"It's not right"

Damn straight girl. Prison sux. You'd better hope they don't find you mentally ill...

How much does it take to make someone feel empathy? At what point will Paris Hilton think, "Gee, imagine what this would be like without a rich family supporting me and constant media coverage? What would it be like if I couldn't afford an appeal? What if the system wasn't being watched, judged, and second-guessed by millions around the world?"

I'm not holding my breath...

It's not right? Darlin, that's about as right as it gets in this country. You couldn't find a fairer process anywhere. Democracy works best when people are watching and opining about the fairness of the process and the sentence. When no one is looking... that's when it starts to turn sour, rotten and corrupt.

That's when they come in and kick the crap out of you in the middle of the night for no reason at all. That's when they put you on too much of the wrong medication and you don't know which side is up for most of the day. That's when you die of thirst because you were strapped to a table for too long.

It's not right.

Imagine what this world would be like if we paid attention to all State-sanctioned punishment with that much interest and passion...

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I arrived in McRae, GA in the afternoon on Saturday, June 2nd after driving 300 miles from Charlotte, NC. It rained the whole way, and continued raining through the night. The town of McRae has a population of 2000. The prison holds 1700. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that prisoners are counted as residents... the town is tiny. At the point where two railroad tracks intersect, there is a block of old, boarded up shops. Farther down the main road there is a strip mall with a grocery store, discount clothing, and other assorted shops. The dairy queen marquee says "Jesus Loves You". I stopped at the Travel Lodge and inquired about a room. "$55" said the man from India.

"That's a bit high for me, is there anything else in the area?"
"There's one across the street and another at the other end of town."

I went to the one across the street, the Budget Motel. Another Indian woman greeted me, this time with a price of $35. I took it. I unloaded my luggage and drove into town. Oliver had warned me of the "gizmo" at the prison that can detect drugs on you, even if you touched something that had drugs on it at one point. Having spent two days travelling to see him, I wasn't going to take any chances, so I went to the discount clothing store and bought a new set of clothes. The only shoes that fit the bill (no sandals allowed) were a pair of brown leather clogs with a black faux fur lining... absolutely hideous... but shoes would be the major offender, second only to money.

I returned to the motel and turned on the TV. I was immediately confronted by hard-core porn. I had trouble getting to sleep, so I watched Pirates of the Carribean: the curse of the black pearl, and re-read Oliver's letters in the commercials. He was a creature of the sea before going to prison, and to the sea he will return when he gets out. He was even arrested whilst smuggling in the Carribean, but I will get to that later. He wrote, "20 months - maybe 16 if I'm lucky - and then rapidly arrange another boat - Oh yeah!! - Me & Jack Sparrow - Ho! Ho! Ho! You will always be welcome wench - ar ye strong? - can ye fight?"

I finally drifted off to sleep about 11:30. At midnight, there was a knock on the door. I ignored it and fell asleep again. At some unknown time later, the phone rang. I couldn't understand the heavy Indian accent at first, but eventually I understood it to say, "Is Michael there?". Nooooooo..... SLAM!

I had set my alarm for 7am, but because of the loud air conditioning, I didn't hear it, and woke on my own at 8:15. I had planned to take a shower, to further rid myself of any rogue drug traces, but I decided to just pack and go.

The prison was just up the road leading out of town. I went in with only my freshly washed driver's license and a $20 bill. Everyone else had bags full of quarters, and there was a change machine in the lobby, but it only accepts $1's and $5's. I went back to my car and got all the $1's I had, which was only 7. I changed them and proceded through the metal detector... there was no drug-detecting 'gizmo'.

The room looks like a high-school cafeteria, with rows of square tables fixed to the floor, and four grey, plastic chairs around each. The chairs were not fixed to the floor. At one end of the room, two guards sat on a raised platform behind a railling. There were 4 vending machines with soda, water, coffee, and various chips and sandwiches. There was an alcove with carpeting on the floor and half way up the walls. A TV was on at the end of the alcove and children played there. I was assigned a table and sat down to wait. After a few minutes, Oliver was escorted through a door.

He is tall and in good shape for 62. He has long strawberry blond hair and a thick white, trimmed beard and mustache peppered with strawberry blond. His face is smooth and free of age spots. Only the skin around his sharp blue eyes is wrinkled, which gives him a young, but infinitely wise look. We embraced. I had been instructed by Leo to cover him with hugs and kisses, but also warned that he had not touched a woman in 12 years, so it might be a bit messy...

