An Education in Hustling

From The Prisoner Firefighters Battling California’s Wildfires (thenation.com),

Three clips from a new film exploring the seemingly ordinary landscapes touched by our prison system.

The three clips treat subjects ranging from the heroic to the mundane: fighting wildfires, playing chess, sending a package.

How Prison Taught This Man How to Play Chess (3:34) • 'When Nahshon Thomas was incarcerated in the 1980s, he didn’t know much about chess. But he met a guy who told him that he would never beat him at the game.'

The description continued,

He didn’t like to hear that, but he decided to learn from him. Now that he’s out, he teaches chess and plays for money in New York’s Washington Square Park. "If you see any black man out here hustlin’, trying to sell something," Thomas says, "he’s been to jail."

For more, see Prison permeates everything in its path (nsnews.com; 'Documentary explores the soul-wrenching business of incarceration at DOXA [Documentary Film Festival, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada]'):-

U.S. President Barack Obama made headlines last year when he tweeted: "We could eliminate tuition at every public college and university in America with the $80 billion we spend each year on incarcerations."

Makes you wonder, doesn't it? Add this topic to the ongoing series on The Sociology of Chess (November 2016), even though we're straying from the original thought.