It's up to Art

A line of corrections officers marched across the yard, shotguns and automatic rifles held at the ready while I waited in no man's land for the lock to snap and the gate to swing open. This was a drill, but the ammo was live and the riot gear ready. Bad food, price gouging of commissary goods, exploitative pay for prison work, and the big stuff like loss of voting rights and social invisibility have all contributed to inmate anger. It builds up to a boiling point. A man in the workshops assaulted an officer. The details, as told by inmate witnesses, involved an argument over hanging up a phone call. The inmate was talking to his mother and had some minutes left on the call. The officer wanted him to hang up. The inmate asked to use up his allotted time. The officer pressed his order and took the phone. The inmate then cursed at the officer, a struggle over the phone followed, a radio was smashed, and the inmate was sent to the hole. The phone hung on its cord, transmitting the sounds of struggle to the mother. The trigger for the assault was the phone call, but years of disrespect and humiliation had been subjects of this inmate's writing. He saw his place in the web of inequalities clearly. The spark has been struck.Tension fills the yard, and the workshops are under scrutiny. The men want to write. They want to write stories, letters, editorials; they want to bear witness. It seems up to art to turn the machine of a the prison system out of control toward something that corrects and rehabilitates rather than deprives and punishes. If not art, then what?