The explanation of this is convoluted and takes a while for my brain to process. The library clerk goes on to tell me that sovereign citizens don’t have to pay taxes because of the “straw man” theory. Today, the Moorish Science Temple shares a kinship with the Sovereign Citizen movement, which considers itself unbound by the laws and leaders of the United States. Others wear a modified fez, a hallmark of Moorish Science. When they walk in, some with flowing robes and turbans, they look more like ancient wise men and shepherds than inmates. The Moors meet on Fridays at the weekly Muslim jum’ah service in the gymnasium near the library. Inmates like him, he says, add a suffix such as ‘Bey’ or ‘El’ to their last names, a symbol of their Moorish, not Black, heritage. One of the library workers, an African-American man, tells me he goes by Brown-Bey, not simply Brown, because he is a Moorish Science Muslim. He leaves my (accurate) brochure behind when he exits the library, a cruel reminder that people hear what they want to hear. “But the paper says you will deny this program exists,” the inmate says, after I hand him one of those very brochures. The Social Security Administration is aware of such misinformation and has published brochures explaining how Social Security really works for inmates returning to society. This is another prison folktale: the myth of a lucrative handout, post-incarceration. The piece of paper promises years of free financial benefits from the government. We do our best to provide accurate responses that are current and come from reliable sources.Īn inmate hands me what looks like a 15th-generation photocopy, asking about the Social Security benefits available to him when he gets out. Or, they can lean on someone like me as their internet intermediary, making formal, written requests for information online. Inmates do not have regular access to the internet, so while outsiders can Google the slightest question, the incarcerated have to use an old-fashioned form of search engine: the printed encyclopedia. I can see that he is genuinely disappointed - even as an incarcerated person, he had high hopes for a human presence in outer space.Īs a prison librarian, you get a lot of interesting reference questions.
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