csrzine

LETTERS WITH MY INCARCERATED PEN PAL,

C H

U

C K a csrzine meditating on mass incarceration & inter-racial solidarity, by michelle chang featuring the letters of charles downing

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to chuck, in gratitude.

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This zine is an attempt to do justice to the multitudes of how my friend Chuck models for me the courage of interracial solidarity with his incarcerated neighbors, and for the ways that he has undoubtedly highlighted the gaping holes that are left in our communities when incarcerated voices are lacking from them.

Chuck is a poet who went on a seven-year writing binge, writing over 80 poems and finally stopping when he felt like he had written the best poem he could ever write.

Chuck is an avid prankster who once sent me a kind letter using cut-up magazine letters to resemble a ransom note.

Chuck is a father who has loved his daughters for every single second of their lives. And Chuck is a white man who is incarcerated in New Lisbon Correctional Institution in Wisconsin, and he has been incarcerated for 28 years.

I found Charles Downing ’s name on a blog posting for incarcerated people looking for pen pals, and we have been writing to each other since July 2017. This past February 2019, his prison began accommodating email accounts through the CorrLinks platform. Most of the letters in this zine come from our emails these past few months, which were more accessible to search through.

To contextualize the lessons that Chuck has taught me about inter-racial solidarity through the lens of this course, CSRE 196C, I have accompanied each excerpt of Chuck’s letters with my own present-day response written at the conclusion of this course, addressed to Chuck. The type of art that has always resonated most deeply with me is making as giving, and I present this as a gift and testament of our friendship to Chuck.

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you taught me eyes that fume 6/5/2019 1:33:40 PM Should I answer better?

My Friend, When we moved from Kenosha to a small town in west central Wisconsin, it seemed alien to me to attend a high school that only had one black male and one Asian brother and sister (who incidentally, were twins and were born on the same day as me!). Yet somehow, I never talked to the black student and had limited contact with the Asians.

The disparity of white/people of color incarcerated are off. Black men in prison are more prevalent than white men.

“Why?” is a discussion that will never end.

Causes vary. Prejudice of a victim, police, judges and juries.

I’m white and I can only try to understand what blacks go through. When I was incarcerated in the Waupun Correctional Institution (WCI), I noticed that a majority of the Conduct Reports (“tickets”) written over bullshit than whites. Do believe that because I was one of the more prolific men who challenged tickets at WCI and saw what I saw. I worked in WCI’s library and I was approached so often to help that I had to get another job in another area because too many men approached me.

As far as my having a “privilege” by being white ... in and out of prison, my color has made me approachable with minimal (if not zero) fear. In prison, I’ve noticed that my work supervisors found more trust in me than blacks.

Always here, Chuck

the geographic distribution of racial representation in New Lisbon, Wisconsin — the town where Chuck’s prison is located, using a tool created by the University of Virginia based on 2010 Census data. Each colored dot represents one person. The high concentration of black people (in green) in one area coincides directly with the location of the prison.

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Dear Chuck, Growing up in the suburbs of Los Angeles in what has been described as an “Asian bubble,” I have always been surrounded by East Asians. It didn’t occur to me until I visited Minnesota on a family vacation when I was 8 years old that most of America did not share the same demographic composition. Even at Stanford, I have found plenty of East Asians in my classes, dorms, and communities.

But that cross-country roadtrip last summer was the first time I was acutely aware of what it might feel like to be underrepresented. In Wisconsin, I felt less safe in public spaces as the only person of color who thus inadvertently attracted more attention by others — an anxiety that came at odds with

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Blue notes like armor st bleed ‘em 15th Black hands finally check will lead them

my desire to13th reach out and forge new connections Freedom with a condition with strangers. I remember Your rights as a person when I met you in-person don’t in August inIf theyou middle of follow the that roadtrip.

Entering else’s laws the prison waiting room to see you, I was struck by And that the the musician sputter the realization And the key first black person I saw in feels wrong my two weeksLike in Wisconsin they lied to you wh was in this prison.

song

I’m learning that the prison system is not broken. The 13th system — from the fabricated This isn’t my story war on crack cocaine to ButCrow when the sax can’t s present-day Jim laws — is doing exactly what it statutory was designed and created How can we beat our feet to do. It was designed to gave its rhythm forcibly target andAmerica erase the presenceWithout and voice moving of instituti blackness, sequestering are let in them people of color to a second class citizenship.

Yours, Michelle

Because Uncle Sam said “I want you.”

He pointed at a man from library book in a prison And a voice at the other “I want you.”

I am the Because even if mething your music has so

you taught me the limits of my empathy 5/15/2019 12:27:32 PM Forging hope.

My dear friend, Couplets/Verse # 8:

from harsher n’t give back / ca e on th ea br A final black judgment based on cast aside / men iter sheets are wh of s be ro en Wh society to hide. blend back into

And how does this e-missive greet your day? Fair?

