Solitary

In prison, you never talk about your charge but you talk about everything else. Multiple times. Multiple ways. Multiple versions. What you (supposedly) did, what someone did to you, what you will do when you get out.

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In prison, you are part of a human herd. In the human herd survival of the fittest is all there is. You become instinctive, not intellectual. Therein lies the secret to the master’s control. One minute you’re treated like a baby, being handed a spoon to eat with or being told where to stand. The next, with utter indifference, you’re being counted several times a day – you have no choice, you have no privacy. The next moment you’re threatened, pushed, tested. You develop a sixth sense as a means of survival, instincts to help you size up what’s going on around you at all times and help you make all the internal adjustments necessary to respond when it will save your life, but never before. Taking action at the wrong time could get you killed.

Once you have a reputation you have to do what it takes to keep it; you do things you don’t want to because it’s expected.

In every other way, the dungeon was the same, designed to torture prisoners, to mentally break them. They turned off the water in the sink for days at a time, so I was forced to drink water from the toilet. This was one of the most humiliating acts I ever endured while in solitary confinement. It taught me how strong my desire to survive was. I got so I could sit in one spot in the cell and feel the physical limitations of it yet know that my mind and emotions were unlimited. I knew I was unlimited.

The top 1 percent of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent of all Americans of all races, combined. And yet Americans believe that people of other races, religions, sexual preferences, and cultures are the problem. An unjust economic system can only be perpetuated if we, the majority of the population, are at odds with one another. Black Lives Matter was formed to campaign against violence and systemic racism toward black people. How was that being racist? When you see organisations like Black Lives Matter under attack for being ‘racist’, you are seeing the agenda of an unjust economic system at play – a system that seeks to separate groups of people within the majority to benefit the top 1 percent. If we can’t allow diversity, if we can’t accept our differences, if we can’t see one another as equal, if every race can’t begin to function on an equal footing with every other race in this world, we will never be able to unite, which means we will never be able to demand economic justice for all. We won’t be able to advance as a species. Capitalism can’t be ‘fixed’ or made to be fair or just; it must be destroyed. The very nature of a capitalistic economy prevents unity and fosters class struggle. Under capitalism there is division in labor and division among the workers themselves because they are taught to look out for the individual and not for their fellow workers. There is no equal distribution of the wealth of the nation under a capitalist system. We have to come together and look out for one another. In 1968, Martin Luther King spoke before a mixed-race crowd who had gathered to support the striking black sanitation workers, honoring the unity of the group. ‘You are demonstrating that we can stick together.’ King said, ‘You are demonstrating that we are all tied in a single garment of destiny, and that if one black person suffers, if one black person is down, we are all down.’