After 27

Trigger Warning*** This post contains content about state violence in prisons and sexual violence

I saw the man cry on the witness stand, for his family and for himself.  He pointed out his wife and neighbors in the courtroom.  All sitting by.  All emotional in their suffering.  Just wanting it to be over.  The man's father had died 11 days ago.  He was having a hard time.  The victims' fathers were there too.  All I could think was, "Well, who gets to be human, and who gets to grieve?"

Twenty people testified for the jury.  And what about those teens in the front row? the day Shoemaker said that the man came to his cell and dangled his testicles a few inches from his face.  "Yeah.  I think it was a few inches."  I wondered if they should be spared?  Or was it good for them to hear that?  To consider that possibility?  Was he their father figure?  Did they go on vacations together? Is this their idea of a normal kind of man? Who cried on the witness stand?

It doesn't matter that his daughter's got a good job for someone her age.  It doesn't matter that he got a medal for helping the women in the parking lot.  If you rape someone at the prison and the jury decides that you did, they will send you to prison.  It's another dead end kind of day.

Questions from the lawyers.

"Have you ever committed sexual assault?  Have you ever raped an inmate?"

He is having comprehension problems.  He is having trouble hearing.  But he knows what he did not do.

Except,  he didn't say no.  He said, "Your questions make me sick."  He said, "I'm a father.  I'm a son." I could never do something like that.

Cough.  Someone is being paid to make sure there are no outbursts in the courtroom.  No facial expressions. No gesturing.  I squirm in my skin.

But, but, but, Mr. Nicoletti, you must know that most people in prison are fathers and sons.  You must know that most abusers are fathers and sons.  But, but, well, who gets to be human, and who gets to grieve?

Questions from the lawyers.

There were no cameras.  There isn't any truth to get to.  All we got is what everyone says and it's hard to remember when the days run together, and it's hard to speak when you haven't trusted anyone ever.  (Not since the genocide.)  And everything that could possibly have happened could probably have been perceived as normal to everyone involved because this normal is a different kind of normal.  Although I could argue that this normal is not that far off from most kinds of normal.  Marcus is on the walkie-talkie.  A transwomen is being groped.  There is a hierarchy called prey on the most vulnerable.  There is a hierarchy called you don't have a choice, but we are gonna make them think that you do.

If you rape someone when you work at the prison and the jury decides that you did, you will go to prison.  It's another prison-loving kind of day.  So it's complicated.  Having the ability to see an individual as an individual within a group and it's perilous ascribing a tone to an entire group of people.  But the lawyer was right to argue that there's a pattern here.  That every aspect is controlled.  That there are two sides, the prisoners and the guards.  And it's not like on the street.  There are no vocal chords in prison.  You can see how the deck is stacked.  You can see how this could go.

Exception.  How this did go.

Exception. The lawyer took it all back in the papers.  He said, "I don't mean this to be a reflection on the hardworking people in the Department of Corrections."  He didn't mean shit about a pattern.  He just constructed the right lines.  He was just a white man, doing a white man's job on another white kind of day in a courtroom in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Where quote* "legal ideas are manipulable and the law serves to legitimate existing maldistributions of wealth and power. Where for example quote#, "many people believe that theft, murder, violent assault, and rape are clear examples of criminal conduct.  Yet, state-sponsored violence is seldom named and prosecuted as criminal, though it may involve killing large numbers of people and its effects are no less harmful than when those acts are performed by individuals or small groups."  Where a white prison guard was found guilty of 27 counts of official oppression, indecent exposure, simple assault, criminal solicitation and terroristic threats (the lesser charges), before a mostly white jury.  Nicoletti didn't stand for an entire group of people.  He was an individual among his peers and his race.

After 27 counts,  I heard Fred Ho say, "We have to move beyond this paradigm.  That whiteness is inevitable."  I squirm in my skin.  But, but, but who gets to be human Mr. Ho? Who gets to grieve?  I haven't got enough whimsy to argue that.  I mean enough privilege.  I mean enough liberation.  I mean, I'm just here in this courtroom, and I'm not feeling that connected to that depth of future looking.

*Mari Matsuda
#authors of Queer Injustice

Project Fish Book: Christopher

Learning to Silk Screen
Poems by Mary Oliver
Font Orator

Paint

Four ideas about paint from Engaged Resistance: American Indian Art, Literature, Film From Alcatraz to the NMAI by Dean Rader:

Those who see the project as having been unlawful will most likely see the paintings as graffiti; those who think of the occupation as having been necessary will find the images celebratory; those who see the takeover through a lens of anarchy, sedition, or subversion will likely view the works as desecration and defacement; and those who see the occupation as a project of positive resistance and self-determination will understand that the marking of the infrastructure of Alcatraz was a gesture of independence, autonomy, and self-naming.

