I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight (23 page)

We are stopped by the guards on the way in for an extensive search. They filter through Lorene's bag and take out some Balance bars, but not others. They decide to leave my hot-pink Sailor Jerry pocketbook alone, presumably because there is a painting of a naked lady on it. I take my pocketbook back out to the car, since it's too racy for prison, and, who knows, maybe I baked a file in it. I scoop up big handfuls of quarters for the vending machines and carry them around in my sweaty fists. I had been advised by Burk Sauls, who for the last twelve years has been leading the movement to free the WM3, on
WM3.org
, to bring lots of change for diet Dr Peppers and candy bars. Inmates are allowed these treats only in the visiting area, and they are enormously appreciated. A female guard asks me about my elaborate gold arm bracelets that I wear up high, near my shoulders, like a belly dancer. She wonders if they are "jewelry," and sighs and shakes her head when I tell her yes, like having them on must be some kind of arduous task.

We walk through numerous doors, and then down a long, winding outdoor path. It would be a pretty day, with the cloudless blue sky
overhead, if we didn't have to look at it from behind the scary, razor-sharp, electrified barbed-wire fence. You want criminals to live like this if they have hurt you, robbed you, raped you. If they have taken a life, then this is the life they should get in turn. However, this is not what my friends have done.

I hate that my friends live like this.

We are brought to a large, refrigerated building, with glass partitions and steel walls. After the slamming of countless doors, starting in the distance and then coming closer, Damien is finally brought to the other side of the glass. He is hard to hear through the air vents, but he is wonderful to see.

Damien is beautiful like a girl, with a pale, delicate complexion that is Dove Cleansing Bar–worthy. I exclaim that he is one-quarter moisturizing cream, and Lorene says you can see them pouring the cream into the bar, just like in the commercial. Lorri and Lorene both think that he has a Johnny Depp quality, but I think that Damien is much cuter. Though we have never met face-to-face until now, we know each other well, although he's much shyer than I expected him to be. I wonder what he would have been like if he hadn't become a tragic victim of circumstance. He might be living on a houseboat in New Orleans, writing historical novels and giving lectures on the nature of compassion at the local Zen center. He is an inspiring teacher and a remarkable thinker. His writing is a constant source of wonder to me—I genuinely admire it, its quality, its intelligence, its hope, especially now that I've seen the captivity he lives in.

We sit for many hours, which go by much too quickly. He reads his
poetry, which is eloquent and dreamlike. I am reminded of Lewis Carroll daguerreotypes, in the fragile, childlike features of his face. He wants me to tell Jason that he would like to find a way that they could communicate, whether it is through other people or relayed messages. Their closeness hasn't faded, even after being separated for over a decade.

When it's time for him to go, it's hard to say good-bye. I watch as the guard takes him back through the vast labyrinth of concrete, steel, glass and bars, doors that shut with a kind of finality that we don't hear much in the outside world unless you are a fan of
Oz
.

Then we go to visit Jason Baldwin. He is heartbreakingly buoyant. The years in this place have not weighed down his spirit. I read him a poem that Damien had written about him, and the look on his face is priceless. He is grateful for the thousands of supporters that write to him from all over the world. He works in the law library, helping other inmates with their cases, and, through this service, he possesses a formidable knowledge of the legal system. I promise to write, and I encourage him to write his story, like a letter to the world.

And, finally, we visit Jessie Misskelley. He shows me the tattoo on top of his head, a clockface with Roman numerals. He plans to have the hands of the clock tattoed on with the exact time of his release, to commemorate it forever, when that time comes. He is adorable, and full of boundless hope. And he has the last thing that would be expected from someone serving life in prison: optimism. His outlook is impossibly sunny.

I wish our nation had as good a forecast. My friend Damien is
sitting in prison for a crime he did not commit. And, in the face of resounding, exonerating evidence, the WM3 are still in prison. Could you imagine sitting in a cell for twelve years for something you didn't do? Our judicial system is quick when it comes to sentencing people to life and death, but it's unbearably slow when it needs to correct its own errors. Even if Damien, Jason and Jessie were freed today, they've still been wrongfully imprisoned for all this time. How much longer can we allow this injustice to go on?

conservatives like to procrastinate

W
henever I would witness some sort of injustice, I could understand it intellectually, and be angry about it in a very distant way, but knowing Damien Echols and his wife now as intimately as I do my feelings about the issues have changed dramatically. He wrote me the other day about the Elvis biopic on CBS. He wanted to know if I had seen it and what I thought. He said seeing it filled him with an unbearable longing to be back home. He was overcome with sorrow because he wanted to see Graceland again. All of us on the outside take Graceland for granted, and by Graceland I'm not just talking about fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches and dying from an overdose of prescription drugs while sitting on the toilet. Graceland is
freedom, the right to make choices for yourself about where to go, what to do, how we will spend our weekends, our weekdays, our lives. It sickens me to know someone I love does not have this freedom, and misses it as badly and in more ways than I could ever imagine.

