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$50 in Gate Money, in the age of Tariffmania II

Hey, let's chew on that for a minute.

My buddy JJ leaves Blessington (or another prison if he gets relocated) in late August, 2025! 🍻
What does this look like?

  • He will be provided with a basic shoe, a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and a pair of undergarments
  • A state ID card will be issued to him
  • He will receive a copy of his Social Security card
  • He'll receive $50.00 in funds as he leaves on a Jpay Progress Release MasterCard laden with suckerpunch fees that he won't see until he gets the cardholder agreement at release
  • The various social safety nets are falling apart as he gears up to depart into a rocky society.

So, let's look at the $50.00 he gets for leaving prison. What will it net him?

Frankly, not so much. He may have someone helping him on the outside when he leaves, which is practically mandatory in the financial scope of things. JJ is likely staying in Florida for a bit, simply because he does not have the financial means to uproot and move clear across the country to a place where humans are treated as humans, not as the mistakes they made before.

$50.00, sadly, will cover a small number of low to middling quality meals absent SNAP benefits, and maybe a handful of days of bus passes in a city that offers mass transit.
In this scenario, he's out of money in a week, trying to find a job to put food in his mouth and a roof over his head through legal means as quickly as possible.

I worry that even with some of the shopping hacks I've explained to him, $50 is going to land him in severe distress in a week's time when this nation's safety nets are being ripped apart with diamond-studded chainsaws.

So, these safety nets are frayed, and prices are rocketing through the roof. How the F💣 is a person with literally nothing but the shirt on his back and the pants on his butt supposed to survive?

While there are services navigators out there, fighting the good fight to help put people like JJ back on the tracks to move forward, if the resources these navigators rely on have been chopped up with a diamond-studded handheld wood ripper, there may be less help for my little buddy going out there.

He's said to me a couple of times that he's worried that he's going to have to live in a tent in the woods to be able to afford anything.

I don't know how familiar you are with Florida's thunderstorms, but living in a tent during thunderstorm season in Florida would unnerve me in a most intense manner. You are not going to stay dry or safe in your little tent, even with the trees acting as partial buffer to the torrential downpour, as well as being nature's lightning rods. This will ruin the 2024 GED Study Guide he received from me, too.

Also, I don't know if he has even figured out how he will afford his tent. It's not like I can help him buy one from here. :)

Assuming it's not dismantled when he hauls butt out of here, he should be immediately eligible for SNAP benefits. That's about $180.00 to $210.00 in food funds, depending on what Florida's version of the program disburses. This, if he spends carefully and cautiously, can last a month. Longer, if he ends up in a transitional housing program, halfway house, or other safe place to live that he can afford.

I hear that there are forms of assistance with acquiring housing, but I expect those to be swamped, and slow moving. Still, I know it is a question I want him to ask of the class instructor for a program all people departing Florida prisons are required to be offered.

I know that I have informed him of Florida's CareerSource centers in passing, and a recently reacquainted friend has given me a better mental image of what should be in scope of what they can do for him. It's on me to transcribe that scope list into a journal I'm putting together for him, and to do it soon, because either of us can be relocated at any time.

I've mused previously that I feel like a hen, clucking at her brood of chicks, making sure they're safe when I referenced JJ. That feeling has not changed; I want him to be safe and successful out there in the Earth yard. That is a feeling from deep in this heart, one that wants to ensure he encounters as little suffering as possible as he scrabbles his way up the hill.

If there were anything I would ask for,

I would wholeheartedly ask for a list of resources for recently released justice-impacted individuals up here in the tri-state area of Florida, Alabama, and Georgia. Y'know, something I can put into JJ's hands or the hands of anyone else in this place that is departing soon, with hopes of never seeing them on Blessington Correctional's yard again.

Of course, a desire for prison conditions to be bettered for all of us who remain behind the wires of Blessington, of Suwanee, of Gadsden, Apalachee, Century, and the 100+ other correctional institutions, facilities, work camps, and release centers here in Florida, and the other states, and countries around the world where people of all ages are sequestered will be where this 'I', this heart resides.

A Dedication Of Merit

I dedicate the merit I have received to improving this sector of humanity, to elevate it above the murky tides of Other, to weave it back into the infinite cloth of interbeing.

May ALL beings be safe.
May ALL beings be happy.
May ALL beings be at peace.

☮️☸️🖤