Transitioning
Enoch, his son RayShawn and me.
Derrick and me.
I’m going through a transition or maybe I’m just maturing. Sort of unsettling to be 81 years old and transitioning, maturing, or who knows what?
It’s hard to put a finger on when the transition started. As a One on the Enneagram, I’ve felt the call to justice my whole life, though I’ve not often answered calls for justice. Or, if I’ve answered, answering did not subject me to criticism.
Going into prison in 2013 landed me right in the middle of injustice. Injustice I couldn’t rationalize away or ignore. I suppose I could have just stopped going into prison but by then I had established friendships that mattered to me, friendships I did not want to abandon.
Seeing injustice elicits anger and self-righteousness, which I have had to learn to temper. What do you do with all those strong feelings? I shared (I suspect that is not a strong enough word) the feelings with my loved ones, my friends and anyone else I could corner. I engaged in activities to make at least a few men in white’s lives better—wrote them letters, sent them books, attended approved meetings with them in prison, mentored in person, helped them when they were paroled.
I started this blog believing that letting people with good hearts know what is happening in prison is necessary if there is ever to be meaningful change.
In early January 2023, I wrote the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, my state representative and state senator and the chair of the House and Senate committees overseeing prisons to inform them of the injustice I have observed firsthand for over ten years. None have responded.
In March 2023 I wrote an article I am seeking to have published in a magazine of wide circulation. I sent it to Texas Monthly, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, O, the Oprah Magazine, AARP Magazine, to eight Texas law schools and to the Texas Bar Journal.
That effort has born good fruit. I’ve made a connection with Grant Dykeman, the Chair of the Criminal Law Society at South Texas School of Law, which is doing some fine work (I’ll have a post on it soon) and the Texas Bar Journal is considering publishing a shortened version of my aricle.
You can rest assured I would welcome any suggestions you have regarding publication or anything else I can do to get the word out and to spark the changes that are so badly needed.