in defense of jen shah
Even if Jen Shah is “Guilty”, I Don't Think She Should Go To Prison
If you know me personally, you know I’m a huge fan of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, for no good reason other than: sometimes reality TV is just a great escape! I live in Salt Lake City, too, so I feel like I have to… for the culture. I have not watched any of the other franchises of the Real Housewives, nor do I consider myself a “stan” for any one of the housewives—but I did instantly feel drawn to Jen Shah from the beginning of the show when she talked about how she left the Mormon church after she found out Black people were not allowed the priesthood until the 70s, & converted to Islam instead. I have deep respect for anyone who can so easily call out the racism of the LDS church on a popular television show. Alhamdulillah.
At this point, many people are familiar with Jen’s arrest in March of this year, which happened during the filming of season two. Jen is being accused of committing wire fraud and money laundering through a telemarketing scheme. Though the case is still pending in federal court, and her partner, Stuart Smith, pled guilty later this year, Jen maintains her innocence. However, it appears that many of the housewives, the public, and especially the producers of the recent documentary, The Housewife and the Shah Shocker, would disagree.
It’s worth mentioning now, before diving further into this piece, that if you don’t already know, I’m a firm abolitionist—in short, meaning that I don’t believe prisons should exist. I don’t think they repair or restore relationships after acts of harm. I don’t believe they are places where accountability can be practiced. And I believe them to be a part of the racist legacy of slavery and oppression in their practice and execution. (Here’s an easy intro to what prison abolition and the prison industrial complex is from Critical Resistance.)
That said, I believe that instead of reacting to moments of harm by punishing someone and sending them away to a prison, I think other methods of rehabilitation and restoration should be explored. Prison abolition also means that instead of just reacting to harm after it happens, we’re also putting our efforts into creating conditions that prevent those moments from happening in the first place. That includes white collar crimes such as the ones Jen is being accused of.
So in my view, it doesn’t matter so much if Jen is “innocent” or “guilty”—a binary which flattens the complexity of what leads a person to act in one way or another—but whether there can be some sort of reckoning of what happened, and who needs to be responsible for repairing the harm. If Jen is responsible for the alleged harm, I wonder if there’s some way she could take accountability for whatever actions she took without being villainized the way that she has up to this point. And if she isn’t responsible (which I’m willing to believe is possible), I would still hope that the victims of this exploitation can access some kind of stability despite whatever the court determines.
Even if Jen is responsible for everything she is being accused of, I don’t think she is the only housewife on the show who causes harm: the other housewives are certainly not innocent of generating damage through their own actions, businesses, charitable connections, or livelihoods. Although the other housewives are not targeted by the police or currently facing any civil litigation, they too have accounting for.
My Personal Thoughts on Jen Shah’s Portrayal on the Show
It’s fairly well known at this point that “reality” TV show is only a reflection of the producer’s motivations of how they want to portray a narrative—it’s easy to create a storyline and skew the scenes or cut conversations to make someone’s actions fit that, all the while leading the audience on to believe that what we are seeing is a fully embodied representation of how the person actually is. We believe, despite knowing that filming only happens over a few weeks at a time, that we know the housewives' whole history and lives, and that we are viewing them in their most authentic and vulnerable states.
That means the people in front of the camera are often primed as characters and cast as common tropes to satisfy viewers' attention spans. In the casting of Jen Shah, a Polynesian woman, it seems as though the producers’ have boxed her in to be the angry woman of color: this gets reinforced by Jen’s castmates, who largely lack awareness about the harms and degrees of the racism that they commit.
Certainly, viewers of the show do not likely demand education about anti-Blackness or white supremacy of the housewives—and instances in the show would suggest the housewives hold dated views steeped in racism and homophobia. Consequently, that means the labor of teaching other white cast-members often falls on the people of color on the show. As it’s played out, that means Jennie Nguyen (the new housewife in season two) and Jen bear the brunt of this duty, with Mary Cosby, a Black woman, mostly acting like racism isn’t even a thing, or spewing racist comments herself.