We talked about Leo, our mutual friend in Arsetralia, as he calls it. Leo grew up with Oliver and his son in Capetown, South Africa. Leo was drawn to Oliver's "60's attitude", and contributed to his own deliquency as well. Oliver told me about going for a walk in the hills near Table Mountain, in search of the fly agaric mushroom. They found one, and Leo said that he was going to eat one filament of the shroom, and if he died in 3 days, they would know why. He didn't die, and they threw a small, exclusive party. Oliver said that Leo had cleared out his living room of all furniture except for a shelf with glassware on it. Suddenly, Leo came running out of the hallway and ran three or four steps straight up the wall. He fell backwards, and knocked some of the glassware off the shelf onto the floor where it smashed into bits. Getting up, he went back down the hall and did the same again, this time landing on shards of broken glass. Upon rising, Oliver said that Leo didn't have a single cut on him. Leo said that this was what the Vikings took before going into battle, and that was how they got the reputation of being fierce fighters, and totally insane.

Oliver told me the story of his capture. His wife of 20 years was having an affair with a fellow invloved in drug dealing. The wife and their daughter disappeared one day, and Oliver was led to believe that they would be killed if he did not take a load of cocaine into the U.S. He almost made it, but was dobbed in by the wife's lover.

He has been in prison for 13 years, being shuffled from prison to prison according to the needs of the Corrections Corporation of America. He has researched the private prison industry and is convinced that a deal was struck with legislators; they received shares in CCA and Wakenhut/GEO in exchange for mandatory sentencing laws which keep the prisons full. The corporations receive $25,000 per person per year in tax money. The prisoners are used as slave labor for other industries, and receive substandard care, adding to the corporate profits.

I was transfixed by him. He urged me to look into his eyes as much as possible and not break away. His face is compelling, and easy to watch. Combined with tales of adventure, corruption and decadence, the time flew by. At times, I could see nothing but those eyes. The room disappeared, and we were completely alone inside each other's minds. The room was very cold though, and I was not allowed to go back to my car to get more clothes. I drew my arms inside my shirt, which concerned Oliver greatly. He asked the guard if there was something I could wear, or if they could adjust the air conditioning. No and no. "I'd love to give you some of my heat" he said, as his eyelids drooped over his pupils, leaving no doubt about his meaning.

The conversation turned steamy as he told me about his marriage and infidelities. A wife of a friend at a dinner party went into the kitchen to make coffee. She asked Oliver to help. As he walked into the kitchen, she flipped up her skirt, revealing a naked bum. "Do you want it or not?" she asked. He told me, "...as we were in the kitchen, being human beings, the husband called from the living room, 'where's that coffee?' The reply echoed down the hallway, 'We're coming!'"

I was not surprised, shocked or offended at his lasciviousness. Only the most naive person would expect any less from a man in prison for 13 years. I was pleased to be able to indulge him in a rare treat. At one point he interrupted me and said, 'This is marvellous, I feel like I'm sitting in a pub again!"

He asked me about my relationships, and why I had no children. I did my best to explain. He told me about his beliefs about the body and the spirit. He has become a member of the Lakota religion and goes to a sweat lodge inside the prison every Saturday. He said that in the intense heat, the spirit becomes distinct from the body for a short time. We talked at length about spirituality, and my rabid atheism. At times, he strayed into the realm of what I consider to be 'kookville', but I threw a few leading questions in, to see how far he would take it. He always stopped at the edge of looniness and offered a caveat that he had no proof, but was going on instinct. We wrangled with the question of life after death.

A prisoner sat at a small desk in the corner. He had a digital camera. Oliver proposed that we have a photo taken together to send to Leo. He could not accept my money, but agreed to let Oliver pay him later. We went into the carpeted alcove for the photo.

I invited him to visit me in Tucson when he gets out, but he said that he will be deported to Ireland immediately. He wants nothing more to do with the U.S. Government. Fair enough. He has a friend who will meet him in Ireland and help him get settled again.

As the time drew towards 3:00, our gaze was still locked. He informed me that I would be easy to hypnotize. He told me to count down from ten slowly, staring into his eyes. When I finished, he did the same. I locked into his gaze, and his face seemed to change. I saw age spots where there were none, then his face metamorphosed into what looked like an indigenous Mexican. Then told me to close my eyes. "Some flickering" he said. "What's the flickering?" I asked. He said that it is the eye movements from REM sleep.

