A year and a half ago I heard of Arizona’s chief law enforcement officer, Attorney General Kris Mayes, going on a “listening tour”. She was taking 3-minute statements from the public.

My statement said, essentially, ‘I too am concerned. But people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.’ I opened with a brief history of federal protections for US citizens’ civil rights, then transitioned to how modern America's civil rights crimes are perpetrated against those who can't afford an expensive attorney to represent them.

I next made the case that federal intervention to protect Arizona citizens' fundamental rights is more important than ever: “Modern Arizona’s protection racket is particularly vicious to women who make the mistake of trusting their doctor.” [0]

My first example was the passenger who could have been anyone’s grandmother. The second could have been anyone’s daughter. Both women were punished for having health problems that were exacerbated by their trusted doctors’ prescriptions.

My statement did NOT make the AAG’s highlight reel.

Technically protection rackets are one of the businesses of organized crime. When a government perpetrates crimes against its own people, those are “state crimes”. When a government looks the other way to allow private entities to perpetrate crimes, those are “state-sanctioned crimes”.

There were other women who didn’t deserve what happened to them. One night I was sent to rescue a woman who’d been dumped on the streets of downtown Phoenix after the city cops found a better suspect for the petty beer thief they were looking for. I got her again, almost 2 years later - she shared how appreciative she still was that I'd helped her [1].

Another passenger spent ~9 years in minimum security prison for sharing a single opiate pill with a friend. She said the police officers laughed as they wrote her up. She’d gotten fat on prison food, and shared that other women died from neglect.

Sometimes men are also not helped by being locked up for having health problems. The sister of Mr. “who are your lifelines” [2] told me about how her brother originally got locked up after he lost his job and was not able to pay his child support. California's laws were eventually changed to allow for fathers' changing economic circumstances, but that was too late for my passenger. He’d developed adult onset Type 1 diabetes during his early incarcerations, and would be a case study of the futility of using incarceration to worsen people’s health problems.

HN: Have you ever spoken a truth to someone with more power than you?

How do I use my recording of my statement to call for reforms to the make-work aspects of the United States' approach to health and justice?

[0] The inefficiencies of Arizona’s approach to crime and punishment was a recurring theme in my experiences driving a taxi, circa 2012-2015. I wrote about some of the injustices I witnessed: America's Make-Work Sheriff: The Anachronism of Joseph Arpaio, for example: https://www.taxiwars.org/2017/09/americas-make-work-sheriff-anachronism.html

[1] Ordinary Rendition: https://www.taxiwars.org/2017/10/ordinary-rendition-public-servants.html

[2] This passenger came to my part of rural Arizona, got arrested again and gave my number to his sister, whom I met when she came out to rescue his cats. Who are your Lifelines? - https://www.taxiwars.org/p/who-are-your-lifelines.html

Ask HN: Have you ever spoken truth to power?