Yes, I've already done that. When I got off parole I was able to write to both political prisoners, and to other prisoners inside. When it comes to someone like, say, Tom Manning, who the media likes to malign all the time. Tom and I go way back, to the days when we were in Portland, when we were in SCAR, and I consider him my brother. I miss not being able to be in touch with him, and to offer some support for him while he's struggling with still being in prison. So that's one of the things I did, to contact people inside to see what I can do. Tom has some very serious health issues right now, and the Bureau of Prisons is not known for providing quality health care. One of our codefendants died in prison many years ago from medical neglect. He could still be around today if he had received proper medical care, but he didn't. I have some involvement with a group called Jericho that does support work for political prisoners, and there will be times when I'll be writing to people inside, strategize about how we can support them politically and, with the problems they have, be it legal help, family, whatever they might be. To me it's really important. Some of these prisoners are like my extended family.
FROM NOVEMBER OF 1984, WHEN YOU WERE ARRESTED IN OHIO, TO MARCH OF 2010, YOU WERE EITHER IN JAIL OR ON PAROLE. ARE YOU ABLE TO LOOK BACK AND IDENTIFY HIGH POINTS OR LOW POINTS? I'M SURE THAT GETTING OUT OF JAIL WAS A HIGH POINT, BUT WHAT ABOUT LOW POINTS?
Yeah, there were low points. I couldn't identify them necessarily by time and dates at the moment. I can't always remember a night, years ago, after all the years of solitary confinement, when my mind feels like it's imploding on itself.
HOW MANY YEARS OF SOLITARY CONFINEMENT WAS IT?
Something like 12. Somewhere around there, and there were moments like that, when you feel like, shit, I can't do this. It's just endless. The kind of resources that you might use if you were out here in the community to deal with an attack on you of some kind, whether it's a network of family, friends, church, neighborhood people. All that's a lot harder to access inside, especially being in solitary confinement. For years I was able to continually rise above it because I knew why I was in prison. I wasn't in prison for personal gain or profit of any kind, or for randomly hurting someone. I was in prison for my ideals, what I believed in, and the actions I carried out based on those ideals and principles. Whether you're Nelson Mandela, or whether you're some unknown political prisoner in Iraq, that's a big part of keeping yourself together against the kind of attack you go under in prison. Whether it's physical torture or psychological torture. That was always a big part of getting through all the difficulties inside. Of course, I had a lot of support from friends and family and all the political community outside. I remained connected to people outside, but after many years of that working I felt like I was getting at a low point again. I guess you could say that there was something missing, and if I didn't find out what it was, I was going to weaken. What I found was that I had been, you know, around Native Americans, and got interested in Native American spirituality. I gravitated towards that and embraced it. To this day I participate in sweat lodges and other Native American ceremonies. That was sort of the last low point I was in inside. That helped me to get past it. That's what got me through those decades. But I didn't come through those decades unscathed. I didn't come through unscarred or unhurt. I don't think that anyone can go through that many years of isolation, and the more extreme kinds of isolation. Not just the isolation of being in prison, but being in a prison within a prison. Nobody comes through that unscathed. I've seen people turn into raving lunatics in there. I've seen people with serious mental health issues go into those isolation cells and just totally succumb to it. The kind of suffering they go through, to me, is unimaginable; because I know that a healthy person is going to end up suffering.
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