Greetings & Good Hello. Today we find out if I fire my 2nd lawyer. It is Thursday, and if he does not call today then I am going to have to file a motion to remove counsel. It is getting late in the afternoon, but I can not yet tell if it is after 3:00, so I do not know if we have passed the first milestone. Once afternoon meds or dinner comes it will be certain – after that there is only the 7:00 slot to pass. I went ahead and wrote the motion, two drafts. I’ll have the pharmacist proof it tonight – he’ll give me a sense of whether or not I’m being too bitchy, or if I should tone things down here or there.
My goal with this motion is to stress that the problem is not between me and counsel, but comes from our difficulty communicating due to detention center policies. For example, the policy that limits us to only having video calls on Thursday – and if that does not work out for my attorney, then we wait a week. The fact that the facility makes money off me isn’t brought up, but I do point out that the USMS-Raleigh office should be considered hostile. It is important that the reality of these conditions be well known – they are not. The access to the courts, the innocence until proven guilty, the integrity of our federal institutions – that is all total horse shit.
America is broken – pretty much every institution is broken. The country itself just does not work. The country itself is a bubble, it is a sort of pyramid scheme built on the rape and plunder of natural resources and people it could exploit – slaves, natives, the poor and disenfranchised oozing out of Europe, desperate peoples from all over. Better the statue of liberty be cracking a whip and holding a branding iron, or wearing a taser – that book she’s carrying is a chattel log book, an inventory with some RoI calculations scribbled in the back, accounting for acceptable rates of loss of course. My time on the inside has certainly taught me nothing to give me systemic hope – although, I might admit, the word on the street here is that the judge I have seems “a pretty fair guy”. I guess, more than anything, the fact that the other inmates talk respectfully about this one figure is heartening. It is refreshing to see that these inmates, facing the person who will impose sentence on them, honestly believe that he will do so fairly after giving full consideration to all of the information available. That says a lot about both sides of this equation.
Systemically though, the situation is not changed. A judge sits at the apex of the system, but the problems come from the low quality of the cogs. Here I am talking about [med’s just got called, so attorney is not here in the afternoon!] Sgt. C – the mail lady, and “The Lieutenant” 1st Sgt. Jenkins, or even Sgt. Faulk or officer Wilson – all of whom are convinced that everyone in here is a guilty criminal out to scam, cheat, steal, lie, etc. There is a lot of that, especially in the other blocks – the local country lock-up – but the fed block is very different. Here we have a few like that, but mostly it is a more sophisticated and sedate group – and generally quite a bit more intelligent. Quite a number of us are actively involved in our cases and are trying to take care of our world by coordinating with notaries and such. Several are, for example, trying to file taxes. In this context the knee-jerk idiotic attitude of the facility staff is just disruptive, especially when the staff is flat out wrong on points of law.
The more you see of these multiple Americas too, the more it makes sense. Most of the guys in here are part of a quiet race-war. There isn’t so much as a “war-on-drugs”, it is the failure of American society to be truly livable for the vast majority of the population. The world of the hustle, outside of the confines of the regulated economy, is really just that – it is an entire secondary economy, because the one that is officially sanctioned just does not work. It doesn’t take long at all to start to get a really clear picture of how the dual system works, and how the race politics come into play. Unfortunately, it is not a story that can come across on the TV, or on news broadcasts, or even casual social mixers. In here we all have a common enemy – the system, the state, beating us down day by day, hour by hour – working to strip away our humanity and break our character. We support each other, and we grow immune. I can tell you, just from this little time, that prison sentences do not work in dealing with crime – not a one of us thinks that way. The entirety of the prison investment is off-target.
