Digs

Bail funds have long presented a pathway to freedom—a disruptive fissure in a system that criminalizes both poverty and race. In many ways, the story of bail funds provides a window into many critical moments in American history over the last century. Bail funds have sprouted up during times of intense conflict between the United States government and political activists, suspected Communists, civil rights leaders, and students. Visually, the history of bail funds would look much like the ebb and flow of an ocean’s tide, growing with consciousness about injustice and falling into extinction once the momentum, or often the money, dies out. The creation of bail funds in the United States is a tribute to the power of individuals to create a collective force to push back against the complex and growing force of mass incarceration.

Bail funds build on the tradition of churches, families, and other community members who, as black communities did during slavery, join together to purchase the freedom of their loved ones. As mass incarceration has entrapped more and more of the country, communities have responded in recent years with an increasing commitment to the direct action of bailing strangers out of jail. While marginalized communities have long been pooling resources to pay bail, organized bail funds—often aimed at bailing out strangers—were few and far between for much of the twentieth and start of the twenty-first century. But as mass incarceration has spread across the country, more Americans have come to understand the injustice that has long been apparent to low-income communities and communities of color, and there has been a subsequent influx of resources into decarceration efforts.

So I decided to create a slideshow to boost my pageviews, but I had no idea what to create. I clicked around the internet for inspiration and read a slideshow on a website that I forget. The title was “Navy SEALS vs. Baby Seals.” It was alternating photos of buff Special Forces soldiers and adorable baby seals, with some meaningless copy underneath. I almost wept at the brilliance of this slideshow. (I like to think I was a pioneer of slideshows.) There, in front of me, was another subterranean internet Morlock who also had to hit their traffic goals. And so they built a completely meaningless and utterly irresistible blackhole of clicks. If you created that, please, I want you to know that someone out there, a colleague, gazed upon it with wonder. I was inspired, obviously, so I grabbed some stock photos of creepy dolls and stuffed animals and wrote “13 Toys That Whisper Things In Your Ears While You Sleep.” No, it wasn’t nearly as brilliant as “Navy SEALS vs. Baby Seals.” But I thought it was brilliant.

A current gives
as much as it has
given

you who, I swear, I saw

gone round the tidepools yesterday at noon But the world is
gone But the world is

a lake the size of
a lake

When I was a child

the Teton Dam broke.

Everyone lost their carpet.

The mildew wouldn’t stop blossoming.


Over time, everything got better.

People bought more dogs.

I loved the yippy ones most.

Tiny and fierce and shitting everywhere.


My closet was so small.

I had almost no clothes.

We were rich in other ways.

My grandparents owned a speedboat.


And here I am today, timid

around water, but enduring.

Responsibly burying everyone I love

into that dry earth.