They are trying to lock up as many of us up as possible to put us

Host: The sky was a bruised shade of purple, the kind that comes after a long summer storm. Thunderclouds drifted above the city, slow and swollen, as if reluctant to release their last anger. The streets below glistened with rain, reflecting red and blue sirens that pulsed like wounds across the asphalt.

In the corner of an old laundromat, under flickering fluorescent lights, Jack sat on a hard plastic chair, elbows on his knees, staring at the rotating washer drums as though they held the universe’s secrets. Jeeny sat beside him, her hands clasped tightly around a cup of vending machine coffee, the steam curling like restless ghosts between them.

The air smelled of soap, wet metal, and quiet defiance. The only sound was the low hum of the machines — steady, circular, unending.

Jeeny: “Did you read what Eddie Griffin said once? About the prison system being modern slavery? ‘They’re trying to lock as many of us up as possible… turning it into a business.’”

Jack: “Yeah. I read it. And he’s not wrong. But he’s not new either. People have been saying that since the Thirteenth Amendment was signed — ‘abolished slavery except as punishment for a crime.’ You leave one door open, and someone’s always gonna walk through it.”

Host: The washer clanked, the cycle shifting. The sound echoed like a heartbeat — mechanical, cold, inescapable.

Jeeny: “But the thing is, Jack — it’s still happening. Decades later. You’d think by now people would see the pattern. They build prisons the way others build malls — calculated, profitable, inevitable. Whole towns depend on them.”

Jack: “It’s America’s quietest industry. You want jobs? Build a prison. You want cheap labor? Arrest somebody. And it’s all legal. That’s the brilliance — and the sickness — of it.”

Host: The light flickered again, painting Jack’s face in alternating bars of brightness and shadow. His eyes looked heavy, but not with sleep — with knowledge. The kind that rots if it has nowhere to go.

Jeeny: “You sound detached, like it doesn’t get to you anymore.”

Jack: “It gets to me, Jeeny. But outrage is a currency now. Everyone spends it online, then goes back to scrolling. The system doesn’t care about tweets. It cares about contracts. About quotas. About beds being full.”

Jeeny: “Beds. God, even the language is sanitized. They don’t say ‘bodies,’ they say ‘beds.’ They don’t say ‘slavery,’ they say ‘correctional labor.’ It’s like they’ve rewritten morality in corporate terms.”

Jack: “They always do. You think private prisons came from ideology? No. They came from economics. The 1980s — Reaganomics, ‘tough on crime,’ mass incarceration. Someone looked at overcrowded prisons and saw not a crisis, but a market.”

Host: Jeeny leaned forward, her voice trembling, not with fear, but with the strain of knowing too much and doing too little. The rain outside began again, tapping softly on the glass like the world’s smallest protest.

Jeeny: “And the faces behind those bars — disproportionately Black, disproportionately poor. It’s not an accident, Jack. It’s design.”

Jack: “Design or inevitability — take your pick. You start with systemic poverty, underfunded schools, neighborhoods policed like war zones. Then you privatize the punishment. It’s a pipeline, not a coincidence.”

Jeeny: “But how can you say that like it’s natural? Like it’s gravity? We made this system. We can unmake it.”

Jack: “You think a machine stops because you tell it to? This country’s economy breathes through incarceration. Someone’s making uniforms, someone’s processing food contracts, someone’s getting elected promising ‘law and order.’ They all feed off the same oxygen.”

Host: The laundromat’s hum grew louder as another washer started. It sounded almost like applause — hollow, mechanical applause for an unseen audience.

Jeeny: “That’s exactly what I mean. We’ve normalized it. When did we start accepting profit over people? When did a human life become a spreadsheet entry?”

Jack: “When we decided to confuse justice with order. When we stopped asking who the order serves.”

Jeeny: “And yet, the outrage you call ‘currency’ — it’s still necessary. Without it, there’s no pressure. You think George Floyd’s name would have mattered if people didn’t fill the streets?”

Jack: “For a while, sure. Change happens in bursts. Anger lights the match, but apathy always douses it. That’s America’s rhythm — outrage, reform, relapse.”

Host: Jeeny looked away, her reflection shimmering faintly in the window — doubled, divided, like the very soul of the country she was speaking for.

Jeeny: “You’re cynical, Jack.”

Jack: “I’m realistic.”

Jeeny: “No, you’re tired. There’s a difference.”

Host: A long pause. The washer slowed, spinning slower and slower until it stopped with a soft metallic sigh. The silence that followed felt heavier than noise.

Jeeny: “You ever think about what it means for a system to feed on fear? To need people to fail in order to survive?”

Jack: “That’s not a system — that’s a parasite.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. And yet we keep feeding it. Because it’s hidden behind words like ‘justice’ and ‘safety.’ Because people like you, who could fight, stop believing it’s possible.”

Jack: “You think belief breaks chains? Belief doesn’t change contracts, Jeeny. Lawyers do. Money does. Power does.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe belief is where power begins. You ever read about the Attica prison uprising in 1971? They weren’t just rioting — they were demanding recognition, humanity. Even in cages, they believed they were more than tools. That belief terrified the system.”

Jack: “And look what it got them — blood in the yard. Power never yields to principle without violence.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe the real violence is pretending there’s no choice.”

Host: The air between them was electric now — sharp, charged. Jack’s jaw tightened, his hands balled into fists on his knees. Jeeny’s eyes burned with quiet fire.

Jack: “So what do you want? Revolution? Burn the prisons? March again?”

Jeeny: “No. I want recognition. Accountability. I want people to stop pretending that mass incarceration is a mistake instead of a business model. I want truth to make people uncomfortable again.”

Jack: “Truth doesn’t trend.”

Jeeny: “It doesn’t have to. It just has to endure.”

Host: The rain had stopped, but the windowpane still glistened. A faint light from a distant streetlamp flickered, catching the words “OPEN 24 HOURS” on the laundromat door — a cruel echo of a system that never sleeps.

Jeeny: “You know what scares me most, Jack? It’s not the prisons. It’s the silence. The comfortable silence of people who can look away.”

Jack: “Maybe silence is just self-preservation.”

Jeeny: “Or complicity.”

Host: Jack looked down, then slowly up, his voice quieter now — stripped of cynicism, weighted with fatigue.

Jack: “You’re right. I’m tired, Jeeny. Not of caring — of watching nothing change.”

Jeeny: “Then rest. But don’t stop caring.”

Jack: “I don’t think I could, even if I tried.”

Host: She smiled — faint, sad, resolute. The kind of smile that belongs to those who’ve already decided to keep fighting, even when no one’s watching.

Jeeny: “That’s the difference, Jack. They can lock up bodies. But not voices. Not hearts that refuse to harden.”

Jack: “And what if the voices fade?”

Jeeny: “Then new ones rise. That’s how survival sounds.”

Host: The washer’s final spin ended with a click — a small, definite sound, like punctuation. Jeeny stood, gathering her bag, while Jack watched her with a mix of admiration and exhaustion.

Outside, the storm had cleared. The moonlight spilled over the sidewalk, silvering the puddles, turning them into tiny mirrors.

As they stepped out, the door closed behind them with a hollow clang — a sound that could have been a lock or an opening, depending on how you heard it.

The night was still. The city pulsed on. Somewhere, unseen, the machine kept spinning.

But for a brief, fragile moment, under that bruised sky, two people carried the quiet defiance of remembering — that even in a world built on cages, the act of speaking is still an act of freedom.