That is not to say that we should get rid of prisons altogether, not at all. Some of the people I have met are dangerous – they, sadly, are either quickly released or work in law enforcement. Other people I’ve met are intelligent, honorable, honest, reliable, and also killers – I don’t have a problem with them because, if this were an earlier time or a TV Western, we would celebrate their actions as righteous. And really, why shouldn’t you sell cocaine to police officers who will later try to bust you for that, especially if you can provide home, healthcare, and education for a dozen people because those cops have nasty habits? Those drug-snorting cops, lawyers, bankers, and business owners – fine upstanding people that they are, fund the brutal cartels in Mexico and to the south – yet the people getting punished are the descendants of their slaves who manage and maintain “the other economy” – the one that is and will always be until America comes clean with the inequalities of its past and present. These are not dishonorable lowlife criminals, quite far from it – this is just a whole section of society for whom prison is a rite of passage and part of life, because the system never included them in the first place.
I’ve only had a taste of it, as my family is split nationality and it was my time dealing with that in 2012-2015 that drove me from the U.S. in disgust. It was American racism that played a large part in driving me in here this time. One of the reasons I don’t mind losing this lawyer is because he described George Floyd as “that black guy who faked getting choked”. Part of the reason Sgt’s Clarida, Faulk, and Jenkins work so hard to block and isolate me is because they are black and I am white, it is too delicious a power inversion for them to pass up. Sadly they are too stupid and too stubborn to realize that I am not their enemy – this is the racist South, and they are racists. Thank you Carolina Slavery!
[And – the 7:00 hour has passed. A preacher is out in the block instructing a horde of orange-clad lambs that a magic sky elf can help them overcome drug addictions and lead a sin-free life. Praise Jesus. I still can not get access to the AI textbook I claim as my religious text – but I’m working on it. At 9:00 I will call and see if the notification of the 1st Amendment lawsuit was delivered. I hope so.]
I did a third pass at my motion. Tweaked it a little. It is not great, but I think it will do. I have enough ink in my home-made pen to write a copy out in ink tonight, so it can go in the mail tomorrow morning. Should get to Raleigh by Tuesday and will get filed in court then maybe Wednesday. I feel sad about this in a way – sad and tired, and a bit beat. Also let down.
You get used to it though, realizing that “the system” – all of it is against you. None of it, none of this United States is here for me. It is not a country that I am part of, it is for other people – not me, not us. I am now a part of the excluded community – in a way I was before, but before I was just excluded, now I am a member of a strange fraternity. I know how to flush the toilet in a certain way when I piss. I know about the etiquette of keeping a stainless steel sink clean, about the utility of ramen noodle soups and saving your sugar packets. Talking with folks I got a sense of so many different paths through our society – and just how fucked up America is. The distance between classes, not just economic, but educational classes, racial classes – class isn’t quite the right word, it is too simplistic – but there are distinct differences between those for whom “the system” works and those for whom it fails miserably.
A lot of these differences have to do with a tolerance for submission, a willingness to be shit upon and to look the other way. America demands moral and ethical shallowness – a sort of emptying of the soul and the adoption of a “husk” mentality. This works – citizen as mindless consuming husk. Always blame someone else, don’t look too deep, when confused go eat some fast food. I don’t think it is any coincidence that most of the officers who have been problems – like Jenkins for example, and others at Onslow and Bladen, are gargantuan. I mean truly and spectacularly huge – easily capable of losing over 100kg and still being obese. The outlaws, on the other hand, tend to be fit, alert, and energetic – a lot of them simply live by a different code, and one that is widely celebrated in American culture – moreover, one that was dominant for much of history. This is not an honor-free code, it is not for the undisciplined, and it demands a certain respect.
We all understand that no-one is on our side – everyone is against us and the only person we can count on is ourself. There are exactly zero social institutions available to you now – the entire United States, henceforth, is your enemy – all of it. It is a system which exists to harass, hurt, and harm you and you have no effective rights. Sure, on paper you have rights – but, as you learn in here, those rights do not mean jack shit. My cellmate at Onslow had a point I guess when we welcomed me to taste the experience of being black in America.
Eric Charles Welton
Prisoner #94911
Columbus County Detention Center
April 11, 2024