2020, I Mean…..How Much Worse Could It Get?

By Glen Lamont

Scrolling through the news the other day, desperately looking for anything remotely positive to write about, I noticed that Lori Loughlin was about to enter prison to start her jail sentence. The other celeb involved in the scam was Felicity Huffman but because she threw herself on the mercy of the court she got a lighter sentence and has already “done her time”. Both celebrities were involved in a scheme to pay half a million dollars to a man named William Rick Singer who would arrange to get their daughters into good schools by bribing and forgery and probably lots of other stuff that most of us would end up doing hard time for. Instead they got pretty light sentences which they get to serve in minimum security country clubs. Loughlin even got to choose her prison and has since entered Dublin Federal Correctional Institution. I kind of picture her in her front room with glossy brochures spread out on the coffee table while conferring with her stylist and her lawyer on Facetime and sipping Pinot, much like looking at fabric swatches. I know people make jokes but these white collar prisons are no laughing matter. I have it on good authority that Martha Stewart continued to run her entire “criminal craft empire” from behind bars.

Here are two other women who essentially tried to do the same thing; get their kids into better schools and ended up with real prison sentences, in real prisons, Tanya Mcdowell and Kelley Williams-Bolar.

In 2011, McDowell, a homeless Bridgeport, CT mom, was arrested and charged with first-degree larceny for enrolling her then 5-year-old son Andrew in a school in neighbouring Norwalk. McDowell at the time said she and her son were able to sleep at an apartment in Bridgeport at night, but during the day had to leave, and lived in her van or at shelters. In Ohio, Kelley Williams-Bolar was charged for lying about her residency to get her child into a better school and ordered to pay restitution of $30,000,” she said. “When she didn’t pay it she was sent to jail for 15 days. McDowell eventually took a plea deal and was sentenced to five years in prison for the charges connected to sending her son to school in the Norwalk school district. “Who would have thought that wanting a good education for my son would put me in this predicament?” McDowell said at her sentencing for the drug charges, in which she got a 12-year suspended sentence, plus five years probation; the sentences ran concurrently. “I have no regrets seeking a better education for him, I do regret my participation in this drug case.”

Kelley Williams-Bolar served nine days in jail in 2011 after she was found guilty of using her father’s address instead of her own in an attempt to have her daughters enroll in a better school district than the Akron, Ohio, one they were slated for. Williams-Bolar was also put on probation for three years and required to complete 80 hours of community service. She was convicted of using the wrong residence to get her daughters into a better school district in Ohio than underperforming Akron. She was sentenced to 3 years & ordered to pay $30,000 to the school district.

So, four women all accused of doing the same thing, trying to get their kids into better schools but two got very light sentences and two got very severe sentences. Two of the women just happened to be well known white women and two were unknown black single moms. Does this surprise anyone? So here’s the thing; we could say this happened because Donnie Bonespurs is in charge but it was happening when Obama was in power and before him, George W. Bush all the way back to Abraham Lincoln. It is simply a fact of life in America.

But it did do my heart a little good to see a woman whom I consider to be the epitome of white privilege going to prison. Maybe that’s just petty of me and maybe it’s not going to make one bit of difference in the overall scheme of things but, it was something. As of this writing our neighbours to the south have just heard that Joe Biden is now the President Elect and Kamala Harris, the VP Elect. My fear, if the Donald had won; is that he would have found a way to remove the term limits and declare himself President For Life much like Xi Jinping did in the People’s Republic of China. Also the US election is a big deal to Canada. Since having had to deal with Trump for the past four years, no one here was looking forward to another four. I mean this is the same guy who famously said, regarding the tariffs on Canadian steel; “Didn’t you guys burn down the White House? It was the British Regular Army that attempted to set fire to the Executive Mansion in 1814, by the way. Canada is its own nation with its own constitution and has been so since 1867 when the British North America Act was passed. But I think we’ve already established that Trump is not the guy you’d pick for your Pub Trivia team, let alone to run a country. This is also the guy that ripped up NAFTA and spent months renegotiating for a better deal for the US only to end up with the same agreement with the odd changes here and there so that President Man-child could say he’s tough on trade. Basically he was a ginormous pain in the ass for Canada for no particularly good reason. Other than missing our friends and cheap gas….we’re all pretty chuffed that the border is still closed. Let’s be honest folks, this guy spent the last four years golfing while his country burned and people died…a lot of people! But if you’re wondering why we give a shit about who wins or loses down there, well it’s kinda like living next door to a drunk guy with a lot of guns. I mean you hope that one night in an alcoholic haze he accidentally shoots himself, but chances are it’ll be you or a family member that he shoots by mistake.

So now that Biden has won, we will probably have violence in some cities and towns. Mr. Trump specifically told the Proud Boys to “Stand back and stand by”. His son told supporters to “get out there and have some fun before it’s all over”. The concern here is not just Trump’s army of racist, xenophobic supporters and the damage they are capable of but also the fact that most Americans don’t actually realize how close they were to having an authoritarian government. But The Donald is not another Mussolini or Hitler. He wants to be in charge so he can break up America and sell it off piece by piece to the highest bidder. Yes he’s a narcissist and probably a psychopath but mostly he’s just greedy! So if he manages with all his long shot court cases to stay in the White House he will probably manage to get his Kim Jong Il style military parades and he’ll probably erect a neon Trump sign on all the government buildings, but mostly he won’t hesitate to sell off our National Parks to the highest bidder and he’ll probably make loads of great deals for his Russian friends and Ukrainian debtors.

It;s pretty clear that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have won, but my fear is that people will be so relieved that they will be perfectly happy to go back to the way things were. In other words all the struggles and sacrifice of the Black Lives Matter movement will be put on the back burner while the whole country tries to get back to normal. It will be business as usual again for war, capitalism, poverty and police shooting unarmed black people. Sure, you guys might do better with the Pandemic, I mean it would be almost impossible not to and I’m sure that people will be very relieved to not have to wake up to insane Tweets from Captain Crazy every day but none of the problems that people were facing under Trump, have gone away. Will Joe Biden, a middle of the road old white guy and Kamala Harris, a tough on crime former top cop solve the issues? I have my doubts. Systemic racism in policing and the law don’t just get better because there’s a new president. Raising awareness around things like white privilege is a good start but nothing is going to change until there is legislation implemented that will facilitate that change. It’s just that simple.

The other thing that concerns me is that there seems to be a lot of talk regarding meeting people in the middle. When I say people I mean Trump supporters. In most cases, I’m all for that but in the case of Trump supporters, there is no middle. You knew who he was and what he stood for and yet you still voted for him. I don’t need to see things from your side, I know what your side is. What I’ve yet to figure out is how these people have not clued in to the fact that they suffered under his leadership along with everyone else. Either way they are the ones who need to change their way of thinking or they will simply be left behind and their great fear of migrants and people of color taking over will become a reality.

So to all my American friends, you should celebrate. You should enjoy watching Trump suffer a long and protracted loss and you should look forward to possibly seeing him behind bars, but what you should not and cannot do is let things go back to business as usual because that’s what got you there in the first place. Also you need to thank black women voters, for surely they are the reason that Trump lost. Quite possibly you should be thanking Tanya Mcdowell and Kelley Williams-Bolar. After all, they represent everything that needs to change in America.