{"id":349,"date":"2011-12-09T13:11:12","date_gmt":"2011-12-09T13:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rashidmod.com\/?p=349"},"modified":"2013-12-09T16:11:33","modified_gmt":"2013-12-09T16:11:33","slug":"living-for-the-oppressed-a-journal-entry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/?p=349","title":{"rendered":"Living for the Oppressed: A Journal Entry (2011)"},"content":{"rendered":"

 *This \u201carticle\u201d is an entry made into a journal I was keeping in 2011 \u2013 a sort of prison diary \u2013 which only lasted a couple of weeks. (KRJ)<\/em> <\/p>\n

\n A typical day.<\/p>\n

\n Had a good one-on-one exchange with KB today. Although he\u2019s housed in the cell next to me, we hadn\u2019t talked for about a week. He expressed frustration with me. Feeling years in segregation has affected my mind \u2013 negatively \u2013 in that I don\u2019t seem interested to use my \u201cwits\u201d to get out: of segregation and ultimately prison. He goes for the \u201cbe a good boy and they\u2019ll let you out\u201d line. Had to correct him.<\/p>\n

\n He\u2019s deeply idealistic. The affective type: highly emotional, sensational, which he attributes to his zodiac sign (sigh!) \u2013 Pisces.<\/p>\n

\n I\u2019ve had to explain \u2013 seems repeatedly \u2013 that I am<\/em> avoiding trouble. It\u2019s never worked. He\u2019s heard numerous ranking pigs admit that many factors weigh against my ever seeing an open yard in Virginia, which include that I stir up too much trouble challenging and generating protest over foul conditions and our (mis) treatment, my past extreme (counter) violence (against pigs), a lot of ranking pigs and administrators deeply resent me, they feel also I \u201ccan\u2019t be trusted\u201d walking out and about, I have \u201ctoo much influence,\u201d I must be kept under close surveillance, etc.<\/p>\n

\n Even under segregated confinement I\u2019ve been on 24\/7 video monitoring since 2008, and since 2009 anytime any pig opens the hatch on the cell door to give or receive anything to or from me, and whenever I\u2019m brought out of the cell (handcuffed and leg-shackled of course), I\u2019m to be audio-video taped on portable camera. I\u2019m confined under \u201cspecial\u201d management \u2014housed in a cell specially constructed just for me, with special reinforcements around and in front of the cell door, the bed, the light, the sink\/commode unit and the back window; special glass in the cell door window, and all cell fixtures removed: no shelf, desk, mirror, electric socket, etc.<\/p>\n

\n He sees, hears, knows all this, but believes in the general rhetoric, \u201cif you lay back, sooner or later they\u2019ll let up.\u201d How do we keep falling for the old carrot on a stick?<\/p>\n

\n In the end he conceded, I may just be stuck in seg after all. But he<\/em> personally couldn\u2019t do it, which is what it really boils down to. Projecting his own subjective \u201cneed\u201d to get out onto me, his \u201cneed\u201d to believe in the system, that the pigs are honorable and follow their own rules. Clinging to false hope, which flies in the face of his own lived experiences of 25 years, going back to his childhood. His earliest years were marked by being taunted and brutalized by the cops in his \u2018hood.<\/p>\n

\n He also once told me how he\u2019s still emotionally and \u2013 also showed me \u2013 physically scarred by an experience in Richmond\u2019s juvenile detention center. The pigs hog tied and tortured him for hours, after<\/em> they\u2019d already beaten him brutally (with fists, boots and bodily jumping onto him), and dislocated his shoulder and his collarbone, which is permanently deformed and chronically dislocates spontaneously.<\/p>\n

\n When describing the experience sometime back, he implored \u2013 almost as if appealing to the pigs, who had brutalized his pre-adolescent body \u2013 \u201cYou can\u2019t do that to a child! I don\u2019t care what he did!\u201d He\u2019d actually done nothing but refuse to be bullied by the detention center pigs. My response: \u201cI know. I know. That\u2019s why we\u2019ve got to change this system, this society. It\u2019s happening everyday. You weren\u2019t the first or the last.\u201d The experience shattered his trust in \u201cauthority,\u201d but he still clings to false hope.<\/p>\n

