Introduction to Incarceration 101

Last week, I had my first workshop in the correctional facility. In some ways it wasn't what I expected (I guess I expected prison to be super rough and for everyone to seem different than me... to look a certain way.)  Which was dumb, because they were all ordinary people with their own stories and context. The weirdest part was having to wait at doors with cameras watching, knowing that you're being watched and guided through by some invisible oversee-er-- it's almost like highschool except those mysterious locks and barbed wire fences... and when they want to they can make you wait, or forget about you, and you just have to wait and pass through the maze of doors-- it made me think of Palestinian's passing through checkpoints-- especially when inmates where not called off their blocks to come to the workshop and neither we nor they really have any power to change that, they just get there when they can.

They all seem like women I'd meet in any setting of my life. and then there's things like "I have nine years, plus time served." Nine years. It doesn't sink in. How could it in one day? I laugh with them, their hands popping into the air at once to ask questions about their cases (there is such an intense preoccupation with their individual dramas and case-- I guess all the time to lends itself to that-- so many of them have a sense that their judge or lawyer personally hates them or that they aren't being represented fairly.) Their hands pop up again- in response to how many are mothers, how many have kids under 18 (nearly all of them). "I lost visitation rights here. permanently. I won't have another visitor while i"m here." Again this doesn't sink in... how could it? No visitors for years?? I don't see their rooms, their day to day life, the violence and prison mentality, the power struggles... I do see the cameras, the "movement of hold", the doorless stalls in the bathroom.   I hear in their stories similarities to people I sat with at Dorothy's. People with trauma. People with substance abuse issues, people who are sick, people who made bad choices, people who resorted to violence... there are several women who blatantly have mental illness and have limited medication in prison (no narcotics)... all normal people. How did they get here? I guess I wasn't expecting them to be so normal-- daughters, sisters, mothers friends, lovers, caregivers... people who were nurses, one had a bachelor's degree-- though most of them got their GED in prison, come from situations of poverty... etc.  There is no clock and I forgot a watch so I felt anxious of time the whole first day... Sarah says she thinks it could be a mechanism of control to stretch the day, to make it endless or make it feel short. 

I looked at their faces-- some pretty, some tired, some older than they are, some younger... I look at the faces and I realize, I don't know a thing about it... about the path to prison or the path out? I walked through the front door easily.

"It took me thirty-years to learn to love myself, now isn't that ridiculous? Thirty-years." Some of them... of us... women... will we ever learn? Can we know how to knit ourselves back from trauma, sexual abuse, physical, emotional abuse or neglect or detachment, from lovers that trampled through our skin, from the way life never seemed to bend in their favor as their taught it can for some people, how some people have all the luck? 

I don't know how to be anti-racist. I don't know how to be a good feminist. I don't know how to work against these systems of oppression, of institutional racism, of unequal power, of trauma, of prison systems that don't rehabilitate or set people up for success... I don't know how to keep remembering that if you're white, you have to pay attention to your skin opening doors, unlocking opportunities, and to be actively supporting others.

Today a few of the women shared stories and participated in activities where they opened up and one broke down crying in an activity and couldn't go on...  and I thought about how strange it is that we can encounter someone we don't know at all and in offering them an opportunity to safely express their emotions -- so many people don't have that and are so eager for those moments of vulnerability. I think for me the best part of my work is just having genuine connections with other people, even if they're miniscule in the grand scheme of things... it just feels important to have interactions where I really acknowledge and pay attention to the humanity of another person. It was sobering and also hopeful-- because there are opportunities for them to find support and move on with their lives-- it felt good to be able to be part of giving them concrete links to what they need and just to listen, to put into their hands forms and contacts and resources.