Political Cartoon

Amidst all this constant anxiety over the 700+ positive Covid-19 cases here in our 1200 inmate unit, a few of us have decided to vent our frustrations with a little political cartooning.  I story-boarded this one and sketched a rough draft, the drawing completed and reviewed by our informal Board of Standards and Ethics, consisting of a black guy, a Japanese-Dane (looks like a strangely tall Sumo), a Latino, a WASP, and myself (of mysterious Italian/gypsy descent).  To a man, we felt we might have downplayed the Donald's behavior, but here you have it:

Since last week another friend died of coronavirus here, and at least one more I know is in the hospital.  Depressing and no end in sight.  I keep on ticking, feel fine, never even a sniffle, but another guy just turned up positive in our supposedly negative unit an hour ago, so I'm keeping a low profile.  Stay well, everybody.

[Editorial comment:  This drawing arrived at my house today.  It's on 11 x 14 drawing paper, in crayon and ink.  I'm going to pass along the original to the artist's family - it's a keeper!]

The Covid Shuffle

Shelter in Place?  Stay at Home orders?  Social distancing?  It’s getting you down, right?  Well, try 90 days locked-in, locked-down, herded, contained, and disdained.  COVID-19 in Prison!  While we empathize, sympathize, and try to understand how people on the outside feel, we also roll our eyes.  “Forced” to stay home with some Netflix, YouTube, treadmills, delivery, backyards…shit, to us that would be paradise.  In here it’s a good day if you’re lucky enough to use the bathroom without two people in the neighboring stalls. On a rare occasion maybe you’re lucky enough to have a window on the back of the building where you can watch a sunrise and maybe see some wildlife, and if you lean over just right your line of sight may not include the razor wire.

 

If your window is on the compound side you have probably spent the past 3 months watching your friends on the way to medical.  With easily more than 700 of 1100 inmates already infected, there’s been a lot of traffic down there.  Among them, you have the seemingly healthy smiling ruefully as they are carted off to the Special Housing Unit (probably just running a fever but otherwise feeling okay). Then you have those doing what I’m calling the Covid Shuffle:  they say it feels like a bad hangover/head cold/exhaustion, and they amble down to the luxurious new accommodations. Unfortunately, there is also the all-hands-on-deck “Oh f__k we let another one die” situation. Through it all most staff just carry on with their typical indifferent attitude.

 

We continue to file paperwork seeking some kind of early release, in line with the federal government’s order, but the staff just acts annoyed, at times even angry, that we are trying.  Twenty men have died so far, plus one guard. We all feel like sitting ducks.

 

You may have heard that they tested all inmates, separated, isolated, etc.  Yes, they did test us – once – but then didn’t move anyone for another ten days!  For those ten days my cellie was a guy who had tested positive.  The unit I’m on, where guys are supposed to be negative, had two more guys infected during that ten days.  As one nurse told me, “It would appear the administration is doing the best they can to make sure every last one of you gets it.”

 

More testing?  Why bother?  “No need” we are told. As far as I know, somehow I’m still well after 90 days of this, and was told, “Well, you’ve probably had it, been asymptomatic (one administrator mispronounced this as “asystematic”), so what’s the big deal?  How about not wanting to risk illness or death, dude?

 

I don’t understand why officials can’t just tell the truth. Admit that just like the rest of the world, they can’t control the virus. That in spite of Emergency Orders, public outcry, and CDC advice, they just will not let anyone go home.  The federal prison system - driven by money, fear tactics, and politics – can’t seem to shift gears and show a little concern for human life.  Is it an 18-wheeler trying to turn around in an alley, a head in the sand hoping the problem will go away (the President’s apparent choice), or a deliberate middle finger?  Two quotes from staff:  “We can do what we want” and “We answer to no one.”

 

Frankly, I don’t care which of these it is, I just know that nearly my entire unit is sick and people are dying.  Was it Alexis de Toqueville in his Democracy in America who first said that you can judge a society by how it treats those at the bottom of the pecking order?  If that is true, and I hope it is, then I ask all of you on the outside, please don’t forget about us in here!  PLEASE!

The Cough: Corona in Lock-up - a poem

You wake up each morning and look all around.

The board is updated and the numbers tick down.

The grim faces, the quiet, the tension all about,

the coughing has started, but nobody's gettin' out.

Where's Slugger?  Saw him playin' chess last night.

The AW assures us that everything's all right.

The indifference, the neglect, the anger...we shout.

Cough's comin' for us, nobody's gettin' out.

160, 150, 140...the count continues to drop.

