Another Jail

Out of habit, I voted.

Question 1 on the ballot asked, “Shall the City of Kansas City continue to impose a sales tax authorized by Section 94.577 … to be used for … management associated with administering public safety … including the construction, operation and maintenance of capital improvements…?”

Translation: Kansas Citians, Do you want to keep this sales tax, so we can build you a another jail?

Fifty-seven and a half percent of those who turned out for the off-year election answered yes. I was among the forty-two and a half percent who said no. My cynicism prevented disappointment that Kansas City voted for a jail; that’s what I’d expected. The word “safety” on the ballot hinted that fear motivated the fifty-seven and a half.

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I pushed the cart around the store as usual and, as ususal, thought too hard about subjects other than my grocery list. The store imparted an intimacy among us, like peeking into each other’s kitchens. Simultaneously, the store kept us strangers, our conversations limited to “excuse me.”

Because I would never know which way anyone had voted on Question 1, I viewed my fellow shoppers with curiosity bordering on suspicion. Every other one equated public safety with more jails, a world view irreconcilable with mine.

Who had voted yes? Possibly the lady wrangling her toddler, who was dangerously close to escaping the cart. Probably not the mooney young couple buying only two jars of Prego. Maybe the white-haired man pushing a walker. What about the guy who banged his cart into the canned vegetables shelf with a resounding crash that made both of us laugh, as he said oops to no one in particular? Certainly not the woman in the cut-off overalls reaching for a bag of quinoa.

Had I successfully identified the yes-voters, I would have permitted myself to dislike them. They would have thought the same about me, had they thought about me at all. Odds are, they did not. I was the one imprisoned by too much thinking.

I tried to settle down. We had this grocery store in common … our need for food … our desire for safety.

Still, when I got home, I went online and bought a tee shirt emblazoned with DECARCERATE.