I received a zine from a young man named Paul Brown this past week. It is excellent and frankly I am so grateful that he has taken the time to document the 11 months that he spent working in a jail in Seattle. The zine is titled “Eleven Months” and I highly recommend it.

He describes the zine as follows: “Eleven Months is a zine about my experience teaching in the jail in downtown Seattle. It is a mix of experience, dreams, analysis, rumors, reflections and internal e-mails. I wrote it as an attempt to condense a magnificent, traumatic, grueling experience into something I could share with others.”

By Colin Matthes – Just Seeds Artists’ Cooperative

One of the most moving parts of the zine for me speaks to the feeling of despair that often threatens to overwhelm those who spend a significant amount of time working in jails or prisons. Here is what Paul writes:

“The jail has affected me tremendously. I feel less hope for the world, for humanity. I laugh less now than I did a year ago. I can’t remember what I used to be like. Now, when I feel hope, I treasure it, because I know it will be crushed on my bus ride to work the next day. Now I know that the world is a horribly fucked-up place, where people suffer and die and no one cares. Now I know that people kill at work. (I’m talking about cops, who kill directly, and also bureaucrats and politicians, who make decisions that deny people health care, housing, etc.) Work kills people and their relationships. People are seen as fuck-ups and no one gives them a chance. The system swallows people whole, spits them out more fucked-up than they came in. The effect that I am able to have is infinitesimal. I hope that once this year is over I get some of my hope back. Despair is a sensible reaction in this world, in this place. But it isn’t pleasant.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the vast amount of suffering happening above me (the education office is on the first floor of the jail, inmates are “housed” on floors 2-11). I get kites* from inmates who have no one to turn to, who will be homeless on their release, who are in abusive relationships. I’ve gotten desensitized to everything. Instead of a sharp feeling that could move me to tears, it’s a feeling comparable to a dull ache. Occasionally the tears come through, but not nearly as much as they should. It makes me feel kind of dead.”

Interestingly, I just wrote last week about my own experience of feeling anxious about having to visit someone at Cook County Jail before I had read Paul’s zine. I did visit Cook County Jail on Friday and I am still around to write about it. I think that it is essential for as many of us as possible to enter jails and prisons in whatever capacity we can. We need to be witnesses to what is happening inside these hell holes. Yes, these experiences can feel soul-deadening but it is nothing compared to the people who are locked in cages for sometimes 23 hours a day. It is nothing compared to knowing that you will die in a cell. Feeling despair is OK. I think that it would make us inhumane if we didn’t despair at what happens on the inside. Yet, we do not have the option to give up. We can’t opt-out. We cannot abandon those on the inside to the cruelties of the prison industrial complex. Our liberation is inextricably linked to theirs. No justice, no peace for any of us.

I have so much empathy for the feelings and words shared by Paul. I wrote a post last year titled “How do you keep from giving up?” One salient portion of that post shared a quote by Cornel West that I find relevant to the idea resisting a feeling of hopelessness:

“It takes courage to cut against the grain and become non-conformist. It takes courage to wake up and stay awake instead of engaging in complacent slumber. It takes courage to shatter conformity and cowardice.” I would add that it takes courage to keep from giving up.

Thank you Paul for your zine and your determination to “wake up and stay awake instead of engaging in complacent slumber.”