Moving Forward

Had the opportunity to head out on the road Tuesday night for a 3 hour drive down to Champaign for a Books to Prisoners tv show taping and a court conference on my lawsuit Wednesday. It was the farthest I have ever driven by myself, and it was just a taste of something I’ve wanted to do for a long time - just pack up all my stuff and head out on the open road alone to some unknown destination.

Both on the way there and back I passed through Pontiac at about 11pm each time. I was very tempted to pull off the highway and take a drive past the prison… I knew exactly what most guys were doing at that time of night - the count lights would be on, a lot of guys would be standing at the doors waiting to see what officers were working, maybe to see if one of them would pass a book or magazine to another cell, or waiting for them to come past and count so that they could send a line under the door to pass something or pick something up.

My friend Brian let me spend the night at his house, and I got to meet his wife Sarah for the first time, who was really cool. And in the morning there was some kind of car chase in front of his house, with a car taking down a big cement light pole and losing a wheel, crashing into other cars and driving down the street on its rim. I was sleeping when it happened, but when I got up we went out to see the damage. Luckily my car was parked in his driveway behind his house, because if it was parked out front it likely would have been fucked up somehow in the car chase.

Later that morning I went to a taping of a tv show for Books To Prisoners, a great opportunity to explain the program and bring in donations and volunteers. Once the video is finalized I’ll put it up here. Getting books to prisoners is such a vital program, and without a doubt if I didn’t have the opportunity to read and study nearly every waking hour for the over 6 years straight I did in segregation in Pontiac, I can’t even imagine who I’d be right now - I probably wouldn’t even be out of prison right now, frankly.

Then I had a court conference on my vegetarian diet lawsuit that I started in prison. After winning in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, all that was left was to enter judgment in my favor in the district court. Theoretically I could have attempted to fight for damages, but that was never my purpose - while I was in prison the purpose was to get them to give me the diet. Of course the judge and Attorney General attempted, and succeeded, in prolonging the case until I was released from prison so that I couldn’t get an injunction, but the fact remains that I won a fairly significant ruling from the Seventh Circuit that will help other prisoners on this issue. So for me, having spent countless hours pursuing the case from a segregation cell in prison since initially starting the case when I was about 23 years old, hand-writing multi-dozen page legal briefs with a small, flexible rubber pen, and ultimately prevailing over the machinations of a corrupt district court judge who copied the defendant’s briefs word-for-word into “the courts” opinion on the case and teams of lawyers with years of legal training and access to materials, to receive a favorable ruling from the Seventh Circuit agreeing with the points I had been raising for numerous years was a pretty damn nice victory. And it was nice to get the chance to go before the same corrupt judge who had been issuing patently ridiculous rulings for all those years and have him reversed by the Seventh Circuit and instructed to actually follow clearly established law and enter judgment in my favor. It was definitely a nice little unneccesary-to-be-stated “fuck you.”

Got home and received my financial aid from college, so I’m not flat broke anymore. Living on $1,700 for 6 months or so ain’t gonna cut it though. Finally had the money to pay to get into the iPhone Developer Program, so now I’m officially in and all I have to do now is get a good, solid application developed and I can submit it to Apple for approval and then sell it on the App Store. Got a 99% on my first Computer Science test, so that was nice too As much as I hate it, I have to make some money to survive, so I’m going to have to do something.

Things are moving forward, hopefully I’ll get off parole in December. That is about the main thing still holding me back, besides not having any money. But if I was off parole, I could just leave, move on, get settled where ever I decided, and just get started in life. Of course the main goal is making a revolutionary change in this society, but I have to get my personal situation figured out.

