Archive for the 'Inside Line' Category

photo by jpKERNODLE PHOTOGRAPHY

May 25, 2011

Dear Friends,

Welcome to another of America’s gulags – this one in Eastern TN – the Blount County Correctional Facility in Maryville, TN!
This is day number 15 and I want to begin the journey with a quote from Jarhead by Anthony Swofford and his experiences as a Marine in Operation Desert shield. “What follows is neither  true nor false but what I know.”…and heard, saw, tasted, smelled and touched.

DAY 1. Around 7:30 p.m. we are placed in a typical holding cell with no mattresses, 2 benches of concrete, toilet/sink combo and blanket given many hours later.
We are taken out one by one for processing which consists of answering typical intake forms, fingerprints, picture and hospital type bright orange arm bands to distinguish us from the county folks wearing blue/white armbands, the de-liceing shower and stripped uniforms (black and white if new; shades of grey if older (the color everything becomes) and flip flops for shoes. The one pair of old socks, underpants and t-shirt must last until commissary. We were supposed to get two of everything but they have run out with 2-300 extra. So no laundry bag or crate either. We make an attempt to sleep on the concrete slabs but it’s a long night. We tell stories, laugh, sing.

photo by Leonard Eiger

After spending the first 2 1/2 weeks of his prison sentence for the Disarm Now Plowshares action at the SeaTac Federal Correction Facility, Jesuit priest Bill “Bix” Bichsel was taken out of his cell on April 18.  He is being transported several thousand miles across the U.S. to Tennessee, where he is scheduled to join 12 others for a May 9 trial stemming from their July 5, 2010 civil resistance action at the Y-12 nuclear weapons complex in Oak Ridge.  (More about the action here.)

Bix’s health is fragile, and being transported by the Bureau of Prisons can make for a long and difficult journey, during which it is difficult to receive needed medications.  Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers.

April 14, 2011
Day 16 at SeaTac Federal Detention

By Bill Bichsel, S.J.

I will pursue my hope to do some writing while in lock-up. I feel the
spirit present with me in lock-up and feel confirmed by the spirit
that here is where I should be.

As I slowly shuffle around the common area, I thank God for being here
and for the peace I experience. I am not anxious or overly concerned
by anything, though I do feel some tugs to answer my letters and to
get my calling and visitor lists into the computer.

photo by Cindy Callahan

December 8, 2010

HERE WE ARE AGAIN

by Fr. Louis Vitale

Two weeks have passed since David Omondi and I began our sojourn here at Irwin County Detention Center in southern Georgia.  Some may say, “Vitale has protested himself back into the pokey below the Mason-Dixon line” and “He has been jailed again in an effort to bring peace and social justice.”  SF Chronicle 11/28

Many ask, “Why do you keep doing this?”  We try to respond:  “Because the oppression goes on and our nation is a major participant in that oppression of the poor and of all creation.”  Specifically this manifestation of mourning focuses on the School of the Americas (WHINSEC) at Ft. Benning, Georgia, where U.S. military have taught counter-insurgency techniques, including torture and disappearance, to Latin American military.  It still goes on, as recently observed with the outrageous coup in Honduras carried out by graduates of the School of the Americas.  In fact, our involvement in oppressive militarism extends throughout the world!

(From the Nuclear Resister #157, June 1, 2010)

February 25, 2010

How Can I Cope?

Many people who write me – friends and supporters – ask about harsh treatment and brutality.  I do not deny that in many prisons and jails these conditions do exist.  One can even raise the charge of torture.  In regards to myself I have not experienced such conditions.  Hardships, yes, but not brutality or violence.

The hardships begin with the loss of freedom.  I remember during my first incarceration, after having made pastoral visits in jail to prisoners, it was a shock as I realized the cell doors were closed and locked on me.