For incarcerated people and their families, the holidays are the most painful time of year. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, host Mansa Musa and TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speak frankly about what it’s like to be locked up during the holidays, why inmate suicides, violence, and depression spike this time of year, and about the life-saving and society-improving steps we can take this holiday season to help prisoners maintain contact with the outside world.
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And I’m Maximillian Alvarez, editor-in-chief of the Real News Network. As we reach the end of an impossibly long year, all of us here at the Real News want to wish you and yours a happy holiday season. Whether you celebrate or not, we hope that this time of year at least provides some time and space for you to rest and to be with the ones that you love. But of course, as we do every single year here, we also want to take this moment to remind y’all and to remind ourselves that there are so many people in this country right now who will not be able to be with their loved ones this year. The nearly two million human beings who are locked up in the United States of America right now. The tens of thousands of immigrants who have been sitting and rotting in ice detention, the vast majority of whom without any criminal record whatsoever, they will not be with their families this holiday season and their families’ homes will be a little more empty this year than they were before.
Mansa Musa:
And to your point, Max, a lot of people will not be with their families and love ones. And especially those that are 2.5 million people that’s locked up under the criminal injustice system on the prison industrial complex plantations, they’ll not be. And I know for a fact, because I was locked up for 48 years, just shy of 50 years, two years shy of 50 years. And this was a hard time for us serving time because of the conditions that we found ourselves under. The visitations was sometimes restricted. The forms of communication was sometimes restricted. So at some point in time, you find yourself sulking because you don’t have no outlet. But as time went on and years went on, one thing I learned from being in prison was that prisoners are resilient. And we would oftentimes find ways to find relief in prison during these times.
Homemade wine, getting drunk, putting on little skits and plays. But more importantly, as our thinking group, we decided that we wanted to involve our families in the prison system. And we created programs like Family Days. So a lot of times around this time of the year, we would have an activity where our children could come in and spend a couple of hours with us in a festive manner Max. So yeah, but this is a hard time and a lot of people are depressed. And we hear at The Real News and Rattling the Bars wanted you to understand that don’t allow yourself to become depressed by the state of this country. If you don’t do nothing else, get a state of mind that you’re going to resist and you’re going to find souls in the fact that you’re standing up for yourself.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And one of the ways that we can stand up for ourselves and each other is to take care of one another, to reach out and offer a helping hand in dark times. And there are plenty of things that you can do this holiday season to really make a huge difference in the lives of people incarcerated and the many family members and friends and loved ones on the outside who are living this holiday season without them. And over the next 10, 15 minutes, man, so I wanted to kind of just talk to you a little bit about that. But first, I want to kind of ask if you could say more about your own time locked up, and especially what it was like for you and others around the holidays. Because I know that this is the time of year where you see suicide spike. You see spikes in violence on the inside.
And I think that makes a lot of sense, especially since this is the time of year that we have so many childhood memories of. We have so many memories of being with our family, being together with the ones we love. And those can be very painful memories when you are locked up in the worst place imaginable, unable to touch and feel and talk to the people that you love. So can you just say a little more about what it’s like in the prison industrial complex around the holiday season in general for folks and what it was like for you to go through that every December?
Mansa Musa:
And like I said earlier, it was depressing because one, you hear on TV, all wonderful life, the whole Christmas thing being unpacked, the Jingle Bells and everything is a constant reminder of what this time of year, how festive this time of the year is, but you’re locked into an environment where you have limitations, you’re not allowed to visit your family, you’re not allowed to go out on the street, you’re not allowed to enjoy those things that normal people would do on this time. But what we did, we found amongst ourselves, and Angela Davis talking about this and if they come in the morning about the uniqueness of the prison population, how the extended family exists. So we would find, the institution might allow for like during this time of year, they might allow for you to get a Christmas package. So it would be a combination of food items and candies.
