So I was briefly in court the other day. I am not going to comment much on the reason for my presence, though you can get an idea here.

What an amazing thing it is to be in court, though. The system stands naked before you and gets all awkward about the shit.

The last time I was in court, a few months ago, we (me and my co-defendants) were preceded by three different cases. One was a public urination offense and the other two were trespassing charges lodged against rather sad-looking dudes who had apparently slept in an abandoned house and a trainyard, respectively.

This time, since we had acquired counsel, we weren’t really even on the agenda. We mostly hung out in the hall, reading the formal complaints we’d demanded a month ago and received directly prior to the hearing. The state offered us the same basic offer we got last time, which we refused. One of us got our charges dismissed for some reason. Hell yeah for that.

Anyways, sitting in the courtroom, here are the two other charges I heard against others on Friday:

Public indecency: A woman was arrested passed out in the passenger seat of a car with no pants on. The representative of the state asked her very serious questions about this. She was compelled to answer very seriously. The prosecutor was a young white woman and the defendant was an African-American woman in her mid-30s, I’d guess. Everyone found it awkward and distasteful and stupid. Still, that’s how the system rolls.

Trespassing: An old man — grizzled, looking pretty beat-up but mostly from the travails of street-life, I’d guess — stood in shackles in that little booth Hennepin County mandates for inmates. Turns out, he slept in a bus stop enclosure and got picked up. It was readily apparent that he probably had nowhere else to go. Still, here he was, jumpsuited, shackled, looking like someone who’d hurt someone. Fuck if I know if he ever had. He mostly looked dejected and sad. He answered questions like, “Did you know, on the evening of October xx, that it was illegal to seek shelter in a bus-stop?” And he was like, “Yes, m’aam.” And looked down.

We, me and my co-defendants, are charged with allegedly impeding — in various ways — the eviction of a 25-year resident from her house. Later, it seems, they will arrest those who sleep in the house they just emptied. Later still, they will arrest those who “seek shelter in bus-stops.”

This is madness.