![Creeping Fascism: A Winery and a Newspaper](https://fresnoalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/pexels-polina-tankilevitch-4110404-scaled-1-620x413.jpg)
Fresno Bee readers will have learned recently (see āSumner Peck Ranch reopensā¦,ā Fresno Bee, May 28, 2021, page 1) that the former correctional officers who are proprietors of Fresnoās Solitary Cellars Wine Company feature a prison cell for patronsā play-acting in their showroom.
Perhaps more shocking is to learn that in āa little museumā they also display items made by prisoners that these guards confiscated (a hollowed-out book with a cell phone, an electric skillet to cook spam). While profiting from othersā suffering is appalling, so was the Fresno Beeās uncritical report.
I wrote a letter to the editor objecting to how the newspaper covered this story, but it was not printed. You might have noticed that few letters are printed in the ever more expensive hedge fundāowned Bee even as it shrinks in size. So I wrote the following poem as a response to the article.
Morally Tasteless, A 21st Century American Flavor
An only slightly unique situation:
You steal things created by imprisoned people whoāve no recourse,
no permitted response.
You keep these for yourself,
and proudly display them
as exactly what they are
and as curiosities
about which you tell stories
anonymizing their makers, normalizing your theft,
stories in which you and we who listen
are blameless.
You/we enforce their captivity and disappear who they are.
You reproduce their jail cell as a business attraction.
Letās savor, letās sample that cage you/we shut and lock,
your tales
of prisonersā ingenuity foiled.
Your dominance unquestioned.
Weādistancedā
not us or ours ever caged;
we sample jailing
we taste your sweet wine.
A repeated, not solitary, American cruelty
reported without comment on page one.