\n The idea that the entire system is itself illegitimate is just too big for him to grasp. To him, it\u2019s just too big and powerful. The world he knows \u2013 the ghettos and prisons \u2013 are completely regulated by the system\u2019s enforcers who have absolute power. He can only fathom competing against and venting on other poor and powerless people. He doesn\u2019t even grasp the world beyond the segregated city blocks and cellblocks.<\/p>\n

\n He was studying for a while, and then shut down. I had him reading Mumia\u2019s, We Want Freedom<\/em> ((Mumia Abu-Jamal, We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party<\/em>(Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2004).)), and Zinn\u2019s, A People\u2019s History of the United States<\/em> ((Howard Zinn, A People\u2019s History of the United States: 1492 to Present <\/em>(N.Y., Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005).)). Like many from the \u2018hood, he has a keen and gritty intelligence, and was moved by these works \u2013 he also expressed a sense of betrayal by a school system that never taught him these histories. But then he withdrew. I believe he found the history of systemic oppression by the powerful against the masses of common people and their struggles overwhelming.<\/p>\n

\n All he cares about, he protests, is his<\/em> family. \u201cFuck everybody else!\u201d, unless he personally knows and likes them. His thinking isn\u2019t exceptional. I struggle with him. Reminding him that his<\/em> family is part of a much larger community<\/em>. If the community isn\u2019t safe and supportive, neither is his family.<\/p>\n

\n He\u2019s receptive. . . for a while, then retreats into his own world, working on writing a fantasy novel. Then resurfaces after a few days, or a week, or more, as he did today. Comes back for more. Each time he\u2019s a little more receptive, his mind grows. It\u2019s a protracted process. I know this. Winning hearts and minds.<\/p>\n

\n He implores me to get out of prison. \u201cWe need you out there,\u201d he tells me often. A lot of our peers tell me this. I reply, \u201cYou can do anything I can. United with others of like mind, you can change the world.\u201d So I struggle to teach them, learn from them. And they struggle in return \u2013 even if only unconsciously at first \u2013 to grow, to learn, to teach me.<\/p>\n

\n Many find it \u201codd\u201d when I ask them to criticize me, to point out my flaws, to help me<\/em> grow; they\u2019re like, \u201cHow we gonna teach you?\u201d Most, conditioned by bourgeois (il)logic, feel a teacher or leader is above criticism. I explain, one who cannot accept the people\u2019s criticism and correction is not their leader, but is capable only of being their oppressor.<\/p>\n

\n I give them Mao\u2019s \u201cCombat Liberalism,\u201d ((Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Vol. 2 (Foreign Languages Press, 1975).)) and his talks on Democratic Centralism ((John Chinnery and Tieyun trans., Mao Tse-Tung, \u201cTalks at an Enlarged Central Work Conference,\u201d Chairman Mao Talks to the People: Talks and Letters: 1956-1971<\/em> (NY: Pantheon Books, 1974) p. 158.)). Explain to them the mass line; the dialectical relationship between teaching and learning, and the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge \u2013 that learning goes on so long as we are alive. It\u2019s what advances human society and relationships. I have them study Mao\u2019s, \u201cOn Practice,\u201d ((Mao Tse-Tung, \u201cOn Practice,\u201d Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, Vol. 1<\/em> (Foreign Languages Press, 1975).)) then write and return to me summaries explaining the articles. They grow; I grow.<\/p>\n

\n Some are more receptive than others. But they all come back for more … sooner or later. They are <\/em>\u201calive and learning,\u201d some in spite of themselves. These are our people. The lowest of the low. To know them is to know oneself. They are me and I am them. How could you not love them? I live for them.<\/p>\n

\n All Power to The people!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

 *This \u201carticle\u201d is an entry made into a journal I was keeping in 2011 \u2013 a sort of prison diary \u2013 which only lasted a couple of weeks. (KRJ) A typical day. Had a good one-on-one exchange with KB today. Although he\u2019s housed in the cell next to me, we …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-news-and-updates","tag-red-onion-state-prison-conditionsnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=349"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":949,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions\/949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rashidmod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}