THE SILENCE WITHIN
THE SILENCE WITHIN
Within the larger silence was a different silence. This silence was deceiving. It slapped me in the face, vice-gripping my throat, saying, "Look! Look! YOU can't ignore me!" My heart raced, and I paced my cage. I don't know if I was having one of those vision-causing seizures, but I was suddenly in another cage with a homemade mouth-piece in my mouth, a sock tied around my face, covering my nose, with a do-rag on my head holding a piece of plastic over my eyes. I was pacing and waiting, waiting through the silence; waiting for the officers working on the pod to suit up in full riot gear, armed with iron-knuckle handcuffs, ball and chain shackles, a battering ram-shield, and chemical warfare, stomp-stomp-stomping their way back to my cage. After which under the guise of retrieving the tray I refused to give back in protest of our inhumane treatment, they'll use the amount of force "necessary" to regain "safety and security" of their establishment, while attempting to regain the humanity that urged my resistance. Then I realized...it wasn't me going up against the systems antithesis to our humanity.
As if slapping me back into reality, I heard the loud "beep," signaling to the picket officer somebody wanted into the pod. I stood at my cage door to observe.
The pod is horseshoe shaped with the control picket, wrapped with Plexiglas windows, sitting dead center as if it was the iron post this horseshoe was pressed upon--Cling! In cage 84, I'm the last cage on the 2nd row, F-section, at the mouth of one end of this horseshoe. There are six sections that run along this horseshoe; going backwards they are, E, D, C, B and A Section, located in the mouth but on the other end of the horseshoe. The position of my cage enables me to see through the Plexiglas of the control picket, and into parts of B and C sections, which are counter-cornered from me.
Because of the isolated position of all our cages (which face in one direction), one learns how to use shadows, vibrations, the direction faced by picket officers, "beep" sounds (among a myriad of others), and the red-light high on the wall before you enter each section (that comes on to notify pod officers when a cage door is ajar), to orientate ourselves to the activity in our surroundings.
The picket officer was staring into C-section intently, with excitement even waiting for the show, them vs. us, gray suits vs. white suits, which is sad because that’s not the case at all. It's more like machine vs. Humanity. Some of them get it; yet obviously, this excited picket officer didn't. Then like a black centipede, one-behind-the-other, the 5-man team stomp-stomp-stomped their way into the pod, stomping into the C-section, and up its stairs to row 2.
It was right after lunch. The floor officers had just came around picking up trays; then suddenly rushed off the pod. Somebody on C-Section refused to return their tray.
Once the "team" got upstairs, I started counting to myself, while looking for that section's red-light to come on signaling when the resistant prisoner's cage door has rolled open and the team had run in on him. If the sergeant - who shoots the prisoner through his cage door screen with these chemical agents - follows protocol, he will give three direct orders to the prisoner to relinquish the tray, and should he refuse, "chemical agents and a five-man team will be utilized". After the 3rd command, they may unleash their 3-second burst of chemical agents on the prisoner. Then after 3 minutes, they may administer another, another; and another. But too often these 3-second bursts stretch into 5-seconds. Most of the time, the gas they administer on one prisoner in a small 6x9 caged box is meant only for use on groups of people in larger areas. Sometimes they give one fast command before gassing and almost simultaneously running in on the prisoner. Other times they jettison the gas, and just run in on the prisoner. Either way, what was designed to preserve the "safety and security" of this establishment in a way safest for officers and prisoners, has now become a violent tool of repression.
The team wasn't on row 2 for a minute, before the red light came on. They had either, after quick commands, gassed the prisoner, immediately running in on him (aiming to hit him with the shield pushed by five running men, and whatever else the camera can’t see), or they just ran in without using chemical warfare. After a couple of minutes, the team came down the stairs supporting Kenny Parr, the protesting death row prisoner, to level-3 (disciplinary level with the highest level of sensory deprivation). This silence has a voice.
Justin Fuller is a son dearly loved by his Momma and Daddy; he's a father dearly loved by his beautiful daughter and he's a brother dearly loved by many of us on death row. He was also scheduled to be murdered by the state.
A few weeks before Justin's "date" I saw him in visitation.
"Fuller! What's up bruh?"
"You don't know?!!" he said with his signature sarcasm.
"I'm trying to find out." I returned, looking for anything that would let me know how he was taking his impending murder.
"You too?!!" he returned shakily, as if saying he was just as much in the dark as I, as if saying he still didn't want to die, but didn't know what to do either.
On the date of the state-sanctioned murder, the brother with the "date" was transported around 12.00pm to the Walls Unit in Huntsville, Tx., where at 6.00pm he was poisoned with a concoction of chemicals that are banned from use on animals.
Kenny Parr protested, to stand in solidarity with his brother, Justin Fuller, that the state of Texas was tearing from him, from us. Kenny Parr resisted in hopes of, if for mere moments, disrupting their transporting Justin Fuller to his "execution". But his resistance, his desperate swing against this machinery of death was much more. It was humanity's battle cry. It was beyond Justin Fuller being loved. Justin Fuller was a human being, imperfect, striving for perfection like the rest of us. He wasn't a rabid dog. Maybe this partially explains society's silence. Maybe they don't want to know about the humanity within these walls. They can't know of it if this machine is to continue violent retaliations against lives instead of harmful systems of thought.
Nevertheless, here was a human being caught in a vicious cycle of violence.
A Vicious cycle.
A cycle that state claims they want to break
A cycle that won’t be broken until people see each other in a way that wont allow them to be violent towards each other; until people learn how to love as a community family.
Justin Fuller, who never saw the age of 30, was executed 8-24-06; another person to add to a pile of statistics, while his loved ones lay equally piled up as extended victims.
Exactly a week later, Derrick "Hasan Shakur" Frazier, Son, Father, Brother and human rights soldier, who spoke when others were suffocated by this oppression to speak, had a “date”.
Same silence.
More victims added to the same pile.
Then more.
And more.
How long shall this war-worn silence scream from within the concrete encasement of Society’s silence.
My Justification
(A Tanka)
Each time they kill one
of my brothers within these
walls, they kill a part
of me. I feel, communal
self-defense is justified.
*This poem was written the day they murdered ("executed") our comrade, Hasan Shakur. I dedicate it now to all the victims of violence.
Reginald W. Blanton
#999395
Polunsky Unit
3872 F.M. 350 South
Livingston, Tx 77351