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Letters From Prison

November, 2003, my partner and I cut the lock on a small pedestrian gate leading on the Fort Benning US military installation as an act of nonviolent civil disobedience. Fort Benning is home to the notorious School of the Americas, a US training school for Latin American soldiers from whence emerged 12 dictators who seized power through military coups. We knew that we would go to prison for our action.

Below are letters, poems, and communiques from my six months in Terre Haute Federal Prison.

Sentencing Statement

These are the words which I spoke to the judge just before he sentenced me to six months in prison, a year of probation, and a $1000 fine, in 2003.

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Testimony: Conversion in Prison

Salvation in Ill-Fitting Blue Pants.

This is my testimony, written for Geez Magazine, about my conversion in prison.

Prison Letter: October 28, 2003 | Television, the Name of God, and the Stagnation of Mind

“People think television is a revolutionary invention, but it’s also a revolutionary experiment in consciousness that’s not all good.” – Thomas Doane-Swanson

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Letter from Prison | October 09, 2003 | Race, Arbitrariness of Law, and Vigilante Justice

“You know what they need to do with them blonde-hair, blue-eye devils? They need to kill ‘em right when they drop out they momma ass.” --My joy of a bunkie

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Letter from Prison | Early October | Alienated Labor

“And I survived because I made a point of forgetting . . . I did not count the days or the weeks or the months. Time is an illusion that only makes us pant.

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Letter from Prison | Constant Surveillance and Male Anger | September 13, 2003

One of those things which incessantly tormented me when I first arrived was the continual feeling of eyes on the back of my head.

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Letter from Prison: September 2, 2003

“I still feel funny watching movies without my wife and kids . . .”

. . . A child is crying and screaming, dragged by her mother away from the visiting room . . .

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Poem from prison

I slunk
noiselessly
candy on my breath
past a weeping violin.

I tore out my smile
and rolled it like a cigarette
smoldering gently.

He began to smoke
and my guilt subsided

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Letter from Prison: August 25, 2003

“’I would like to know which is worse – to be raped a hundred times by Negro pirates, to have a buttock cut off, run the gauntlet among Bulgarians, be flogged and hanged in an auto-da-té, be dissected

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Recent Quotes and Commentaries

  • C.S. Lewis: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of . . .Read More
  • Margaret Kim Peterson: "And housework of all kinds is increasingly relegated to the fringes of lives filled with other things. In her book The Time Bind . . .Read More
  • Charles Eisenstein: "Some would scoff at primitive cave-dwellers who imagined that their representations of animals on cave walls could magically . . .Read More
  • Soren Kierkegaard: "The results of reflection are both dangerous and unforeseeable because one can never tell whether the decision which saves a man . . .Read More

. . .All Quotes

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@jacloninger Hey Jaymie!! I totally just got this. How about a free share next time? — 9 hours 27 min ago
"There will always be those who wish to do us harm. To stop them, we risk awaking the same evil in ourselves." Star Trek: into Darkness — 2 days 5 hours ago
So we're giving kids SPEED (i.e. Ritalin) to fix a SLEEP problem (ADHD). Think about how that might backfire, folks. http://t.co/j1OSzveaEB — 2 days 8 hours ago
Ever come upon something you did before and you say... how did I do that again? And you have to learn how to do it again from scratch. — 2 days 12 hours ago
"Slavery stitched to the inside of my clothes... i know love will come to set me free." Ain't No Reason, Brett Dennon — 2 days 12 hours ago

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