- from Schuylkill
by John Heid

From the Winter/Spring 2003 newsletter of the Loaves and Fishes newsletter of the Duluth, Minnesota Catholic Worker community:

CONJECTURES OF A GUILTY BYSTANDER II

Sun danced diamond-like On the concertina wire barbs. Miles of hardware fence Crowned by a shimmering helix. Razored. Three rows deep And 1,300 men. For years.

Late last summer, Barb Katt accompanied me cross-country on this pastoral Appalachian summit and delivered me to tawny cement buildings enclosed by razor wire.

Turns out this facility was just a way-station. A check-in point for my seven month retreat. In a matter of hours I was shuttled to a nearby prison camp... but not before the perfunctory strip-down, change-of-clothes, photo session. Like birth, one enters these confines buck naked and numbered. Here I am known as 13815-016. I am not 13815-016.

FPC Schuylkill is the crème de la crème of penal institutions. Five star. Low intensity dumpster to an art form. Gardens. A jogging track... campus-esque ambience. A whitened sepulcher. No wall. Few guards. Palatable food. Myriad recreational opportunities. An unfenced cage for nonviolent offenders. White collars and traffickers of drugs. Superficially comfortable. Schuylkill's no gulag.

Regardless of facility most inmates will confide the deepest pain of incarceration is separation from loved ones. Period. (Each and every night of this haul, just before sleep, I face northwest and whisper "sweet dreams, Miss Jane, sweet dreams.")

The gospel promises a hundredfold return in the service of the Good News...and FPC Schuylkill's delivered. The bounty is my brethren. This beloved community in exile. I won't romanticize. It ain't always pretty - being human isn't an Atlantic City beauty contest... we grow by fits and starts. Touch is common. Displays of compassion and brotherhood are not infrequent.

Given the disproportionate racial equation in U.S. incarceration rates, there exists a noticeable diversity here. In its metastasization, imprisonment is becoming more equal opportunity at the camp level.

Many languages are spoken here - often simultaneously - and the f-word, while not on the rare and endangered list, is much less common than in county jail.

We're double capacity - two men in a cube designed for one. So, this is a crash course in community. Every man has a story. Or two. I live in what's nicknamed "the ghetto" range - the loudest neighborhood in the mount. It is counterpoint to Quaker Meeting and Anathoth life. Bearable, even invigorating. And, yes, grace-full...

We're a microcosm of society herein. We ape it... prisoners are not exceptions to the rules. We've just broken them. At the dinner table we're indistinguishable from any at a Mall Food Court. So, with war as backdrop to my time at Schuylkill, brothers' reactions to national/world events are as diverse (or not) as main street. You can take a person out of the mainstream, but not the mainstream out of the person. I sense that many people on both sides of the line have scant sense of their own power and thus are less in touch with their heart-of-heart hopes. We here exchanged citizenship for consumership.

Prison is...

Prison is a mirror. I see myself in less censored ways herein. My clay feet. My unhewn ways. My topsy-turvy humanity. Brothers holding the reflecting glass up. Prison pares body and soul. With less space for physical ambulation, one goes internal. Our farthest odysseys are not taken by boat or plane - but by imagination.

Prison is my window - looking out. I see our society, our nation, our civilization (so-called) from the vantage point of an exile. From the perspective of 13815-016, i.e., federal property. From within the guts of the filthy rotten system. There's nothing to compare with the inside view; it compliments the outside one.

Prison is my retreat. I confess. I pray more in uniform. Not to get out, but to get in... into the heart of what really matters. Here at Schuylkill that's meant Shabbat prayers with Jews. Meditation with Buddhists. Bible study with Protestants. Sermons with the Nation of Islam. Rosary and liturgy with Catholics. In between, my silent walks around the quarter mile track serve as mute refrain which bind everything together.

Prison is my university. Learning from the bottom-up. Grassroots from jailed seed. My professors are criminals. Drug dealers and money launderers. Small time. And big. Men's stories are my lessons and my major is life. Bit by bit the granite of my middle class illiteracy is chiseled away. I begin to see new colors. Cynicism's grey is re-dyed rainbow.

"Prison is where I did more good than outside," said Phil Berrigan. Many argue the point. Yet from where I sit today, I understand. These environs invite soul-work. Gritty, unfettered, heart-rending, shoulder-to-the-plow, digging in... my soul's as much on ice as in Malachi's refiner's fire. Prison is the paradox of fecundity in the desert.

Out of Bounds!

"Out of bounds" signs mark the prison camp's perimeter. No walls of stone. No concertina coils or armed sentries. Just measly placards. Three words to keep us in our place. The razor wire's between our ears. We are a self-policed society. In here. Out there. The thin line of lock-step conformity. We're in our comfort zones - or inescapable discomfort zones.

Authentic liberation requires exiting these zones of so-called security. Poet and ex-con, Jimmy Santiago Baca (C-Train and Thirteen Mexicans) writes that such zones "deaden our souls to the universe." Most of us know what and where our lines are - those places we won't go - relationally, geographically, politically, spiritually... the class lines, the gender lines, the race lines... Freedom has less to do with where we can/can't go than where we won't allow ourselves to venture. To risk. To learn. To move beyond our no's.

War and revolution

We're at war. We've been at war. Long before bullets and embargoes, B-52's and DU missiles. War is first and foremost a matter of heart or lack thereof. Yet we can resist the death instinct implicit in a culture of war. Letter upon letter has migrated up this mountain to offer news from across the country, across the earth. People are finding their resistance feet and walking. Many have written me of the purity of prison witness in these times... how they wished they could make as clarion a statement as mine.. .puh-leeze. "Resistance takes place anytime any man or woman rebels to the point of tearing off the clothes resignation has woven for them and cynicism has dyed grey." (Our Word is Our Weapon, Subcomandante Marcos)

Barbara Kingsolver writes: "Good things don't get lost.Here's what I've decided: the very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for... and the most you can do is live inside of that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof." (Animal Dreams)

Wanted: Liberation homemakers. Liberations bus drivers. Liberation school students. Liberation bankers. Liberation plumbers et al.

Gandhi wrote: "I believe it perfectly possible for an individual to adopt the way of life of the future.. without having to wait for others to do so."

Amen, brother! I pray for the blessed impatience alongside holy patience.

Sweet peace....

(John Heid, a member of the Anathoth Community in Luck, Wisconsin, recently finished serving a seven month sentence at Schuylkill Federal Prison Camp for trespass at the School of the Americas and the Navy's Project ELF.)



The Nuclear Resister
April 2003