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Summary Of It Going To Be A Cold Winter

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While such transformations of people behind bars can leave a permanent mark such events and daily invasion of privacy contribute to these permanent changes as described in his poem, Its Going To Be A Cold Winter, “They enter my cell: a legal pillow fight begins with my books and papers. Stir crazy madmen, papers sidling down to the cement floor, my mattress turned over, sheets torn away like a mask hiding tons of heroin; but nothing, only cotton, cheap sweaty moldy-smelling cotton, picked by slaves, sewed up by slaves, slaves of the Greater State, that come in all colors.” (Baca, p.6) He amply provides the reader a clear understanding of this loss of privacy and the random acts of invasion, as he is left unable to say anything about these activities by the guards.
Baca continues to distinguish the role of forced slavery in its modern form in prisons while subtly indicating the role of racialized discrimination. Such instances, however described earlier explains the class divides based upon previous segregated environments where economic policy divided people up by class and race. Further development of industries which are becoming dependent on cheap labor like previously desired during the slave trade in the early 1800’s, is still ongoing as owners want to pay less for labor …show more content…

Furthermore, tens of thousands of detained undocumented immigrants face deportation, await sentencing and though the policies of Trump become a greater target for American racial discrimination. What is not discussed, however in any of these poems is the direct impact of the school-to-prison pipeline, which continuously impacts social and economic disparities in communities often heavily populated by black and brown people. Perhaps these statistics are reassuring to some, but the hyper-incarceration plaguing America has had a damaging effect on society at large. (Khalek

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