"Visitation is over" announced the guard. We stood and hugged, and kissed, and hugged again. He thanked me for the visit and the intimacy. I said I would try to visit again over the Christmas break.

I left with the other visitors. A young black woman guard asked me if he was my husband. "No, just a friend." She raised an eyebrow.

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On Cecil Robinson's Death
by W. Edward Morgan
Oct 1990

Roar in my
pain demented head.

-------------------------

If I believed in such things, W. Edward Morgan would be my Godfather. He is the reason for my existence, and surpassed only by my mother's obstetrician in being my oldest friend... longest and most elderly.

Ed was the lawyer in the case of Elfbrandt v. Russel in the U.S. Supreme Court. The case challenged the requirement that public school teachers sign an oath of loyalty to the U.S. Government, including a statement that you were not a communist. Barbara Elfbrandt was a tenured teacher at that point, so she could not be fired for refusing to sign the oath, but the school refused to pay her. A community of supporters formed around Barbara and her husband to provide support for them while the challenge was working its way through the system. My parents met on the campaign, and the rest is history...

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Today is/was/woulda-been pred's birthday. Of course, it should have no significance now, since the 3rd anniversary of his death is June 4th. I wondered if I should do something predlike, or something to remember him by. But then I suddenly knew that he would rather I be able to forget him... to pass the day in blissful ignorance. This voice... this opinion... I know that it is him. It is my memory of him, but that is all I ever had anyway. You only know people by how your brain interprets their speech and behavior. It's like etching chemicals on glass... the more you know someone, the stronger the impression... but it is still just an impression. Pred's impression is fading every day, but there are scratches that will remain in my mind until I die. Those scratches _are_ him, even if they spell out: "go on and forget me, get on with yer life dude."

Like a scene from "The Life of Brian", my mind repeats the conversation. I just wanted him to know that he was very special to me and to many people, and a very hard person to forget. But he half laughed, half cried the reply as I cradled him on his last night at home. The morphine pills weren't helping anymore, and the trips from the bed to the hot bath kept him up all night. In the morning his father took him to the hospital for the last time.

"MOnday 24th. My birthday. I go to Edgecliffe to get more ascorbate shot up me then to Randwick to scream at my oncologist. I can't walk straight. I think I will have to end the log here since I am perpertually weak. I am dying. Goodbye.

<predator>"

I suppose a quick death was the best present he could have gotten. Well, happy bloody b'day, dude... and I _am_ getting on with my life, but I still won't forget you.

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Yay! Everybody jump up and down and rejoice! Smile! And remember...
at all times, all things are working together for good!

Ok... now that you're all happy, come help me stuff (no folding, thank
Dwight :), stamp, label and seal 3000 envelopes containing letters to
mostly white, relatively affluent Americans, begging for money so that
mostly brown, relatively poor Mexicans don't have to drink their own
urine :)

C'mon, it's a good cause and you know it! just 2 hours of your time
Saturday morning at 11:00 (late enough to sleep off a hangover) at St.
Mark's. I'll even bring danish and coffee :)

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I keep getting flashes of places in Sydney. I've been dreaming about it lately. Mostly places that I modelled in... perhaps because I was forced to study them in minute detail for 3 or 4 hours a week... Brandling St., a dusty, crude barn with an outdoor toilet and stuffy artists, but the only place with a rope hanging from the ceiling to use for balance and creative poses... The Royal Arse Society in Lavender Bay... more stuffy artists, but a nice room above the art gallery. Surprisingly one of the only studios that had any kind of lighting system. By far the most appreciative teachers and students...

And I think about places I frequented on my bike... the ride from the icecream factory to work and back, I must have done nearly a thousand times... I can still see the place where the path winds under the train tracks near Wolli Creek. Sometimes the path would be flooded, and it is near enough to the sea that the water is very salty. I rode through the water once and it nearly ruined my bike. Sand and salt got in everywhere. So if it was flooded, I had to turn around and ride over the tracks at Tempe train station. I remember riding past the abortion clinic every day. Some days there would be one little old lady out there with a sign, talking to women going in and out. That was something I loved about Australia... there was no real debate about abortion... the whole country seemed to agree that it was none of their business. There has been a rise in opposition in the last few years, but compared to this country, they are insignificant.

