[Ppnews] Herman Bell - 25 to Life - What Does That Mean To Me?

[Political Prisoner News]

25-LIFE - WHAT DOES THAT MEAN TO ME?
BY H. BELL, 3/26/11)

             Although I have served more than 37 
years in prison, I am still unable to wrap my 
mind around what that means; years of locking 
in-and-out of cells, letters from home and the 
occasional family photo; one letter telling that 
the new baby has arrived, another telling that my 
niece or nephew is doing well in school and that 
the neighbor next door died in his sleep; the 
photo shows Ma-dear and Dad looking good but are 
noticeably older, 25-life (what does that mean to me?).

             If you were a family man, like I 
was, with a young wife and two rambunctious boys, 
the separation had to have been heart-wrenching. 
It was for me. My boys, Johnes and Keith, had 
thoroughly broken me into domesticity: feeding 
them, changing and washing their diapers, 
dressing them, consoling them, taking them for 
their shots. Hoping the family dog wouldn't bite 
me for reprimanding them. Their mother, 
high-spirited and the love of my lie, was no less 
challenging; a borderline red-bone, with a 
delightful spray of freckles across her nose and 
cheeks, almond-shaped eyes and pouty lips. During 
our feuds, rather than talk, we wrote notes to 
each other and the children handed them to us.

             What does doing 25-life mean to me? 
As I mull over this question, I am reminded of 
Elmina, the Portuguese slave fortress, located on 
the West coast of Ghana from which enchained 
afrikans were led through its infamous 
"door-of-no-return" to the holds of waiting slave 
ships that would take them to the New World. I 
too feel as though I've walked through a "door-of-no-return."

IMPRISONMENT (A MODERN PLANTATION)

            If one knew nothing about the 
geography of a town in upstate NY where one is 
imprisoned, then one can readily imagine what the 
afrikan slave must have felt on a southern 
plantation – not knowing where to run or how to 
get there. For me, getting from Attica or Clinton 
Dannemora, to my hood, seemed no different than 
for the afrikan on a slave plantation in Georgia 
getting from there back to Afrika. Across the 
country, I have been held in many jails, and my 
family has had to travel thousands of miles to see me at considerable expense.

             You know how families are received 
at these places: standing in the elements to get 
in; suffering the indignities of disparaging 
remarks; seating arrangements; frustrating 
package rules. Prison is where spiteful, petty, 
contemptible, morally unkind acts find free 
expression at the whim of those who have 
authority over us. The keepers are vigilant and 
they instinctively ferret out unguarded 
self-esteem, courage, and strength. Prison is 
designed to break you down, not build you up. It 
casually destroys the weak and unwary (as though 
they were an afterthought), and turns the 
spiritually debased into beasts. What's not so 
strange about this is that the spiritually 
debased elicits no particular attention from the 
keepers. 25-life (what does that mean to me?).

AS THE YEARS GO BY

Time, faces, and relationships change, and like 
sand cascading down the funnel of an hourglass, 
nothing can resist this change. One day, you look 
in the mirror and see gray hair and a face that 
tells you you've aged; your body tells you that 
too. Some of your old friends have moved on and 
new ones have come to take their place.

Your mother and father may have passed away, as 
have mine, and I was unable to see them buried. 
You may have contemplated numerous possible 
scenarios, should you be imprisoned, but never 
that; and neither did I. The years take their 
toll, the people you believed in, the certainties 
you once embraced might have led you to realize 
that the more you know, the more you realize you 
don't know. With luck, we come to understand that 
humility and wisdom come with age and experience, 
and that death is often merciful.

RELEASE TIME AND ITS UNCERTAINTY

In doing 25-life, you never now when your release 
time will come; as it is with death, you can 
never foretell the day it will knock on your 
door. Yet, in both instances, you better be prepared.

MAKE TIME WORK FOR YOU (SELF-IMPROVEMENT

The old-timers in here will tell you: make time work for you, not against you.

Education:
             I earned a dual Bachelor of Science 
degree in psychology and sociology and a master's 
in sociology. It was hard work and could not have 
been accomplished without discipline, commitment, 
and sacrifice. Through the self-help projects 
I've developed on the outside while imprisoned, 
e.g., Calendar, Community Gardens, I have built 
remarkable relationships inside and outside these 
walls. And I have managed to keep a good name 
(which is all one can rightly claim as one's own 
in here). Because of that, I have managed to make 
it through the day, one day at a time. 25-life (what does that mean to me?).

THE PAROLE BOARD

             Parole is discretionary, we are 
told, not a right. When one's freedom is withheld 
by another, be it a state institution or a 
private individual, it's tantamount to slavery 
and is a poignant reminder that slavery was never 
abolished in the US; the 13th Amendment preserved it.

             State parole commissioners have 
guidelines to aid them in their parole decision; 
that decision, nevertheless, is still subjective. 
A host of variables weigh in on this process, 
including the kind of day a commissioner is 
having, societal stereotypes, the crime that one 
committed 30 years ago. As a parole candidate, 
one has to be impressed by what I've accomplished 
inside and on the outside; and my disciplinary is 
exemplary. Yet my next Board appearance will mark 
10 years beyond my minimum sentence. And I am not 
alone in this experience. Because of consistent 
denials, one is led to conclude that more is 
involved in these parole denials than what meets 
the eye. One is led to conclude that power, 
politics, and economics are driving them. And 
that this triumvirate serves special interests. 
Yet those invested in this practice, and who 
profit handsomely from it, still argue that the 
mission of prisons is and always shall be about 
corrections and rehabilitation. They argue that 
prisons are not used as an employment agency or 
as a tool of social repression. But if that were 
true, then surely fewer people would be in prison today.

CONCLUSION

            This is just a tiny piece of the 
picture. The point is that we remain in the grips 
of an economic order and culture that's as 
formidable and treacherous as the recent quake, 
tsunami, and meltdown in Japan, and I wish it were not so.

             Think about it. What do you or I 
produce in prison? Okay, there is the Corcraft 
Industry, which generates a few million dollars a 
year, yet it's a pittance compared to the bigger 
picture relating to you and me. Billions are made 
just by keeping us in a cell. Our very presence 
is the raw product that sustains the prison 
industry. It did the same during chattel slavery 
for almost 400 years, and, like today, we've 
benefited none from it. Today, our people spend 
well over 500 billion in the US economy, and we 
control practically none of it. The only 
institution of any consequence we control today is the Black church.

             Today, the sons and daughters of the 
people employed to keep us here have begun to 
keep watch over us and our children, who now are 
finding themselves in here. We have to get out of 
these places, stay out of them and keep others 
out. And while still in here, it is our duty to 
use this time constructively, and thus be an 
asset to our communities when we get out. That 
way, we turn this thing on its head, snatching 
victory from the jaws of defeat, which in this 
instance is what is meant by: falling in a 
shithouse and coming out smelling like a rose.




Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/ppnews_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20110427/2e4f21a5/attachment.htm>