Foundation Focuses on Children of Incarcerated Parents

The Pittsburgh Child Guidance Foundation released a report last month, "Changing Lives Changing Systems: A Decade of Advocacy for Children of Prisoners" that outlines findings, achievements and work yet-to-do to address ongoing challenges that children and families face when a parent is incarcerated. The Foundation is a service coordinator, advocate and grant fund distributor working in Allegheny County, where ten thousand parents are incarcerated every year, separated from eighty-five hundred children. At least twelve percent of kids in Allegheny County will experience a caretaker being incarcerated in their lifetime, and the PA Prison Society estimates one hundred thousand children affected by parental incarceration across the state.

 

Over the past decade, the Foundation partnered with the Allegheny County Jail Collaborative and others to research major problems facing children, parents, and caregivers, to determine how their lives are affected by the system and where there was room for advocacy. The initiative found that having one person incarcerated has the potential to impoverish a family for generations. In addition to lost wages, family members pay high costs for commissary and phone calls, court fees and lawyers. Being labeled a felon continues to have detrimental effects on people’s ability to get jobs after they are incarcerated, further damaging the family’s economic potential and stability. For children with incarcerated parents, having less access to resources made some kids feel different or angry. Some teens who were interviewed cited fighting in school or not getting attached to people in relationships out of abandonment anxiety. A three decade study on boys in Pittsburgh found that boys with incarcerated parents were more likely to drop out of high school, and that boys who drop out of high school were more likely to become incarcerated. Other children who were interviewed felt like it was their responsibility to take care of their elderly grandparents or alternative caretakers if their parent was locked up.

 

Some recommendations made by the Foundation to interrupt the prolonged negative economic impact on incarcerated families were offering subsidies to caregivers and changing the employment landscape for formerly incarcerated people. A previous report by a joint governmental commission compiled in support of a Pennsylvania bill, found it problematic that non-relatives who foster children are able to get financial assistance to provide for children’s needs, but alternate caregivers who are family members or friends of incarcerated parents cannot receive financial assistance from the state. Changing the employment landscape for formerly incarcerated people would require an increase in reentry services to help people find jobs, moving the box, quitting access to old incarceration records once people have turned turned their lives around, and supporting conscious raising movements to lessen the fear that employers have surrounding the stigma of incarceration.

 

Changing Lives suggest that more people are beginning to catch on to how supporting strong families and giving resources to reentry services decreases recidivism rates and jail operating costs. The Foundation and Jail Collaborative have the joint goals of raising awareness on how repeat crime and recidivism take its toll on the community and the effects on the community of children growing up traumatized and impoverished by mass incarceration. Recent justice reinvestment initiatives by state government in Pennsylvania found that every dollar spent on reentry services saves six dollars in incarceration costs. Increased programming to prisoners at the jail is part of the reentry initiative supported by the Foundation and outlined in the Jail Collaborative’s three year plan.

 

In it’s 2011-2012 progress report, the Collaborative has seen positive results for families and recidivism rates, by having designated treatment pods, work opportunities for prisoners in the jail, drug and alcohol treatment, graduated systems of rewards, increased mentoring and family support programs. They were also able to set up and fund a discharge center, so people weren’t being released from jail at two in the morning without a bus pass or their medications. The Jail Collaborative with the Pittsburgh Children Guidance Foundation aim to reduce recidivism rates by ten percent yearly. At the time of this report, only ten percent of prisoners at the jail could access education, family support, and comprehensive reentry services.

 

The Collaborative acknowledged in its three year plan the need to put children at the forefront and change policy that negatively affects families. The initiative found problems for children and families regarding staying in contact, having healthy visits and maintaining parental rights. Some progress was made by the initiative in extending phone service hours at ACJ, so outside people would be able to find out what was going on with their family members inside. A kid friendly visiting area was constructed in the lobby of the jail, that makes waiting for visits easier for children and families. SB1454 is legislation that would stop the current practice of terminating parental rights after 15 months of incarceration, and would allow parents who were actively loving their children while incarcerated, to maintain their parental rights.

