{"id":4156,"date":"2018-05-16T16:35:33","date_gmt":"2018-05-16T22:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/?p=4156"},"modified":"2018-05-16T16:35:33","modified_gmt":"2018-05-16T22:35:33","slug":"where-justice-is-denied-where-poverty-is-enforced-where-ignorance-prevails-and-any-one-class-is-made-to-feel-that-society-is-an-organized-conspiracy-to-oppress-rob-and-degrade-them-neither-pers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rayharvey.org\/index.php\/2018\/05\/where-justice-is-denied-where-poverty-is-enforced-where-ignorance-prevails-and-any-one-class-is-made-to-feel-that-society-is-an-organized-conspiracy-to-oppress-rob-and-degrade-them-neither-pers\/","title":{"rendered":"“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails and any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Her name was Kelly Carlyle. She was twenty-years-old, and she was the girl Kristy Reed had seen over a year before in the classroom, who had shown him the book.<\/p>\n

\tSome twenty days after this meeting in the diner, he visited her at her home, when she was sick with a high fever, and the lights of the city hung in a rippled haze beyond her window. She lived in a bare spacious flat far west of town, in a subdivision along the fringes of the desert. She lay upon her back on a wide black futon on the floor. Her slender white fingers looked flowerlike across the dark-blue sheets. He brought her a bottle of icy-cold water.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cI would say that I\u2019m surprised to see you,\u201d she said, \u201cexcept for some reason I\u2019m not surprised to see you. I think I half expected it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\u201cThey told me you were sick,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\tShe lolled her head on the pillow and looked at him from under heavy eyelids. He did not speak but regarded her frankly.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cI think I was hoping you\u2019d come,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cIs there anything I can do for you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tThey were both silent, and in the silence a big generator throbbed stupidly outside.<\/p>\n

\tShe apologized for the noise and told him she was unable to sleep because of this noise, because city road-crews were tearing up the entire street right out front and rebuilding it. She said that even though they stopped working at 5:00pm, they left their klieg lights on all night long, for some reason, and the generator too, and she said that it was very loud and bright and that the lights and the noise kept her awake, even though she had heavy black drapes. She said she\u2019d even called the city and complained about it, and they told her there was nothing that could be done, that that\u2019s just the way it was.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cYou can\u2019t fight the city hall,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cWhat is that?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cJust an expression.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tHe looked contemplative. She was in this moment struck by his sprawling and haphazard education, which in the past two weeks she\u2019d come to know: she found endearing the gaps in his knowledge but also the depths, which stemmed from his upbringing, his autodidacticism, his singleminded decision to take upon himself the task of his own education.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cI think it means you can\u2019t fight bureaucracy,\u201d she explained, \u201cbecause there\u2019s no one human there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\u201cHave you tried?\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tHe looked thoughtful again, deeply thoughtful, his eyes narrowed as thin as saber slashes.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cI suggest earplugs,\u201d he said. \u201cFor the noise,\u201d he added, \u201cnot the city hall.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tHe smiled, and she weakly laughed and said:<\/p>\n

\t\u201cDon\u2019t make me laugh: it hurts my head. I\u2019ve tried earplugs. They don\u2019t really help. I\u2019m resigned to the noise. Besides, I can hear my heartbeat when I wear earplugs, and I don\u2019t like that. It reminds me too much of my own mortality, and that definitely keeps me awake.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tBut that night, the lights and the big generator indeed went simultaneously silent and black.\f<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

 
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\tThat next morning, the foreman found the generator disconnected \u2014 no small job since the generator was fenced-off and secured. He asked the nightwatchman about it. The nightwatchman said he\u2019d witnessed nothing, and so that next night the foreman stationed himself, with a large thermos of coffee, in a hidden alcove very near the high fence that enclosed the generator.<\/p>\n

\tNear midnight he saw a hooded figure sweep through the darkness, leaping lightly over the fence and shutting off the generator by removing the wires and the boot from the spark plugs and thereby instantly abolishing the lights and the noise. This figure then hopped back over the fence and ghosted away into the darkness.<\/p>\n

\tIt happened so rapidly that the foreman scarcely had time to react.<\/p>\n

\tThe next night, he was better prepared: He had men with him.<\/p>\n

\tThus when the figure came, they were all three waiting in the dark, and when the figure got inside the fence, the men sprung.<\/p>\n

