary school. It was during the first week that I first learned of the ban on my employment within the system. The principal, while gracious and welcoming, said she could not allow me to continue to teach because of the ban. I had just walked away from steady employment at an office job with the management of the building where I live, readily handed to me by the landlord, in order to accept the teaching job. By the time I found out I was ineligible to continue teaching the office job had already been re-staffed.

In the meantime I began driving again, the previous time being in the fall and winter of '03-'04, when a cheap, used '87 Toyota Corolla hatchback became my livelihood as I made courier runs for Chicago Messenger Service. Now, in September of '06 I was handed down my father's '91 Toyota Corolla sedan which facilitated a new round of dating Estell. She was back to living in the same apartment building with her parents, now raising her 3-year-old daughter. Our plans for the future ramped up quickly, with heightened emotions and talk of engagement once we could afford it. My complications with employment -- while not sufficient to explain Estell's drop-off in feeling -- seemed to dampen our budding relationship, hurtling it downward to the depths of petty power-plays on her part, accompanied by cross-purposes and communication breakdown.

One day, after dropping her off at work one morning, events took a further turn for the worse, as a driver backed her SUV into my driving lane, which speedily cut off my options for manuever. The result was a crunch and the destruction of my car's left headlight, along with a buckled hood and mangled left fender.

Police reports and auto insurance assessments dragged on, leaving me with an automotive liability. On my way home from a first day at a new job I was pulled over by a police car for the headlight and was subsequently arrested due to an outstanding bogus arrest charge from the Philadelphia police department resulting from a protest at the Republican National Convention in 2000. I was summarily subjected to a four-day stay in police lockup and Cook County jail -- identical to the process when I was arrested in Madison, Wisconsin, in 2002 while covering a protest at the Conference of Mayors -- while the Philadelphia police department waited to convey their standing policy that they won't extradite except from adjacent states.

Most resounding of recent events is the compounded arbitrariness of it all -- chains of causation have pulled me down again as I was beginning to get a leg up. The poor judgment on the part of New Millennium's principal was compounded by the summary ban by Chicago Public School's director of Human Resources. Foot-dragging on the part of the Chicago Police Department slowed down the Allstate insurance damage assessment process, which left me with the broken headlight. And, although I was driving at night with the broken headlight for a week-and-a-half, passing several police cars all the while, nothing happened to me until the day when I was pulled over and arrested. The broken headlight continues to be a risk factor -- prolonged by the police department and insurance company, while I am lacking the means to rectify the outstanding warrant and court case from Philly.

Incidentally the case from Philly is only outstanding due to the summons arriving at my residence in Chicago (in South Loop at the time) on the same day that it summoned me to be court in Philly, in August of 2000. In the meantime the cases of hundreds of people who had been summarily arrested on that day have since been dismissed, due to the state's utter lack of evidence -- a web search for "R2K Philly arrests 2000" will produce numerous news accounts of it.

What's the Point?

If my effort spent on writing this account is to have any purpose, or relevance, it is this: That this account can at least serve as a documentation of one drastic, unwanted outcome due to socio-political forces at work in our society. When I was arrested in Madison while reporting for Chicago Indymedia the stated cause was that I stepped off the curb, never mind that at the same moment entire camera crews were operating off the curb, in the street. I made a point of drawing co-arrestees' attention to that fact as our arrest van pulled away from the scene. Later the charges were dropped and I was released after spending four pointless days in the Dane County lockup.

My recent, 2006 Chicago arrest was also executed on the flimsiest of grounds, with an unnatural, almost pre-meditated kind of planning -- I constantly note the number of vehicles with missing headlights and taillights, and the number of times I now pass by police vehicles, without again being pulled over for the busted headlight.

The Arrest

Chicago police cars used to sport the motto "To serve and protect." Since then the motto has been jettisoned, probably in recognition that its presence would only invite silent jeers. In our current period of imperialist war the domestic scene also takes on an imperial feel, a kind of high-tech barbarism -- a combination of Mad Max and Max Headroom scenarios. In lieu of a progressively enlarged respect for the rights of people to displace outmoded respect for property, we instead have a system of interlocking bureaucracies that readily scoop up wary and unwary alike.

Informal networks of informal gossip prevail over the virtually forgotten legacy of ideals of rational enlightenment concerning government. If liberty-preserving systems of checks and balances ever did exist they are currently a farce, as evidenced by my direct observation of the workings of the Cook County criminal justice system.

