Alice Johnson is Out, but what about Street Dealers?

I’m glad that Alice Johnson is out of prison. I don’t like the way the press are saying she’s a “first time nonviolent drug offender”. Please. She was operating up a the executive level. She wasn’t some lady selling small bags of coke to friends.

She had mainly administrative operations to help secure communications and transport, according to the linked article. So she provided logistics.

Why is she considered more “innocent” than a poor person who is sitting in prison today for selling small quantities of weed or other drugs?

It seems like this is a kind of classism, where people who don’t do the dirty work are considered “clean”, though they create the business superstructure in which regular working people find themselves.

The street sellers  are demonized, but the people in the “organization” above them, who really run he show, seem to be able to escape.

It’s like the inverse of “Uber” versus “Uber driver”, or “Ebay” versus “Ebay seller”, or “AirBNB” versus “AirBNB host”.  In the above-ground, corporate world, the small time sellers are used as a kind of front group for the corporation, to humanize the business.

When it comes to poorer communities, the people who are visible are dehumanized.