Looking out: Hopelessness and despair
By Brandon Astor Jones
Have you ever wondered about the topics that prisoners discuss late at night, when the prison is relatively quiet and locked down? This will be the first of a series of excerpts from those discussions, published with the permission of the prisoner. My purpose is to provide insights into those conversations that lead to good as well as bad places for us all — and sometimes, to no place at all.
BAJ: What is your name?
AD: Anthony Dillard.
BAJ: How old were you when you came to prison?
AD: I was 19 and mad at the world, my family and myself.
BAJ: How long have you been in prison?
AD: Thirteen years.
BAJ: Is your anger gone? I mean, has your vision of a cut and dried black and white world been changed?
AD: As I got older, different shades of grey started to creep into the black and white of it. I have become an observer of life, and my view of the world has become more narrow. My mind began to close as if there was an absence of colour in my life's colours. Events, and the people responsible for them, started to take on an "other-world" quality. I was dying.
BAJ: Can you clarify that a little more?
AD: A person lives as long as he experiences his life as having meaning and value, and as long as he has something to live for — meaningful projects that inspire him and invite him to move into his future.
BAJ: Okay, I understand. We have begun with prison as a theme, but how would you respond if my questions were also to include religion — as in prison, prisoner and his religion?
AD: I feel that most religious teachers in prisons have a tendency to talk down to prisoners. They see us as the scum of the earth; the "fire and brimstone" speech is shoved down our throats like a bad but necessary medicine.
BAJ: Is that all religions?
AD: Well, the religions that we learn about most in prison are Islam and Christianity, the two biggest religions in the world, yet we are taught so little about them that you can hardly discern the distinctions between the two. You only gain the ism of Christianity and Islam through what you see and hear on television or learn through your own studies in a cell.
BAJ: Are you saying that religion lacks the intended and hoped for influence on a prisoner?
AD: I'm saying that the teachings of a religion should influence the personality and the daily conduct of its believers, and thus each person's conduct will normally be a reflection, to a greater or lesser degree, of their religion.
BAJ: Does you religion influence you — are you a believer/follower of Christianity or Islam?
AD: I guess we could say that prison is both my church and my religion. My religion is what I call "Better". You would have to look up the definitions of "better" to really understand what I'm saying. Betterment is my goal in life.
BAJ: So in essence what you are saying is that your own religion alters not only your view of religions, as they are known, but of the world as well?
AD: Yeah, I guess you could say that. For example, the Rodney King and OJ trials gave me the chance to see if grey was the colour of the real world or just my self-contained phantom.
BAJ: What do you mean?
AD: I mean that it didn't take long to see that the public choose their champions according to their sense of white and black. The argument of right and wrong only comes as an afterthought; that's why it took two trials in each of those cases. They were about colour, the first and second time around.
BAJ: So you are saying that you see things now that you had not paid attention to before?
AD: Yes. This was the beginning of my awakening. I saw the media, the president and the churches play the "race card" again. The most obvious were the president's plans to redirect the anger and public show of hatred.
BAJ: Of course, you mean the anger and hatred the nation as whole is presently directing at the men, women and children in America's prisons?
AD: Right. the president identified us as a "common enemy" that all Americans could hate: we are the newest scourge, living in a grey world of hopelessness and despair.
[The writer is a prisoner in the United States. He welcomes letters commenting on his columns. He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, Georgia State Prison, HCO1, E-2-36, Reidsville, GA 30453, USA. For the first time in 17 years, Brandon has the real hope of his sentence of death being mitigated. If you can help by contributing to his defence fund or in other ways, please contact Australians Against Executions, PO Box 640, Milson's Point NSW 2061. Phone (02) 9955 1731, fax 9427 9489. Cheques can be made payable to "Brandon Astor Jones Defence Fund".]