Though Jen is not Black, her kids and husband are, and she surely has less tolerance for racism and anti-Blackness than Mary, who in season one said that if she goes to a 7-11 and see’s Black people, she’ll go to a different 7-11. Cosby even further went on to say in season two that she sees Jen “as a thug...as one of those Mexican people who make drugs.” And to ice the cake… in the next episode, Mary tells Jennie that she likes her “slanty eyes”. Bitch, WHAT??? I do not say this lightly when I would suggest that Cosby needs more than calling out, but professional help. She does not live in the same reality that you and I, or even the other housewives, live in.
But back to Jen… though her methods of trying to teach her friends about how they enact racism may sometimes be explosive or questionable in their efficacy, Jen does drop truths that the other housewives clearly do not feel comfortable absorbing. Jen’s outrage is justified: her lived experiences of racism impact how much she can trust the other housewives. It feels like they don’t really understand why she gets so upset, nor do they care to try: instead, they consistently get defensive and accuse Jen of disturbing the peace. Unfortunately, even her self-proclaimed close friend on the show, Heather Gay, often denies it too when accused of doing something harmful. And Meredith Marks, known for disengaging, could learn how to sit with tension and deeply listen when Jen shares something that she believes Meredith needs to hear.
This is common behavior from white people, and understandably bubbles up to anger when people of color are ignored or dismissed when they air their grievances. White people, including the white housewives, love to hand-select quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr. that make them feel good (or in Lisa’s case, just retweet), while ignoring his more uncomfortable stances on the well-meaning white people that the other housewives embody so ignorantly. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, King states:
“I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”
It is this “shallow understanding from people of good will” that often gets overlooked when having conversations about how racism shows up in the Real Housewives of SLC. It feels easier for the audience to sympathize with the other housewives than with Jen when she loses her temper, instead of looking deeper into the reasons that Jen has an outburst in the first place. This casting is careless on the part of the producers, but must be taken even more personally, I can imagine, when Jen hears what the housewives say about her in confessionals or after-the-episode talk shows.
The Hypocrisy of the Housewives
People may feel quick to point out Jen’s flaws, but the other housewives certainly do not have a perfect track record. In fact, it’s my belief that anyone in their tax bracket doesn't make the kind of money they flaunt by being morally reasonable people. Wealth is accumulated through labor and resource exploitation in one way or another, and the housewives are not innocent of committing such wrongs. And if it isn’t their business actively practicing exploitative behavior, they definitely have some other problematic behavior that, when not called out, can cause damage to their community and impressionable viewers of the show.
Meredith Marks
Meredith seems to have the biggest beef with Jen—and it’s perplexing to me. Sure, Jen could have gone easier on her son, Brooks Marks, and part of me understands how Meredith’s motherly, protective instinct would lash out. But Jen was also hurt by Brooks and Meredith, which Meredith doesn’t seem to be willing to take accountability for, and to Jen’s point, she did apologize—to both Meredith and Brooks, separately, and multiple times.
Despite that, however, Meredith still seems to have it out for her, as evident with her not giving it up and moving on, choosing instead to start nosing around in Jen’s business. Merediths' hiring of a private investigator to dig into Jen’s background does seem racially motivated, or at least racially insensitive. I have to ask—has she questioned how the other housewives make money to the same degree? And what would I pull up if I were to hire a private investigator on Meredith’s business? Certainly procurement in the diamond and jewelry business doesn’t involve the cleanest of hands.
Meredith has also greatly exaggerated the degree to which Jen has impacted her and her family, claiming that Jen “abused me and slapped me in the face”, and claims that Brooks was being threatened through text messages. Meredith also claims that one of Jen’s crew stole a clutch from her store—leaving out the fact that it was later returned. While I obviously can’t claim to know everything that happened between the two of them, as far as the public is concerned—Jen didn’t physically abuse her to the degree that Meredith claims.