So everybody would get a food package and we would share. We would like, you know, when the food package came in, I would go around, give somebody something. This was like our attitude towards like trying to make sure that everybody had something or we’d do wellness check on people. We knew that guys was like depressed and guys was like going through it and having difficult times to adjust. So we would get with them, talk to them, walk the yard with them. We would always try to find, in our mind or in our hearts, a space where, like you had opened up earlier about, we want everybody to be safe. We want everybody to try to have a same state of mind. So we would do those things. Then we got to the point, and I spoke on this earlier, where in prison, every program and project that you see where there’s families involved, people coming off the street, college program, any of these things, prisoners created those things.
Prisoners was the ones that came up with ideas, I want to get a college degree and started networking with the system to how they go about getting there. So we created what we call family day. And I remember this real clear when I was in Maryland Penitentiary and it was on the heels of a riot and the inmate advisory council was meeting with the warden and we was on lockdown twenty four seven and they was meeting with the warden because it was understood that as long as we stayed locked down, the prison would become more unmanageable because once you let us off, we going to go back to business as usual as far as like you realize us and then we going to respond. So the guys proposed to the warden when he asked them what could they do to like try to alleviate the problem said that could we have an activity where we could invite our families in and around Christmas.
And this was the most insane thing that you could ever imagine because prior to that, the police had shot a couple of people in the yard, prisons had stabbed some police, being with bats, it was like chaos, pandemonium, and we was locked down. It wasn’t coming out for shower. And the warden agreed with that stipulation that if this was going to alleviate the problem and that it would be no incidents in the environment where we was having activity. So we organized for four days straight, two different shifts, everybody in the population had opportunity to go, unlimited family members, unlimited guests, went up in the auditorium, had gifts for our children and had family day. This right here changed the whole dynamic of the prison population. So really, we always found ways to like alleviate the tension because we always felt in our mind that the best way to alleviate tension is to have access to society and by having access to society, we would even invite people in, create programs, get people in, or we would create programs to get out.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, and I think it’s really, I mean, it’s a really beautiful story. And I want to ask you a little more about that when we kind of wrap up here, but I think it’s also important to underscore for people watching and listening that like, this is not the norm that everybody in prison gets, right? I mean, and I think a lot of people who don’t know what it’s like in prison maybe assume that that’s what it’s like. They think, oh, they must get a Christmas meal, they get time with their family, they get packages. It’s more like what we are told in the movies it’s like, right? I mean, so before you organized and launched this family day with other inmates when you were locked up, what was it like around the holidays in general? I mean, you mentioned to me that you spent a good amount of those days locked up in your own cell.
Mansa Musa:
To your point, Max, this was not the norm. The norm was that, like I said, I spent a lot of times on lockup. So the norm was that you was isolated, that it was real restrictive. You had regular visits and they was a half an hour because everybody wanted to visit, everybody had, then they created our even day. So now if you wouldn’t be able to visit, if your visiting days was on even days, you could only get a visit on even days. So Christmas came on the 25th on the all day, you’re not allowed to have no visit that day. So you had to have a visit the following day. Yeah, so it became more restrictive and that’s where it’s at today. Today is it got to that point now where that’s where it’s at today. Today in most prisons, you’re isolated, you’re not allowed to interact outside of your cell, outside of your unit.
You’re given basically what they call a Christmas meal, processed meat, no dressing that’s undescriptive.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah, not exactly like grandma’s cooked turkey,
Mansa Musa:
Right? And at one point the meals was all right, but now because they done outsourced to like different corporations and they go by what they consider the calorie count, so what might be considered under the Food and Drug Administration, the calories, the required calorie count, that don’t mean that the food is going to be wholesome. It’s just non-descriptive turkey. So yeah, to your point, and around this time you have a lot of suicides, and they come in the form of substance use disorder, substance use, or people just outright just killing themselves because of the depression of not being treated as human and not being having access to society.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, and that’s, and not having access to society makes us less human as you lay out so powerfully and painfully every week on this show. Because as I’m listening to you talk, I’m thinking about the many powerful episodes that you’ve done showing that people who are locked up in this country have been increasingly not just like exploited by profit seeking entities that want to use prison labor or make money off prison services, but they’ve been punished and pushed into these dark holes of isolation where you don’t even get like written letters from your loved ones that you can hold. You get those scanned into a iPad type thing. So it’s like, again, you’re always one, two, three, four, five degrees removed from that basic human touch, that connection with the outside world. Instead of in- person visits, you get these telephone Zoom type visits with your loved ones.
