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Category: My Story

Posted
August 11, 2022
Category
Criminal Justice Reform, gun criminal, gun violence, interconnectedness, kindness, life without parole, My Story, On My Block, parole, prison reform, raising children
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Groundhog Day

One desperate afternoon in 2005, a skinny and addicted version of myself was scanning the lawn care equipment and power tools in mom’s garage for something I could pawn for dope money when suddenly I was struck by a bolt of inspiration: Why deprive mom of her weed whacker when I can easily rob a neighbor? There was far more honor in that, right? I went in through the bathroom window.

First thing I found was a loaded 9mm. Fate crackled in the barrel. I tucked it into the waist of my jeans then made a quick check for jewelry and money before slinking off into the March afternoon to do what the broken people do. (Legal note—Since I armed myself in the commission of a crime, this simple burglary became an armed burglary. A first-degree felony punishable by life in prison.)

Over the next 36 hours in a dope-fueled tailspin, I used this weapon to jack various area drug dealers as well as two convenience stores. In the parlance of Narcotics Anonymous, this phenomenon is referred to as “a case of the fuck its.” Luckily no one was harmed in my unraveling. I never even fired the gun. And because I spared the State the expense of a jury trial, the State spared me the misery of a life sentence. (Legal note—According to Florida’s 10-20-Life law, brandishing a firearm in the commission of a felony carries a mandatory ten years, firing the weapon carries twenty, shooting someone triggers a life sentence. There is no parole.)

I ended up with twenty years in the department of corrections along with more than a quarter century in the federal system. For a more detailed account of the night of my arrest, check out the Divine Intervention essay at malcolmivey.com. But please do not mistake my tone as flippant or unremorseful. This could not be further from the truth. I am deeply humiliated by the weak and pathetic actions of that miserable little crackhead. It’s just that all this occurred almost two decades ago and when you spend so many years pacing cells, alone in your head, relentlessly scrutinizing your life and the moment things went south, over and over and over again, it all becomes a little mechanical. Like a movie you’ve seen a million times. Groundhog Day.

I am a gun criminal. Embarrassing to admit this with all the recent ugliness on the evening news, but my record speaks for itself. No getting around it. I was actually classified as an Armed Career Criminal by the United States government until a 2016 Supreme Court ruling resulted in my federal sentence being overturned.

Although the above debacle was my first taste of armed robbery, it was not my first rodeo. I’ve been sleeping on hard institutional bunks and eating cold food on dirty trays since I was a pre-teen in juvenile detention. I don’t pretend to know a lot about the outside world because I’ve been removed from it for so many years, but if there’s one subject I’m fluent in, it’s the criminal justice system. I’ve written six books and over 100 essays on life behind the razor wire.

With this recent spike of violent crime—not just the tragic and headline-dominating mass shootings but also gangland drive-bys, ambushed police, and robbery homicides—many old guard politicians are already dusting off their tough-on-crime speeches from the ‘90s. And the public will predictably respond at the polls. For good reason: something has to be done. But I would argue that the solution will not be found in tougher laws. How much tougher can you get than consecutive life-without-parole sentences? The death penalty? We’ve got that too. And the robberies and car-jackings and murders continue to surge. Einstein famously said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Another approach might save us from where we are headed.

All across this great nation, impoverished young people with mothers and fathers either in early graves or serving lengthy prison sentences are walking the same lonely roads as their parents. Why would anyone choose such a miserable existence? Maybe it’s not a choice. I know they’re not getting much help from their countrymen. Especially not our nation’s two political parties. The liberal message which blames systemic racism for every bad break and poor decision provides zero viable solutions and runs counter to American ideals of self-sufficiency and accountability. The conservative pull yourself up by the bootstraps narrative is unrealistic as well. When you’ve never met your incarcerated father and your mother alternates between violent dopesickness and being slumped on the couch, when your world is confined to the project buildings and trailer parks where you were born, when most of your neighbors supplement their government assistance income with some form of hustling, when your normal consists of scrapping and stealing just to survive, when this is all you’ve ever known, you don’t just wake up one day, crack your knuckles, and decide to go to vocational school. It may happen occasionally. But as the exception, never the rule. So what? you’re probably thinking. Why should the average American care? Why should you care? I mean, we’re talking about a bunch of criminals and slum dwellers, right?

Well…

If Covid has taught us anything, it’s how interconnected we all are. Conspiracy theories aside, a virus from Wuhan China has circled the globe and killed millions of people. An incident in a laboratory on the other side of the world has wreaked that much havoc. And we’re still dealing with the aftermath—supply chain issues, factory shutdowns, inflation, mutations, political unrest. The shockwaves are inescapable. Even the remote Panhandle prison where I sit and type this essay is not immune. Outside my cell door is a beleaguered workforce, rising canteen prices, diminishing food portions, rampant drug abuse… But our interconnectedness is not limited to global pandemics. Look how the Russian invasion of Ukraine has affected the price of fuel, and how the price of fuel has affected world markets, and how plummeting markets have affected people’s 401(k)s. Like it or not, we are all in this together.

