I had been called for jury duty before, and the results were always the same: everyone in the room where the lawyers questioned prospective jurors would laugh when I said that I worked for the Democratic Socialists of America or I would raise my hand when asked whether anyone had a problem with New York State’s mandatory-sentencing drug laws. Either way, I was out of there. Even though now I worked for a magazine that didn’t have the “S” word in its title, I thought Dissent might get the same reaction.

Truth to tell, I wasn’t eager to serve. Each trip to the courthouse had depressed and infuriated me. There were the dreary halls, the bored bailiffs, the sullen and scared prisoners of color (were the white criminals all in civil court?). And almost every case seemed to involve a police officer buying drugs from an alleged dealer. Surely, I would huff to my friends, there were enough crimes being committed that the police could find better things to do than create th...

» Want to continue? Login below:

top  |  print  |  email