 

In addition, SB1454 mandates training programs for police officers regarding arresting parents while children are present on the scene. The initiative found many children exposed to traumatic situations when their parents were arrested and no clear guidelines for what police officers are required to do. A family court judge worked with the initiative to develop guidelines for police training when making arrests in the presence of children. These include asking people if they are parents, allowing parents to designate alternate caregivers and call them, permitting parents to comfort their children, moving kids to another place when their parents were being handcuffed, creating kid friendly spaces or comfort places where kids can wait with the cops for alternate caregivers, and training cops in childhood trauma. The bill was introduced by Senator Greenleaf and could be implemented by 2013.

 

To the Grateful Poets: Love is the Higher Law

At work Bob asks if his radio is too loud.  "No" I say. "Thanks for asking." 

On the bus, people blast their music and everyone has to listen.  It is a battle of wills.  Sometimes people stew.  Sometimes they ignore.  Sometimes they confront.  My general participation choice is to not react.  I remember giving it 4 hours once.  I think 4 hours is small compared to whole lives.  I think some people go their whole lives without permission to react.  I acknowledge them.   

I no longer need so many things.  If I ever did it was because I understood only one dimension.  Now there are all these soul people and all these dimensions.  There is hardly space for complaining.  I know we are comfortable in increasingly less spaces, but that doesn't mean we don't find comfort in our lives.  We get out of bed in the morning.  We breath.  I am sitting here thinking about how life is long.  How life could be so very long.

I don't want to live with you for a year and have you keep your cereal bowl in your own separate cupboard.  I want us to drink out of the same glass.  I want your life to flow over into mine.  I want the things that I count on to be your things and I want you to always count on me.  I won't expect anything from you.  I give you the benefit of the doubt.  But I do expect things of myself to give to you.  Because I don't think we regard each other enough. I don't think we give each other enough space to learn how to be people in a world like this.

Do you remember when they talked about wearing masks at work?  Do you think about that everyday?  Do you think about oppression and how it is affecting us? I want to know we share a framework.

I'm not going to thank you more than one time for being here, maybe not even one time.  It would take a lot more of me reimagining this as collective liberation.  It would take a lot more of a commitment to us building something together.  We would need to expect things of each other.  We would need common language.

I no longer think of numbers or success.  Only that I had this thing happen in my head, and now it is in my mouth and in my chest and maybe dancing off to somewhere else and maybe you can see it too.  If you could choose a space in the world and color it in with all that moves you, I could respond to that real easy.  I could find you.  If you can't choose, then I want you to take it.  I want for you to take whatever you can grab.  Whatever you need to be well.

So I tried understanding the grateful poets.  But then I resisted trying.  Someone made this soapbox and someone owns this instrument and the music gets relatable sometimes.  That's it.  That's why I came.  I used to believe that if we built something they could respond.  They being us, I mean anyone.  I mean I still sort of do.

So, if you need your volume to be loud, do it.  My song is not that delicate.  It could be grand to just lie back and float in everyone else's and to come when I am called for.  It could be enough to keep showing up, so long as my body allows. 

The 1800's

I had an endearing trip to the post office.  I was picking up the Book 'Em mail on a rainy day in full winter gear.  As I go through the line, there is a youngish, white, bro-ish looking person who has approached the clerk twice.  He is confused.  As I'm leaving the line, he says, "do you know how to do this?"

I pull over.

He is holding an envelope and a fill out form. "Yeah," I say.  "This is the 'to' area, where you put in the address that you are sending this to.  And this is the 'from' area, where you put in the address you are sending this from."  This is not enough.  He is not getting it.  Fortunately, I love giving directions and I love the mail, so I slow it down, and walk him through line by line.

It comes out that he is sending an absentee ballot express mail to New Jersey for 20 bucks.  He is committed.  He knows his vote is small but maybe necessary.

"You had a lot of mail there, so I figured you knew what to do," he says.  I tell him about Book 'Em and how my hunk of envelopes was a bunch of requests from prisoners asking for books.   It turns out that he used to live at Ft. Leavenworth in Kansas on base because of his dad.  There is a federal prison there that some high profile characters have passed through.  I've heard of it but I forget which people he named.

So we chat for a bit, and then we turn back to the form.  He is still puzzled.  I resume my direction lending, repeating when necessary, showing him how to identify where he lives and write it out.  I tell him that I had forgotten that some people are too young to know how to use the post office.

"Oh.  You can't be that much older than me," he says.

It turns out that I am in fact 9 years older than him, which makes him the same age as my little brother.  I didn't make this little brother age connection until a few days later, but it made me think about how long nine years are and about my little brother.  I wonder if he would have similar post office questions.