Warm as a sun shining day? Cloudy with a chance of rain? Hopefully, not the latter.

The above couplet is something I had hanging around with nothing to build on but it has purpose to stoke thought. I cannot fathom what my black brothers go through in their lives and I really wouldn’t want to. To be pulled over driving by white policemen is probably akin to a racial life or death experience.

All people of colors’ (sans white) experiences are different levels of treatment or mistreatment at varying levels under certain circumstances.

I have been at the serious ends of firearms before and I never feared death because, probably, I was white.

Odd to this subject, I was shot in the left leg once in the early 1980s.

Privileged, Chuck

///////// Dear Chuck, Your words help give language to the struggles I also have with knowing how to comprehend the set of experiences of people whose racial identities differ from our own. In my work organizing incarcerated arts projects, I am constantly confronted with the discomfort of how little I can empathize with how the process of racialization informs the way black incarcerated artists navigate the world.

Even in the futility of our efforts, I am reminded that we can come to approximations. I can learn about the perspective-taking in the form of “cop wisdom,” for example, which is a natural byproduct of black men’s being policed and tethered to the myth of black criminality.

That it is even a privilege I get to choose into perspective-taking with a race other than my own, when black men do so to survive.

I start, also, with this question I am forced to confront: What are the daily small ways that I commit acts of violence by choosing — inadvertently or not — to not see someone as anything less than a messy human being?

In gratitude, Michelle

you taught me the courage of small doings 6/4/2019 9:51:43 AM Rock it on Thursday!

Dear Michelle, My addiction to criminal activity — actually, I was addicted to the criminal hustle after the crimes.

From out running the police in cars, to doubling up the return selling marijuana to laundering ill-gotten gains.

Now I’ve found an equalling addiction in creating slick legal issues and prison administration maneuvers that may not be 100% above board but they are there to be used (i. e., my getting that one prisoner $1996.00 in backpay and we still lost the case but he was able to keep the full backpay). Lately, I’ve found spark in writing and playing with words and phrases. But I still like administrative work and fight.

On that, Often Rainbow, shine bright on Thursday and be you! Stay safe and remain aware.

Honored, Chuck

My dear friend, Well, I crapped out on my Restorative Justice group.

About 2 hours before the group, I was waiting at the Health Services Unit (HSU) sitting on the bench in the waiting room when in came Mr. Lopez in a wheelchair doubled over in pain, moaning and groaning and he defecated on himself. He was brought to HSU with a prisoner pusher. It was about 6:45 a.m.

He was there for 3 to 5 minutes when I tried to get ahold of the nurse’s office. I saw nurses eating, drinking, and doing paperwork. A guard told the pusher to wheel the man aside.

When a nurse finally came out to address him, I said, “It’s about time!”. She said, “Who said that?”. I replied, “I did.”

The female guard came back to the unit in an hour and told me the Lieutenant found me guilty of disrespect and disruptive conduct and gave me 3 days’ room confinement. For those who know the inner workings of the disciplinary system, if a man gets punished the exact amount we are offered, it was bullcrap to begin with.

Apparently, truth delivered and/or giving another voice are things the powers-that-be want us not to learn nor practice. Criticism is verboten — a bureaucratic sin. I’ve been on the unfortunate end in many situations in these past 28 years and the above is not the last because I take many a stand.

4/13/2019 9:31:32 AM Yup, me again :) Dear Kindness, Today is one of my days off and I’m going to chill.

Yesterday, I had to write out questions for my roomie because he has that evidentiary hearing on Monday.

Don’t know when the sheriff’s office will pick him up. There will be an interpreter for him due to his English skills lacking. Plus, his mother had an exchange with the Mexican Consulate who just may be there with legal assistance.

On that, I will take my leave and wish you a great day with cherishing encounters and exchanges in all areas of your life.

Humbly, Your Friend, Chuck

5/17/2019 3: Confirmation Hey Michelle,

6/5/2019 1:33:40 PM Should I answer better?

Yep, I do help more blacks and Hispanics out. It’s great to give them voice and identity. I don’t help them for that reason; I help because it shouldn’t have been done.

In a perfect world, it should never be race. Ours isn’t a perfect world. The best I can do is not subscribe to racism.

Even I am judged today from what I did 28 years ago. That is the closest approximation to racism that I can experience.

I'm putting toget José's parole pap today and I hope him a parole “gra custody of Immigr for Cuba. I work on it and hoping my first man freed

With Great Respec Chuck

:41:38 PM

ther pers to get ant” into ration ked hard to get dom.

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I hope this finds you navigating well through your off-school time. How are you feeling? Hopefully blessed and elated!

Thank you for the zine you mailed. After Jésus returned the zine you sent me this morning, he blessed me with a sincere “thank you” and I extend that gratitude to you. It sounded like he was able to feel a sense of home.

