Chain Gang All Stars

When they asked her what she was most proud of, what she always thought about was hunger. She’d helped organize it, the hunger strike when she was still in prison. She’d stopped eating. Stopped working her busywork because conditions in her own prison were beneath human decency and beneath human dignity. And she’d gone on strike not just for those around her, but for those in other prisons like hers—there were so many—and those in the immigration detention camps too, who were being held for no crime at all except trying to live. Prisons have a way of speaking to one another, and when they’d learned about the horrors elsewhere, they took action. She’d written a draft of her statement and slipped it on a piece of paper to a reporter who had taken an interest in the lives of women in prison.

To all with a conscience and a sense of justice:

We the enslaved of the GEOD system facility known as the Forthwright Detention Center stand imprisoned but in power and solidarity with the imprisoned located at New Holly, and we reject the separation of families and the inhumane violence set against innocent refugees. We reject the notion that so-called aliens, because of their non-citizenship, must be subject to inhumane conditions in poorly organized detention centers. We further condemn the rape and sexual assault that is and has been prevalent in these facilities as well as the trading and bartering of children into any number of horrors.^[*] We demand that these so-called immigration detention centers be abolished and ask for a more humane method of accepting those in need into our country. We demand an end to neo-slavery in GEOD systems and all American detainment institutions, which have long kept the harsh flame of slavery alive in this country. We find abhorrent the ease with which humans subject other humans to torture in the name of righteousness and justice, and we are ready to put our lives on the line to ensure our demands are met.

Signed,

Dr. Patricia St. Jean

Marsha Banwitten

Loretta Thurwar

Lacie Kolare

and all members of the Forthwright Rights Collective

They had been her words, but the small group of women who had identified as part of the collective on her block believed in the words and had given the okay. They had starved together.

They had been on day six of their hunger strike when the guards had thrown her into isolation and told her she would be Influenced. She’d seen the smiles on some, heard stories of eyes ripped from skulls, had begged them not to do it. They’d said, “Let’s see how ready you are,” and stabbed a black rod connected to a wire and finally a controller into her thigh.

She’d eaten her fill that night. The Influencing had shown her that her life, already a blight, could fit so much more pain than she had imagined. And she was not willing to see how much of that pain they could pull out of her. The following day she’d signed the papers to join the CAPE program.

* About 14,700 complaints alleging sexual and physical abuse were lodged against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) between 2010 and 2016. Thousands and thousands. ICE was created in 2003 as part of the government’s response to the September 11 attacks.