In 2006, the prison where I was being housed routinely served a breakfast that included worms in the oatmeal, and sour expired milk. I’d been incarcerated for about a decade by then, and was beginning to untangle my shame and guilt from the idea that my fellow prisoners and I still had the right to humane treatment. In the hope of creating a change, I encouraged a nonviolent protest: One morning, in our 1,800-person prison, all but 100 or so skipped breakfast.
The change I created was that staff pinned me as the leader, and I took my first ride on that midnight train to Georgia. Albeit it was actually a transport van in Tennessee, to a different prison that was just up the street. Not surprisingly, my TV, radio, commissary and most of my personal property never made it to the new facility.
Later that same year, I wrote a letter to a local news station about some of the issues the prison population was facing at that time. They contacted the facility to arrange an interview with me, and on that midnight train to Georgia I left once again.
“Bus justice” is how prisons often punish organized resistance. To anyone who’s ever spoken up, the experience of being loaded into a transport van in the middle of the night without warning is a familiar one. Many people are transferred continuously so that before they can get their bearings in their new surroundings, they’re hauled off to yet another prison. In addition to personal property, mail and visits from loved ones often never catch up. It’s a traumatic experience, and an effective way of hushing up those who would cause trouble.
I’m an old man now, and my eagerness to hold “the man” accountable has tempered a bit. Not because conditions have improved, but because being shackled and loaded onto the chain bus does not work well for my arthritis and my bladder that demands to be emptied every hour. But as I reach the stage in life where one wonders how to make the best use of whatever time is left, I’ve found other forms of resistance that have often been more effective and more fulfilling. I can’t change the system, but I can create positive change for the people in my living unit, including myself.
“If I don’t resist this environment and the culture it wants us to adopt, I’ll be a shell of a human being, and my family deserves more than that.”
One of the groups I’ve started in prison is a Kintsugi discussion group—we named it after the Japanese art of using fine metals to put broken pottery back together, incorporating the cracks into the design.
About 10 of us meet on Sundays and help each other process the harms we’ve caused as well as our own past and ongoing trauma. At each meeting I always propose a topic of discussion that seems like it would resonate with the group—“reconnecting” was a recent one.
Perry, one of the members of our group, is haunted by the last time he saw his mom. She was crying as he was being handcuffed and taken away. She died three months later, and he believes that he broke her heart. He’s been consumed with that memory, and struggles with severe depression. Prison encourages people to sink into the darkest parts of themselves. But Perry wants to be able to reunite with his family one day, and this led him to join our group.
“Hopelessness kills the spirit, and it becomes impossible to feel anything,” he told Filter. “If I don’t resist this environment and the culture it wants us to adopt, I’ll be a shell of a human being, and my family deserves more than that.”
Prison encourages and rewards toxic masculinity, and it’s hard to believe that it’s okay to talk about your feelings when no one around you is doing it.
Over the course of his sentence John has struggled with being stuck in “fight mode” at all times. After being robbed over and over, and placed in segregation for defending himself, he’s developed a hatred for staff and prisoners alike. But he’s aware that even though our environment reinforces this mentality, it isn’t the way we’re meant to live. He resists the injustices of prison by refusing to let it rob him of his humanity and his ability to experience joy.
“I feel like if I stop fighting, I’ll die,” he said. “Resisting this craziness is the only thing I can control, so it makes sense to me … I’ve got too goddamn much time [here] to be filled with constant rage.”
Prison encourages and rewards toxic masculinity, and it’s hard to believe that it’s okay to talk about your feelings when no one around you is doing it. But a group setting, among peers who won’t use our vulnerability against us, allows us to explore our emotions—positive and negative.
James, for example, described living with so much regret and shame that sometimes he can’t raise his head to face people. But in our group, we can discuss shame as a collective.
“That feels like I’m sharing that burden,” he told Filter. “I even find myself smiling without feeling guilty sometimes. Joy is creeping back into my heart. I’ve missed it.”
Prisons across the country are offering less and less recreational or therapeutic programming. Often the only types of group activities left are religious in nature. I’ve been at facilities where there would be volunteers who’d come in to do workshops on various topics, but nothing like this. I’ve never seen any official prison programming that gave us space to share the brokenness we feel without expectation or judgment, and mutually encourage each other in putting ourselves back together. The community we build is the fine metal that makes our broken pieces stronger and more precious. To resist incarceration by holding onto our humanity, by finding thoughtfulness, mindfulness, peace and joy.
“It’s hard to focus on change when all you can do is try to survive,” said Damon, another member of our group. “I want to be different than I was. But the system has no help for that; it’s up to me.”
For many incarcerated people it would be impossible, or too big a risk, to gather together like this. But I cannot overstate the impact it has had on our small group to allow shame and self-worth, grief and joy, to sit at the same table. To allow them to coexist.
Image via Mississippi Department of Corrections