Gender-Lock Threatens Project
What’s Adam without Eve? Sonny without Cher? Regis without Kathie Lee? Joe without … Joanne?
A colossal faux pas, judging by the talk at City Hall, where plans for a sculpture titled “Joe Fan” have council members in a frenzy.
The statue, still in the artist’s conception stage, would be a piece of interactive art situated in the end-zone bleachers at Joe Albi Stadium to typify the spirit of the sports fan. Well, the male sports fan, anyway.
Being a man, Joe, of course, is not a woman. So some critics think he should be accompanied by a woman, maybe even a family.
The council ponders on. If it were your choice, what would happen to Joe and/or Joanne?
Double jeopardy?
Paying taxes once is hard enough. Mary Lou Dean of Spokane says she’s getting hit twice.
Once through the normal channels the state uses to collect revenue. Once again when prison officials confiscate a third of the money she and her husband send to their son, a penitentiary inmate at Walla Walla.
“It’s not fair to us and it’s not fair to the guys,” she said.
Under state law, prison officials can seize 35 percent of the money inmates earn or receive from outside. Some families are contesting the law. Meanwhile, the state holds $1 million in reserve until the issue is settled.
Dean doesn’t quarrel with the fact her 40-year-old son is behind bars.
It’s the money - money she sends so he can buy toothpaste and other toiletries, things that convicts are not allowed to receive from outside and have to purchase from the prison.
She said she called officials to complain but they said it’s not her money that’s being confiscated - it’s her son’s.
“As soon as I put his name on the money order - it has to be a postal money order - then it’s not my money.”
The idea behind the law is to secure inmates’ money for restitution to their victims and to help pay for their keep. Her son, Dean said, has a lot of restitution.
“If those guys work in there, which he does - he works in the kitchen and gets 50 cents an hour and clears $35 a month - then let ‘em take that.”
But she and her husband are disabled and, she said, can’t really afford the money they do send their son.
So she’s sending petitions and “raising a ruckus.
“If it’s going to cause him problems inside, then I may have to back down,” Dean said. “We’ll see.”
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