Kristl Tyler's Blog
December 4, 2014
Is it time for a new Nicodemus?
When slavery ended in 1865, many blacks gathered up their limited belongings and headed north and west as pioneers. All-black towns sprung up all over the place. The most famous of these towns was Nicodemus, Kansas.
In my book, The Wheat Money, I suggest that the failure of Nicodemus was not an accident. Whites simply did not want black towns to thrive. The reasoning was simple, if black towns were self-sufficient, many white towns would have had no permanent underclass available to do their menial labor for paltry wages.
We can no longer deny that since the end of slavery 150 years ago, we whites have systematically undermined black businesses and black-owned farms wherever they sprung up. How different would our country be today if non-white towns had been allowed to develop organically?
In June of this year, Ta-Nehesi Coates gathered and presented The Case for Reparations. Coates, as usual, hits every nail on it's head. His article and the growing movement prove that it's time we take the discussion of reparations seriously.
Michelle Alexander, in her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness reasons that radical changes will be needed to dismantle this new system of White Supremacy. What we don't really need are more task forces who talk (and talk and talk) about tweaking the existing system.
How will we restore the innumerable "felons" to a life they always deserved but have now been systematically denied?
"When they get out, they have no other place to go and that's why they end up with the exact same life all over again."
This is a lamentation my husband often repeats. As we ride around Denver, Colorado on some errand or another, he easily spots the freshly released.
"It's the penitentiary release uniform. Plain black tennis shoes, khaki pants, a polo collared shirt and a light jacket."
When he points them out to me, our hearts and moods sink in unison. We know these ex-prisoners are probably still full of hope and we know statistics show they will probably begin failing within 78 hours of their release. They are often already in debt to the system before they walk out the prison door: Victim reparations, administrative fees, daily rent on halfway house residency, ten bucks for the honor of having someone watch you pee in a cup, registration fees for classes on Anger Management, Parenting, Drug and Alcohol abuse.
Last month, as we drove back from Ferguson for a second time, we stopped in Limon, Colorado to get gas and use the bathrooms. Limon is a very small town and the residents joke that their town's name is an acronym for Life In The Middle Of Nowhere. There, at the Limon truck stop, we lingered, browsing the merchandise and chatting up Karen, the gift shop owner.
When we got back in the car, I started rambling about homesteading, intentional collective communities, and Nicodemus. My husband joined in, talking about his experiences in Outward Bound during his wayward youth. The Outward Bound counselors taught him camping and survival skills. He broke and trained horses. He learned to make horseshoes from iron. He felt free for the first time and last time in his life.
As we rolled toward Denver, the conversation had us vibing hard and our utterances boiled down almost into code as we materialized the same idea, together: Felon towns.
Yes, a town full of felons, starting over. If it worked for the entire country of Australia, why couldn't it work for a small town in Eastern, Colorado?
I suggested the name Hazelton as the first experimental felon town. A Hazel-Town in honor of my husband's mother. He loved the name and we continued volleying details around for another hour.
When we got back home to Aurora, I ordered books on intentional communities. There was no need to research the felon's revolving door, I'd been living it for almost a decade, ever since I'd met my husband in the inner city of Denver in 2005.
Hazelton is the code name for the utopic new Nicodemus bouncing around in our heads now. How would it be funded? What would be the initial rules and regulations? How "rough: would residents start out? Would they have seeds and animals? Cinderblocks and mortar? Internet access?
In the coming weeks I'll share my research, and more details of the proposals we are trying to construct.
In the meantime, I welcome comments. Just as Hazelton would be a collective, so should it's design.
In my book, The Wheat Money, I suggest that the failure of Nicodemus was not an accident. Whites simply did not want black towns to thrive. The reasoning was simple, if black towns were self-sufficient, many white towns would have had no permanent underclass available to do their menial labor for paltry wages.
We can no longer deny that since the end of slavery 150 years ago, we whites have systematically undermined black businesses and black-owned farms wherever they sprung up. How different would our country be today if non-white towns had been allowed to develop organically?
In June of this year, Ta-Nehesi Coates gathered and presented The Case for Reparations. Coates, as usual, hits every nail on it's head. His article and the growing movement prove that it's time we take the discussion of reparations seriously.
Michelle Alexander, in her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness reasons that radical changes will be needed to dismantle this new system of White Supremacy. What we don't really need are more task forces who talk (and talk and talk) about tweaking the existing system.
How will we restore the innumerable "felons" to a life they always deserved but have now been systematically denied?
"When they get out, they have no other place to go and that's why they end up with the exact same life all over again."
This is a lamentation my husband often repeats. As we ride around Denver, Colorado on some errand or another, he easily spots the freshly released.
"It's the penitentiary release uniform. Plain black tennis shoes, khaki pants, a polo collared shirt and a light jacket."
When he points them out to me, our hearts and moods sink in unison. We know these ex-prisoners are probably still full of hope and we know statistics show they will probably begin failing within 78 hours of their release. They are often already in debt to the system before they walk out the prison door: Victim reparations, administrative fees, daily rent on halfway house residency, ten bucks for the honor of having someone watch you pee in a cup, registration fees for classes on Anger Management, Parenting, Drug and Alcohol abuse.
Last month, as we drove back from Ferguson for a second time, we stopped in Limon, Colorado to get gas and use the bathrooms. Limon is a very small town and the residents joke that their town's name is an acronym for Life In The Middle Of Nowhere. There, at the Limon truck stop, we lingered, browsing the merchandise and chatting up Karen, the gift shop owner.
When we got back in the car, I started rambling about homesteading, intentional collective communities, and Nicodemus. My husband joined in, talking about his experiences in Outward Bound during his wayward youth. The Outward Bound counselors taught him camping and survival skills. He broke and trained horses. He learned to make horseshoes from iron. He felt free for the first time and last time in his life.
As we rolled toward Denver, the conversation had us vibing hard and our utterances boiled down almost into code as we materialized the same idea, together: Felon towns.
Yes, a town full of felons, starting over. If it worked for the entire country of Australia, why couldn't it work for a small town in Eastern, Colorado?
I suggested the name Hazelton as the first experimental felon town. A Hazel-Town in honor of my husband's mother. He loved the name and we continued volleying details around for another hour.
When we got back home to Aurora, I ordered books on intentional communities. There was no need to research the felon's revolving door, I'd been living it for almost a decade, ever since I'd met my husband in the inner city of Denver in 2005.
Hazelton is the code name for the utopic new Nicodemus bouncing around in our heads now. How would it be funded? What would be the initial rules and regulations? How "rough: would residents start out? Would they have seeds and animals? Cinderblocks and mortar? Internet access?
In the coming weeks I'll share my research, and more details of the proposals we are trying to construct.
In the meantime, I welcome comments. Just as Hazelton would be a collective, so should it's design.