We're told, "Give it two weeks, it's all gonna stop.

We want to let you go, we just haven't the clout."

The cough's all around, someone please let us out?

Late at night in your bunk, you tamp down your fears,

face in the pillow, wanting to swallow your tears.

You've accepted the truth.  There can't be any doubt.

Some friends won't be back.  The cough took them out.

Beavis & Costello

We begin with a 45-minute argument over who has the classiest and smartest woman on the streets, concluding with:

Bro #1:  (haughty, condescending) Let me ask you this:  Do you know what a lobotomy is?

Bro #2:  C’mon man…what you think, I’m stupid?

Bro #1:  I don’t know, you tell me.

Bro #2:  Yeah, see, the chick at the hospital, when she takes your blood, that’s a lobotomy.

Bro #1:  Okay, good job.

Bro #2:  Hell yeah it is!

Bro #1:  That’s what my girl does, she’s a lobotomist.  (Then simulates mike drop and walks away.)

If I’d offered phlebotomist, would they have called this a nose doctor?  (phlegm?  Got it?  Ha!)

And this:

Watching the MTV show Ridiculousness the other day, featuring crazy things that happen in cars.  Two guys driving down the highway when a snake pokes its head into the tiny gap in a barely opened window.  The camera flashes to the speedometer – 75 mph.  One guy in the tv room turns to another and the following exchange ensues:

Guy #1:  Man, I don’t believe this shit!

Guy #2:  Me neither.

Guy #1:  I mean, like yeah, ain’t no way a snake jumped off the ground and grabbed that car at 75 mph!

Guy #2:  Yeah, maybe 25 or 30, but 75?  They smarter than that!

I’m surrounded by Geniuses!  Geniuses, I tell ya!

Gingerbread Whut?

Late night meetings in the Spanish TV Room among O.G. (Original Gangsta), Slugger, A-Rod, El Jefe and Mobile Vending.  Inmates posted up at the door to make sure no one from another unit enters.  Prepping an innocuous looking dude to be a spy, to infiltrate the other units.  Bad jokes circulate along the lines of “your mission, should you choose to accept it….”  Rounds of drinks (actually sodas) shared between groups of guys who never talk to each other.  Then a harsh debate that devolves into laughter over the best colors to use when … painting a four foot tall model of a lollipop?   Whut? 

You read that right.  We aren’t setting up for trouble.  No uprising in the works. 

No, we are building a 6-foot model of a Gingerbread House.  That’s right, all these BA convicts are pulling together with a shared purpose and guess what?  It’s amazing how much fun people are having.  Just goes to show if you give a guy an actual goal even guys you least expect can rise to the occasion.  The administration stumbled onto genius:  A Unit vs. Unit Holiday Decorating Contest.  At first the idea was met with typical cynicism.  They have official visitors arriving next week and want to put on a dog and pony show.  F___ them, most said.  But then one guy suggested, wait a minute, this might be fun, then another guy signed on, then a third respected prisoner joined in.  Their rationale?  Look, of course this is an administrative ploy (well, probably not, just dumb luck), but screw that.  Let’s just run with it.

That’s all it took.  Isn’t the old saying, “Incarceration is the Mother of Invention?”  So now we have gumdrop and candy painters, roofers, framers, background landscapers.  I crocheted a Santa Head to poke out of the chimney.  While maybe not Macy’s Parade worthy, our Gingerbread House beats anything you would buy at Michael’s.  No Lie!  I’d put it in my yard at home.  Pardon the language, but as one of our oh-so-hard straight from the hood gangstas put it when he looked up from his work covered in pink and purple glitter, “Damn, we got some talented-ass mother f______ers in here!  Why they let us waste away in prison?”  Funny and thought-provoking.  The human warehousing system we call the BOP Must Be Fixed!  But that is another letter.  For now, I just shake my head and smile.

I mean, maybe what we have here is the real holiday spirit.  Making the most of what you have, pulling together as a team, fellowship amongst diverse people.  Laughter.  Sharing.  A common goal.  Maybe I’m completely full of shit, I don’t know.  What I do know is that it’s a lot more pleasant to hear guys arguing over the proper application of glitter instead of Lebron vs. Steph and their Ticket!  So today we are mixing paints and hoarding cardboard.  January 2^nd all this stuff will be contraband again, but oh well.  One Day at a Time!

Happy Holidays!!