Even though English is his second language and he had my help addressing bureaucratic bullshit, I let him read it first (and without stating why to him) because it was an opportunity to help him practice his English.

I never need to be the first at/on anything if another can benefit more.

I read the zine from cover-to-cover. I absolutely felt the inside front cover’s addressed envelope. I felt your “small nod” seeing your handwriting of “Dear Reader, where you are at, here and now.”

Thank you, Kindness.

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Dear Chuck, I compiled these excerpts together as only a small sample of the countless times I have read about, in passing, how you care for your incarcerated neighbors of color. You can imagine how difficult it was for me to select only a few.

Sometimes I feel exhausted by the ways activism and inter-racial solidarity are approached on my college campus. I know a lot of people who speak with a certain vocabulary to sound the most “woke,” or show up to events. Thinking back to a documentary I watched earlier this quarter on the establishment of ethnic studies programs, I sit with a picture of how a little-visible Filipina student, Juanita, stated that it was “obvious” that the cause for Black Studies was just as much a part of her cause and of other people of color. The patient, dedicated work you do of legal research and paperwork is out of the spotlight and unglorified, but it is just as valid and important.

Your generosity and solidarity in negotiating your whiteness and your language for others continues to show through in your letters — from an interaction with Jésus, to helping Jimmy after he slipped on an ice cube, to even getting expelled from your Restorative Justice support group when standing up for a Hispanic man who needed medical attention. Indeed,

you live out the courage of “a tiny gesture,” as you once put it, Chuck.

I am a firm believer that who we are at the micro level amplifies to reflect larger systems. That where we place our attention grows.

You, more than a lot of people I know, can testify that you actually used your shoulders for other people of color to sit upon, even as you face your own plethora of injustices in the repressive pocket of incarceration. I hope you continue to draw strength from those who have come before you in this work such as Bill Moore, who implored that the passivity of inaction by white people is, in fact, a doing that actively perpetuates systems of white supremacy.

It feels strange to read that April 21, 2018 letter knowing that, just last week, you graduated from the Restorative Justice group after being readmitted with this year’s cohort and were even elected to be the commencement speaker.

I hope your fellow cohort saw how your actions on April 21, 2018 embodied the principles of restorative justice. In it, I saw how you are participating in reimagining and reconceptualizing a system that might ask, instead, “Who has been hurt? And how do we heal together?”

Yours, Michelle

Must One Die to Save One’s Life?

May 24, 2019

en one bundles Prison # 26: Wh pocrisy, one gets audacity with hy em. this prison syst Prison staff have rules they must follow as prisoners do. How dare Olsen use the prisoner disciplinary rule for lying (DOC 303.31) and yet embellish the ticket with a lie and violate her work rules. How dare the Inmate Complaint Review System and the “Warden” essentially state for them to address Gums’ complaint, Gums must get beat down, shanked or killed. It is exactly the above actions and inactions which negate the dignity of our lives.

you taugh performan can be bro

THIS PRISON SYSTEM THIS PRISON SYSTEM

THERE IS YOUR THERE IS YOUR H

Why must we prisoners have to suffer actual harm in order for prison staff to prevent it from occurring in the future?!

Most staff who act under the Inmate Complaint Review System are coworkers of the staff complained of. It appears that they are only assigned there to protect their coworkers from legal and administrative consequences. Ethics is alien to them.

THIS PRI THIS PRI

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Dear Chuck,

ht me nce codes oken

WAS FORGED WAS FORGED

AUDACITY HYPOCRISY

ISON ISON

I appreciate your transparency that you have in discussing the many barriers to asserting the worth of incarcerated lives in prison and the staff who blind themselves to that humanity.

I am reminded of one of your sayings you once sent me, “Prison #53: In the prison environment, some instincts are abilities that cannot be taught nor learned; they are sensed.” This quote felt relevant in considering the many ways that prisons are institutions uniquely saturated with performance codes, behaviors, and practices - in how to speak, how to dress, how to interact with staff. Those in charge get to dictate which performances are deemed worthy of innocence.

To speak up and demand trasnparency for the mistreatment of incarcerated people, particularly those of color, violates the enforced performance codes as a white incarcerated man to be passive and cooperative.

Thank you for sending your letter to the Wisconsin Civil Liberties Union.

Above all else, I hope you know how much your voice has profoundly moved my heart, giving it arms and legs and momentum. You said it best once: “Damn, I love writing. I have become so much more.”

In gratitude always, Michelle

you gave me proximity Proximity builds bridges over walls.

In Chuck’s prison, the visiting room has a photo backdrop set up for incarcerated people to have the option to take a photo with their visitor. Only the incarcerated person can pay for the photo using their canteen money. The backdrop has many different options (e.g., beach, autumnal trees, spring trees) that somewhat ridiculously try to pretend that no one is in a prison.

The backdrop imagines a world that the incarcerated cannot inhabit.