[APPLAUSE]
A lot of people ask me--
the question arises again and again--
how did you learn to read and write?
Well, I can answer this for all of you by reading something
that I wrote about the night I decided
that I wanted to go to school.
And it happened while I was in Florence.
And it's a crazy story because I had a lot of friends in prison
there.
Anyway, I went to reclassification committee
because they said I could go to school.
And when I went to the reclass committee,
Mad Dog Madril, Captain Avenitti,
Five Hundred-- there was a guard named Five Hundred who
was over Five Hundred pounds, and they
would send him to crush people.
And he had questioned me a few times,
and I was terrified of the man, of his shoes-- they were huge.
And like one stomp, he could break a few ribs,
and another stomp would break your jaw.
And his legs were like, must have been 200 pounds.
Just one leg, and I'll just [WHOOSH]..
It'd be like dropping a 200 pound weight on your head.
Well anyway, I went to reclassification committee,
and I didn't get in a fight, and I didn't do anything bad
for about 90 days.
And they said if you don't get in any fights,
you can go to school.
I wanted to learn how to read.
And I went and I believed them.
And when I got to reclassification committee,
they said I couldn't go to school.
And in fact, they were very insulting to me.
And something had happened in my body
where they disconnected my nervous system.
When the guy-- when Mad Dog Madril, Captain Avenitti
said it's over, the meeting.
He said I could leave.
And for the first time in my life, I panicked.
I panicked and I said, up-- get up.
And my body, for the first time, didn't obey my thoughts.
And I said, Jimmy, you got to get up.
What's going on?
And I was really terrified that something terribly
had gone wrong with my nervous system because I couldn't move.
My body wouldn't move anymore.
And Mad Dog looked at Five Hundred,
and a counselor was in there too.
But Mad Dog looked at Five Hundred,
and I was looking at the counselor
because he had promised me I could go to school.
And I was saying, at the same time,
I looked at Captain Avenitti, and he was saying,
you're dismissed.
And I was like, Jimmy, you got to get up, dude.
And Captain Avenitti looked at Five Hundred,
and Five Hundred got up.
And I thought, holy shit, man.
I said, Jimmy, you got to get up out of the chair, dude.
But my body just didn't move.
A trauma came out.
I don't know what the trauma was,
but something happened to me.
And the next thing I remember was I got hit.
And I remember hurling through the room, falling around,
and then I remember waking up in my cell.
And my legs were so badly beaten that I couldn't get up.
And I remember one of the guards was
so nice that he came to my cell and said, are you OK, man?
Are you OK?
And I was like--
I didn't even know I hadn't been out of the room.
And I tried to get up, and I couldn't walk.
And I had blood on my face and stuff.
And it was really amazing because I was thinking,
this guard I always thought was a mean guard was asking me,
are you OK?
You want to go to the infirmary?
I was like, I'm OK.
So I decided something happened, and I just
started staying in my cell, and I quit working.
Over the next week, I quit making my bunk
and cleaning my cell.
As usual, every time the Bull came down the tier,
he placed a writeup on the bars for breaking rules.
When I looked at the pile of pink slips,
I had the feeling I was fucking everything up.
I also knew that by simply refusing to take them
off the bars, I was deflating the importance of what
they represented.
For the next few days when the tier guard
stood in front of my cell with his clipboard at count time
and barked out my number, I turned my back on him
like he wasn't there.
He placed another writeup on the bars and moved on.
The cons wondered when I might get up and stand for count
time, but I never did.
To this day, it still amazes me how
taking myself out of the system and refusing to work
had everybody in an upheaval--
from guards, friends, cons, everyone.
The more I did nothing, the more aggravated everyone became.
It was the first time I felt I was accomplishing something,
even though I couldn't see why.
Regardless of what little my life
meant in the larger scheme of things,
at least for the moment, it was my life and not the wardens,
despite what he had shouted at me.
It didn't belong to the state, the judge, the guards,
or the cons.
They told me all my life what to do, and I did.
But I couldn't take it anymore.
Before my reclass hearing, I was getting it together.
I had friends and respect, and I was
starting to believe I was going to make it.
Who knew that not working would take me out of my life
as I lived it, and a whole new, chaotic, unrecognizable
reality?
It started with my homeboys.
At first they extended their hands and their hearts
to help me with whatever might be disturbing me.
I backed them up.
I had a lot of respect.
They'd stop at my cell and exchange a few words.
