I sometimes like to show a film called Prison Town, USA when I am doing popular education workshops about the prison industrial complex. The film is set in Susanville, California and tells the story of a small town that tries to revive its economic fortunes by building a prison. It is a complex portrait of the impact of this prison on Susanville. To me, the best part of the film is the searing and poignant portrayal of the people who want to work and/or currently work at the prison. The film does a particularly good job at exploring these individuals’ motives and motivations. Here is a trailer from the film:

Kelsey Kauffman has written that “prisons are perhaps the most racially divisive institutions in America today.” I think that this is certainly true. Anyone who has spent any time on the inside can attest to the very strong racial animus between prisoners and also between prisoners and guards. This racial hatred does not stay within the walls of the prison; it seeps outside as well. The prison is also a racially divisive institution because of its disproportionate impact on people of color (both those who ends up behind bars and those of us who don’t).

I have posted a couple of poems by Jimmy Santiago Baca (one of my favorite writers) in the past few days. I really love his writing. I am posting another poem of his today. This particular poem “There Are Black” has an interesting take on the racial divisions among guards and prisoners. Baca writes about the phenomenon of people of color working in prison to oversee prisoners of color. The poem captures the contradictions and complexities of this role. Additionally, the poem speaks to the overall dehumanization of all who come into contact with the prison – the incarcerated and the guards. You have to linger over Baca’s words to understand their implication. We pay billions of dollars each year to run “correctional” institutions that leave the people who go through them – prisoners and guards — worse off than when they first went in. This is a simple and profound reality. Things have to change.

There Are Black
by Jimmy Santiago Baca

There are black guards slamming cell gates
on black men,
And brown guards saying hello to brown men
with numbers on their backs,
And white guards laughing with white cons,
and red guards, few, say nothing
to red inmates as they walk by to chow and cells.

There you have it, the little antpile . . .
convicts marching in straight lines, guards flying
on badged wings, permits to sting, to glut themselves
at the cost of secluding themselves from their people . .
Turning off their minds like watertaps
wrapped in gunnysacks that insulate the pipes
carrying the pale weak water to their hearts.

It gets bad when you see these same guards
carrying buckets of blood out of cells,
see them puking at the smell, the people,
their own people slashing their wrists,
hanging themselves with belts from light outlets;
it gets bad to see them clean up the mess,
carry the blue cold body out under sheets,
and then retake their places in guard cages,
watching their people maul and mangle themselves,

And over this blood-rutted land,
the sun shines, the guards talk of horses and guns,
go to the store and buy new boots,
and the longer they work here the more powerful they become,
taking on the presence of some ancient mummy,
down in the dungeons of prison, a mummy
that will not listen, but has a strange power
in this dark world, to be so utterly disgusting in ignorance,
and yet so proudly command so many men. . . .

And the convicts themselves, at the mummy’s
feet, blood-splattered leather, at this one’s feet,
they become cobras sucking life out of their brothers,
they fight for rings and money and drugs,
in this pit of pain their teeth bare fangs,
to fight for what morsels they can. . . .

And the other convicts, guilty
of nothing but their born color, guilty of being innocent,
they slowly turn to dust in the nightly winds here,
flying in the wind back to their farms and cities.
From the gash in their hearts, sand flies up spraying
over houses and through trees,

look at the sand blow over this deserted place,
you are looking at them.

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  By Rachel, March 17, 2011 @ 3:07 am

  Wow. Amazing poem. Thank you very much!

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