I composed a column about racism and how it is directly responsible for the disproportionate number of “minorities” – blacks – in US prisons, especially on drug charges, and how racism continues to be prevalent throughout our penal institutions. However, before I could re-write the rough draft, the guards shook down the cell block and confiscated my article along with some legal material. They claim it could incite a riot!

Anyway, the warden is supposed to return the material to me once he has renewed it. I will forward it to the web site as soon as he does – if he does. If I have not gotten it back in 7 days I will re-write it from memory. The warden cannot keep the written article indefinitely. It would violate my Freedom of Speech – as if he cared!

Meanwhile, as this letter leaves me, I maintain my sanity in an oppressive situation that breeds insanity. Each day I watch the news and read the paper to try to stay abreast of the war in Iraq. I am so skeptical of what the media report under the influence of the government that it is impossible to know how much to believe. I absolutely distrust the government.

Bush says the soldiers are in Iraq to “free the people.” How can America speak on that of which it has no clue – Freedom? I can’t recall a time when I’ve ever been “free” in this country. I’ve had certain liberties, but total freedom is as foreign to a black man from America’s ghettos as it is to any oppressed face or group of people in any land, be it a democracy or a dictatorship. The purpose that Bush gives for our troops to be fighting in Iraq is incongruent with the reality for which America stands, which is its determination to run other people’s lives. Who says the US has all the answers? Does the rest of the world realize that America commits its own atrocities against its own people?

(to be continued)