Word: rodeos
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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CLIFFORD BOWMAN, LEFT, IS EVERYTHING A RODEO HERO SHOULD BE. He rides tall in the saddle. He can hang on to a bucking bull with the best of them. He can milk a wild cow, and he's handy with a gun--after all, he's serving a life sentence for killing his father-in-law with a rifle...
...Bowman is not your run-of-the-mill broncobuster. But he is the winner of this year's All-Around Champion Cowboy title at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Site of the only all-inmate rodeo in the nation, Angola is home to what the event's organizers tout as a "gang of crazy convict cowboys." Among them: all-around runner-up Johnny Brooks, right, who owes his title to skillful bull riding and a botched grocery-store robbery; and Terry Hawkins, a former butcher-shop employee who killed his supervisor with a hammer and went...
Some audience members no doubt attend in hopes of seeing the rodeo animals dish out a little cruel-and-unusual punishment. "They think if a prisoner falls off a horse and gets stepped on, maybe that's what he deserves," says Bowman. The risk of injury at Angola is actually higher than at a non-inmate rodeo because many of the men have no experience with bulls and bucking broncos. "Some of these prisoners are from the big city and have never been on an animal before," notes Dan Klein Jr., one of the rodeo's producers. "The bad ones...
...indicate that the majority are rooting for the cons not to get trampled. Warden Burl Cain hopes his men, with their sometimes accomplished bull wrestling and barrel jumping, are leaving a lasting impression. "These inmates don't have horns and a fork and a tail," says Cain. "The rodeo shows that they can be rehabilitated--that they're real people...
...Janitors, sponsored by Sweeney's service-employees union, which has organized some 30,000 building cleaners over the past five years and brought the number of janitors in the union to 180,000. Members last spring staged a sit-in at the chic intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California, that led to 49 arrests. But the demonstration paid off for 8,000 janitors employed by companies throughout the Los Angeles area, who won health benefits and paid vacation in addition to a top wage of $6.80 an hour...