Now they started avoiding me.
They avoided my eyes, or if they did look,
it was a quick side view that meant they now suspected me
of being a coward, or betraying their trust,
or letting them down.
I could sense the peer pressure boiling over,
the secret accusations in their blood, the hardcore, stone cold
glares.
And finally I heard the words I dreaded--
maybe he's a snitch.
No, maybe he's a punk.
Man, he's afraid.
Es puto.
No vale verga.
No tiene corazón.
Chale con aquel vato.
He's a sissy.
He ain't worth it, doesn't have heart, forget him.
Guards on every shift routinely came to my cell,
and raking a baton across the bars, called my number.
When I just stared back, they checked my number off
on a clipboard and placed another writeup on the others.
The counselor came up on the third week.
What the hell are you trying to pull?
He stood away from the bars.
Fuck you, liar, I said.
Turned my back on him and faced the sink.
I spooned coffee in my plastic cup, filled it with hot water
from the tap, and stirred it.
I turned and stared at him, thinking,
you promised me, man, I could go to school.
Why'd you do that, man?
Behind him other cons across the way were watching.
I drank the coffee and felt it warm and bitter in my stomach.
The whole time I was glaring at him, I was thinking,
why did you set me up?
My look must have frightened him because he
left without saying anything.
Later, when everyone had come in from work
and was showering and getting ready for supper,
five guards stormed through the front of the block
into the landing with riot gear helmets, shields and batons.
And in the lead, Mad Dog Madril yelled at the tier guard
to wreck my cell as the goons came up the shaking stairwell.
Shake it down, Mad Dog seethed.
He pushed me out on the tier in my boxers.
Cons stuck mirrors out through the bars,
and I could see their confused faces and their questioning
eyes.
The goons ripped the mattress apart,
squeezed out the toothpaste tube, emptied my tobacco bag
searching my cell for a shank or drugs.
And all they found was a small packet
of sugar from the kitchen.
Add contraband to the charges, Mad Dog commanded.
Five Hundred jabbed me with a stick in the back
and marched me down into the landing
in the middle of the block.
Cons stood at the bars as one voice.
And then another and another cursed in a deafening roar.
They shook the bars, yelping like hyenas over fresh kill.
I tried to tell myself they were cursing the guards,
but it was me they were condemning.
I remember the humiliation of seeing them grip the bars
and push their faces forward as they screamed.
They had revealed their secrets to me.
I was one of them.
And believing I had turned on them
made me no different from all the perpetrators
who had killed their spirits.
Because I was the friend they had embraced, and now
who thought had turned and who had stabbed them in the back.
That was one of the worst and strangest days of my life.
Their rage forcing me to find out something about myself
which didn't exist, yet which I felt struggling to come out.
Stripped of everything I believed in-- my pride,
my friends, my reputation--
everything was gone.
And I felt as if I was on the verge of discovering something
else about myself in the world.
And I was facing the tears toward myself
when a cup of scalding water hit me in the shoulder from behind.
I turned, and someone else threw urine,
and then someone else threw a Styrofoam cup of feces.
It was as if I was standing outside
of myself watching this.
I told myself, got nothing to do with me.
I wiped my face with my hands.
The yelling caught on, and the whole block
was cursing from both sides.
And when I go back to that night now, I think I felt at the time
that I was insane.
I must have been.
That it would only be a matter of time
before I swirled into a pit of disintegration.
And with white eyes I watched the ones
who didn't scream watch me.
They were watching me with detached pity thinking,
they thought I was crazy.
And even them, they could go crazy.
Anyone could break now.
A link in the chain had snapped.
And for that, their repugnance stormed down on me,
shaking tears and trembling concrete.
And I stood there, quietly taking it all in,
pretending to myself someone else was standing there,
not me.
Mad Dog Madril came down and chained me
around the waist, hands and wrists.
And then he and the goons marched me out of the block.
Outside, going across the yard, I looked up at the stars,
and I knew.
Despite this loathing by the world,
by everyone, by standing up for myself
I had done something completely new.
I might have lost the respect of my peers.
But I was feeling a sense of my own worth
that I never felt before.
I knew I was no longer a 22-year-old illiterate Brown
man, not just another con with a number who was going to submit
to the degradation--
not anymore.
Something had altered in me, and I felt tremendous pride
at having taken this one little step I now
knew I'd wanted to take for the longest time.
[APPLAUSE]