I have to also call out Meredith for her repression and homophobia in regards to her son. Meredith is right to say that Brooks should come out in his own time, and on his own terms—but she refers to her adult, 21 year old son as a boy, and talks horrifically about how dark of a journey it is to figure out your sexuality. As a queer person myself, it’s only a dark process if the people who are supposed to support you and love you unconditionally make it seem like you aren’t the perfect//imperfect, lovable creature that you are no matter how you identify. Despite Meredith’s support of Encircle (which I’ll get into later…), she could definitely be a better queer ally to the community, and if I were Brooks, I would personally feel more offended by my mother’s remarks than by Jen making fun of me.
Whitney Rose
Whitney was quick on the bus ride to Vail to dig up a lot of accusations against Jen—Lisa even nicknamed her “Nancy Drew” for all the theories she was throwing out there. It’s not all surprising, though, considering her husband, Justin Rose, has gone through similar civil litigation himself. His company, LifeVantage, claims to “unlock the health and wealth of every life we touch” through the selling of nutritional products, as well as having a multi-level marketing (MLM) arm of the company for people to sell their products as a business opportunity. In 2018, Justin was accused of operating a pyramid scheme that falsely advertised their products, which had no medicinal or nutritional value, as well as selling false dreams of wealth and financial independence.
For the sake of brevity, I won’t go into how fucked up MLM’s are—you can find your own information pretty easily if you just look into them yourself…. but as this piece reports in the Atlantic, MLMs and conspiracy theories such as Q Anon go hand in hand—apropos to the Rose family, since one of Whitney’s close friends is well-known for being into QAnon, to the point of even being seen at the Capitol participating in the infamous January 6 riot.
While Whitney later issued a statement saying she did not support the insurrection, merely calling for “love and kindness” is a weak platitude—denouncing white supremacy and recognizing how she reinforces it would make me believe she’s willing to learn and change. But, the way that she claims that Jen “pulled out the racist accusation again” during the reunion episode after season one, I have a hard time believing that Whitney has the awareness to accept how she, too, can be enabling harm through the relationships she chooses to maintain and the actions she takes.
Heather Gay
I have to admit, this section pains me a little bit to write, because though she can be problematic, I ultimately still love Heather. While I admire her frankness and story of her coming out of the Mormon church, I’ve also found some of the things she’s said or done harmful, enacting the same kind of shallow understanding as the other white housewives.
Heather admits from the beginning that when she was younger, she followed the teachings of her Mormon upbringing to marry in the temple and become a mom, and that would fulfil her divine birthright. Her ex-husband, Frank Billy Gay, is claimed to be “Mormon Royalty” for having been an heir of oil mogul Howard Hughes. Hughes, like many white millionaires, inherited wealth from his father, who established the Hughes Tool Company, which controls the rights to oil drill technology.
Though Heather has now established her own business and is successful in her own right, her husband’s wealth certainly contributed to being able to launch it off the ground. And the fact that he established his wealth off of fossil fuel extraction is thanks to the white colonization of Indigenous land: protests against pipelines like the Dakota Access Pipeline or Enbridge’s Line 3 highlight resistance against such extraction. Heather would benefit from learning from the #LandBack movement, The Red Deal, and other forms of Indigenous resistance to support reparations for the harms of settler colonialism that she benefits from.
While I support Heather in so many ways through her journey in leaving Mormonism (obviously!), she also claims from the beginning to take advantage of the Mormon idea of *perfectionism* through her business, Beauty Lab and Laser. Heather claims that Utah is the #1 state for body modifications, and while I don’t know how to verify that, I believe her. Undoubtedly that’s because of this idea that many white Mormon women have about how they look being tied to their holiness.
