I once taught prisoners. Every one of them was black, no doubt every one had been poor, no doubt every one had lived in really awful neighborhoods, etc. If ever there was a case where I had privilege, this was it. Yet, not once did anyone bring up anything like today's privilege discourse. They wanted what I had--a knowledge of economics. I learned a great deal from them too, and I think maybe I became a better person having met them. But in that prison, on those nights, we had a common purpose. And I could see that, while we had little in common in many ways, we might someday be brothers in struggle. Solidarity, now that's a word that can have real meaning and usefulness. And it was their condition that mattered, not my privilege. However, it was now my duty to use my freedom to speak out against what they had to experience. I could no longer say, I didn't know about this.