As my post office person begins to get the hang of the address thing, he says, " I feel like this is the 1800's."  "No," I respond immediately.  "More like the 1990's."

We start talking about voting.  I tell him that I am not sure if I will vote because I am like a "super radical abolitionist" and so I don't think I can vote for any of the people.  I actually say the words "super radical abolitionist."  He suggests that I vote for Obama because he thinks maybe Obama is closer to my views, and, "sometimes you have to go for the least worst."  I think this is solid advice, even though it hurts me to follow it.

We finish the form!  Hooray!  He thanks me, and sincerely hopes that I have a good day, but, well now it is evening.  So he sincerely hopes that I have a good evening.

I breeze out of there feeling hopeful.  I feel grateful for all the times.  All the times that I have been grounded by strangers.  How we have managed to share curiosity even though we mostly fit into these very separate boxes.  How there is still room for all of us.  How engaging with my perceived opposites has so often brought genuine and positive and unexpected results.  Thanks bro!  Thank you.    

Report Details Solitary Confinement in U.S. Detention Centers

A report released by the National Immigrant Justice Center and Physicians for Human Rights, Invisible in Isolation: The Use of Segregation and Solitary Confinement in Immigrant Detention, documents the use of solitary confinement in U.S. detention centers and makes recommendations for Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Congress to abolish it. Considering the psychological and other health effects of solitary confinement, the lack of judicial oversight and avenues of legal redress for detainees, and the fact that immigrant detention is not synonymous with punishment, the report finds the current system, maintained by ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security fundamentally flawed.

Case studies of detention centers and jails and interviews with individuals who had experienced isolation showed arbitrary use of solitary, abuse, lack of medical and mental health treatment for chronic conditions and trauma, and discrimination based on gender, race, and language. The report was created from the testimony of former detainees and from data collected from ICE by freedom of information requests. Researches asked for statistics on the number of people held in solitary, and for detailed information on how long they were detained and what policies and decision making was governing their placement. ICE adopted a best practices document in 2011 to set up standards and policies for housing immigrant detainees. However, as of 2012, they have not moved any of their facilities or contracts into compliance and are not required to report on their actions.

There are approximately 34,000 people in U.S. detention centers on any given night. Therefore, what we have is a continuously growing number of people moving through a system that is extremely costly and highly unregulated.

The report concluded one main problem with immigrant detention in the U.S. is that all of the standards put forth by ICE are based on the American Correctional Association model, essentially rendering detention the same as jail. Detainees are often mixed in with people who have been convicted of a crime, and are often put into solitary confinement for not following rules, despite not having been convicted of a crime, or having papers to be processed through the judicial system. In addition, detainees often lack legal representation or avenues to challenge their placement in solitary. Faced with a choice of going to the hole, some people reported abandoning their immigration or asylum seeking process because they feared further dehumanization in isolation.

Housing people as detainees is much more expensive than alternatives to detention both psychologically and financially. The effects of solitary confinement have been studied on general prison populations in the U.S. In 2011, the US Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez, concluded that isolation over 15 days is “prolonged” and could have lasting psychological effects. He concluded the use of solitary confinement should be avoided as much as possible, should not be used to house mentally ill prisoners, and should be overseen by an independent review body that could have daily access to those being isolated. These standards are hardly enforced in U.S. prisons, and even less regulated in the detention system. And though the cost of housing a large number of people in immigrant detention centers significantly outweighs the cost of more constructive methods of alternatives to detention, Congress has continued to pump money into the system.

A report by the Vera Institute of Justice found that community release programs work well for detainees and the vast majority of people show up for their scheduled hearings. However, for 2013, The U.S. House appropriated over 2 billion dollars for housing immigrants, considerably more than the 111 million for alternatives to detention. Reducing the number of people in detention centers would decrease the number of people who could be traumatized by solitary confinement.

The authors recommend several detailed steps for ICE and Congress to take to abolish the use of solitary within detention centers or jails holding detainees.The summary of these include: conducting a comprehensive review of segregation and solitary use nationwide, using alternatives to detention for vulnerable populations, not using jails or jail like facilities, developing legally enforceable regulations based on civil and human rights standards rather than correctional standards, and withdrawing monies from facilities who do not comply with all standards. Much like the Human Rights Coalition’s campaign against abuse and solitary confinement, the authors recommend segregation and isolation of detainees as a last resort, and independent monitoring by an outside organization with reports that are publicly available.