So it follows that if events in Asia and eastern Europe can have an impact of this magnitude on Bible Belt America, then what about that other section of your very own hometown? What about fentanyl, what about meth, what about gangs, what about an ideology and culture that places no value on human life? It doesn’t take an epidemiologist to recognize that violent crime is spreading exponentially. And it is no longer confined to those neighborhoods across the tracks. A generation of unraised and unloved children are coming of age. You see their faces every night on the local news. And on their way to life sentences in prison and fatal gunshot wounds, they’re making babies who will also grow up fatherless, motherless, hopeless… America has extremely broad shoulders. But at some point she will collapse beneath the staggering weight of her broken citizens. And the world’s longest running democracy will finally come to an end. That is, unless we do something. But what can we do?

I have two suggestions.

The first is so simple that it seems inarguable. We need to love our kids. And by “our kids” I mean America’s kids. We need to teach them the value of honest work, discipline, and respect. All of them. No child among the 330,000,000 of us should grow up without a rock-solid support system, without consistent direction, without love… Imagine a coalition of teachers, athletes, business professionals, community leaders, neighbors, moms, dads, police officers, even reformed ex-prisoners committed to stepping up and assuring the abandoned and forgotten that there is love in the world. Not by throwing money at the problem or writing preachy and long-winded disquisitions like this one 🙂 but by rolling up our sleeves and investing our time and our hearts and our energy in the coming generation—and doing this with the same sense of urgency and conviction that Christian missionaries carry on their voyages to foreign continents every day. If we don’t, then the only ones who will suffer the consequences is us.

You will disagree with this second suggestion. And I totally understand. But I can only tell you the truth as I see it. And what I’ve seen every day for decades in prison is young unaffiliated men stepping off county vans, wide-eyed and green to prison life, ready to do their time and get home. Only to exit the system years later as full-fledged gang members with the requisite crowns, stars, and swastikas tattooed on their heads and necks. Why? First of all, prison is a dangerous place and there is always safety in numbers, but there is also the allure of dope, money, cell phones, respect, and brotherhood. Five years ago I wrote about this emerging crisis in a series of essays called Fixing a Broken Prison System. At the time, gang members made up about 10% of my dorm. Today it’s closer to 25%. Again, who cares about a bunch of prisoners and low-income trash, right? But these same hardened young men are returning to their neighborhoods as heroes home from war, and many are indoctrinating the young people in their communities. That’s not just a problem. That’s systemic failure.

The Florida Department of Corrections cites public safety as a top priority. This is emphasized in their mission statement, core principles, and pretty much every press release regarding prisons and prisoners. Yet on this, they are failing the public on a scale so spectacular that it boggles the mind. There’s a relatively easy fix for it, but it flies in the face of every stump speech being made by every tough-on-crime politician on the Florida Panhandle right now. Be tough on crime. Hell yeah. Be merciless on crime. But bring back parole.

Aww Malcolm… you’re just trying to get your buddies home.

This is true. And if you knew some of my friends (and their mommas) you would see why. Good people. Men who changed their lives decades ago and are now just hanging around, waiting to die. Many of the guards who work here would attest to this. But allowing men and women to earn their way home would have ripple effects far beyond my circle of friends.

Imagine a prison system where every person arriving at the reception centers—barring pedophiles and clinically diagnosed sociopaths—would be given a series of diagnostic tests to gauge IQ, reading and math levels, vocational skills, emotional intelligence, etc… Once their history and aptitude are established, a team of psychologists, educators, and trained classification officers would set a number of almost impossibly high benchmarks to be reached over time. A final meeting with the incoming offender would sound something like this: “Okay, young man, you’ve been sentenced to life in prison. Life means life in the state of Florida. This means you will die behind these fences. But that will probably be 70 or 80 years from now since you’re only 18 years old. During that time everything you love will be taken away. However… there is a faint possibility that you might be able to one day earn your way home. But only if you accomplish the following. Get your GED, get your bachelor’s degree, complete these 50 courses, log in 10,000 hours of anger management, keep a clean disciplinary record… And, by the way, if you join a gang you are automatically eliminated from the program.”

Something like that. If this idea were implemented, prisons would be safer, guards would have a legitimate management tool, and gang affiliation numbers in Florida would plummet within a decade. Amazing what a little hope can do. Of course, there will be some who try to game the system, but over time I think even those men and women would be converted. I know from my own experience that a strange thing happens on the road to education: the more learned you become, the less likely you are to do harm to your fellow man.

