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Prisons (All Kinds)

A subway ride, a military prison, a 1950s chain gang

Through The Bars

Letters From Prison

I can’t know for sure what you need to do. All I’m giving you is my opinion, and you have to sort it all out and make your own decisions. But I do want to be straight with you about what my opinion is, because it’s 180 degrees from how you interpreted it. I think you should try a radical change of environment and interests. If you keep revolving your entire life around the trauma you went through, it might make good Hollywood movie stuff, but I don’t think it will meet your deepest needs.

Reluctant Resister

I had finally reached, within the secret recesses and labyrinths of this jail, the silent center and perfect still point of human suffering. Behind those thick steel doors, entombed in concrete, curled in a tight fetal position on a cold metal bed, lies the suffering body of Christ.

The Pipe Or The Tomahawk

An Interview With Sun Bear

We’re trying to put our philosophy on a working level. This is important. People espouse different philosophies, but if it doesn’t work with flesh and blood on an everyday basis then it’s not real. You don’t have sovereignty until you control your own livelihood.

Selected Poems

Death On The Wind

Letters From A Prisoner

I’m presently in the Idaho State prison for first degree murder, two counts. I was arrested in November of 1974, taken to trial, found guilty and sentenced to death, March of 1976. In October of 1977, the Idaho Supreme Court vacated my death penalty, but I’m under review to receive a newly enacted death penalty in May of this year. At that time the courts will decide if I can be given the new death penalty or a double life sentence. These two charges in Idaho aren’t the only ones I have. There are seven more in other states. Please let me explain why I did these cold-blooded, without any mercy, killings. In April of 1974, 11 men entered my home in Portland, Oregon, raped my 17 year old wife, who was three months pregnant at the time, then threw her four stories out our apartment window.

We’re All Doing Time

An Interview With Bo And Sita Lozoff

People ask me about getting gang-raped and whether they should defend themselves or submit. I can’t say to somebody, “Submit and don’t worry about it,” and I also can’t say, “Defend yourself and die.” That’s his choice to make. Mahatma Gandhi could and would have submitted because he was so non-attached to his body there was no degradation there, there was no undignity. And yet on the other hand, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce wouldn’t have submitted, he would have said, “Ah, this is a wonderful day to die.”

Editor’s Note

We Are People

Interviews With Inmates Of Hillsborough Prison

The day I sat in the courtroom, there were three or four white men with the same charges, but they let them pay out, maybe seven or eight hundred dollars. I was black. The man didn’t say nothing about no fees or charges. They gave me the maximum sentence. My skin color gave me away. I can base it down to that. I didn’t have the money, so I got to pull the time. It’s just as simple as that.

Tales From Inside

As Manny walked he was overwhelmed by the delicate, inviolable crown of the stars. Freedom was a feather brushed and swept across the heavens, now sweeping his tongue, his nostrils, his lungs. There was nothing more he needed.