The storyline of duplicity affecting my life kicked into high gear with my recent arrest while returning home from a first day of work -- the arresting officer, on seeing my plight with the outstanding warrant from Philadelphia, said he would waive the ticket for the broken headlight. While he kept his word about driving and parking my car in a safe location near the police station where I was processed, his promise of a waiver was later forgotten as my return home from the free weekend in captivity led me to find the ticket in my mailbox.

Disclaimer

You may be saying "big deal, so what" by this point. If you, the reader, are finding this tale rather light on tragedy, or can easily retrieve a handful of sorrier persons, it is certainly understandable. Sure, plenty of people have life much worse, and society could certainly move beyond its obsession with property so that it could pay more attention to people, as an alternative.

Nonetheless, this is an important story because it is my own. This is meant to be a "to whom it may concern" kind of account, an issuance due to the peculiar nature of my circumstances, especially of late.

Perhaps the touchstone of this entire account is professionalism. This yardstick, however theoretical, will be the tool with which to measure events. The opposite of professionalism is corruption and favoritism, too much of which greatly downgrades the reputation and credibility of the person or institution in question.

I'm glad to report that the bulk of my treatment while in Chicago Police and Cook County custody was mostly professional -- but with glaring exceptions. I could easily argue that professionalism from the Philadelphia system in the first place would have prevented this entire ordeal, and also the carbon-copy ordeal from Madison in 2002 -- not to mention the initial nine days of political incarceration, in 4 different jails, meted out to those arrested in Philly in 2000 during the protests at the Republican National Convention.

That aside, I was not thuggishly beaten up or subjected to any arbitrary retribution, but that really isn't saying much in light of everything else that's been happening.

Taking Care of Business, Their Way

The arresting officer was good enough to drive my car to the police station where I was processed, at 103rd and Luella. None of my possessions were pilfered throughout, unlike the camcorder and other personal items that didn't make it out of the Philadelphia system.

After booking and moving my personal items into a possessions bag -- and the normal extended wait, which is a given at each cattle-herding juncture -- I was driven alone in a paddy wagon to a local jail where my money and items of value were specifically noted as part of my possessions bag, and I was put into a cell.

The holding cell I entered already contained another arrestee -- an obviously gay, late-teens guy named M.G. We got right to a political conversation and he noted that in our current anti-war political climate his clientele now reflect this anti-war sentiment, even though they are a white-bread Wisconsin family. In today's world even they have a bone to pick with Bush. We agreed that the war on Iraq is a waste, and I had to further insist that the Democratic Party, including Hillary Clinton, was no alternative -- both parties have a solid track record of firmly supporting the war on Iraq, now responsible for over 600,000 deaths.

Presently I was ushered into a cell of my own, in a hallway of identical lock-up cells. Just as I experienced in Philadelphia, this cell was freezing cold -- unnecessarily so -- and I did what I could to stay warm and calm for the overnight stay. There are no adequate excuses or explanations for the freezing environment -- the rest of the lockup area, outside of the cells, was heated -- warm and comfortable. I managed to sleep in the approximately 40-some-degree temperature, glad to have my three-quarter-length leather coat on me, though it was hardly sufficient.

I fell in and out of sleep, and after awhile I fell into a sound slumber, interrupted by the guards' banging on the cells with their batons. They opened the cells and lined the inmates up in preparation for a mass paddy wagon ride to the Cook County jail system. The gray sunlight was just beginning to light up the skylight above the main desk in the jail building, our only cue as to the current time of day. The nature of the criminal justice system was overwhelmingly apparent from even the slightest glance at the population of the inmates -- almost all except myself were minority youth -- black and Latino, from mid-teen to late-teen years, with a spare man or two of middle age. Conversations I overheard were almost business-convention-like, if one could nullify the environment and stress from the scene. It was about who knew who, who was catching up on news from which neighborhood, which crew, and what people were busted for -- overwhelmingly petty drug offenses -- the breaks of seeking and purveying substances of pleasure in the black-market realm.

The Science of Wasting Your Time

The paddy wagon ride was just square one in a journey of a peculiar, profoundly alienating social mixture -- while there were about thirty of us distributed on the sides of the paddy wagon, and down the middle row, none of us knew each other. There may be exceptions, but throughout each aspect and station of my four-day-long cattle-herding process it was an incredible feeling of how entirely a waste of time every moment was. I knew from being in jail previously that the best thing to do was to sleep as much as possible, and I managed to find a few positions that allowed it no matter how little room I had in a holding cell.