Climbing the Mountain

Winter.   Cold.  Dark.  Game of Thrones?  Nope, prison, winter being the toughest season to make it through.  Less to do and more time to do it.  Luckily, I’m in the South.  Can’t imagine spending the long months of winter imprisoned in some place like Minnesota.  But even here, when it’s cold, you can’t go out.  Cooped up inside, guys grow antsy, restless, and irritable.  The noise increases.  Sometimes it’s like an all-day basketball tournament in a crowded high school gym.  “Showin’ out” reaches epic levels.  Showin’ Out?  That’s the intentionally loud, obnoxious, look-at-me behaviors.  Yelling, rapping, arguing.  Reverberating throughout the unit.  In better weather, people go outside when they can.  They play cards or dominoes, they share stories, pictures and food.  But this time of year, while it’s not northern cold, it is too chilly to just sit around outdoors.  Most days, if you stay active, maybe working out for an hour or so, you can tolerate it, but just relaxing, trying to get a moment’s peace in the out of doors?  Not happening.

So the indoor crowding and the noise, sharing of resources and frustration that comes of it amplify.  I mean, most guys are not in prison due to their mastery of delayed gratification.  They jump lines for the laundry or computer room, hog tables for games, take control of the tv channel.  Tempers flare.  Add in the holidays and being here instead of home and you end up with 140 men just praying for Spring.  What to do?

I think of each day as a mountain that needs climbing.  I get up and sling on my backpack of mental barriers (some guys pray, meditate, or pace – I crochet), take my first steps on the path.  I fill up a big jug of patience for the journey, then decide on a mantra to chant as I go.  Instead of a true mantra, I opt for a daily goal, as corny as that may sound.  It might be based on some kind of personal growth, maybe working out or studying Spanish or helping others; it might be something generic like “no negative talk.”  All ready to go, I start the climb.  Yes, there will be obstacles (internal and external) along the way, the path is steep.  Just slog along, focused on my goal and the mountaintop of bedtime.

Some days I make it through with ease; others I struggle to the summit, and at times I fall short.  However the climb went, at the end of the day I pop in my earplugs, crawl into bed (under the sheets! – see previous post) and review how things went.  What went wrong?  What went well?  What might I do better tomorrow?  Then I read for a few minutes, turn out the light, try to let go of the tension of prison life, and hopefully sleep undisturbed.

Then it’s morning.  I open my eyes and yep, still in prison!  I check the bars on the window, the cinderblock walls, and turn to the mountainous day ahead.  I get a cup of coffee, my crocheting, set my daily goal.  One of these days the climb will end with me walking out the front gate.  For now, though, even at the holidays, I just have to take it one mountain at a time.

The Facts in Black & White

Just for fun, one recent rainy afternoon when everyone was stuck indoors, I set out on a sociological experiment here on the unit.  In an effort to explore racial stereotypes, I walked around asking people to complete the following sentence:  “All black (or white) people….”  Regardless of race or ethnicity, each person was asked to complete both sentences.  You may be thinking, that’s a risky thing to do, but I’m on good terms with most of the guys by now.  I think they see me as an open-minded person, essentially harmless, a friend to many and fair to all, etc.  Even so, I avoided the most virulently and openly nasty racists, because I didn’t want to stir up real trouble.  I went about my mission in the spirit of that old Eddie Murphy skit where he went undercover as a white man (you can look it up on them Googles).  So, for your reading pleasure, the results of my experiment:  The Facts of Life in Black and White.

All Black People:

Play basketball, are drug dealers, hate to blow their noses (weirdly, in prison this one appears to be sort of true), love horror movies, think Tyler Perry is a true comedic savant, are loud, think they can rap, yell at the tv during a movie, like big butts (…and they cannot lie…), and drink orange/grape soda exclusively.

All White People:

Pretend to like Tyler Perry, think liking Tiger Woods proves they are not racist, are rich, like to watch 60 Minutes on tv, somehow believe they could survive in the woods (like on one of those Discovery channel shows), can’t dance, can’t jump, can’t really play basketball, will take medicine for anything and everything, whether they need it or not (again, in prison, appears to be sort of true), think Ellen is better than Oprah, think they understand the stock market, and bought their drugs from black guys, but act like they weren’t criminals themselves.

Some of these answers made me laugh, some made me think, and others just had me scratching my head.  I guess we could have launched into a deep discussion about these stereotypes, but we didn’t.  You know what we did?  We laughed.  Hard.  We laughed because even as people came up with these comparisons, they knew they weren’t really true.  And sometimes just taking a step back, not taking ourselves and our attitudes so seriously, is a good thing (especially here in prison).  After all, life is hard.  Prison makes it harder.  But we don’t need to amplify all that by taking everything so seriously.  Happy Thanksgiving!  Peace out.