On prisons and pals

Today I offered to become a pen pal to a prisoner.  I did this once when I was a teenager and it didn't go well.   He wanted sex and money.  I'm older and wiser now, and hope to avert such requests. 
I also contribute monthly to a nonprofit that supports the salvation of dogs and prisoners, by the inmates training the dogs to be service animals.   Prison Pet Partnership Program, it's called.

Criminal justice in the US is a mess and I don't give it a lot of energy but am well aware of how messed up it is.   I hope pen palling will help one prisoner.

The starfish metaphor remains with me.

Peace and justice, y'all

Molly

Do Justice

While I await inspiration and energy, I want to share the day's entry on the perpetual calendar from Alternatives for Simple Living (800-821-6153).

The first principle is not "Think about Justice," or even "Believe in Justice." it's "Do Justice!" Besides our prayers, our contributions, and our pressure on governments, we help the world's poor by consuming less, thereby making more available for others. Biblical Justice reflects God's great love for the poor and our parallel call to live in a way that positively responds to their needs."

So concise and right!

I am consuming less this month by declining to buy. I am having a month of retail abstinence. The hard part is staying away from lattes. The rest is not too bad. Last night we went to Costco to buy a few things on our grocery list. I felt interest but no temptation from all the other stuff there.

More on justice. Just a brief pause to consider it gave me an idea. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals just ruled that felons in prison have a right to vote. My local newspaper deplored this but I embrace it. The disenfranchised in our culture are the ones who suffer injustice - children, illegal aliens, plants and animals, air and water, the poor. Isn't it justice enough to lock up those folks?

Early childhood education

Consensus is good. Quakers use it So does the League of Women Voters.

Tonight's LWV meeting featured my favorite soup, cooked with a few adjustments for the vegetarians in our group. And we discussed early childhood education and the state's role in it. Rather, the role the state should have in it.

But money is tight, tight, tight So we will probably not see more funding for early childhood education for years to come. So kids of the well-to-do will thrive, and the neediest of the poor kids will get charity (state support). But the kids in the middle may get good care, maybe not. And maybe the kids that don't will be not quite needy enough to be special needs, but are needy enough to have trouble in school and later in life.

League's state study showed that kids who were in an early childhood education program fared better than those who didn't across a number of variables--succeeding in school, making more than $20k/year, completing college, refraining from getting arrested or incarcerated.

Which costs us taxpayers less--$8-12K/year for 5 years, or having a kid grow up to fill a bed in a prison for 5-20 years? So we taxpayers will moan about paying more for gas, food, and education but never mind what we pay for more jails and prisons.

I want to pay more taxes. Sounds perverse, even un-American. But that's my truth. I wantot invest in a green infrastructure for the future, in children, in public health.