Justice for All
Grandpa Pickleball, Alvin Bragg, Donald Trump, Kalief Browder, and a personal story
Let’s start off easy, with a recent story about a guy I’ve come to think of as “Grandpa Pickleball.” On March 14, a 71-year-old retired civil engineer named Arslan Guney used a marker to delineate pickleball boundaries on the floor of a public court in Denver, Colorado. Guney, an avid pickleball player who came to the public center to play, and stayed before and after to help set up and break down the court, was reinforcing marks on the floor that had been put there by staff earlier and were fading. The Denver Parks and Recreation subsequently decided that this was damage to public property, charged him with a felony, and demanded $9,344 to refinish the floor (even though your mee maw or bubbe will tell you, you can remove marker from wood with a bit of rubbing alcohol) and demanded that he turn himself in. They tossed him in jail for a day, and are still deciding whether to prosecute. If they do, and they find him guilty, he could serve up to three years in jail.
This is absurd, of course, and has nothing to do with pursuit of justice. It’s all the more infuriating when you consider that things like this happen every day, overwhelmingly and disproportionally to Black people, and that it is also happening in within a justice system that, so far, has…
