A Letter From Susan Crane
About a week ago the U.S. Marshals picked me up at the Elmwood Jail and brought me over to the Federal Correctional Institute In Dublin. What a change from the county jail! I can go outside, the guards wear white shirts and ties instead of cop uniforms, the food includes vegetables and the guards don't insult us all the time. The main difference is that this is a federal facility and my dispute is with the federal government. I'm one of a handful of political prisoners here. There are at least 150 political prisoners in the U.S. Those here are serving long sentences: 40 years, 55 years, ten or life. My sentence is barely an eyeblink.
There is no unemployment at this prison. Jobs are assigned without regard to age, race, handicaps, gifts or talents. I am lucky to have a job I enjoy, tutoring women in reading, math and GED preparation. Pay is about 12 cents an hour or around $5.00/week.
It seems that most people think prisons are to keep the violent prisoners of the streets, but from what I see, most of the women are here for nonviolent offenses. But the increasing demonization of prisoners continues. The mandatory minimum sentences along with conspiracy laws make for extremely long sentences. The average sentence here is about 20 years. Women are convicted on the conspiracy laws, not because of what they did, but because of who they knew. It's a system based on snitching in exchange for a plea bargain. People are given long terms on the say so of another person. It hard to prove that you weren't at a meeting on a particular date 5 years ago.
When I look around I see that about half the women are foreign nationals, and most will be deported when their sentence is up. About 45% are Hispanic, 30% black, 10% Asian and 10% white, maybe 25% don't speak any English. The prison is pretty much bilingual and I'm at a distinct disadvantage not knowing Spanish.
This prison is overcrowded. It was originally built to hold 336 prisoners, now there are about 950. The women say it has become more repressive recently, and they have lost their inmate clubs in the past few months. These clubs were a way to raise money, bring speakers, bands and workshops to the prison. They also included the hobby craft clubs, where women taught each other cross stitch, quilting and other similar skills.
Although this place looks like a college campus, there is the ever present threat of being thrown in the SHU (Special Housing Unit) if you do anything out of line or say anything that can be taken the wrong way. I ended up in the SHU last Friday. The guards here wear shirts and jackets with logos on them that say, "Dept. of Justice," The things that pop into my head when I see those logos...I think about the marginalized women who are here, treated so unjustly by the courts, not the sort of thoughts that those in power want to hear. Reminds me of Bob Dylan's song where he sings, "If my thought dreams could be seen, they'd probably put my head in a guillotine." After I missed an appointment, I had to talk to a lieutenant who was impressing on me the importance of doing my job, which included showing up for "call outs" or appointments. He told me that if he didn't do his job, I would get stabbed in the back. I told him that I didn't think so, and that I'd cast my lot with the women here, who for the most part were held unjustly. For some reason that upset him, he immediately had me cuffed and taken into the special housing unit. Fortunately for me one of the counselors (the guards have different job titles) came in to see me. I told her that I had been in county jail for 7 months and hadn't been able to go to services. She had compassion for me and got me out on Saturday. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been considered for release until Tuesday. I have to do 8 hours of extra work for her. In this system work is used as a punishment. What a different idea!
I'm writing this letter in the law library in the education building. Women are reading law books, discussing law, writing and typing. All working hard and in earnest.
I'm is the process of making friends, trying to stay healthy and out of trouble. After that 30 days in solitary in Santa Rita from painting shadows at Livermore Lab, I find that I don't respond well to being locked down alone. The extreme feelings of longing to be with other people, and the extreme frustration of being locked up alone that I experienced at the end of 30 days comes back to me right away. I have a lot of respect for Vanunu, who has been in solitary in an Israeli prison for over 9 years.
Thanks for all your prayers, letters, cards, news clippings and books. The book situation is good here. There is a library.
Love and Peace,
Susan Crane
I have finally figured out, late in life, that it isn't the words of the First Amendment that one should honor so much as the people who stood up and spoke and got hit over the head, who starved to death and were burned at the stake, and somehow made that principle of freedom of speech so basic. It was only later that some word-people put it into the U.S. Constitution. We got our human rights by fighting for them with words, boycotts, picketing, strikes....by organizing.
That's where these rights came from. They were never handed to us. All of these events took place in the United States, all of these battles.
Ann Fagan Ginger
I have had a couple of days now to sort out my feelings sufficiently to attempt a comment on your reaction to the treatment meted out by peace officers to demonstrators in your office.
I have no wish to offend you or to have you turn away from what I am trying to bring to your attention because of the strength of my feelings. Nonetheless, I cannot shake the feeling of horror and foreboding that came over me as I listened to your comments on KMUD. I am old enough to have lived through World War II, and I am enough of a student of history to recognize the dynamics of repression when I see them. I know how easily it can happen here, and when I see someone in a position of power such as yourself make the statements you made, I cannot help but think that it is happening here.
I know that you can scarcely be expected to appreciate such statements; who would? I realize that you think that you are correct in your approach; that many people share your views, and that you are extremely unlikely to change them. This is frightening to me, but I cannot sit idly by while such things happen.
Let us not mince words; you (a public official with a significant amount of power and responsibility) publicly and emphatically stated that it is not only acceptable but praiseworthy to you to torture (the police's own word) minor children engaged in misdemeanor violations of law. YOU DID, SIR! Put any face on it you like; that is what you said.
Mr. Riggs, I beg you to summon the strength of character to stand back and take as objective a look as you possibly can at that fact; to search your soul and imagine how you would feel to hear someone else say such a thing. I know that you have a heart, and a sense of what is right; we all do. I know that if you will look deeply into yourself you must realize that such an attitude is simply wrong. Nothing can justify it - not even the sheer terror of being burst in upon at your workplace by a bunch of rowdy young people throwing sawdust and wearing a mask. Your concern for the welfare of your employees is praiseworthy, but what in the name of God are your priorities?
Mr. Riggs, I tell you that angels hover around these young people, who are admittedly shouting "fire" in a crowded theater, but who insist that the theater is on fire, and that it will affect us all tremendously if we don't deal with it. They say that it is truly important to save that small fragment of God's undisturbed handiwork that still exists in the forests of this country (and in the world). History will prove them right, as it has the Freedom Marchers of the sixties and the earlier Gandhian protesters. Their chief crime has been to attempt to awaken us to something vitally important, while we insist on being undisturbed as we watch the movie. They shout louder, since we won't listen. So we torture them to shut them up. And we continue to think of ourselves as espousing all that is true, beautiful, loving and right. How profoundly shameful!
We would do well to remember that God is not mocked. We will pay for such behavior. "If ye do it unto one of the least of these..." "Better a millstone should be placed around your neck and you should be cast into the sea."
I'm tired. I'll spare you further fulmination. I know the odds against your ever reading this letter and, further, of its having any value to you. But I had to try. I can't get those children's screams out of my ears. Frank, what is to become of us.
Sincerely,
Peter O. Childs
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1997
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited