Category: Off topic

A World Without Prisons

To celebrate a year of publishing a monthly newsletter, Iowa City Mutual Aid solicited responses to the prompt “what does a world without prisons look like?” Here is my response.

Prisons are a symptom, edifices to a culture insisting people are either good or bad—a lesson we learn as children and one that saturates our media, politics, policies, and the ways we move through the world.

Prisons are places where we lock people away for their faults and imperfections. We build them to contain those who harm so we can pretend to rehabilitate them; those who are mentally ill because we don’t have treatment for them; those without homes because we don’t have houses for them. We build prisons to hide, out of sight, the people we choose to discard rather than care for.

And then we build more. We rebuild them. We expand them. Prisons become an excuse not to construct—or even imagine—something better.

A world without prisons is a world that accepts each of us as a human with imperfection and responds with care, rather than exile. It is a world oriented toward healing and transformation and justice for those who cause harm and those who are hurt. It is a transformed world of peace that knows people are not simply good or bad. It is a world that knows each and every one of us needs healing, causes harm and is worthy of care.

‘Dilbert’ Creator Scott Adams Dies at 68

Mark Kennedy for The Associated Press:

It all collapsed quickly in 2023 when Adams, who was white, repeatedly referred to Black people as members of a “hate group” and said he would no longer “help Black Americans.” He later said he was being hyperbolic, yet continued to defend his stance.

Almost immediately, newspapers dropped “Dilbert” and his distributor, Andrews McMeel Universal, severed ties with the cartoonist. The Sun Chronicle in Attleboro, Massachusetts, decided to keep the “Dilbert” space blank for a while “as a reminder of the racism that pervades our society.” A planned book was scrapped.

“He’s not being canceled. He’s experiencing the consequences of expressing his views,” Bill Holbrook, the creator of the strip “On the Fastrack,” told The Associated Press at the time. “I am in full support with him saying anything he wants to, but then he has to own the consequences of saying them.”

It’s OK to Be Angry. You Should Be Angry.

Look. We don’t have to agree about policing in America. We don’t even have to agree that the state shouldn’t have the power to kill. But I hope we can agree that the state shouldn’t be able to kill someone in the street.

We call that murder.

State Dumps “Healthy Kids Iowa” and Returns to Summer EBT

Erin Murphy and Maya Marchel Hoff in The Gazette:

 Iowa announced on Monday that it will return to a federal summer food assistance program, while tying the program’s $40 per month per child to Iowa’s new healthy foods initiative.

The announcement came on the same day a report made available to The Gazette showed Iowa’s program in 2025 fell well short of reaching the number of children that the federal program would have.

Last summer’s Healthy Kids Iowa replacement program for Summer EBT required families to find time to locate and show up to distribution sites during limited hours and local pantries and other volunteers to set up, staff and market these pop-ups, which only had pre-packaged boxes of food, which is a lot to put on overburdened people and organizations.

It’s bad enough that, of the 220,000 Iowa children eligible, the replacement program managed to serve less than a third of them. What’s worse is that was exactly what the State of Iowa expected.

Incarcerated People Don’t Have Enough Period Products

Amanda Watford writing in the radical prison abolitionist rag (checks notes) Iowa Capital Dispatch and States Newsroom:

When Yraida Faneite was on trial for drug-related charges, the judge had to halt proceedings at one point because her period was so heavy that blood was running down her legs.

The same struggle followed her into a federal prison in Florida after she was convicted. For about a decade, officials allowed her only a small ration of menstrual products, and she couldn’t afford extra pads from the commissary. She bartered with other women. On her worst days, she tore up her own T-shirts and used them as makeshift pads.

When she told officers she needed to see a doctor and couldn’t safely continue a mandatory kitchen shift, she said, she was placed in solitary confinement. She eventually found out that her heavy bleeding was caused by cysts.

Incarceration is inhumane, and this is also inhumane.

Second Prize is a Trip to the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl

Craig Meyer for USA Today:

The bowl system around which the college football postseason has been built for decades has encountered a bit of a problem this year.

It’s having trouble finding teams that want to participate.

College teams that have declined playing in a post-season bowl game:

  • Notre Dame (10-2)
  • Iowa State (8-4)
  • Kansas State (6-6)
  • Florida State (5-7)
  • Auburn (5-7)
  • UCF (5-7)
  • Baylor (5-7)
  • Kansas (5-7)
  • Rutgers (5-7)
  • Temple (5-7)

College bowls were supposed to be a reward for teams and fan, then everyone wanted one and not enough people wants participate in the consolation prize, not even some 5-7 losers and even if it comes with a $500,000 fine.

Center for Intellectual Freedom Bozos Ask “What’s Wrong with Higher Education” and You’ll Be Shocked at Their Answer

Brooklyn Draisey for the Iowa Capital Dispatch:

There wasn’t much debate among panelists and audience members, with the group seeming to agree that the root of the problems facing higher education comes from liberals and the ideas they bring with them.

The Crimethink infrastructure is here.

See also: Clara Reynen’s field report from Day 2.

Previously here: Destroying the Economic Engine to Own the Libs