What It's Like

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"Because survival is insufficient."

—Station Eleven (quoting Star Trek Voyager) 

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Everyday is a journey, and that journey itself is home. 

      —Matsuo Bashō 

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It is the policy of the Iowa Department of Corrections to provide evidence-based high quality correctional strategies and practices in a safe, secure, and humane environment for incarcerated individuals confined in its institutions and/or under the care of community correction services in order to protect the community and reintegrate incarcerated individuals back into society as law abiding, responsible and productive citizens. 

—IDOC Policies & Procedures

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Today, I've lived 6025 consecutive days in prison (or 16 years, 5 months, 4 weeks, and 1 day), which means the date is Tuesday, June 29, 2024. I have exactly one year until I am eligible for parole. My mind flutters between elation and trepidation. Planning the rest of my life dominates my thoughts (plans that still feel like dreams). I'm envisioning my career, my education, my relationships, my connection to Earth and Spirit. I repeat, "It's okay to fail. It's okay to stumble. When that time comes, you'll get back up!" While my thoughts reel into the future, the last two decades of incarceration perforate my memory. I remember chaotic bursts of violence, officers screaming to "get down”, and alarms screeching as hyper-vigilant prisoners assess the situation. I remember each time I've succumbed to the pressures around me, and each instance of impeccable resilience. I remember those I've hurt and the pain I've caused. I remember all the love and goodwill; those impassioned eruptions of humanity that still bring tears to my eyes. I'm remembering it all. I'm not sure why. Maybe because no matter how much I wish against it, prison is the home I know. 

In the movie, The Shawshank Redemption, Morgan Freeman's character, Red, performs a moving monologue regarding institutionalization. Reacting to the librarian Brooks' release and subsequent suicide, Red says, "These walls are funny. First, you hate em', then you get used to em'. Enough time passes you get so you depend on em'." I shiver every time I hear this line. This is because the true horror of incarceration (or life in general?) is becoming reliant on the very things that destroy you. Stephen King, author of the short story that inspired the movie, understands that real monsters dwell within the mundane, hiding in plain sight. Shawshank's warden, donned in tailored suits, shined shoes, and seemingly impeccable faith, disguises the filth of his greed with a facade of integrity. Like the warden's polished aesthetic, the prison industrial complex – the systematic exploitation of the incarcerated to generate wealth – convinces us that incarceration exists as a system of successful rehabilitation, while it quietly devours racial minorities, the financially disadvantaged, and countless other traumatized “slip through the crack” cases – an estimated 1.9 million humans total, at the time of this writing. In this way, the billions of dollars in annual revenue generated through exorbitant phone call charges, price-gouged commissary, and wages less than $1/hour are hidden from public sight. Human beings are commodities in this terrifying market. The invisible monster lives on, silently stalking, conjuring its control within the white-washed offices of prison administrators, bureaucrats, and CEOs. The U.S. prison system feasts on the actual lives of those trapped in its clutches. As release nears, I'm thinking of Brooks the most. I'm considering the implications of experiencing this place as my home. I’ve adapted to survive inside a system of horrifying violence. What soul work it will take to heal after two decades of institutionalization?

Two years into my sentence, I witnessed a murder. Twenty yards from where I lifted weights on a concrete platform, the thud, thud, thud of fist against flesh thumped across the yard, pulling my attention to three white supremacists beating another white man to death. Every nerve in my body begged to escape, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. The men struck their unconscious victim, and despite the frozen dullness of shock, my body pleaded to intervene. My accelerated senses slowed the scene to a crawl, providing a moment to rationalize my inaction — "This is not my fight," my mind whispered. My heartbeat reverberated throughout my arms, legs, and back up through my rib cage, narrowing my peripheral vision to pinholes. Two oblivious guards rested against the fence; the summer sun baked the concrete walkways surrounding the prison yard. Other incarcerated men purposefully drew their awareness away from the assault, so the beating could continue undetected. Inside, you learn early in your sentences to ignore transgression: drawing attention to rule infractions is an inexcusable offense that has violent consequences. A flutter of kicks ended the murder; the three men scurried away quickly; the victim died alone. I continued my workout, still in shock, routinely checking to see if the man moved. He laid still for twenty minutes. The officers discovered the body not long after the yard closed; the intercom nonchalantly announced, "All inmates return to their cells and lockdown".

I walked to my room and informed my cellmates of what I’d seen. 

"Is he okay?" One asked.

I looked out the cell window, a small vertical slit encased in concrete, checking to see if the man was responsive. Guards and nurses surrounded his body; one officer performed CPR.

"I don't know. He laid there for a long time." I responded.

After several minutes, paramedics sprinted across the yard. They strapped his body to a stretcher and fastened a medical device to his chest that jackhammered his torso. In their navy blue uniforms, they wheeled the stretcher past my cell window. The man's head jerked with each thrust of the machine, his eyes open despite their lack of life. Memories exist somewhere in the unstable matrix where reality and story merge:  when I summon the details of this man's death, I can't tell what's real. I remember his dull, vacant gaze, those unresponsive death eyes that pierce through years and miles to find me.... still shocked and ashamed. In this memory, the distance between life and death feels so tenuous, as if Earthly balance hangs by the fragile strands of spiders. There was no one there to help him that day, not even me. That night, I dreamt I died in prison and my mother reclaimed my body. She wept as the medical examiner cut the state-issued clothes from my torso. I watched from a million miles away, grieving the senseless loss of life. I wondered if I would make it out alive. 