While I don’t want to shame people who choose to do things with their body that they have every right to do, I do question the motives when people value the way they look over the way they act, and I see that a LOT in the likes of the clientele at Beauty Lab. Body modification often reinforces white supremacy, or fetishizes people of other races, by making people believe that they should have certain features—larger eyes, higher cheeks, bigger lips, fuller butts, glowing skin. Instead of uplifting the diversity of bodies and admiring people’s unique features or different life stages, many people are led to believe that they have to fit a certain mold of the way they look in order to be accepted in our culture. I find that depressing, honestly, and the way that Heather and her company advertise can sometimes feel predatory and shameful.
Lisa Barlow
Jen often gets accused of being vague when she’s asked about what her business is or how she makes money, but Lisa’s businesses and marketing projects seem almost just as convoluted. While Vida Tequila is the brand she touts the most, Lisa is involved in other ambiguous marketing companies and design services. She’s also possibly one of the wealthiest housewives of the Salt Lake City franchise.
Cultural appropriation is most damaging when white people profit off of other cultures’ products, and in the case of marketing and branding tequila, Lisa is guilty of this. As this article mentions, tequila is an important piece of Mexican culture, and “it’s essential to protect, share, and teach the traditions and stories that come with it.” Further, one of the interviewees emphasizes that “it is extremely important that the culture of mezcal is transmitted correctly and that it doesn’t just become another ‘fad’ in consumer culture.” Browsing through Vida’s website and even Lisa’s own, it does not appear that this culture or tradition is very meaningful to the branding of the spirit, other than a brief aside that “Barlow’s vision for VIDA is to better embody what Mexico is today. Mature, modern, and complex.” Hmmm… 🤨 ok.
Lisa also seems the most enthusiastic about bragging about her charitable contributions, including to Utah Foster Family and Encircle. While Encircle’s mission seems generous on its surface, the organization seems primarily focused on purchasing mansions, endorsing Republican politicians, and having sponsors that include problematic businesses such as Wal-Mart, Young Living, Goldman Sachs, and famed homophobic fast food chain Chick-Fil-A. Meanwhile, the organization does not help trans people pay for their housing or gender-affirming surgeries, or any other resources the queer community could materially benefit from.
Without getting too thick into the weeds, there’s a wealth of literature out there about the harms of the non-profit industrial complex, and how the concentration on charity actually diminishes the struggle for the liberation of marginalized communities. In short, the owning classes use non-profits to derail political uprisings and control dissent, and redirect activist energy into career-based models of organizing instead of building mass power to actually transform society. In addition, it allows celebrities and corporations to mask the damage they cause by giving them a reputation of *giving back* to whatever cause is in vogue.
Mary Cosby
Honestly — I don’t have time to get into Mary Cosby. But I’m sure you can find some things about her on the internet and draw your own conclusions. IMO, she’s living on another planet, and I seriously think she should be cut from the show.
Jennie Nguyen
Jennie, insofar as I can tell, is perfect, and so is her daughter Karlyn. I just wish she would dump Duy’s ass already. She can do better than stay married to someone who blatantly admitted on national television that he does not respect her body's limits and boundaries… he’s not worth it Jennie, you’re hot! Let him go!
**Edit**
Jennie’s Facebook posts from 2020 have come to light recently, and Jennie has issued an acknowledgement and apology on her Instagram.account. I retract what I originally wrote about her being perfect and hope that she does more than just apologize. It is my hope that she, with the rest of the housewives, take anti-racism seriously, and start adamantly calling out and condemning all forms of racism when they see it.
These surface level conversations among castmates or quick apologies posted on social media could also go further if they start to recognize how white supremacy reveals itself systemically, and dedicate themselves to supporting organizations and causes that work to eliminate the violence of such systems. That means putting their money where their mouth is, posting invitations for people to learn more about anti-Blackness, and doing their own personal work to unlearn the things they’ve bought into that only reinforce harm and violence through wealth inequality, racial injustice, and other forms of violence that they seem either oblivious to or completely apathetic about.
Jen’s Court Case
Ok, enough about the other housewives… let’s go back to Jen again.