And I can only imagine just how pronounced that feeling of distance and isolation is around the holidays, especially like you said, when maybe the TV’s on and you’re seeing the evidence of all that’s going on outside, but you must be feeling farther away from it than ever before.
Mansa Musa:
And you really, for me, around this time, I really like isolated. And I know that probably was depression now, because I didn’t really feel I wanted to be bothered, right? I felt like … So I pretty much even stayed in my cell or stayed to myself. I didn’t do the meals. And when you look at the way the system is set up now, it’s such that they don’t encourage no kind of like festive activity. They don’t encourage … At one point they encourage that. So that gave a person a sense of purpose like, okay, I can be involved with something that means something versus now, no, for the most part, you locked in yourself, you only get out an hour, you come out the hour for wreck. The phones, depending on where you at, phone calls is expensive. So unless somebody put money on your books that you can make the call, you can’t even make the call.
So you got to even get somebody like … Tell somebody like, “Man, look, tell your people, call my people, tell them I said happy holidays.” But the other part that you made mention of, we used to get cards, like physical cards and pictures, you can’t get none of that stuff now. So they took all that out. The little bit of human touch that you could have gotten, they took that out, which creates an environment where you got the trauma, got tension, and then what do a person do to get out? Like I said, a lot of drugs, some prisons is like the OD raid is beyond your imagination because of the lack of the ability to be able to conceptualize anything relative to freedom.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Man, that really just makes my heart sink just hearing that. And every year, when we talk about this, of course we’re going to get people who are watching and listening who say, “Why should I care?” They’re criminals, they’re locked up, they’re being punished for their crimes, they shouldn’t get Christmas, why should I care about any of this? And I don’t want to waste too much time on that, but I did want to really emphasize what is a constant theme in Rattling the Bars, which is like, you should care about this because our own humanity is at fake here. That’s
Mansa Musa:
Exactly
Maximillian Alvarez:
Why. The way that we treat our own people is a reflection on us and our values and what we call justice in this country. And so not only are we not who we say and think we are when we commit such inhumane atrocities to people in the name of justice, but also we’re creating the conditions for more crime, more violence, more injustice by damaging people as much as possible so that they have no hope of rehabilitation when they get out or no hope of getting out at all. Like maybe they will end their life before they reach the end of their sentence.That’s not part of their sentence to be punished this way, serving the time is their sentence. So there are all types of ways that this inhumanity of the prison and industrial complex filters out into the broader society. It impacts the people who work at the prisons, the people in the communities that inmates are released into, the families who live in these communities, so on and so forth.
So I just really want to stress to people that like if you’re finding your heart kind of reacting negatively to what we’re saying, just please take a moment to consider why we’re saying this and to consider your own reasons for caring about this and the things that you and others can actually do to make a difference. And that’s what I wanted to sort of end on because you and other folks locked in, like you guys did something to really try to counteract that isolation
And that punitive severing of your connections with society, with your family when you started that tradition of family day. So I want you to say a little more about why you did that and the change that it brought. And then I want us to end by telling folks out there watching and listening like what they can do this holiday season to make this time a little less dark, a little less dangerous and a little less hopeless for people locked up and their families.
