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…