Thursday, November 6, 2014

IF THE SHU FITS ...Festival for All Skid Row Artists





At The Festival For All Skid Row Artists, now in its 5th year, we were invited to perform a fifteen minute segment from “If The SHU Fits” a dramatic reading that I had recently directed at the Unitarian Church in Santa Monica. This is a compilation of writings by men and women who have been, or still are, in solitary confinement in United States prisons. Also writings from members of their families outside. In California, SHU stands for Secure Housing Unit and the implicit protest in this performance is that, as declared by the United Nations, long-term Solitary Confinement is Torture!
KevinMichael Key, who co-produces the Festival, performed in the show and again at the Festival.  One of his portrayals was a man in prison in Malone, New York who pleaded: “Sometimes I feel as though I’m walking through a cemetery of lost souls. Seeing as how almost everyone around me is either already dead; in the process of dying or simply withering away like a corpse left to rot away in some decrepit grave with the name and epitaph erased away!” For another, who had spent 25 years in the SHU, he read this ironic statement: “I now face the rest of my life at Supermax, locked in a concrete tomb, dying in complete isolation. I have been approved to be transferred to this torture facility by psychological professionals who affirm that I am sane enough to be driven crazy!
Reverend Sidonie Smith, reading for the sister of another SHU prisoner who had taken part in a fierce hunger strike, persuasively laid out the humane and practical solutions to the incarceration of such men: “The five core demands are just human things that you and I would respect: 1. End group punishment and administrative abuse; 2. Abolish the debriefing policy and modify the gang status criteria; 3. Comply with the U.S. Commission recommendations to end long-term solitary confinement ; 4. Provide nutritious food; 5. Create and expand constructive programs!”
Most poignant was the reading by Paula Brooks, as a woman in a New Jersey SHU, describing how she saw from her sealed window a plant growing in the brick wall outside. She reads: “As the wind would blow against the leaves of this plant, I would actually close my eyes and pretend this very wind was blowing against my face. I know it sounds crazy, but it was the only part of nature that I had.”
Deeply emotional was Sherri Walker as the mother of a young man, locked away out of her reach, in the SHU at California’s Pelican Bay: “You worry day by day if your child is OK. You can’t visit them because they are so far away. They can’t call you. All you can do is write them. You wonder if they are alive or dead and the only thing I can do is pray!”
Most powerful was Craig Walter, speaking for an inmate at Mansfield Correctional Institute in Ohio, an eloquent and angry poet. He opened the reading with these words: “Within a cage, How can you Lock me in a cage, for some misdeed done, Within a cage? All you can do, is feed my rage!” Then he closed with another poem: “I shall not die a thousand deaths of compromise Giving up names in exchange for food or blanket. I will bite my own arm to smother my screams And rob you of the satisfaction when you disassemble me…” He ended the presentation with this moving statement: “My name is Sean Swain. All I have is this pen, this paper, and the truth. Please remember that I lived.”
Compiled by Melvin Ishmael Johnson and Andy Griggs, “If The SHU Fits” was commissioned by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, and the Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace. This one-hour dramatic piece is being presented at various churches as an appeal to the public to stand forward and denounce the use of solitary confinement now rampant in our prison system.
For further information contact: www.nrcat.org or www.icujp.org.

No comments:

Post a Comment