\tBut it was almost as if the figure expected them: he vaulted like a puma over the other side of the fence, and he bound off into the darkness.<\/p>\n

\tThe men gave chase.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cHalt!\u201d the foreman yelled. \u201cSTOP! This is government property. You are trespassing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tThe figure did not stop but kept running: a hooded blur in the darkness.<\/p>\n

\tThe men followed after him at top speed.<\/p>\n

\tThe figure did not know that a high cement wall awaited him.<\/p>\n

\tBut the men knew.<\/p>\n

\tWhen the figure came to the wall, he hesitated for just a fraction of a second, but he didn\u2019t stop running. There was a slight hitch in his step, and that was all.<\/p>\n

\tHe leapt with all his might and ran two steps up the concrete facade which stood glowing brightly under an apricot klieg and then one more shorter step before leaping again \u2014 a wild effort in which he reached for the top of the wall.<\/p>\n

\tHe caught it.<\/p>\n

\tJust barely, but he held on with his left hand and hung there for a split second. Then he swung his other arm around and grabbed hold of the top of the wall with his fingertips and started to pull himself up \u2014 until one of the men below, who was agile and strong, ran the wall as well and leapt and grabbed hold of the hem of the hooded jacket, striving to pull the figure down, momentarily stopping the figure from climbing over. No sooner had he grabbed hold of the jacket-hem, however, than the figure slipped out of it, leaving the man empty-handed and back on the ground, but exposing the figure\u2019s face as he did so.<\/p>\n

\tIt was Kristy Reed.<\/p>\n

\tAll three men saw him in the light.<\/p>\n

\tKristy slipped up and over the wall and dropped down and then vanished into the night.<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n

 
\n<\/br><\/p>\n

\tFour days later, on a Friday afternoon, when Kristy learned that a nameless boy had been caught and jailed for trespassing on government property and shutting off the generator, he went down to the police station and turned himself in. A little later that same day, the foreman and his two men definitively identified Kristy as the person they\u2019d chased and who had evaded them.<\/p>\n

\tHe was arraigned three days after that, on Monday, and brought before the judge. The courtroom was spacious and mostly empty. Along the righthand side of the room, a screenless window stood open to receive the desert breeze.<\/p>\n

\tWhen the judge asked him why he\u2019d done it, he said because he cared for the young woman, who was his friend, and who was ill and unable to sleep for the lights and the loud noise. He said a second time that he cared about her.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cDid you know you were trespassing?\u201d the judge asked.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tThe judge looked at the papers before him.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cIt is my understanding also that you\u2019re a runaway who\u2019s been arrested at least once for truancy, and that you\u2019re not yet eighteen-years-old \u2014 not until next month.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\u201cYes, that is correct.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\u201cHow do you plead?\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\u201cNot guilty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tThe judge looked at him. Kristy spoke:<\/p>\n

\t\u201cThere is deep legal precedent, judge, going back to at least 1786, for escaping and running away with impunity, even from police or other government personnel, when matters of personal safety, injury, and security are at issue.\u201d Kristy paused. \u201cJudge, in a land of freedom, life is worth living because in such a land, under such circumstances, life is full of promise, and it teems with potential. I was born in no such place. I was brought up in no such place. I was brought up in a place where we are not allowed to own the fruits of our labor, which is property, which is an extension of person. In running, I sought to come into such a place. Frederick Douglass said \u2018Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails and any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.\u2019 That is what I come from, judge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\tThe judge cast Kristy a long, steady stare.<\/p>\n

\t\u201cYou may say that at your trial,\u201d the judge said. \u201cYour bail is set at twenty-thousand.\u201d He hammered the gavel.<\/p>\n

\tThe bailiff then came to lead Kristy Reed away, back to the jail cell. He reached over gently for Kristy\u2019s arm, but Kristy slipped lightly out of his reach, and in a liquid-like manner, he went for the open window. He jumped out.<\/p>\n

\tThe police chased him, but they did not catch him.<\/p>\n

\tThey pursued him down the alleys and the backstreets and the neighborhood lanes, and they pursued him down the labyrinthian ways \u2014 and they lost him. They put out an all-points-bulletin, but he was not found.
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Her name was Kelly Carlyle. She was twenty-years-old, and she was the girl Kristy Reed had seen over a year before in the classroom, who had shown him the book. Some twenty days after this meeting in the diner, he visited her at her home, when she was sick with a high fever, and the … <\/p>\n

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