Laws & New Orders
Musings and meanderings on the state of punishment.
Audio voiceover is back.
One of my earliest school memories is from the first grade, the day I got my name on the board. This was a bad thing, a punishment for not following the rules. If you got your name on the board, it sat there all day on display, next to the grammar lesson or math problem, and for a good kid like me it was agony. I earned it that day by talking after the bell rang at the end of recess. The rule was that when the bell would ring, all the kids were supposed to freeze in position, for about 20 seconds, until a teacher would blow their whistle and release us back to our classrooms. But that day I was excited to tell my friend Sara one last thing, and after that bell rang I decided to kept talking and get in my thought. It turned out my first grade teacher was standing close enough to hear, and he barked my name and said something like “when we get inside, your name is going on the board.”
I remember the waves of shame and embarrassment washing down my small frame, and sure enough when we sat back at our desks he fulfilled the threat. There it was, “Amy” (along with a few others), the letters smarting and throbbing in my heated field of vision. It was erased at the end of the day, and the next morning a clean chalkboard offered all of us a fresh start, but I’d never forget that feeling. I’m sure it did its job, teaching me not to talk after the bell rang. And it wasn’t the last time I got in trouble for talking to my friends during class. But in that moment there was no one to tell me that it would be okay and help put it in perspective, and it left a small scar that stung when I thought about it until years later, when I was old enough to know it was comically not a big deal, and in fact I got a kick out of reimagining the performance art of hundreds of kids frozen in position: arms out, elbows bent, mid-stride or kick, while I yammered away to my friend.
Last week we witnessed a full moon passing over our valley and setting behind the horizon. For a few hours each night its white light shone directly into our bedroom window. I recently learned about an ancient 13-month calendar based on the moon’s cycles, with 28 days in a month instead of 30 or 31. The 13-month calendar shows up in the history of multiple cultures: Mayan, Celt, Norse, Native American, but it eventually fell out of use in favor of the Gregorian one. Or, maybe it was dominated out of use? A moon-based calendar makes so much more intuitive sense to me, but I can’t imagine us ever agreeing to change.
We launched a new website last week (news article here), a redesigned and rebuilt site for Plan C to better represent the robust information landscape at hand and describe the various options and resources in a cleaner, more understandable way. Admittedly, the project has taken almost two years total, because of stops and starts and unexpected hurdles: we were led astray by a terrible development firm, then started over with someone new who was good but moved slowly. We also lined up rounds and rounds of user interviews then took time to process feedback, make technical changes and keep iterating. We finally reached the home stretch in September, when we essentially had to create our own finish line and say after these next priorities, we are done.
The launch date was set for October 6, a full harvest supermoon. This is a harvest moon because it would traditionally extend the farmer’s workday as they finished collecting the crops, and a supermoon in that the moon was as close to Earth as it’ll come this year. I scrolled back in my calendar app to see that October 6, 2023 was the date we first scoped out the work with the i ll-fated development agency, the project kickoff. The week before, September 29, was the date of the initial conversation, the “discovery call:” and also happened to be the date of the 2023 fall supermoon. I appreciated the connection between these long sine wave arcs of time, months stretching over years only to perfectly align at the end.
Because the website is about ending a pregnancy or regaining a period, my mind also went to the moon-menstruation connection, or the body’s mirroring of the soft gravitational pull from above on a near-identical cycle length. The internet told me this month’s supermoon in Aries represented action, courage, and authenticity: energies which also seemed correct for re-launching this particular website in all its direct and empowering, and highly polarizing, information.
So much has happened during those two years: we weathered an election season and its media cycle. We saw power switch hands, and felt it as the crosshairs of punishment were turned to our neighbors and friends. In my line of work, we’ve watched as politicians designed new attempts to block old medications and punish provision of care, doubling down on stories of morality and protecting women. I’m a rule abider by nature, and some days I’m struck by how I’ve chosen to exist within something that directly challenges my own wiring. The work is one of my greatest teachers, and it’s made me more discerning and more brave.
Maybe every governmental system feels punitive if you’re sitting on the wrong side of it, but we’re watching our so-called leaders reinterpret or ignore the constitution and steamroller established laws on free speech, bodily autonomy, protection from unlawful search and seizure. We’re watching fear of criminalization used as domination in ways we’ve never seen. Others within the machinery of the system who want to right the ship are grasping at accountability, wondering how forcefully they can counter without putting themselves in the same line of fire. It’s a massive game of capture the flag, on shared territory and in dusky fading light, except the opponents are not neighborhood kids but intractable enemies.
Watching the ICE raids and Venezuelan boat bombings, my mind keeps going to: why? Not just, why is this happening and who does it benefit? But why are these violently punitive strategies not only the obvious way to dominate, but also used to generally maintain order?
Is it just human being’s best playing cards, are the true power levers ever only muscle and money? Laws themselves are threats, a promise of violence or payback by the dominant team against the other. In an alternate reality, enforcement of a law would ideally come from a loving desire to correct exploitation and harm, and keep individuals and the collective safe and prosperous. But most often, laws and enforcement hold the energy of retribution and anger. Do we intentionally choose this as our foundation, or is it the default because it’s the most forceful, loudest and scariest and it ensures compliance? Is it utterly unrealistic to think we humans could ever keep each other in line without violence?
