Pictures are taken from the internet and are used for illustrative purposes only
One of the first and initial acts of Governor Abigail Spanberger was to elevate by selecting a Virginia Department of Corrections, apparatchik, Joseph Walters, to become it's Director and the inevitable reaction and its condemnation was swift, prompt and vociferous. This work isn't to purport that a basis for Governor Spanbergers' action exist save for that perennial Democratic fear of "Law and Order" issues, which prison and imprisonment is its most distilled. In otherwords, Governor Spanberger and her advisors made the calculated and its cost benefit analysis, that with everything being correct that the Virginia prison official is a corrupt entity, its not in her nor Virginia's Democratic Party interest, to own the Department's rotted carcass, by embarking on the accountability-function of bringing it to heel, with the chemotherapy of finally subordinating the Virginia prison official to the will of the People of Virginia. In one word Governor Spanberger had her moment and encounter, with that historic encapsulation of, "we've met the enemy and its us", to which on that issue, shirked from, the anticipated and expected leadership force and its necessary motive of finally aligning The Commonwealth of Virginia with its asserted aspirations. What this makes Governor Spanberger is, despite the historic nature of her ascension and supremacy to the House of Burgesse, she is yet to master it by democratizing the accountability-function, or equality under law as applied to the Virginia prison official, which despite the modernization of the nomenclature and dress, it's uniforms are as Bob Marley, lyricized, "uniforms of brutality" and the hypocritical and dehumanizing narrative it represents. Now candidate Abigail Spanberger became the Governor of Virginia on the simple and always straightforward critique of "affordability", which as long as its underlying dynamic is kept at arms length, has always been cast and recast in whatever verbiage has that captivating ring to the People's ear. But in this work of dispelling that undermining mythology surrounding, reform of Virginia's justice infrastructure and the prison system our analysis isn't hamstrung, by that status quo duplicity of creating distinctions where none exist and distinguishing interactions and relationships that have and share a common dialectic. We acknowledge and recognize that the dynamic of "affordability" on whose sails Spanberger made history, isn't limited to the price and cost mark up of a loaf of bread, but it is a function of that systemic existence of the peoples loss of faith and trust in the accountability-function and its ensuing impunity, which as focus of this work is embodied by the Virginia prison official. In other words, if "affordability" is that most basic, primitive and elementary critique of political-economy and its Social Contract, then nothing about its examination and interrogation can exist without a scrutiny of the terms the states organized violence has with its people and the most germane of this is that of the imprisonment circumstance, where each and every moment of the imprisonment is determined by to what extent are the prison officials, which in this case, the Virginia prison official, functioning and operating under law and not its extra-judicial formulations of its above-the-lawism impunity. In other words if Governor Spanberger isn't talking out of both sides of her mouth and unequivocally accepts that, even though she exploited a version of it, her "affordability", critique is fundamentally about holding impunity to account.
By William Thorpe
I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982