Eh, I still haven’t had a chance to really let my mind work a lot of this out, plus I’ve been dealing with numerous little issues since I’ve been home. Need more time to let my mind work stuff out…

Miscellaneous Minutiae

Neglected writing for a few weeks because a lot of shit was going on. Started my classes, all of which seem to be fairly interesting. My Intro to Psychology class started with the teacher asking us all to tell something “interesting” about ourselves: I proffered that I went to prison when I was 17 years old, did 11 years in prison, got out a year and a half ago and was just starting my second year of college - seemed like a kind of interesting set of facts about myself. Finally in the Computer Science class, and now I’m such a 1337 4@x0r that I can write a “Hello World” program in Java, in addition to C, C++, and Objective-C Got accepted into the iPhone Developer Program, so now all I need is to get $100 together to pay for it and then actually get a solid application built and maybe I can make some money instead of being flat broke until I get the next financial aid check from my college. My car stopped working and now I have to hope it gets fixed in the morning or else I’m fucked and have to find another way to get to my classes right as the goddamn semester starts.

I never did hear anything back about the writing job, so they basically just refused to make a decision, therefore I didn’t get the job by default. Even with a 4.0 GPA, a recommendation from my English professor, and the Director of the Writing Center wanting me to have the job, I can’t even get a job because of my prison record. Haha, then I get another letter from this stupid Phi Theta Kappa “honors society” again telling me I can join - the same motherfuckers who told me the first time that since I was in prison I couldn’t join. I guess they are just going to send me this same thing every semester since my grades qualify me to join but my socio-economico-political status in life puts me on their blacklist.

Met up with an old friend of mine for the first time in like 13 years. Unfortunately, like 2 weeks before I saw him again his brother was stabbed and killed. But its good to see an old friend, hard to believe its been so long… His son who was just born a few months before I went to prison is 13 years old now!

Been out to a few clubs, which is something I haven’t really done before. Its nice to get out and be around people, but… I don’t particularly like the social relations of them. Plus its still so fucking weird to me to just be out and around people, people that its hard for me to relate to on many different levels. I’ve been in prison my whole life. And I don’t particularly just want to meet some random women but… considering I have no other options despite making some attempts, the choice is basically between being alone or trying to meet someone, even if its just some bullshit insignificant encounters. I don’t know, I’ve tried to put myself out there a couple times in the past few years: had something of a “long term relationship” that disintegrated without much of any explanation a few months after I got out of prison, met someone online earlier this year that was in a situation that really precluded us from moving forward with anything although we had something for a little while, and I met someone really great a couple months ago but who doesn’t seem similarly attracted to me. I don’t really feel that I should continue to be alone without any kind of romantic/sexual experience - and I won’t even get into the extremely difficult topic of “love” - but I don’t want to just get into the total fucking bullshit relations between men and women in this society.

My parole officer is supposed to submit me to get off parole again in December, so just a couple more months… I really hope I get off this time. I need to get out of here and start my life. I want to move to Chicago, get situated there, maybe apply to UIC for next fall. Thats the general outline of my plans if I do get off parole. If I don’t, then I’m stuck in this situation for up to another year after that. As much as I hate it, I’m going to have to start spending my time trying to make some money. I don’t want to get sucked more and more into this system, but I have to do something. I fucking hate money! Why should my worth to this society be dependent upon whether I have money or not, why should whether I eat or have a roof over my head or electicity or go to prison or not depend on that? Especially when it doesn’t have to be like that? Fuck this system. And its not just me, and my personal situation, there are billions of people across the world who are just as worthless to this system of capitalism-imperialism that are in even worse conditions and situations than I am. And this system tells all of us that we are worthless unless our labor can be profitably exploited. How many great thinkers or scientists or artists or writers or musicians has the world lost simply because this system has told them they are worthless? How much better could society be globally if people were given the opportunity to contribute to a society that didn’t view them as simply replaceable commodities that have no inherent human dignity or value? Ultimately, that is the kind of society that I’m struggling for. I have no interest whatsoever in “contributing” to this capitalist-imperialist system, and what passes for “success” in this system would be a monutmental failure for me.

UPDATE - 9/15/08 3:30PM - Had my bicycle wheels pumped up, ready to ride my bike to classes if I had to, and I haven’t rode a bike in 15 years probably. But my cousin-in-law came over and pinned down the problem with my car - needed a new battery. So he and my great uncle pitched in to get me a new battery this morning, and I even had time to take a shower before making it to class on time. Whew, glad that is fixed and it was a relatively minor problem.