The US has a long history of anger and retribution in general, as does the religion of Christianity which has seemed to become part of the justice system somehow. It’s where we come from, how we do things here. Maybe it comes from righteousness, getting steeped in a point of view and feeling fired up about anyone violating it? Patriarchy, the masculine role of protector, getting spun out to the nth degree until it loses touch with what it’s protecting? A crusade of morality crushing certain behavior in pursuit of perfection?
I imagine that for certain people, there’s a lot that feels good about living in a punitive pseudo-Christian system. There’s a clear moral code, established by an unquestionable god and interpreted by uncompromising judges and leaders. If you’re on the right side of it and your team is winning, I’m sure punitive law can make you feel safe: they’re reining things in, getting the bad guys, restoring order. The problem right now is that the teams don’t agree on who the bad guys are and what safety looks like.
The whole idea of redemption, of forgiveness and second chances, seems to be missing too. Last night Andy reminded me that this is hard in US culture because we aren’t good at loving or forgiving ourselves.
Last week the Texas AG charged a midwife with 15 felony counts for allegedly performing two abortions, and arrested eight of her associates of whom they claimed several are not citizens. Their midwifery practice serves a predominantly low-income, non-English speaking community, generally folks facing higher barriers to reproductive care and also probably confused or fearful about what’s still allowed. According to an “Anti” article, she’s also apparently delivered hundreds of healthy babies over the years — they cited this fact in lamenting her decision to help people end their pregnancies. So under someone’s moral framework, she has been deemed the bad guy for the abortion part, and of course the color-of-skin-and-status part. Is this use of time and resources really understood as keeping people safe? Who, exactly? The unborn fetus above all else? Is it helping churchgoers feel safe as they pray to end abortion, in what they have decided is gods will even though it’s not addressesd in the bible? Is it giving them the feeling of a win in this chaotic world? A fetus is pre-sin, pre-judgement—easy to crusade to protect. Adults are flawed, entangled, tribal—easy to categorize and condemn.
But these policies and laws operate on multiple planes, appealing to morality then reinforcing a political goal. In terms of safety, it seems like the politicians might be the primary beneficiaries protected by the action against latina midwives, keeping themselves safe by reinforcing their brand and rallying their base.
Why is safety treated like a zero-sum game, where someone has to become unsafe in order for others to feel safe? Does my own rely on someone else not having it? Logically, wouldn’t the opposite be true?
When I think of a world where safety rules and punitive approaches have been replaced by peaceful ones, I think of a Dr. Seussian village with people holding hands and smiling and rocking side to side. Is this absofuckinglutely ridiculous? In order for us to even start down the path of pursuing that vision, we’d need to meet people’s basic needs in a much more substantial way. Mental health, food justice, education, line it up and scoot people up that hierarchy of needs, and chances are a need for punishment would drop as well.
But that idea seems to be in direct conflict with the bootstrapped American ethos of doing it all yourself, or else you’re bad and lazy and a burden on the rest of us, a narrative that’s been used to cut social services and fuel capitalistic growth for companies that rely on everyone needing to do it all themselves. Good for capitalism, bad for broke exhausted underinsured families and individuals.
Interestingly, the Mayan moral framework was rooted in nature but also included the concept that laws and morality came from the gods. Crimes like murder, adultery, treason, and religious offenses were seen not only as breaking a civil law but also as sins against the gods. The difference from modern US is that everyone was bought in to the same belief system, it wasn’t one narrative attempting to dominate another. Sure there were people who crossed the line, and perhaps believed it was their right to do so, but it seems there was general consensus about where the line lay.
Of course crimes like murder and treason should be examined and punished — this serves my safety too, and it doesn’t really serve the murderer to let them keep roaming the streets. I agree with striving for general safety, accountability for following laws like traffic rules that prevent harm. Laws that protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Existing life — life of the mother, right and ability to build the life and family she wants. And there it is — my interpretation.
The Christians who interpret fetus as alive would disagree, and their way of enforcing would be punitive because how else would they enforce it? We know best, they say, because god has told us so. We will use punishment as a tool to correct and prevent behavior, and compel the fetus to stay. Even though in up to 20% of pregnancies, the fetus does not stay but leaves in miscarriage—also god’s will, right? To me this brings up a much deeper question of predetermination or fate vs free will, a question of who is really at the wheel. We could talk about that one for a while.
In the reality I currently one I live in, we start with trust and compassion, saying: the pregnant person knows best. They are making the decision that is best for their life, their health, and we trust them to make this decision within their own belief system, without interference, and that the best and most aligned outcome will prevail.
Two weeks ago I read this essay on why abortion matters by friend and movement colleague Jex Blackmore who is a very skilled organizer and an excellent writer, and it felt true in my bones. It spoke directly to why I do this work: not because I’m angry about patriarchy and denial of rights, although some days that’s what fuels me. And not because I identify so deeply with abortion activism, although I’m certainly surrounded by activists who will do this specific work til they’re old. But more because I’m compelled by the complexity of how this issue plays out in our culture and society, how it represents power and who holds it, how it gets wrapped into stories we tell each other about morality in a post-puritanical but currently-confused configuration of a country, and how it touches me and everyone who values body autonomy as we wrestle with the question of who gets to determine the outcomes of our lives.
