Recently the Willamette Week ran a story on jobs and prisoners. Specifically, skilled jobs and felons who committed violent crimes. For the first five paragraphs of the article, I was there (so there!) with the plight of the writer. Prisoners do need to acquire skills to use upon their release; we don't want to send them right back to crime. I've seen The Shawshank Redemption; I know what happens when former inmates (outmates?) are not prepared for the 'real' world.
Paragraph six, though...Oh paragraph six is a quote from a Portland NPO member for the aid of ex-felons. The woman said:
"Inmates who get out of prison without job skills are much harder to find jobs for. They'll probably end up with a $9-an-hour job. Unless inmates get more education and training, whatever other help they get is just a Band-Aid."
Nine bucks per hour? Those poor dears--Wait! Nine?? That's what I make! How many years was I in college? How many minutes does it take to hold up a convenience store? Where did I go wrong...
Oh Willamette Week, who the hell do you think reads you? Your cover story was about a man who dresses up like a superhero and hands out sodas to people under the Burnside bridge. As disturbingly endearing as Zetaman may be, he does not grab the attention of the respectable citizens of Portland who might be of help to unskilled outmates. I was reading the Willamette Week that day because I scraped my quarters together for bus fare and therefore couldn't afford the Oregonian. I am not in a place to sympathize with those convicted of armed robbery. Unless, possibly, they were just trying to make a payment to Citibank.
What I really want to know is this: how much does this WW writer make? He ended the article by putting forth what I'm sure he imagined to be a powerful command: Oregon must decide what kind of future it wants for its prisoners. Wow, WW writer, wow. I'm sure you always imagined that you'd be writing for the Times or even the Oregonian by now, but you're not. Maybe one day you'll make more than a recently-released prisoner, but for now, maybe step back and see the forest from the nit-picking trees. People need better jobs and better paying jobs. You're not going to change that by coddling prisoners and demeaning your readers.
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I'm afraid I loathe Willamette Week, and its bratty little sib the Mercury, for just that reason. They pretend to be written by and for regular working people in Portland but they're nothing of the sort. Though I'm not sure who their writers are, I'm sure that most of them have never lived hand to mouth in their lives. (I also doubt that most of them have lived in Portland for more than a few months.) Both those papers feel deeply, deeply dishonest to me. They're not what they represent themselves to be, and it's a little creepy.
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