sabrinaslipchenko

Think of it as Monopoly, but more sinister: You go to jail. You don’t pass go. Your fellow players circle the board, accumulate capital. You hope for your lucky break, for the arbitrary roll of the dice to free you. While you sit, stuck, isolated, more impatient by each turn, you’re paying to be imprisoned.

Let’s take a step back. Private prisons are operated by corporations, paid with tax dollars via government contracts.

On Yom Kippur 2019, I survived a white nationalist mass shooting in Halle, Germany.

Halle, with its squat stone castle, spiked medieval church, and cobblestone market square, sits along the river Saale. During the second World War, prisoners from a Nazi concentration camp built combat aircraft at the Siebel plant, just miles away from where the neo-Nazi attacked us.

After the shooting, I became a co-plantiff in the trial against the shooter.