But this appeared recently on Sydney Indy, and I thought it was a brilliant description of my all time favorite place in Sydney: Newtown...

Kicks in Newtown
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 07/05/2007 - 14:58. Creative Writing | Sydney Basin | Features

Twisted Bent & Messy on an afternoon in Newtown

Its night time, almost naturally you could say. The night scene shifts into gear along King St. unperterbed and unshaken; It just comes – it wants to come. It strikes down, not like lightning or a waterfall, but like a jovial parade, eager and keen and always on the lookout for kicks.

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Well... it seems the story was just a practical joke on us by the japanese :)
The Sydney Morning Herald put up an error message. The New York Times has this:

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/like-herding-poodles-and-sheep/

But by far, the best pic was here:

http://ktla.trb.com/news/ktla-poodlescam,0,3319027.story?coll=ktla-news-2

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Just click on it... it will make you smile, guaranteed =8)

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/04/26/1177459875122.html

"Death has a life of its own" said Rudy Gerber, former superior court judge, in a dramatic flourish to his second speech during question time. His point was that it is so expensive to put people to death because every case is different. You may think you've defined some essential element of the death penalty, but it keeps coming back over and over again with a new subtlety to ponder.

"Death is different" is another saying that opened the conference on the death penalty on Saturday. Meaning that when the state decides to kill someone, it must be given more consideration than when it decides to send someone to prison. And yet different deaths are different from each other, claimed Bill Montgomery from the Arizona Voice for Victims Enforcement Project. He claimed that there is "a fundamental difference" between the murder of an innocent victim and the state executing a murderer. That fundamental difference is that Bill wouldn't be able to sleep at night if he thought otherwise. He claims that his clients believe that death is a just punishment for the killing of their loved one. He stared straight ahead and a bit down while listening to the other victims' perspectives that he was sandwiched between. Two women, one of whom lost her daughter to a violent crime, and another whose son had committed murder and was now on death row. Both of them said that killing a killer doesn't help to heal the pain of loss, and in some cases can even make it worse. If the executed person turns out to be innocent, the family now has innocent blood on their hands. Even if they were guilty beyond any doubt, many families say that it's not fair that the killer is now at peace, whereas they still have to live with their pain.

I'd wager that Bill Montgomery has never lost a loved one. I'd bet that he thinks revenge can lessen the pain of loss. He makes his living off of convincing people that they have a right to that revenge. He drags the victims families through endless appeals and forces them to relive the horror over and over again. He beats the drum of vengance, until victims' families are frothing at the mouth. He beats the drum for years, increasing the pace, dangling the bloody carrot until finally, they get to watch the final ecstatic moment when they lay out the body on a bed that looks like a cross, but with straps instead of nails, and inject the poison that is supposed to make the horror more tolerable.

Then the drum beats stop, Bill is no longer there with them, counselling them, they are alone again, and their loved one is still dead. But now there is another sound... the sound of another family wailing their grief, but that family knows they will never get revenge.

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Nobody has sympathy for prisoners. We have images of psychotic killers and manipulative masterminds, but very few people know who is inside our community's cages. I don't know. I've never actually been inside a prison, for any reason. I've been outside a couple of them, but never even farted near enough to annoy the guards at the front door.

But everybody has a crime victim story, real or imagined. Everybody knows, or likes to think they know, what it's like to be robbed, raped or murdered. I've been robbed... one a snatch and grab in Rome, and the other a slimy roommate at the icecream factory, but not the other two mercifully.

So it should be in all our interests to reform criminals whilst they are in prison, so that we don't end up victims of crimes that could have been prevented when the person was in the 'care' of the state.

In my wildest, anarchist fantasies, I'd like to represent a class action lawsuit on behalf of the Future Crime Victims of America. I want the prisons to be transparent to all media and community members. We should be allowed to talk to any prisoner, at any time and demand accountability for their progress. We should be allowed to consult with the education and medical staff about their classes and treatments. And we should be allowed to be satisfied that every prisoner has a support network to go to when they are released. Not surveillance, but support... so that they know all the people they live with, and they know that their wellbeing is dependent on the wellbeing of their neighbors.

