A funny thing happened to a man on the way to Education Week this past week at BYU.
Well, maybe not funny, since the story involves a three-night stay at the Utah County Jail. Ironic is probably a better word, because how often do you use Education Week and jail in the same sentence?
An ironic thing happened, then, to a man on the way to Education Week. Something ironic enough that if it had happened when Woody Guthrie was alive, he would have written a song about it.
It began Monday morning in downtown Provo outside the building that houses the Food & Care Coalition of Utah Valley — an organization that helps feed, clothe and house the poor, needy and down-and-out.
The man was standing in front of the Food & Care Coalition when he saw a sign that said, "No Sitting on the Planters. If you do it! Three days you will not receive food services." English translation: Sit on the stone planter boxes in front of the building and you won't get food for three days.
Seeing this, the man had a thought. The planter boxes are on the sidewalk, which he's pretty sure is public property. He doesn't think this is right, stopping people from sitting on public property, and he has time on his hands, so he sits.
In his mind he is Gandhi, peacefully protesting.
When he won't move, a woman inside the Food & Care Coalition calls the police. When a Provo city patrolman arrives, the man — righteously envisioning his "day in court" in front of a judge where he'll right this wrong against himself and against society — tells the officer he's going to have to cite him first. But the policeman isn't playing that game; instead, he handcuffs the man, takes his bag containing his personal belongings (including his Education Week registration) and escorts him off to the county jail in Spanish Fork.
Two long days and nights later, the man gets to see a judge, sort of. In a videotaped court hearing he is last on the Wednesday afternoon docket with a judge who asks for no plea or details but only summarily sets a court date for two weeks later, Sept. 6, and establishes bail at $300, cash only.
The man doesn't have $300. He doesn't have anywhere near that much money. He sure doesn't have a credit card, and he can't call a bail bondsman because he has to have cash. He is now looking at two weeks in the county lock-up before he goes to trial. And because he isn't a permanent jail resident, the jailers won't allow him any visitors.
Thus is completed a strange chain of fed-up-to-here people exercising their authority.
The man, no stranger to the streets, is fed up with signs telling him where to go and what to do, so he sits on the planter box. The woman in the rescue mission is tired of seeing people sit on the planter box so she calls the police. The police are tired of being hassled and abused so they cuff first and let the jail deal with it. At the jail, they're tired of hearing victims whine so they follow procedure and wait for the judge. The judge, overworked precisely because of cases like this, doesn't even come to the jail in person but metes out his form of justice with a $300 cash bail and a trial date two weeks hence.
Everybody talks, nobody listens.
Are you telling me Woody Guthrie wouldn't write this?
Post script: The man finally found a friend to come to Spanish Fork and post the $300 bail by Thursday lunchtime. He retrieved his bag, and registration form, from the Provo police station and by Thursday afternoon was in attendance at an Education Week class at BYU. The class was on the family. No one asked where he'd been.
Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.