SWAT Never Should Have Raided the Shah’s Home
This bears saying in its own section: SWAT never should have raided the Shah’s home. The state also should not have sent the gang of police and federal agents to the parking lot of Beauty Lab. The spectacle of SWAT and police raids reinforce the racist system of policing that helps frame their target as a criminal, regardless of known “innocence” or “guilt”—this creates someone to fear, someone to doubt and mistrust. And it worked: even Lisa was in tears on the bus ride to Vail saying that she felt like she no longer knew who Jen was.
The SWAT team being sent to the Shah Chalet also caused unnecessary trauma on the family, who are not guilty of the same things Jen is being alleged of—now her whole family has to face the trauma of police violence, which is difficult in itself to process, while the police do not have to hold any accountability for the damage they did.
SWAT doesn’t even serve their intended purpose, and are often deployed just to show off the might and militancy of police violence. As we wrote on Decarcerate Utah’s blog:
“SWAT teams were created in the 1960s to deal with extreme situations like prison escapes and hostage situations. Now, most of their time is spent serving warrants for routine drug searches, and with over-militarized police departments, they frequently barge into people’s homes, causing severe trauma and harm. Over two-thirds of SWAT searches don’t even uncover a weapon on the scene.”
You can also check out this brief episode of Adam Ruins Everything to learn more about how SWAT does more harm than good. In short: I think their invasion of the Shah family was racially motivated and incredibly harmful, and the Shah’s should have every right to sue them for misconduct.
The Housewife and the Shah Shocker
ABC News recently released a documentary about Jen, titled above, interviewing alleged victims, entertainment writers and journalists, a former castmate of another Real Housewives franchise, Bravo fans, special agents and prosecutors, one of Jen’s family members, one of her childhood friends, and her former employee, Koa Johnson. It supposedly details the actions of Jen and her partner, Stuart Smith—but it does not give Jen or Stuart any airtime to confirm or deny any of the accusations.
Though the documentary helps contextualize Jen’s legal case, where she is being charged under Title 18, the criminal code of the United States, it plays much of the role that police did in creating a spectacle against their target. Jen’s lawyer is right to claim that the documentary damages her chance at having an impartial jury.
In general, white collar crimes do not get prosecuted in the United States, largely because that’s not what the purpose of prisons are—instead they are largely managers of poverty, unemployment and inequity. The extravagance of going after Jen seems racially reinforced when people of color are disproportionately represented in the prison system. There are so many examples of racial disparities in the prison system that I can’t afford to include in here, but in Utah alone, here are just a few.
It’s also worth breaking down what she is actually being accused of.
The first charge: wire fraud
Jen could, as she has maintained in her public appearances, be totally oblivious to the telemarketing scheme that took place, as outlined in the documentary. The documentary claims that people (most over 55, which is why this is categorized as elder fraud) would sign up for these “work from home” business opportunities advertised on Facebook, and then enter their credit card and other information to be put on a lead list. Jen was involved in distributing these lead lists. They then received calls for business opportunities and were given the impression that paying these companies would help them with tax preparation and website design, among other services. The alleged victims oftentimes did not own a computer, or were unfamiliar with social media.
These services never amounted to anything, however, and the victims claim to have lost anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars. It is not clear how many people were targeted by this or bought into it—court documents only say it is ten or more persons. These alleged schemes were also committed by another person, Arash Ketabchi, who is currently serving time in prison. Through his telemarketing networks, Ketabchi targeted people in Arizona, Nevada, and in Utah, which apparently is where Jen and/or Stuart’s connection comes into play. The telemarketing companies were based out of New York and New Jersey, hence the federal charges and NYPD presence in the parking lot of Beauty Lab.
Screengrabs above and below from the the Indictment issued by the US District Court.
I have to say: I do not think that people should take advantage of elders, nor do I think it’s right to sell a product under false pretenses. But on my own social media feed and in networking groups I see people selling “business opportunities'' on a regular basis. Anyone can sell an online course, training, consultation, or service, some of which even I have fallen for, that end up amounting to both/either time and money wasted. Without regulation of the market or consumer protections, it is easy to advertise and sell your product as something it isn’t. I’m not happy about that, but I’ve also realized that these are lessons learned to make me sharper in my business practice, and has helped me discern what I will seek or avoid in the future.