No shared past existed among inmates in processing, and no conversations were enabled, since the social environment gave no cause for polite or casual interactions. Indeed no better term than a 'living purgatory' could describe the environment. It is pure management, without any resulting labor or pleasure. Each cell or holding cell looked as if it had been untouched by any sanitation or renovation since it had been built -- and, for no wonder, I suppose. An endless freight of shipments of living, unrelated bodies would motivate no one to issue or make repairs, since no guest would ever have cause to request it in advance, and no one would care once they were through and done with it.

The Cook County holding cells, each about 40 feet long by 20 feet wide kept about 60 people stuffed within, spread willy-nilly on four benches, lengthwise, and on the floors. In the back was a small urinal-type area with the standard stainless steel sink-toilet combo. Walls and tile floors were in terminal disrepair -- combined with the tough-talking, petty-bully demeanor of the corrections officers the whole scene resembled some kind of adolescent creation of a kindergarten from hell, rather South Park-ish.

M.G. had made a point of encasing a couple of cigarettes, and -- reportedly, by him, vials of liquid something-or-other -- in the lining of his coat. While the c.o.'s instructed everyone to dispose of any remaining possessions -- particularly "contraband" -- M.G. didn't, and one c.o. ripped open his coat's lining with a knife after frisking it and found the cigarettes. The c.o., a large, heavy-set Asian, proceeded to insult M.G., and then also by his sexual orientation -- and then punched him to the side of his head a couple of times, finishing with a lightning-quick side-kick to his chest.

M.G. seemed stunned more than anything else, his pride victimized more than his body. He had the occasion to speak soon afterward, and so was not even badly winded.

The moment served as a demonstration of the height of professionalism in the mode of the sick nature of the c.o.'s line of work. The choice of the type of blows to the head, along with the generic language of the verbal abuse, tapering off into an almost grudging use of a homophobic insult, practically under the breath, all reflected on an evident course of training. One may have come away from viewing the scene with the sense that we just saw some kind of a Procedure Yada-Yada, or whatever -- a "How to Set the Tone for the New Inmates by Making an Example of One of Them."

Documenting the details of the rest of the inmate experience would be an exercise in the mundane -- we were systematically herded from the holding cell, after a long wait, to another holding cell in preparation for a TV-screen bond hearing at half a minute per person. The systematized, automated nature of the proceedings soon made all prison personnel seem like window dressing, mere backdrops to the assembly line of inmate processing.

We were lined up on both walls of a long hallway in preparation for waiting and loading onto buses which took us to the Cook County jail "pods" type of incarceration -- identical to what I'd seen in Philadelphia. Our pod was one out of a few radial branches past an air-traffic-control-like tower. The pod area itself is not unlike a typical two-story balcony walkway motel that's enclosed with a sizeable chunk of "parking lot" as the main floor. It has a truly institutional feel, with side offices, classrooms, and conference rooms off of the hallway outside of the pod, and regular upkeep throughout. Cells are small, about the size of a walk-in closet, with a bunk bed for two, a toilet/sink combo, and steel mirror on the wall. I was "housed" on the floor space on a roll-up foam mat, with spartan bedding.

Throughout the entire 4-day-long sessions of herding, standing, crouching, waiting, and sleeping I only had three occasions for conversation. Besides the aforementioned conversation with M.G. upon my intake, I wound up talking to a late-teens Mexican guy while waiting in line for intake to the pod. He told a tale of working two jobs, both around minimum wage, and now having to serve time while his attractive petite girlfriend is expecting. His story sounded all-too-common, a living testament to the economic apartheid in this country. He said his only better option, as a step up to owning property of his own and collecting rents, would be to take on risk in the black market. I noted that he is no more or less entrepreneurial than anyone else who is doing the same thing, whether "legal" or "illegal." I also mentioned that the state acts as the "house," muscling in on the various business organizations, whether "gangs" or otherwise, to extract its cut. Indeed, our whole inmate parade in snail-motion felt rather like a prolonged border checkpoint of sorts -- perhaps those who had more success in their street ventures are penalized with a much, much slower "checkpoint" through the penal system.

My time among inmates also forced me to consider what it is exactly that makes them "different" from the population outside. I would guess -- based on my superficial observations, admittedly -- that those inside would not pose an immediate threat to those on the outside. Overall I would say that the inmates seemed bolder than the typical person, however low-key their stunting environment makes them on a day-to-day basis. Most seemed to have been born into a pedigree of impoverishment, having grown up in under-resourced, distraction-laden, and even violent environments.

