Among the experiences that change, that shape...

2009-11-10T22:11:00.004-06:00

It is not often that I will openly admit to being touched, emotionally rocked by an experience in life in a way that leaves me with a bitter taste in my mouth and a heavy heart. It is more historically in my character to claim to be untouched by disturbing images or experiences, but there are rare times that necessitate sharing.

In September of 2009, I joined a student group on a trip to the Louisiana State Penitentiary (more commonly known as "Angola," after the city in which it is located) as an observer for personal and professional reasons. I knew that being there, seeing the prisoners and the "camps" and the cells, would be intense, but I was not prepared for just how intense it was.
The drive there had me on edge, a dual force of excitement and tension wracking my nerves. After loading into the old school-style tour bus and sitting back as we began to trundle down the road toward the heart of Angola, the nervous anticipation began to fade into a somber state of observation. The landscape rolled out before me like a scene out of Roots: African-American prisoners wandering among the rows of vegetation (since Angola is, after all, a plantation prison in Warden Burl Cain's own words) as mainly white male guards kept a watchful eye from a distance. [The video under "own words" provides a glimpse of what I saw at roughly 0:24-0:34.]

The tour guide was at this point requesting questions from the students, and one woman in the back asked about the crops on Angola grounds. Angola is built on 18,000 acres of farmland, about 10,00 of which are used to grow various crops: strawberries, cabbage, watermelons, squash, zucchini and many others. In addition to the vegetation, Angola is home to hundreds of cattle. It would seem that the prison is set up to provide food for the inmates (or "offenders," as is the now-preferred term, according to the tour guide), food grown by inmates to feed inmates.

Not surprisingly, though still appallingly, none of this food is for them. In the tour guide's own chuckling words, the food grown and harvested in Angola is "too good for offenders," that lower-grade food is shipped in from an outside source. (We later had the displeasure of eating a prison meal for lunch, and let me tell you, I would not wish that torture on anyone.)

Somber observation began to sour with distaste.

We were brought into a small conference room, where Sirvoris "Shaq" Sutton, an inmate in his second decade at Angola and DJ for the on-site station KLSP, spoke of his experience in the institution. He spoke of how disturbing the whole process was, of being locked up when conditions were overcrowded, of others he encountered while there.

"Every fifth bed, there was an illiterate man," said Sutton as he explained that the cellmates, made up in large part by young African American men, often pretended to read newspapers and magazines in order to keep their illiteracy a secret. "They're just surviving."

That last statement still sticks with me.

Sutton, a middle-aged African American prisoner, spoke to us to the best of his ability amid interruptions by the older white male tour guide. The tour guide would interject rudely, not waiting for a sign that it was okay to go ahead, sometimes even speaking down to Sutton, a stone's throw away from calling him "boy."

Distaste fermented into disgust.

I have heard cells spoken of, heard of solitary confinement, heard of the utter desolation that can encroach on one's mind inside of a cell after a period of time, but it never truly hit home to me. I have never been claustrophobic nor detained in any similar manner, so the ability to grasp it was beyond me. Sutton gave me a taste of it:
"You get in that 6x8, and the walls just start to close in on you, suffocate you."

Something in his voice and his faraway look brought back memories of panic attacks, where undulating walls marched toward a hyperventilating and trembling teenage girl, and I shuddered.

When Sutton was asked by a student what he would like to see done differently in the system, he answered without hesitation, calling out for a true Department of Corrections and not "incapacitation through incarceration." I am fairly certain the tour guide (who later spoke of his decades-long experience in the criminal justice system) flinched, if only a little, but this may have been wishful thinking.

Following our talk with Sutton, we were crowded into the bus once more and brought to the "Red Hat area," which includes an old building used in Angola's earlier days. It was complete with 38 or so 4x6 cells and what the tour guide almost nostalgically called "Old Hickory," a replica of a wooden electric chair that was set in a room just feet away from the cells in the adjoining hall. I honestly cannot tell you what was discussed in this area; thoughts of what inmates in those cells heard and saw and smelled while executions were taking place overwhelmed me in that small, crowded room. I was the first back on the bus.

Our next stop.... It still pulls forth strong and very tumultuous feelings in me, conflicting feelings. We visited "Camp F," where the lethal injection table is housed. "Table" does not give a legitimate image in one's mind of what is truly there. This may give a better look.
It is haunting to see in person.
I would like to think that any unfortunate man who found himself on Angola's table deserved to be there, but the sobering facts surrounding innocents on death row weighed heavily in my mind as I stared solemnly at that table and at the two viewing rooms, one for family and one for media drones, that overlooked it. Say what you will about a few hundred being hardly evidence of a problem in the larger scope of tens of thousands who "deserve what they get"; to me, a single man or woman incarcerated in any way, let alone forced to endure the horrors of solitary confinement and death row, under false pretenses is one too many and threatens the overall reliability of an already-flawed system.

We were brought to the death row camp next. The aforementioned facts remained, floating around in my head, but hearing the gasps and quiet exclamations from the group instructor (who has done research on the cases of the convicted) upon reading the name placards for the prisoners was a strong reminder that there are still those convictions that stand as they do for a reason. But, blame the bleeding heart in me, I could not draw myself away from journeying down the path of thought that asked, How did they get where they are now? No man that I saw in there that day could have been considered "middle class" or any class above that. Words of a wise woman on the inequalities in our society came floating back.

We all packed back into the bus and rumbled like a thunderous cough past "The Dog Pen," a place that those familiar with the story of the Angola 3 should recognize. A statement from the tour guide involving the pen being "a good place to work as an inmate" and being acquainted with story of the Angola 3 myself had me nearly gagging on roiling disgust.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
However, their story is one for the next blog, when I will hopefully have more time and a better state of mind to describe what the Angola 3 went through and what I learned through a brief interview with Robert H. King.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I lack the writing ability to relate to anyone the full impact that those few hours at Angola had on me, to say how much it brought sorrow into my heart, to convey the outrage at many facets of everyday society that so many choose to turn a cheek to. I wish I could do this, but I cannot.
After the tour, I walked numbly to my car, turned on some music, sat back and stared at the bushes in front of the car. Stuck on autopilot, I pulled out of the parking lot and drove a measly ten seconds before I broke down and had to pull to the side of the road to sit back and sob.
The drive home was rough.

That was it. That day still haunts me. Angola now represents all of the ass-backwards thinking in Louisiana for me, all of the inequality in the "justice" system, all of the filth and wretched behavior that societies have spewed forth over the centuries.

12:13 a.m. finds me in a sorry state, and I am unable to close this properly. I hope that this made some sense, maybe opened some eyes.
Stay tuned for more in-depth (and hopefully more organized and timely) coverage of information gathered while touring Angola, while researching the Angola 3, and while interviewing King.

Numero Uno

2009-10-07T19:18:00.000-05:00

A thought struck me rather suddenly just this past Tuesday morning while speaking with an old high school friend. We mused on our plans beyond college, and I had laughingly suggested we create our own magazine.
I suggested it without any real thought. Friends and I had had similar conversations in the past, imagining all of the awesome jobs we could possibly have… “one day.” As I made the suggestion to my friend on Tuesday, however, it rapidly became clear to me that I had reached an age where such flights of fancy were plausible. Fantasizing about dream jobs has morphed from a distant “one day” into the looming question “Why not just go for it?” Young though I may be at twenty years, I have come to that fated “one day” and stand at the precipice of thousands of what-ifs and whims just waiting to be acted upon.
Now if I could just manage to get my act together, these things might actually happen.

Until next time.

In Sight, In Mind

Among the experiences that change, that shape...

Numero Uno