A
vision of Hell
Yesterday
I visited a 26 year old in the Boscobel prison, newly put on Administrative
confinement - endless solitary. He is bi-polar and in for fraud- sentenced to 6
years, has two years left . I first encountered him when he wrote me begging
for help as he had been slicing himself in solitary. He joined the food refusal
movement and agreed to be part of our lawsuit. He got no conduct report to get
himself transferred to Boscobel and then to interminable solitary= they just
told him he had created a disruption.
I
will be working with him to see that he makes it thru these next two years to
release but the vision of Hell I saw doesn't leave me. I have been a frequent
visitor to this prison because it is close to me but this guy is my daughter's
age and is as vigorous and alive as she is, - that opened in up new avenues of
pain within me I guess. He paces all day up and down his bathroom sized cell-
sleeps about two hours a day, is not allowed his radio, asks for a tv . I also
saw an "old timer " in his 30's .- He wrote the lawsuit that
supposedly got the mentally ill out of boscobel and secured training for the
guards and an outside recreation area etc .He is another political prisoner. I
was told they have added 15 more people to the AC unit in the last few months.
For my 26 year old friend to be able to be moved to Boscobel, they just changed
his diagnosis- corruption at the core of the system.
Our
lawsuit goes forward as do my reports to the legislature, etcetc- but vastness
of the horror in our prison system is really too much, it seems, for most
people to grasp and the prison just plows on with its destructive ways. In my
view it is slavery on a much grander scale than in days of yore and the
motivation is clearly money. Our prisons are the cash cows of rural communuties
and an incredibly elaborate and well healed prison industrial complex that
elects our fearless leaders. The one healing element that was always there for
the slave was the green world,- reminding them of the ground of a loving
beautiful world- our prisons have no such access. And the soul loss must be
complete for the guards whose only mental pathway to keep their job seems to be
toward sadism.
Here
is Link to our fundraiser. All donations appreciated and well used.