At the same time, like any other mature teens, all were knowledgeable, though -- also, like any other teens -- perhaps unexposed to a few pieces of the larger picture of the machinations of society. Maybe it was a small, uneducated miscalculation here or there that left them more exposed to being scooped up while an associate was still doing business and pleasure on the outside.

Stories seemed to range from less-than-royal birth environments to a one-time too-risky transport of goods, to a mere wrong-place, wrong-time, number's-up type of incident. One inmate seemed to have deeply internalized his business of choice, seeing his past dealing in the netherworld as being incorrigibly at odds with the lives of the rest of his family.

Minor, unobjectionable leisure activities like cards, dominos, TV, and chess were the only allowed escapes from the plain, option-less existence of cells, cell-mates, and regular meals. Again, one must marvel at the slick thought that created this inhumane institution -- it is like forever being trapped in an airport terminal. One may make acquaintances, but they are not by choice nor would the connections have likely futures. One may have some contact with the outside world, through received parcels, phone calls, letters, books, and occasional visits, but the permanent buffer confers a fictionalized feel to one's life while within -- it is like living as a character in someone else's storybook, perhaps with a gargantuan giant treading just outside.

Legal and Economic Limbo for This Grad, Teacher

I received a bit of a startle concerning my own welfare when the public defender -- an employee of the court -- announced to a group of us in the holding room outside chambers that those of us awaiting trial on extradition charges (that's me) would have to wait 30 days while the states deliberated their decisions. I inquired as to whether that wait would be inside the jail or outside, and was told it would be inside. I felt dumbfounded and mildly defiant and incredulous -- it seemed there could be no legal grounds whatsoever for such a detention at the state's whim.

As it turned out the judge communicated the very same outcome that the arresting officer mentioned to me at the time of my arrest -- that although I would not be extradited the arrest warrant would continue to exist, and so I could be subjected to the same process again in the future if the case was not resolved in the Philadelphia system.

This Kafka-esque legal status means that I am practically compelled to undertake a business gamble for my possible liberty, even after having now served a total of 17 days of incarceration on three separate occasions. Adding in the expense of days missed from work, additional costs related to the court, and the future expense of travelling to and from Philadelphia, with likely attorney's fees, for an uncertain outcome, makes the whole situation complicated to the point of being painful to even think about. It is like being told that one cannot leave the zoo until they have entered the lion's cage to give the lion a soothing backrub.

To add insult to injury I, after an extended wait in cages with others awaiting release that Monday night, found three parking tickets on my car which had been left in a lot clearly marked "Public Parking," by the officer who had driven it there.

Voyeuring Your Cake and Eating It, Too

These events make it clear to me, and also hopefully to you, the reader, that our society could be doing much better. I do believe in a "Rear Window" Effect -- that those who have decided to take on professional and/or political responsibilities to view outside of their own lives must also deal with the consequences of what they see in their time of viewing.

Abolitionists in the eighteenth century stepped out of their 'comfort zones' to observe what the institution of slavery was doing to blacks, and they agitated for its dismissal. Likewise -- though in my case on a much more miniscule scale, of course -- it seems that there are enough witnesses to the complications resulting from our current, capitalism-based form of social structure. But if the same people make light of what they see or ignore facts selectively from their viewing, then they immediately reduce themselves and their lives to the level of perverted voyeurs, at best, or to slothful, negligent gatekeepers at worst.

Who's Going to Pay for All of This?

Given the overwhelming confluence of demands made on my life lately -- the loss of a position in my chosen and trained-for profession, the blanket barring of me from the educational system entirely, the traffic accident and subsequent arrest and continued legal limbo, and all of the resulting loss of time and associated costs for the same, leave me with the sense of "Who's going to pay for all of this?"

It feels as though others have had adventures at my expense, while at the same time I'm trying to live for the best of my potentials, a point I've gotten to through my own efforts.

In the most basic sense we all have demands made of us, but we are also supposed to have strengths to trade on in the world at large. Too many distractions and detours from without will encumber us to where we become overburdened, at which point the legal system's machinations will find us, and may even prevail -- just note my case and the lives of thousands and millions who are behind bars without cause, and without making society any safer or healthier.

I do realize that there is a systematic, capitalism-based crisis underway, and that the U.S., along with most of its citizens, are living on debt. I don't mean to sound like a monetarist in the least, since I do realize the overall absurdity of the economics of it, but I do want to make it clear that my day-to-day living still requires income so that basics can be paid for.

I will leave off here and thank you for putting up with this account. If you have any cause to contact me, please do not hesitate to do so.





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