Dear Comrades: Difference
Dear Comrades,
I've been up north bidding for 16 years now, mainly in the predominantly white-staffed prisons where every interaction with a CO exists from a standpoint of power, and judgment of your fate is always in the balance. If you ask me, the prison dynamic for the incarcerated must feel like how slavery felt in the 1800s because the respect to treatment ratio is severely out of proportion and the racial dynamic is starkly apparent. You've read about some of my experiences; prison has been a certain type of hard on me. And just hard generally for everyone. Maybe I'm institutionalized because at this point I wouldn't expect anything less of it. Part of the reason why I'm here is to understand how it operates so that I can understand how to change it. Policy by policy. Law by law. Most of the perspective that would form those changes has been built off of the interactions that I've had with racist white officers and their enablers. I had only dreamed of switching the dynamic. Then, somehow that dynamic switched. The Black officers took the place of the white ones, and the world seemed to flip on itself in an instant.
Thinking back on it, it really started on the bus from Upstate Correctional Facility, where I left on May 8. When we got on the bus, the white officers said, "No talking. No fighting. No fucking. From Upstate to Washington Correctional Facility is a three hour trip. During that trip there's absolutely no talking on this bus. What's gonna happen is, once we get to Washington, we'll feed you, provided you stay quiet, don't fight and don't fuck. Green Haven will come get you, feed you again and take you to Green Haven. From there you'll go on to your individual jails and about your way. But don't ask me where because I don't know. Questions? No? Good!"
None of us were sure why he had to say “no fucking” or why he thought grown men wouldn't talk, but as soon as he was done talking the talking started, and no matter how many times the officer called for quiet the talking just kept going. Needless to say, when we got to Washington, the officers from Upstate refused to feed us. We sat in the cul de sac for over 40 minutes asking to be fed only to be ignored. When Green Haven finally pulled up, the Upstate officers got up, got off the bus with the food, and switched buses. Four Black officers then got on in their place and, suddenly, we slipped through an alternate dimension.
First of all, I was surprised. This was an all Black crew. I had never seen that before. The first thing they did was unlocked the door that separated us, leaned on the doorway, and said, "What's up, fellas. We ‘bout to feed y’all now. The trip to Green Haven is about three hours long. We'll make one stop between here and there and get you to Green Haven about dinnertime when we'll feed you again. As long as we have a good trip, no fighting and no smoking ‘cause everybody don't smoke the same shit, we'll let you know where you’re going when we get there. Good?"
The whole vibe was different. There was a respect factor. A level of ease. A "this is just my job, not a license to treat you like shit" kind of play that grew in strength from Green Haven to here at Sing Sing where I landed and where most of the staff members are people of color. If I hadn't lived it myself I might not have believed the night and day difference, but the difference was and is clearly night and day. It was as if Upstate and all of the racist up-north rhetoric was limited to north of Washington, and everything downstate was just on a different type of timing. Since then, my experience has been vastly different than anything I could compare it to prior. It's still jail, but relaxed, just a bit. I mean, I haven't felt one day where I was mentally pained because of something an officer did, said, or might've done in the future. I'm not walking the hallways on edge, being targeted or getting into senseless altercations because of some macho asshole CO. I'm even starting to learn to have genuine responses when asked questions. Like... It's okay.
The atmosphere down here is so much more relaxed. There's an aura of peace that has very quickly permeated me on this leg of my journey that I didn't believe that I deserved in jail because I didn't want to forget how hard this bid has been on me as I transfer into regaining my freedom. I never want to forget all the reasons that I have for never coming back here. Yet since I've gotten here, sometimes I find myself just absorbing the change of pace and trying to relax, feeling like I can finally chill and focus on completing my programs and coming home. Don't get me wrong, it's still jail and anything can happen, but by peeling the officer layer back on the onion, the one that has a pointed daily influence on incarcerated individual behavior, the desired end result is getting a little clearer not only for me as an individual but for us as abolitionists as well. It's obvious to me that in this whole punishment and rehabilitation dynamic, treating people humanely can go a hell of a long way.