This isn’t meant to victim-blame: I mean to say that I think it’s easier to get a business license and rack up enormous debt on a credit card than it is to know how to actually manage a business or make money, and that’s not by accident. The government is absolutely to blame for this in their refusal to provide the education and services we actually need it to be providing. Deceptive marketing is encouraged under capitalism, and deregulation of businesses and corporations hurts everyone at any age. The system is set up to make it easy to exploit us all.
That said: who is ultimately responsible for exploiting those people? The person distributing a lead list, or the people operating the telemarketing companies? From my perspective, the people on the phones and sales floor are the ones who are actively doing the deceptive marketing, and I wonder if they’re involved in these cases or being held accountable for their actions as well.
The second charge: money laundering
This charge claims that Jen and Stuart used offshore bank accounts, encrypted messaging services, and cash withdrawals to avoid currency transaction reporting requirements. Again, it is not clear how much this amounts to, with court documents only saying that it is a value greater than $10,000.
First of all… it is not illegal to use encrypted messaging services, nor is it illegal to pay for items in cash. This charge seems almost like a “broken tail light” charge to me—the kind of charge that is essentially meaningless, but is used to either target someone in the first place or tack on to other charges to ramp up their bail or time served. I mean to say that, even if Jen and Stuart stored their money in offshore bank accounts, which technically is illegal, the other accusations under this charge are being used as fluff to further villainize the defendants.
In addition, for legal reasons, I do not recommend that people store their money in offshore bank accounts, but I do question where that falls on the scale of harm when our government uses the bulk of our taxpayer money to fund its military and prisons, rather than actually providing services and safety nets to its citizens and non-citizens alike. In an ideal world, I would feel more motivated to pay taxes if I knew that it was providing healthcare or free schools for the people I’m in community with.
Image from National Priorities
Can We Encourage Celebrities to Take Accountability for Their Actions?
What is accountability?
I’ve recently begun diving into the tome from Creative Interventions, and in my readings I understand accountability to mean that it is to recognize, end, and take responsibility for harm caused—it also means changing behaviors and attitudes so that the harm does not continue. In our current criminal injustice system, driven by punishment, it’s no wonder that many people are driven to lie or deny any wrongdoing.
Their toolkit also offers a visual of a “staircase of accountability” — although their focus offers interventions to situations of interpersonal violence specifically, I think this can be applied to other contexts of violence, including financial violence that fall under white collar crimes.
I often wonder: are there ways we can frame taking accountability as a reward rather than a punishment? In a framework of accountability, when people take responsibility for the impact of their actions and issue reparations to the people that they harmed, they could then be rewarded by being accepted and supported by members of their community, instead of being ostracized and cut out from it. We should look at accountability as an act of courage, then, and not shame or blame people when they commit harm. None of us are perfect, and we can’t expect perfection out of everyone: but we can help each other be responsible to each other, and really build an interdependent ecosystem of trust and mutual respect.
During the Housewife and the Shah Shocker, one of the alleged victims on the show rhetorically asks if Jen would do this to her mom or relatives. I think this is an important way to reframe this as an invitation to accountability. These are not questions that are addressed in any meaningful way in the courtroom, though. Further, the alleged victims mention that though they have received some of their money back, they haven’t received all of it. Whether Jen serves time in prison or not will not likely change that outcome.
Getting to the root
Getting to the root is one part of understanding why a person acts the way they do, in order to understand how to meet them where they’re at and provide them with the support that they need to take accountability. Without knowing the whole history of Jen’s life, I can still guess the root of her motivation to make and flaunt her money. In season one we hear it from herself at the Sundance party she hosted: she wants to show other people that minorities can be successful too. I have a lot of sympathy for marginalized people who feel that way. I imagine if I were living in this white supremacist hellscape as a person of color, that for generations had told me, my parents, grandparents and on that they or I are undeserving of equal rights or opportunities, or that I don’t fit into the mold of what’s deemed “respectable” in our society because of the way I look—that I would want to beat the odds, too.
