We need your help
"I would like to open up a place where people who are hungry could come and got a shower, a change of clothes and a good hot meal." — The Reverend R.B. Cottonreader
Few things in this life can be more demoralising than being hungry and dispossessed. Many of the men, women and children who are in prison today were hungry and homeless when they were arrested. Homelessness and prison go together sometimes like a hand and glove.
For example, I recently found myself listening to a corrections officer as he recalled an encounter with a parolee. He said that not long ago on the day the man was being paroled — he cautioned him, "Don't come back now!" Alas, the man is back. When the officer asked him why, the man said, "I had a choice of sleeping out in the cold with lice and ticks or a warm prison cell." The man had broken the conditions of his parole by stealing a pack of chewing gum — and making sure that the store operator had seen him.
We ought not to be surprised that hunger and homelessness often lead to imprisonment. US prisons are full of angry men, women and children. I think it was John Steinbeck who once wrote that "the line between hunger and anger is a thin [one]".
Many prisoners know first hand the demoralising relationship between hunger and anger. Society is quick to label them "criminals", but it is far too slow in honestly acknowledging their dispossessed state prior to their imprisonment.
At the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center (GDCC), in the part of the prison commonly known as death row, there is a group of men quietly working day and night. They are crocheting afghans (day-bed covers.) Some of the designs are so intricate that they require as much as 100 hand crafting hours to complete. The men are all volunteers working to support the Afghan Project For The Needy (TAP).
Prisoners in Georgia are not allowed to sell anything. The individual US$100 (plus $30 for postage and handling outside the USA) donation, which is the suggested minimum per afghan, is pooled with all donated funds. After replenishing the supplies required to create the afghan, TAP sends the remaining money to an individual who arranges for the needy to be served hot meals and, in the process, be treated with both dignity and respect. TAP treats and serves each man and woman in a dignified manner so that their self-esteem and humanity are fed along with their hunger.
While TAP has sent checks to other individuals in the past, it now channels most to the Reverend R.B. Cottonreader. The reverend works with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the famed civil rights organisation. The Reverend Cottonreader has been coming to the GDCC to visit with, befriend and provide religious counselling for members of TAP.
The Reverend Cottonreader is one of the few ministers in the region who practises what he preaches where those of us who are on death row are concerned. It is politically expedient for most of his colleagues to shun the men on death row.
When the reverend gathers up a number of homeless men and women and takes them to a restaurant to be served, he does so entirely on his own; and that is good because he does it with much love, kindness and compassion. Moreover, since he knows that we cannot see the good that he helps us do, he takes photographs for us. It is encouraging and inspiring to be able to see the good we are doing.
The Reverend Cottonreader wants to provide not only hot meals, clothing and showers for the needy, but job counselling that leads to gainful employment as well. The late US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt once stated, "True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made." We can be sure that a man who has to resort to stealing a pack of chewing gum in order to have a place to sleep and food to eat would consider the US to be, at least, a fledgling dictatorship already.
If you would like to get an afghan and make a contribution to TAP, please send your cheque or money order, along with your colour preference (black, red or green) and address to: The Afghan Project For The Needy, 142 Wilmer Street, Glassboro New Jersey 08028, USA. Will you help us help others? We really need your help.