Mansa Musa:
That’s a good question, Max. And one way to wrap this up. Eddie Conway, the founder of Rattling the Bars, that was one thing that he emphasized, like show people that we’re human. So rattling the bars, that’s why I always say like, this is about humanity. Rattling the bars is about showing people like that you were dealing with human beings. So go back to your point, we had to question our own humanity when we look at people and look at them as less than human and therefore we allow policies to come into a place that subject them to being a human. The reason why we did what we did was because we wanted to show the population that you’re human. So we’re going to put you in an environment where humanity is going to be on display. We’re going to bring your children in here. We’re going to bring your loved ones in here.
We’re going to bring somebody in here that you care about and care about you so you can spend some quality time with them. Not over counter, not behind a plexiglass, not on the screen that you can touch them, you can hug them, your kids can act like they children in the element. “Daddy, look what I got. Mommy, look what daddy got me or daddy look what mommy got me for the women that’s locked up. “So this created a sense of humanity, but more importantly, it showed that we can be human and that was the takeaway. And what people can do now, I work for organizations that we do what we call adoptive family. So we go to the county detention centers, we go to DC jail and we give the family member that’s locked up a list, make a wish. So we ask them to ask their children what do they want for Christmas and then we match donors with that so the kid, the child actually get what they ask for.
If they ask for a bicycle, they get a bicycle. The takeaway is when they get the bible, when they come to the office and get the bicycle, say,” This is the bicycle that your daddy got you if they process out of believing the Santa. “This is the bicycle that your daddy told Sander to get you if they still believe in that. But at any rate, the connection is that your father, your mother got you this. This is the place that you can come and get because they can’t come out and give it to you. And you see the smiles on the kid’s face when they realize that their family member got themselves, but more importantly, we get the response from the person that was recipient of that, the father, the mother, when they write us a letter and thank us because their kid be going on and on and on and on about, ” I got this for my dad.
“At the end of the process, we served our debt to society. We don’t have an endless debt. It’s crime and punishment. You got the crime, the punishment is the sentence that you receive. The punishment is not to be put in a hold. The punishment is not to be labeled an illegal immigrant and then subjected to being detained anywhere in this country without access to your family. No, this is not humanity. This is inhumane.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And I think on that note, I mean, we say all the time here at The Real News that no one can do everything, but everyone can do something.
Mansa Musa:
Something.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Right? And so this is something, right? There are so many programs out there that folks can get involved in to help families impacted by the system, families with loved ones who are incarcerated, especially to provide presence and support for those families around the holidays. There are programs that will link you up with pen pals inside. And you can … Again, it’s a limited connection, but it’s a connection nonetheless to write to someone inside to say,” Hey, I see your humanity and I’m here reaching out. “And that could even make a huge difference. But I mean, there’s so much more that you can do. And ultimately, I think what we’re asking everyone to do is fight against this unjust system, stand against it, speak out against it. Don’t just accept it as an inevitable fact of life. It doesn’t have to be this way, but the only way it’s going to change is if regular people of conscience speak up against the injustice that is all around us every day.
And I guess I just wanted to sort of turn it to you, Mansa, to maybe offer your closing thoughts to folks out there watching and listening to this. Any final holiday messages?
Mansa Musa:
We want, Rattling the Bars, we want to remind people that we say we don’t give people a voice. We just turn the volume up on your voice. So in order for us to be able to turn the volume up on your voice, you need to tell us what’s going on with you. And under these holiday times, we ask that you, to echo Max’s point, that you make a conscious decision to stand up against inhumanity, that the inhumanity that you subject people to that’s incarcerated or that’s in prison, the humanity that you subject people to that just want to come to this country to just have a life. They ain’t come to this country for normal reason just to live life the same way immigrants came from just through where the Statue of Liberty at, just to have a life. We ask that you look at this, you give us your voice and we’ll turn the volume up on it because what’s more important than that, nothing.
Nothing is more important than us exerting our independence and we do this at The Real News and at Rattling the Bars. And we say, like Max said earlier, we wish you a happy holidays. We ask that you reflect on the progress that you’re making and we ask that you continue to put one foot forward.
