Project Logic Ga

Georgia Governor Nathan Deal is talking with our Agriculture commissioner Gary Black about addressing the farm labor problem with people on probation.  That’s what I call thinking outside the box–literally.  Being in a cell is a big fear for me and farm labor can be pivotal to those under or unemployed.

Corrections time goes faster when you are outside looking at the world and I would imagine freedom feels better after one doesn’t have it.  When I was a kid, a county correction work farm was located in Isabella, Georgia, in Worth County and the inmates grew some of the food for the cafeteria.  While current varsity athletes lift weights in the summer, we hit the watermelon fields to earn money, get cut muscles and get tanned (the white dudes since I have a permanent bronze.)   A young person appreciates the value of a dollar that is earned in the blistering south Georgia sun and I studied harder in school in September after discovering how hard some people worked for their pay.  If I had kids to feed, I would hit the fields today if need be— an honesty dollar is an honesty dollar and kids didn’t ask to be born.

Conservatives often draw a fair correlation between public funds for those needing temporary assistance and the availability of work that many people would not do.  True story: when I was an ag staffer on Capitol Hill in the 90s, a group of fellow staffers and I attended a pre-Farm Bill ag tour in Georgia.  We were scheduled to visit a vegetable processing facility in Colquitt County but the I.N.S. raided the place the week before we arrived.  The farmer’s crops were rotting in the fields because he had no one to collect them.  He complained to us that the day labor pickup location was empty while the public assistance office was full. 

The weather in south Georgia today (103 degrees) is hotter than fish grease but I still rather be tending the fields than sitting in the cell the size of a Real Housewife’s closet.  Governor Nathan Deal was surprised by the amount of state funds we waste on corrections; funds that could be better “invested” in education so people can have productive lives and avoid being locked up.   Since no real thugs would have read this long and rambling blog post to this point, I can say one thing that gets on my nerves.  If people fought to break the chains of slavery, why would someone give up their freedom without feeling disrespectful to our ancestors?  Hell, slaves could at least chill with family at night.  

When guys come home from doing “time,” they often say that the learned the pleasure of learning (faith, reading, science, life skills) while “away” and had to wonder how much better and easier life would have been if they listened to those who told them to study and keep their noses clean when they were kids.  Watching the prison shows on MSNBC on the weekends will get a hard-headed kid on the right track.