by Tyler Bejoian

Recently, there was a provocative article written in the New Yorker magazine that confronted the issue of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons. For those who are not aware, solitary confinement is a form of punishment employed by U.S. prisons, where individuals will spend up to 23 hours a day locked inside a cell, deprived of virtually all human contact (with the exception of the prison staff.) Those who are faced with solitary confinement find themselves enduring severe hallucinations and paralyzing loneliness that almost always leads to issues with “irrational anger”. 

The extremely informative article reminded me of something that I had long suspected, but hadn’t yet been validated by fact. Solitary confinement is a legitimate form of torture. And what is worse, this is a practice that Americans enforce upon other Americans. The prospect of ending this torturous practice rarely enters the public spectrum. I cannot recall a single press conference so far where President Obama had been asked about this practice. However, the good news is that most prison commissioners actually want to ban the practice but are constricted by politicians who threaten to withdraw basic funding, ridiculous stories appear in tabloids and correctional officers calling victims families and telling them that the commissioner has gone “soft on crime.”

While harrowing, this information can also be phenomenally empowering. It means that we as Americans have the ability to sway public opinion, and abolish this abhorrent practice. There are numerous journalists and activists who are working for a more humane prison system, and it is about time that their views are broadcasted to the nation. The use of solitary confinement symbolizes a much larger and devastating issue contaminating America. The United States currently has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world. Over 2 million people were convicted in 2007, and we have seen increasing numbers of convictions within past years. The cost of keeping millions behind bars comes to an astonishing 60 billion a year! This is certainly not a price we can afford to pay any longer.

Link to the New Yorker article: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=1

It is not very often that I personally have the time nor feel it necessary to write a blog post about every organization that we post a link to. Normally a link in the BlogRoll is enough. The idea behind TuneInTurnOnHelpOut.org is first and foremost to provide the user with a trustworthy collection of valuable non-profit causes, charities, and volunteer opportunities — all categorized as hyperlinks that take the user right to the source so you can take action and get involved NOW. Most often this is as simple as getting turned on ourselves to the organization and then checking them out - doing the due diligence so the reader doesn’t have to — and then posting a link to them in the appropriate category. The blog posts themselves are usually content provided by the various organizations that wish to contribute and communicate alerts or action items when timing is of the essence.

So far so good. Response has been overtly positive and all of us here are very thankful to all of you who take the time out of your busy schedules to shoot off a quick thank you email. Not only does it help us feel good about the time, money, and effort that is necessary to keep the site up and running, but more importantly it inspires us because we realize that our overall mission is being fulfilled, i.e. to increase awareness of important causes and charities and get more people on the planet involved in volunteering or becoming more socially or politically active. Again, so far so good. Thanks to all of you for playing a part in it!

Every now and then though one might notice that I do feel compelled to write an actual blog post instead of just suggest a cause. See yesterday’s rant entitled FUCK THE OLYMPICS as an example. (But don’t blame me for that one, because I didn’t write it. Some strange character who calls himself ”The Raconteur” did. But I allowed it in anyway. Freedom of speech and all that you know…

In any case let’s cut to the chase here. This simple blog post is to simply turn us all on to one of the coolest non-profits I have heard of in a long time. The long and the short of it is this: New York City has 14 million people living in it. (all five boroughs). 8 million on just the island of Manhattan alone. This can create quite a mess if left unkept. I personally always wondered how Manhattan managed to stay so clean and beautiful considering how many people live on this tiny little island.

Well it turns out that some of the credit belongs to this ingenius little organization called The Doe Fund. And talk about ingenius. Not only do they keep the city looking beautiful, but they do it through driving straight to our local jails or prisons and giving men who have served their time with exceptional behavior a job right there on the spot. That way there is little chance that the men will find the dificulty of finding work coming right out of prison causing them to relapse into a life of crime… The company is a non-profit. The “men in blue” get the chance to earn an honest living and build or rebuild a career for themselves, and most of the money that is used to pay them comes from donations from individual or corporate donations.

I was very excited when i first learned of this orgnization. This is a real 21st century non-profit! A real win-win-win for everyone, from the inhabitants of the city, to the workers who are keeping the city looking so good, to the generous donors who are making it all possible, and of course the organization itself.

As the founder and president of the organization, George T. McDonald, states:

“The men of Ready, Willing & Able often come from very difficult backgrounds. They are products of poverty, poor education, alcoholism, drug addiction and families broken in ways most of us cannot imagine. Despite all of this, they come to us wanting to be productive and useful, wanting to be an asset to their families, communities and city, and wanting to share in both the benefits and responsibilities of being an American. As you come to know the individuals of Ready, Willing & Able, you appreciate the heroic proportion of their struggle to change and their profound gratitude for the opportunity that this program provides - structured paid work and collective caring.”

Please take some time to visit thier site and learn more about them. I would also be very interested to learn if other cities around the world have similar such programs. If you know of any, please feel free to comment.

Sincerely,
The Ambassador

Just when it appeared that no matter what we did, we were never going to make any headway and the bad guys were always going to win…. This just in from the Times….

Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Thursday, June 12, 2008 — 10:32 AM ET
—–

Justices Rule Terror Suspects Can Appeal in Civilian Courts

The Supreme Court ruled that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantánamo Bay have the right to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.

Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/?emc=na

Uh, yeah, well that makes sense since that’s the FUCKING LAW to begin with! (Boy those TImes reporters sure have potty-mouths!)