Generational trauma is a beast, and I don’t think it’s right to judge how people respond to it. Enforcing power over someone or bullying them makes people feel like they have to prove other people wrong—or they may internalize the abuse, only for it to manifest itself in curious and surprising ways. Sometimes, that can mean mimicking or mirroring their abuser. (I see this often in the way that feminist arguments about equality are framed by suggesting that if only women were in charge of oppressive structures, we could solve the world’s problems… but I digress.)
Instead of just reinforcing power structures, we can choose to eliminate or transform them. To heal from this kind of generational harm, then, would be to level the playing field and really carry out equity and justice. That would mean issuing reparations, lifting each other up instead of tearing each other down, celebrating differences, giving everyone equal access to meet their needs, and sometimes… just minding your own damn business (I’m looking at you, Meredith).
Supporting the public
Ruth Wilson Gilmore often talks about how abolition isn’t just about the absence of prisons, but the presence of a more supportive culture that provides healing resources to everyone. To prevent situations like this from being as pervasive as they are, then, we could push our efforts into providing consumer and labor protections, in addition to boosting and supporting public education. Years of business deregulation allow exploitation to become even easier as businesses make more money. Labor rights organizing and union building would help people find and secure better jobs, and would ultimately make sales jobs like telemarketing unappealing and unsustainable.
I also think everyone should go through some form or another of media training to understand the forces behind what you watch, and how different forms of it can distort your mind and change your attachments to what you think you want and need. I’m thinking about things such as the five filters of the mass media machine from Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent, how to discern misinformation and fake news, and a more critical understanding of pop and celebrity culture from the likes of bell hooks. With more education, people could easily recognize scams in advertising to begin with, so that these kinds of frauds would no longer be able to take advantage of people.
In Conclusion
I felt compelled to write all of this not to suggest that I know or practice a perfect score of morality, nor to cast judgement in one way or the other. I wanted to write this piece to offer nuance to a situation that many people have been quick to jump to conclusions about.
As I mentioned at the beginning, I do think there’s a possibility that Jen could be innocent of causing direct damage to the alleged victims of this crime—and this position seems to be a less popular one to take. I think it’s easier for people to believe that she’s guilty because of the ways the police targeted her, in addition to the ways that she’s already been villainized on the show to be explosive and dramatic. I also believe there’s racism at play in this, though it’s subtle and difficult to explicitly recognize. When people already operate under their bias that a person is evil or harmful, it’s easier for them to believe that they could do such destructive things.
Again, though—even if Jen is at fault for creating the financial precarity of the alleged victims in this case, I don’t think prison is the right solution for resolving the situation. Seeking revenge or punishment after someone does something detrimental is understandable, but it doesn’t encourage someone to recognize, transform, or repair the damage done. Sending someone off to serve time in prison allows us to not think about that person anymore, and assumes that’s how someone will “learn their lesson”. It’s also clear that the fault of this kind of exploitation doesn’t fall on just one person, but on the many people who contributed to and executed this scheme.
In addition, if Jen does end up having to serve time in prison, not only will she be the one *paying* for these crimes, so to speak, but it will also cause disruption to her family, which is unfair to them. People who have loved ones in prison know how frustrating and heartbreaking it is to have someone they know locked up, and they unfortunately also pay the price. Our criminal “justice” system is extremely unjust in this way, and does not deliver restitution to the people harmed, instead just creating further trauma and damage in its wake. This “crime” is one of our system, not just of an individual person.
So finally, in conclusion… abolish prisons, abolish ICE, and abolish the police! And to Jen: I wish you the best during this difficult time, I wish you and your family well, and you can reach out to me at anytime if you want to chat.
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