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At AFSC today, I read and summarized a file of letters from a prisoner in isolation. It hit me harder than I anticipated. I thought I could handle most prison stories, but I suppose the sheer volume of it was overwhelming. The same stories told over and over with varying levels of urgency and anger. The reasoning of a man who will spend the rest of his life in this hell he's describing. No hope whatsoever.

Below is a quick sketch of the hundred or so pages I read today.

--------------

Cockroaches, falling like rain all through the night. I sleep on the bare metal of the bed frame because the mattress they offered me smelled like urine. It had brown stains and was infested with cockroaches. The cover was shredded exposing the thin foam. They turn out the lights at 10PM, then the nuts upstairs start screaming and crying. They wake me up at 1AM to deliver my mail. At 2AM they deliver the newspaper. At 3AM they wake me to ask if I am asleep. At 4AM breakfast comes. Cockroaches are in the watery oatmeal before I can open the warm carton of milk. I flick them off and step on them.

The neck is tougher than most people think. A one foot drop just doesn't work, no matter how much you bounce and thrash around. I'll have to find a higher drop. I heard that if it's 7 feet or more, it will take the head clean off. Then they can't resuscitate me like they did last time. I killed myself for xmas but then I woke up and they put me back in with the roaches.

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I've started volunteering for the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization that takes on some very curly social issues as advocacy campaigns. They are, as far as I know, the only folks in town who are actively pursuing prison reform. It may seem obvious why I did this, from my history with Justice Action, but it still wasn't entirely clear to me until I encountered the question on their info form. Why now, after a year back in the states, and why them, after having decided to volunteer on border issues with No More Deaths?

For starters, at the end of last year, NMD's decided to take 3 months off of meeting, but continued to support the project in Nogales. Decisions were still being made, but not with the input of the membership. Then last week, I heard rumors of a faction starting up their own meetings because they were not happy about the decisions that were being made. While I agree that there needs to be some attempt at democracy within the group, I'm not interested in getting in there and stepping on toes while sorting it out. I also felt very uncomfortable with the idea of being on-site in Nogales under the banner of a fragmented and disorganized group. My medical skills and knowledge are considerably worse than my Spanish (which is adequate to be generous), and so I would be about as useful as Mr. Clippy, the annoying paperclip assistant on Winblows.

"It looks like you're trying to migrate to the U.S. Would you like some water and a burrito?"

When what they really need is a week's rest, money, and a decent coyote at a minimum. Some of them need an ambulance and a lawyer.

So I thought I would go volunteer my time back with the crims. At least with them, you can maintain contact and see what kind of effect the work is having. On my second day there, I was on the phone with the Assistant Attorney General, asking him to help me shine some light on something called the "Violence Control Unit" at Eyman in Florence. It is so secret, it's not even on their website, and they refuse to release official policy on its use. So, already, I've put the powers-that-be on alert that somebody in this state gives a shit about these things.

I also responded to a prisoner who wanted to get his G.E.D, but because he is in super-maximum security, there are no education programs available. I phoned the prison and asked them why he was in super-max. They said it was because of threats to staff and violent behavior. So I wrote to him and told him what they'd told me. I added that while I know it's easy to get angry about the conditions, his ultimate revenge would come when he gets out of lockdown and back into education classes. Then when he gets out and gets a good job, he can laugh at the guards who still have to go to prison every day.

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(Here's a poem from my uncle, Tom Scheff.)

Ross for Less is almost at the bottom
of the food chain for clothes and other goods.
It is not as low as thrift stores, but only one rung above.
It sells hand-me-downs from the stores higher up:
Mervin’s, Sears, Long’s, etc. Nothing at all
From Nordstrom’s, Macy’s, I. Magnim or other palaces.

So I am sitting in a chair by the entrance
Waiting for my wife to finish shopping,
Which is taking longer than I thought it would.

One thing I noticed as I was waiting
That most of the patrons, and almost all
Of the clerks, are Hispanics.
The dialogue with the cashiers is mostly Spanish.
This group is buying what they can afford,
Hand-me-downs.

Why did it take my wife so long? Because she chanced
To meet a professional colleague.
It doesn’t add to one’s allure
To be caught shopping, not at Nordstrom’s
But at Ross for Less.

Slightly embarrassed, my wife and her colleague
Had to chat about their business.
And the colleague explained that she shopped so near the bottom,
Because it was good therapy for her.

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