I BEGIN: Imprisonment in Virginia as Nationally begun its morph into its present state as a direct result of The Civil War and the Faustian, bargain with the devil, that created The 13th Amendment to the U.S Constitution and its "except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall having been duly convicted" clause or should be correctly described as that back door back into slavery and the nullification of all that the Civil War stated. Because the Civil War was about the destruction of States Rights to enslave people, but in the process of abolishing slavery legally and politically, that back door of its continuum "shall have been duly convicted" provided those who couldn't see life without slavery, a sliver of opportunity that yes, their political-economy model of unrequited and unremunerated labor would still thrive. So laws were quickly and hurriedly enacted and passed to reenslave the newly freed and liberated enslaved, by entrapment into imprisonment. Yes its undeniable and inarguable that people, the Human commits monstrous acts and deeds and it isn't my intention with this work to lead you the reader to an example, you can use your own reference point, but what I will point out is the apogee or zenith of monstrous commissions isn't by a private citizen or even groups of private citizens, but without qualification and condition, monstrous acts and deeds are always and I emphasize always committed and perpetrated by a Politics, its economic interest and pursuits under the sovereignty of the citizenry or People under the rule of law and the administration of its process. Virginia, within our National context paved the way for the application of that perfidious back door of reenslavement, which we experience as the Virginia Department of Corrections and its prison system. No one honest person will declare that any Social construct is beyond reform, yet that is the shameless position of those who benefit from the application of, specifically imprisonment in the Commonwealth. Our work is to expose the dishonesty of their arguments and show that notwithstanding the fact that yes "Justice", in whatever civilized form is a necessary component of any mature Social Contract, which the Commonwealth sure as hell claims to be, however we shouldn't become complicit in its perversion, by those who lost the Civil War.
Our work, meaning focus is on reforming Virginia's imprisonment scheme, subsequently its conditions and circumstances. As such we must shove aside the misanthropic and degenerate sophistry of its reactionary proponents and their invidious allied elements, by removing whatever veneer they exploit in their labors of distorting the salient and fundamental terms of reform and its demands. The People of the Commonwealth of Virginia fall into any number of categories relative to any necessary reform of aspects and terms of The Social Contract, which the imprisonment scheme and its Justice Infrastructure is a fundamental question. There is that category of holdovers from the pre-Civil War era and its antebellum psychosis, incapable of renouncing and repudiating the intellectual-liberalism of supremacy and its political-economy, as such will execute the most insensate arguments against any hint or push for reform of Virginia imprisonment and independent of political Party affiliation we find them cloaked in all the idealistic thought produced by the Human Condition. Nationalism in all its incarnations, Conservatism and its supremacist delusions, Theocracy and its perpetual hypocrisies and all the other absurdities emanating from the hodgepodge listed above. Historically anti-prison reformers in Virginia have exploited all sorts of gimmicks as means and mechanisms of garnering support.
Opposition to prison reform is easy. All it takes is a visceral evocation of any number of deeds, perpetrated by any of our hapless members of humanity and reactionaries are off to the races with it and the work of reforming Virginia's imprisonment scheme isn't any different. From the stock prison isn't a Holiday Inn, to all the various apologies and excuses given by supporters of the savagery and barbarism of the Virginia prison official while conveniently and insidiously sacrificing the very foundational and fundamental lattice and glue of Virginia's Social Contract and its terms with their reprobate logic. What I mean by, conveniently and insidiously sacrificing the very foundational and fundamental lattice and glue of Virginia's Social Contract, is this: First of all Virginia's Social Contract or the fundamental construction of the Commonwealth of Virginia as a sovereign entity is a work of Law, in other words, Society composes itself then it declares the process as acts of Law, so everything of society or in this case Virginia are materializations of Law. As such, consequently and significantly the imprisonment scheme is its manifestation. The entire prison construct is comprehensively Law.
It isn't my intent to saddle you the reader with formulations of ideas and concepts that are borne on propositions that the World has been explained and our work is to change or reform it. Because these conceptual facts are resolved and undisputed, there isn't an aspect, circumstance or condition that is outside, in this case of Virginia Law, contrary to the sophistry produced by Court rulings, that want to have it both ways. If imprisonment in Virginia is a process of law, if the condition itself is constructed on terms of law then every aspect of its presumptions, by Virginia's Government is under law. However, firstly Virginia prison anti-reformers, understand this fact more comprehensively than the reformers, as such upon its anticipation, the reactionaries or anti-reformes have recharacterized everything about Virginia's pursuit and application of its Justice Infrastructure to achieve the distortion, that the nature, circumstance and condition of imprisonment in the Commonwealth is an ad hoc construct solely up to the dictatorial whim of antebellumnesque suppositions.
We see this clearly in the recharacterization and misappropriation of the descriptive, "Public Safety". Because Virginia reactionaries and their ally anti-prison reformers, have understood that, to maintain their antebellumnesque psychosis, commandeering definitions of Virginia governmental functions and services is a must. In other words it's that political maneuver of defining the opposition, so we see the descriptive, Public Safety applied in ways that have nothing to do with safety. Chuck D of the Group Public Enemy, captured this phenomenon aptly, with his commentary on the function of the 911 service. We all understand 911,to be a governmental service of assistance. Well Chuck D and Flava Flav gave voice to what some of our community members experience with it, when he classically memorialized the observation with the lyric,"911 is a joke in your town",meaning, despite the fact the entire Society contributes to the existence and purpose of the 911 service, it isn't equitably accessed. Which is the same thing with the misappropriation of the definition, Public Safety, deployed by reactionaries and their retrograde allies in their war against the Virginia prisoner by opposing reform of the practices and attitudes of the Virginia Department of Corrections in the administration of its prisons. What we experience is a mindless opposition to the reform of Virginia's imprisonment scheme, without rhyme or reason, which can only be explained by the realization that Virginia's reactionaries are caught, stuck and trapped in a netherworld of pre Civil War Virginia.
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