As time goes on, there is an assumption that we must be evolving. We must be learning and building new tools and systems, improving the ones we have, and this must change our ways of living in the world. But again maybe this is overly-optimistic, and maybe I need to go back to my pendulum theory that we aren’t necessarily evolving forward but are swinging back and forth between ideologies, devising solutions to existing problems and creating ne w messes as we go. What would the evolution of a punitive legal and justice system look like? You can find examples in Nordic countries with more humane approaches to crime, focusing on rehabilitation and prevention-oriented policies and building prisons with a focus on skills training.
What if a punitive approach came as a second step, after a compassionate one? What if crimes were not corrected in a vacuum, but instead correction took a lens toward mental health, socioeconomic pressures, family systems, and included a social workers assessment of what’s needed alongside a risk assessment of the person’s state? Our prison industrial complex is clearly a disaster, and if we invested in more social services, education and other systems of support we’d start to address root causes instead of playing whack-a-mole with people gone awry. But in this moment, with the corporate incentives at play for taxpayer dollars to fund those prisons and fuel the narrative of cleaning up the streets, that train may have left the station. It will require some real careful signal-switching, miles ahead on the tracks, to slow down what’s already in motion.
It’s tempting to think of justice as something concrete and definable, but it’s not. Each side thinks they are doing what’s right. The first definition of justice on the internet is a circular one:
just·ice /ˈjəstəs/, noun: just behavior or treatment.
the second is more specific:
the quality of being fair and reasonable.
but still entirely subjective. Justice is a felt sense. Philosopher and activist Cornell West once said “Justice is what love looks like in public.”
It’s why you need rules and constitutions and writings, to establish what we collectively believe this love looks like. Andy likes the phrase that there are no bad people, just good people operating with bad information. Not everyone would agree with this — maybe overly generous when you see the extent of the grifters and abusers operating on bad faith — but maybe that is the bad information. Maybe somewhere inside, they think what they’re doing is the right thing, even just for them. To feel good, to keep themselves safe. Behavior that’s in utter contradiction to living in a society.
There’s certainly an end-of-the-world-ness to the current moment, and it’s not just from our worries about rights, groceries, and planetary health. One line of reason is that if we punish the sexual deviants and immigrants but let the climate go to hell, then Jesus will come back and save the good ones, and all will be taken care of. This might not be a mainstream belief, but to me it’s worth noting because explains a lot about the avoidance and denial fire and brimstone in this current moment. Problem is, this is not a Christian society — we explicitly wrote in a separation of church and state — and while Christianity may be the the dominant religion by numbers, it has also been declining, with a growing number of “unaffiliateds.” Important side note that the Jewish religion explicitly protects abortion — they see it as an essential part of valuing the life of the mother and her safety and well-being—and state abortion bans directly undermine Jewish practices.
The real wild card, the ultimate cognitive dissonance, will be when the Epstein files come out. Having worked on child sex slavery for years, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this extreme and uncomfortable issue: how it happens, why it perpetuates. I thought it was the most complex and nuanced issue I could imagine, until I started working on abortion pill access and trafficking seemed more clear-cut again.
People are calling the Epstein files potentially the biggest presidential scandal in history. It seems it will be a very difficult story to spin in the administration’s favor, if it comes out and it’s as bad as predicted. There is no real way to rewrite it as protecting certain groups, or keeping the public safe, or working to achieve something XYZ in the process of briefly crossing a line. But will the same punitive spirit apply, or will attempts to brush it under the rug succeed in sequestering it off from the process applied to other child-protective issues? At the moment it seems the release of the files is blocked by a government shutdown meets competing news drama headlines about the aforementioned Venezuelan boat bombings and ICE raids.
Using punishment as control is the oldest story in the book. Maybe it is all humans have when they attempt large-scale safety and cooperation. Maybe it’s a natural response to so much uncertainty in the world and so many reasons to fear. Maybe the anger and vitriol behind these punitive processes can be explained by all the pain and suffering humans feel. Maybe it’s a leaky expression of how hard it is sometimes to be alive.
My first grade teacher put my name on the board as a way of maintaining control, not because I was inherently bad for speaking after the bell but because if every six to twelve year old child kept talking and moving, the process of returning to classrooms would be absolute chaos. The frozen montage exercise was a way of calming everyone down, allowing teachers to regain order then redirecting us toward the desired location. They’re experimenting, and we experiment in response.
This weekend more than seven million individuals showed up for No Kings rallies around the world. People are harnessing energy, sharing resources, exchanging plans. There will be a winner of this capture the flag game before the sun goes down, but that winner is yet to be known.
Backing track: Original music, playing around in Logic with loops and synth tones. For the muz-os, this was the first time I used only the Modal Cobalt8 tones and Moog Minitaur analog bass, printing straight to audio instead of using Logic’s midi patches. The Cobalt8 is an incredible and compact synth with hundreds of fun sounds.