Perhaps the way we could abolish the death penalty is to do something much like the popular "Take Your Daughter to Work Day"—we could have a "Take Your Local Death Row Inmate to Work Day." Of course, there are a lot of horrifying people who are on death row, but if a close watch is kept on the worst ones the rest, the majority, are unlikely to kill again. When we are forced to personalize issues like the death penalty, actually put a face to a name, shake the hand of the accused, shoot the shit with those about to be shot, we cannot help but think again about what we are doing. It's likely that we might want to save their lives as well as our own.

We cannot lock people up and throw away the key. We cannot allow our courts to have the power over life and death. What if someone makes a mistake? It happens more than we realize. The justice system in this country is seriously flawed, and we should not wait until we are personally betrayed by it to take action.

Even those who are guilty deserve compassion. We are all human beings, and though there might be some of us who commit inhuman acts we have to remember that criminals are not born, they are made. Abuse begets abuse, and our society has too many built-in inequities and injustices and fuckovers that could make anyone on the shady side of it want to shoot up his or her workplace.

Most conservatives want to think that life is fair, since it is likely to have been more than fair to them. They like to ignore the heavy burden of inequality because they don't have to carry much of it.

Most conservatives also believe in the death penalty, but not abortion, which proves they like to procrastinate. Where do their arguments about the sanctity of life and how every child is a child of God go when it comes to taking the life of an alleged criminal? Why is life only sacred when it's convenient for them? It's the stupidity of us referring to those who bomb abortion clinics and murder doctors who terminate pregnancy "pro-lifers" that keeps them in gunpowder and homemade explosive devices. We need to call them "pro-deathers." The idiots who stand in front of clinics in order to harass young women walking in, bombarding them with gory, blown-up photographs of dismembered fetuses are often the same dummies screaming "Fry 'em!" in front of prisons during executions. It is clear that life is not as sacred as their own hypocrisy and ignorance, which they safeguard with a scary, steadfast devotion.

Watch how mad these angry, self-righteous dumbfucks get when you point out the inconsistencies in their beliefs. I love to aggravate them because even though they could tell me to go to hell, which would be far preferable than an Operation Rescue fund-raiser, I know their seething will only win them a lifetime of TMJ and high blood pressure. When you confront pissed-off people, try to piss them off even more. The rage you inspire in them will end up hurting them way more than it will ever hurt you, as long as you can avoid becoming totally infuriated yourself. The best tactic is to laugh at them.
Nothing brings their blood to a boil faster than a smug chuckle at their expense. Of course, then you may run the risk of them killing you, but perhaps if they get the death penalty for your murder they're likely to have a change of heart about capital punishment and even convert some of their ridiculous friends, so it might all be worth it in the end.

I am glad to know Damien Echols, and I am proud to be the publisher of his memoir,
Almost Home
. He tells his own remarkable story with grace and a sense of humor that seems impossible for someone in a situation like his. At my insistence, he has also submitted his work to numerous literary magazines and journals, and now has quite an interesting career as a writer, which brings him much personal satisfaction, introduces him to an entirely new world and gives him hope. He has the opportunity to speak his truth, making us all aware of the fragility of freedom, how it is easily lost, how it is not something to be taken lightly.

WHY I HAVE CHOSEN TO STAY AND FIGHT

"our revolution is long overdue."

—notorious c.h.o
.

I
want to map out
an exit strategy for this book. Exit strategies are in demand, and even though George Bush yet still refuses to put a timetable on Iraq, we as a nation are fortunate in that we will be witness to an elaborate and stunningly dramatic exit for the Bush administration, if we are really lucky, and we can take our country back and try to clean up all the damage that has been done in the previous eight years.

I think that any proper exit strategy is to retreat into oneself, a turtle pulling back into its shell. Returning to Witch Mountain, or wherever you came from. To remove yourself from the situation so that you might recognize yourself again.

When I was a very young girl in San Francisco, the city had a terrible November. First, there was the Jonestown massacre, where over nine hundred men, women, children—black, white, Asian, Latino—were forced to commit ritual suicide by their leader, Jim Jones. This was certainly an exit strategy, and yet not the one that
should have been implememented. The terrible deaths had occurred in Guyana, but the headquarters were still in San Francisco. Coincidentally, my grandparents were looking for a suitable venue for their fiftieth wedding anniversary party, and since the People's Temple members were not going to be needing the building my family snatched it up, pulling down police tape and replacing it with paper chains and streamers. My mom loves to party, and she hates to pay retail. But San Francisco barely noticed. It was in a state of shock. Over nine hundred of our people died, forced out to the jungle by a madman, with an exit strategy that was too permanent, too secretive, too insane, too ugly. The city mourned deeply as the rest of the world looked on in horror.

Then a disgruntled assemblyman assassinated Mayor Moscone and the highly popular and influential Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official. People were overwhelmed. Candlelight marches turned into riots. No one knew a way out of their grief and rage. My exit strategy then, as a little girl, was to vow that one day I would carry on in the tradition of Harvey Milk, that even though he had not survived his message would live on through me. I wasn't sure how that was going to happen, but it just kinda did. I exited grief and fear and my grandparents' golden anniversary and I entered womanhood and my warrior nature.