Marina

“The best change you can make is to hold up a mirror so that people can look into it and change themselves. That's the only way a person can be changed."
By looking into yourself," Zia said. "Even if you have to look into a mirror that's outside yourself to do it."
"And you know," Maida added. "That mirror can be a story you hear, or just someone else's eyes. Anything that reflects back so you can see yourself in it.”
― Charles de Lint, Someplace to Be Flying

“Don’t you know that slavery was outlawed?”
“No,” the guard said, “you’re wrong. Slavery was outlawed with the exception of prisons. Slavery is legal in prisons.”
I looked it up and sure enough, she was right. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution says:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Well, that explained a lot of things. That explained why jails and prisons all over the country are filled to the brim with Black and Third World people, why so many Black people can’t find a job on the streets and are forced to survive the best way they know how. Once you’re in prison, there are plenty of jobs, and, if you don’t want to work, they beat you up and throw you in a hole. If every state had to pay workers to do the jobs prisoners are forced to do, the salaries would amount to billions… Prisons are a profitable business. They are a way of legally perpetuating slavery. In every state more and more prisons are being built and even more are on the drawing board. Who are they for? They certainly aren’t planning to put white people in them. Prisons are part of this government’s genocidal war against Black and Third World people.”
― Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography

“Have you ever noticed how ‘What the hell’ is always the right decision to make?”
― Terry Johnson, Insignificance

“A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.”
― C.S. Lewis