February 2003

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

Letter from a First-Time Activist

Vanessa Carney attended an October 19th rally and march to Boston's South Bay prison in recognition of Prisoner Rights Unity Day. The event was organized by the Campaign to Build Safer Communities: Shutdown the Control Units!

I am not an activist. I had never protested, picketed, boycotted, or even made flyers--not to mention "walking for the cause," which sounds like a completely foreign language to me. I am just a girl from the ghettos of Chicago, what power do I have toward social or political change? I am from a place where surviving is a minute-to-minute struggle; if it wasn't surviving the throttle of poverty, it was surviving being handcuffed and thrown around, courtesy of the Chicago police department. So when I read, "support your loved ones behind bars, come out, show you care" and "protest the atrocities surrounding the US prison industrial complex," I understood the objective, I could relate to what conditions are like in prison. Being locked down and dehumanized without a way out. The streets of Chicago hold conditions akin to those. And they are horrible, I knew that, but the fact remained: I am not political, and I do not have the power to contribute to social change. I couldn't even change my own environment, how could I change others'? But I wondered what the people who handed me this flyer thought I could do, so I agreed to go to the demonstration.

At the rally, I stood contemplating my place there. I felt assured that I had been right--I couldn't do anything. I thought nothing was changing because I was standing there. I am one in a crowd. I was all set to leave, then a woman asked me to hold a banner and handed me cards that advertised the campaign. I found myself giving her a dirty look. I thought, that wasn't part of the deal. I agreed to come to this rally thing, but I didn't agree to expel energy.

The voices of people speaking over the microphone drowned out my thoughts. I did not want to hear. I was definitely more concerned with how tired my arms were becoming from holding up the banner. Then a woman, Tracy, spoke, "I am going to take you inside of the closed custody unit at MCI Framingham." It got my attention, I certainly did not agree to that. She directed the crowd to close their eyes and imagine being contained in a box that was not much taller than she was, with nothing inside but an iron bed and a steel toilet, and then being allowed out for only one hour a day. I couldn't believe what I was hearing; I was upset with the image. "People are kept like this for years!" She continued, "Marching to the South Bay prison is the first step toward stopping this kind of torture." I cared. But I was frozen, unable to move. I wondered if it was okay for me to take a step. I am just a regular person.

The march went underway. "Out of the house and into the streets," they chanted. I trailed behind the rest of the crowd, still questioning whether I should do this or not. People were watching us. I hid my face. I am just one person. What could my walking do to help prisoners? But I decided that I might as well march, I'd made it this far. So with my face hidden, I marched, last in the crowd. We marched past the train station and through residential blocks. I had not focused on what was happening or where we were until a woman nudged me. I didn't recognize her, she wasn't at the rally. She was just a regular person walking along the street. She gave me a timid look and said, "I don't know nobody in prison" and continued walking past me.

I didn't recognize that woman, but I recognized the look. It was acknowledgment. The face that I made every time I had seen a march or a rally, the same face that I had up until this moment. I looked around. A lot of people came out of their houses and watched. I saw myself in all of those faces. The chanters over the bullhorn summoned these people to join the march. But they watched, seemingly frozen. It was acknowledgment. They, like me, cared but did not feel the power to move, to make change. They were regular people like me with similar experience. If all of those people could recognize their power to move, maybe they could join us, and unified, we would have power to change the criminal justice system or whatever else we dedicated ourselves to protest.

We marched and the streets were lined with people watching and standing, some honking their horns, raising their fists, and shouting words of salute to us. But when we approached the prison, no one lined that street except our small group of marchers. I looked up at the prison's windows; each one was filled with orange suits. I could see the prisoners' faces. The crowd yelled up to them, "We love you all. We are supporting you." And the prisoners smiled down at us. They wrote messages on the window, "Thank you." It was amazing! I thought if this little group could make a voice that inspired that many smiles, what a staggering impact we would have had if the voices of all of those people that saluted us on the march over here had combined with ours! The number of windows outnumbered the people in our crowd by at least double. But each person out there was a finger that when put together made a fist. We created a great enough impact to affect a group that doubled us.

I learned that each person that came out to march was integral; that I, a regular girl from the streets of Chicago, could contribute just by feeling the power to walk, to move, to make change; I learned the power of unity but within that, I recognized the power in the force of one.

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