I’ve broken down Oregon’s hole abuses before and documented their violations many times, as yet another year passes, another winter spent in segregation. Actually, spring, summer, fall, and now, winter again. Spent in the most freezing cells, no phone access, and mail obstructions with no mail violation notices.
I’m bound to this freezing cell they keep AC blowing in, day and night, despite it being winter. It’s the exact circumstances as last year in the hole. I’ve been in segregation for two years, with barely a month between. SRCI, OSP, same hole, same SHU, same abuse. These hole practices are heinous, barbaric, archaic, harsh, punitive, unjustified, and ineffective in achieving any semblance of “rehabilitation.” It’s a purely, strictly harmful, vengeful scheme, one that exacts a heavy toll on those incarcerated and their families.
Every day that goes by, a piece of me dies. Today, as I learn again, I’m gonna be held here longer. I’m running on fumes, almost out of steam. I want to cry most days, on the ones that I don’t want to die. Intrusive thoughts plague my mind, locked away, far from sunshine, just the dark, cold and damp, bright fluorescent lights that persist day and night. Even if I didn’t have a back and shoulder injury that kept me up all night in pain, I still couldn’t sleep. Not with these lights.
It’s cold as a refrigerator in here. Literally, the cartons of milk can be kept good, just by sitting in this cell. That’s how cold it is. That is, provided they give us milk that isn’t already expired and long past its due date. I am tired, and the new director of DOC was on OPB, preaching prisons being rehabilitory and not punitive, not warehouses. When I look out my cell, I see rows of storage shelves, cold storage. A warehouse of human meats for the grinding down by the system’s impressive repressive machine.
Matt Reese pretends not to see a thing because OSP and OSCI are the prize. EOCI, SRCI, TRCI, all the eastern Oregon facilities are meant for beating people in line, literally. OSCI and OSP, they’ll parade legislators around, and Matt Reese will frequent, but he wouldn’t dare come out here to see TRCI, overflowed with inmates warehoused, in line for IMU and SRCI, that’s also packed full. Dubbed “programming units,” only to escape the label of what they actually are: black holes that suck us in and won’t let go.
Segstitutionalization, a form of recidivism. Once you go, you’re on the list, tagged profiled, even if you get out. Watched. Expected to slip, set up to fail, often sending enemies on the same mainlines, knowing they’ll get in trouble, get into fights, and come back. Or they just don’t release you at all. You prepare to come back the second you leave. When you’re out, even the most petty thing can bring you back, should you get in trouble within six months of the release from SEG. Or you’re just someone they’ve just tagged as trouble. The green tag STM gives you, not unlike the identifiers given to individuals in death camps. Identifying your trouble, prompting every CEO to watch you closely, profile you intently and lock you back up quick. Not unlike the set up that is probation, fines and fees included. You pay the state for each stay in segregation like it’s a five star hotel and not a concrete hell, a grave, stone cold.
As I write this, my hand is like ice. I want to retreat to my blankets. This uncomfortable concrete slab topped with a mat and the square pillow I’m given. I can lay in pain, in some warmth, or sit upright on this metal stool and write. Cold.
I don’t even remember what a semblance of freedom is like. All my life, I’ve lived under the thumb of oppressive institutions, from home to schools, to behavioral health units, intent on diagnosing you with oppositional defiance disorder, to juvie and forced rehab, to the military, and now prison. Within prison, that is segregation.
Perhaps the most free I was, was as a homeless teen, singing on the streets, though of course, even then, I knew, no one is free until we all are. I think of Gazan’s open air rubble prison, and the people forced to negotiate themselves out of their own genocide. Make that make sense. As we in segregation must demonstrate to our oppressors, our right not to be back here, how must one convince the violent oppressor we are “ready”? Like Gazans must jump through hoops to be independent of that zionist fascist regime?
Some people say, “I don’t know how you do it, man. I couldn’t, if I were you.” Like I have a fucking choice. I’d break out if I could, in a heartbeat, like Assata decided she just was done being in prison. I’ve been there. I don’t have a choice but to live and go on, in an act of defiance in itself, but for lack of options to. No one chooses to do hole time. You just do it because you have no choice. Gaza is devastated, but they go on in defiance, and what’s the other choice? Hamas took up arms and fought in resistance their violent oppressor, in defiance, and what is the other choice? A life of servility, oppression, degradation, persecution, and violence? A slower death. Resistance is essence. Under occupation and violence from the state and institutions, it’s a right. It’s also the only thing to do.
I’m too cold to write anymore now. I’m sniffling and catching a fucking cold.