How I turned 30 in jail and learned to love the Juggalos.

An old column I wrote for Maximum Rock´n´Roll

I just got out of jail. I was in there for a month. I was writing a lot. That reminded me that I want to write for the purpose of self-expression more. I mostly write political shit. Then I got out and got a couple issues of MAXIMUM ROCK'N'ROLL and remembered that I'd wanted to start writing a column awhile back. Seems like now's a good time to start. So here goes. Who am I? I'm a nomadic anarchist punk from Ottawa. I spend a lot of time at blockades, and on the road in my veggie-oil powered schoolbus, known as the Mobile Resistance Unit.

My focus is on anti-extraction and indigenous sovereignty struggles. I'm a militant tree-hugger. I'm a restless, antsy, compulsive organizer who's usually pissed off at people for not doing more for the movement. My goal here's not really to write about politics here, because I already do that elsewhere, but to write my feelings about the world as I see it. That's what I like about the columns in Maximum Rock'n'Roll - the rawness, the immediacy, the honesty. My political writing is calculated and aims to persuade; here I just want to purely express whatever's in my heart and mind at a given moment. OK, enough intro. Let me tell you about jail. I'd been working a lot on my bus this summer and finally deemed it ready for a major road trip. A friend offered me a performer's ticket to Burning Man (I'm a fire juggler) and we made plans to go.

When I crossed the border into Michigan, though, I got arrested and told that I was a "fugitive from justice" and was getting extradited to Minnesota. Thistook me totally by surprise - I had no idea there was a warrant out for me. I'd gotten arrested back in March at a protest of a Trump rally in the state capitol building in St. Paul. I was charged with disorderly conduct (a misdemeanor) and when I got out they told me that my charge was dropped. But apparently they re-filed charges two months later, much more serious charges this time, rioting, using tear gas, and "substantial bodily harm" to a cop. When I got in front of a judge in Michigan, he told me that they don't have to tell you when they put a warrant out for you. "People are harder to find when you know you're looking for them", he said.

He told me that Minnesota would come to pick me up in 10 business days or so. So there I am in the St. Clair County Jail in Port Huron, thinking FUCK ME. When I got into general population, people were working out, doing pushups and crunches and curls with a trashcan full of water. I asked if there was a weight room and a young inmate told me. "Nah, I wish. There's a pool though."

Another chimed in: "Yeah, pool day's tomorrow. You better get a pool pass. Just go down and ask the guard for one." Damn! A pool! That sounded pretty good. I went down and politely asked for a pool pass. The screw looked at me dead cold and told me "You tell those guys up there to fuck off." Everyone got a good laugh out of it. "You got me", I said, thinking that maybe this jail wasn't going to be too bad. As it turned out, St. Clair was a pretty soft landing into jail culture. No big egos in my pod, just guys playing cards and shooting the shit. I made a friend in there who made me a cake for my birthday out of two honey buns and cocoa powder icing with skittles on top.

The saga got worse, tho. I had to wait 13 days to get picked up by a horrible private company called Prisoner Transportation Services (P.T.S.). Another captive put it well: "P.T.S. should add a D. Shit's traumatic!" They put me in the back of a van and we went on a tour of many, many jails, picking up people and dropping people off as we went. This was the worst part of my month being incarcerated. I was stuck in the back of a van with seven other men with wrists and ankles shackled. It was hot, hard to breathe, damn near impossible to sleep, and it was up to 12 hours between bathroom breaks. What's worse, the van wasn't getting me any closer to where I was going, and the itinerary kept changing. I started thinking that it was a deliberate torture tactic like the Frequent Flyer program at Guantanamo. After 48 hours in the van, I was an hour away from where I started. Eventually they dropped me off in Ala-fucking-bama, of all places. What-in-the-actual-fuck. I was told I would be picked up when there was a van driving Northwest. My cellmate was a meth-head juggalo who was in jail for filing a false police report because he reportedthat his wife was fucking the neighbour and they were planning to burn his house down. Meth´s a helluva drug.

At one point in his story he went running out the door with a sword and at another point there were snakes everywhere. He insisted they were real, reasoning that there were so many because he was bleeding from the head and snakes are attracted to blood. Stick to dexedrine, kids. Honestly, though, he was a really good person. He made up with his wife on the phone. He loves her so much. It was touching. He also told me about juggalo culture, saying that underneath the lyrics about murder and psychosis, INSANE CLOWN POSSE is using their music to subliminally promote good morals. After talking to him, I'd got a new respect for juggalo culture. Seems to me like it's a lot of poor white kids from broken homes who society looks down on who have found family in each other. Why hate on that? Anyway, after five days a van showed up and three days after that I was in Minnesota. When I finally got in front of a judge I got out without even having to pay bail. Folks in Minneapolis were really awesome. They housed me, lent me a skateboard, told me to help myself to whatever was in the fridge, etc. Now I'm back in Ottawa. Weirdly, I feel worse now than I did when I was inside. Jail definitely wasn't the adventure I was hoping to have, but it was an adventure. I actually had moments of real happiness in jail. Like I said, I'm a restless bastard and I usually feel like there's something I should be doing, that I don't deserve to be happy if I'm not doing my damnedest to undermine this horrible machine we're all a part of. In jail, there wasn't much I could do, so I felt relieved of that pressure.

Plus, when I would talk to friends on the phone, everyone was so loving towards me and I felt so lucky to have the friends that I do. It helpedput things in perspective for m e. I've got a good life, and even tho I'm kind of an asshole people love me. It made me want to be less of an asshole. Also, it was pretty mind-expanding to see how the amerikkan legal system works. I feel like my picture of reality and my understanding of oppression is more accurate now. It kind of sucks though, because the system really has the underclass by the balls. The Prison Industrial Complex is a finely-tuned machine of social control. They want to lock people up. It's not really even about punishment. It's about money and social control. It's an industry in which human beings are the commodity, and it's a massive counter-insurgency program. A lot of people were there for minor shit, like probation violations. There weren't that many scary, aggro dudes, and the few scary dudes weren't really trying to fuck with you. I'm sure some people do have nightmare experiences in the system, but I was in five different jails in fourstates, so I would think my experience must be somewhat re flective of the norm. It was a lot of Born to Lose types. Most people never made money off their crimes. It was a lot of drug charges, D.U.I. & driving suspended, and domestics. I liked more people than I disliked. My belief in the fundamental goodness of people is battered but intact. I do think that some of the people who were there for domestic violence are basically bad people, but not all of them. People are like dogs. If you abuse or neglect a dog when they're young, they're a lot likelier to hurt others. Same thing goes for humans. Whether you agree with me or not, if you're going to jail, my advice is don't judge others. Try to like people. It's a survival thing. People like people who like them, and you want people in jail to like you. Jail sucks. It's supposed to suck. But it's not the end of the world. For millions and millions of people, it's just part of life. You can make the most of it. You've got all the time in the world to think about your life, to learn about the society that we live in, to learn to control your emotions, to become a more compassionate person by hearing the stories of people who have wound up under society's boot heel. Most of all, it's an opportunity to prove to yourself that you can overcome the challenge, because for sure, jail will challenge you. But if you have to get through it, you will, and if you can keep your mind positive, you might feel like the whole experience makes you stronger and wiser. One thing that kept things in perspective was knowing that most people were a lot worse off than I was in there. I feel a bit like a tourist writing this, because by jail standards a month is a really short period of time, but now I know what I can expect in jail. I'm definitely not going to become a law-abiding citizen, but I don't want to go back to jail, and there are risks that I would have taken before this happened that I won't take now. Someone said "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." You'll never know how much you can get away with until you know what you can't get away with.