I wonder what goes through the C.O.s’ minds when they’re attending to a murdered victim: is it more like compassion, or annoyance at an inconvenient stat that looks bad to higher ups? These brutal environments choke out our ability to care.  In the following days and weeks, not a word was uttered by the admin about this assault.  His story was buried along with his body.  This burial ground of compounded trauma taints the values of all those caught inside. These skewed values inevitably create highly dysfunctional environments. I never knew the full story motivating this murder, but considering the identities of those involved, it seems the strict racial boundaries formed by such dysfunction contributed to this man's death. My own racial values have gotten similarly warped:  “Stick to your kind” is an unwritten but ironclad code.  As a kid entering a max security man’s world, I got the message that to find any shards of safety amidst this brutality, I had to interact solely with other Native Americans. Like prison, racism is a soul-devouring institution — but an institution I have unfortunately relied upon to stay alive.

My heritage and skin color established relative belonging. My first years down, I sat at the "Native" table in the chow hall, and exercised on the "Native" bench on the weight yard. I prayed, laughed, and cried with other indigenous men. I shared my stories, my medicine tales of family, love, and spirit, always leaving room for laughter and contemplation. I researched my tribal affiliation and sat my first sweat lodge.   We spoke from a place of humility and humor, always poking fun, fanning the winds that stoke traditional culture. We cooked and ate together, and made ritual. For years, every Saturday morning, we woke, drank coffee, and walked to the sweat lodge, cracking jokes, preparing for prayer, momentarily oblivious of the razor wire and racial boundaries enclosing us. I felt safe. I felt welcome and  even honored in this community. Some of these men are still in prison, some are out, some are dead, and some I've never heard from again. Some I never liked. Some I loved like my own brothers. Some I fought for, and some I fought.  Our brown bodies, songs, prayers, and prayer songs fashioned a sacred place in these otherwise desecrated and vicious environments. This sacred place is my root, my true home. Rising up from brokenness, this deep connection to community embodies the holistic,  restorative practices desperately needed to heal the U.S.'s corrupt and ineffective system of incarceration. The love and safety of these indigenous communities in prison have  provided me with an authentic, vulnerable space to connect with other humans in a way I had never experienced before. When I learned how to extend the love I felt inside this community out into the wider world, I began to construct my current vision of Home.

Inside, we call a cell our "house". In my house, I live with three African-American men, Spazz, Cutthroat, and Coleman. The strict racial codes that exist on the yard can sometimes disappear in your cell. When this happens, you get profound and intimate windows on a totally different worldview. Last night, each of my cellies told stories of growing up in the same poverty-stricken Des Moines neighborhood. Snuggled in my blankets, I listened intently, asking a few questions and smiling at the funny parts. 25-year-old Spazz speaks of growing up in the foster care system, of the Caucasians throughout his life who demanded authority over his body while eschewing responsibility for his well-being. Two uncles and four cousins live here with Spazz in this prison. Incarceration plagues his family; his own children now inherit this legacy of incarceration. Cutthroat, a husky, silent type, currently enrolled in college, speaks fondly of his mother – how she saved money for egg rolls from his favorite food truck when he was young. His heart seems heavy, despite the smile he constantly wears. 35-year-old Coleman interrupts each story, asking questions about parole. After a year of incarceration for running from a halfway house, Coleman will return to the same place soon if the board of parole approves his release. I pay attention to Coleman's interactions with the parole system, knowing that my time is coming soon. Listening to my roommate's stories,  the survival instinct of separation dissipates and I let my walls down. In this space, I connect with them as brothers, sharing their emotions and dreams for the future. Crazy as it sounds, simply and deeply listening to others in prison is a progressive act of restorative justice. 

When my cellmates finish their stories, I stare at the blank ceiling a couple feet above me. The concrete is smooth and painted white. Light from outside illuminates the cell, and I think about walls.  By the time this is published,  – I now have less than ten months left until I face parole. I still don't know what that means.   I do know that by default I have internalized the codes that run this place – racism, violence, numbing to survive.  They’ve been stored inside my cells and neural pathways, and healing will mean discovering how to support them to release.  But I also know, because I’ve chosen to keep my soul alive and free inside this cage,  that I’ve grown rock steady practices of resilience, joy, listening across difference, and unconditional gratitude that will be gifts to the free world. I know that I know how to build and be part of a true community that traverses over and under the sharpest barbed wire. As I cross the coming threshold from old life to new, incarceration to freedom, and prisoner to human, I will leave knowing that this system did not defeat me. This home has scarred me and this home has taught me – I can make Home anywhere.

(AI generated image created by Tony’s childhood BFF River Brandon based on Tony’s prompt: “punk rock kitten praying in a prison yard”)