I mentioned all this to a teacher at the prison where I’m doing my time. Really cool guy—an Army Ranger with a bachelor’s in political science. He identifies as a fiscal conservative but leans slightly left on matters of social justice. His response: These are not kitchen table issues for the average American. People are worried about inflation, the price of gas, illegal immigration. Not the plight of inner-city kids or criminal justice reform.

He’s probably right. The human brain is not wired for distant threats. This is why things like rising sea levels, ballooning national debt, and evaporating social security are such a hard sell to so many. In his spectacular book, Focus, Daniel Goleman illustrates this phenomenon perfectly. “We are finely tuned to a rustling in the leaves that may signal a stalking tiger. But we have no perceptual apparatus that can sense the thinning of the ozone layer, nor the carcinogens in the particulates we breathe on a smoggy day…”

Ditto the long-term effects of the school-to-prison pipeline and the broken criminal justice system it feeds.

I’m guessing many of you disagree with all this. I probably would too if I hadn’t lived in here for so many years. But I can’t unsee these problems and potential solutions. Aside from writing books and enjoying the people I love, the rest of my life will be dedicated to improving this social condition. Maybe I can pay my proverbial debt to society in this way. A few years ago these concepts might have found more traction. There was an empty Supreme Court seat, bipartisan momentum for criminal justice reform, and conservative politicians like Jeff Brandes roaming the Capitol halls. That time has passed. Violent crime is soaring and hardliner rhetoric is the message of the day. The pendulum has officially swung. But popular or not, I will continue to bang this drum until someone hears me. Groundhog Day.

Posted
June 29, 2021
Category
extremes, life philosophy, My Story, the middle way / moderation
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1 Response

Cosmic balance

My liberal friends accuse me of being a closet neocon because I think cancel culture is a joke and scoff at this new era of national hypersensitivity.

My conservative friends think I’m a flaming snowflake because I refuse to pledge allegiance to a bully like Donald Trump and I admire Obama’s pragmatic swag.

My fellow prisoners often assume I’m a white supremacist based on appearance: clean shaven head with a beard, numerous tattoos and scars. Anyone who has ever read one of my books knows this is not the case.

You’re probably drawing your own conclusions right now.

All these blanket judgements.

But don’t think I’m over here whining about being misunderstood. I judge too. We all do. It’s hardwired into our DNA. Our brains have developed over millennia to categorize, compare, assess. It’s what keeps us out of lions’ mouths, dark alleys, bad relationships, and bad conversations. Rarely do we see the actual person in front of us though, just the story we’re telling ourselves about them.

One of the most influential people I’ve ever met is a pacifist with a horrible temper, a punk rock anarchist who loves listening to the soothing voices of tea-sipping NPR hosts, a vegan who sometimes eats chicken. I once told her she was a walking contradiction. Her response: “…what you call contradiction I prefer to view as cosmically balanced.”

In her weird and wonderful way, she was telling me that life is more complicated than the binary ones and zeros of the judgemental mind.

Another Malcolm—one who’s sold far more books than the author of this essay—wrote about this in his bestseller The Tipping Point. In it, Mr. Gladwell referred to the phenomenon as “fundamental attribution error”, a filtering system in the brain that sorts people into categories based on isolated instances and small sample sizes. But it’s called a fundamental error for a reason: it’s flawed.

Are you a Second Amendment gun aficionado who still sees no justification for fully automatic street sweepers? A climate science believer who abhors the idea of late-term abortion based on embryonic science? Maybe you’re a Fox News watcher but your gut tells you that Joe and Jill Biden are not inherently evil socialists. Or you’re a black man who cringes every time you see Al Sharpton reach for a bullhorn.

If so, then I invite you to the rebellion.

Life is far more complex than the ideological slots we try to jam each other into. Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley Richardson, said there were so many sides to him that he defied geometry. This is probably true for all of us. For our handful of years in this world of great wealth and crushing poverty, of hope and fear, love and indifference, the best we can do is seek the truth.

The brilliant David Mitchell summed it up beautifully in his novel Utopia Avenue—“Labels. I stuck them on everything. Good. Bad. Right. Wrong. Square. Hip. Queer. Normal. Friend. Enemy. Success. Failure. They’re easy to use. They save you the bother of thinking. Those labels stay stuck. They proliferate. They become a habit. Soon, they’re covering everything, and everybody, up. You start thinking reality IS the labels. Simple labels, written in permanent marker. The trouble is, reality’s the opposite. Reality is nuanced, paradoxical, shifting. It’s difficult. It’s many things at once. That’s why we’re so crummy at it. People harp on about freedom. ALL the time. It’s everywhere. There are riots and wars about what freedom is and who it’s for. But the Queen of Freedoms is this: to be free of labels.”

Stay cosmically balanced, my friends.

Posted
March 20, 2021
Category
Criminal Justice Reform, My Story, Supreme Court
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1 Response

Thank you again

I sent a bunch of property home over the weekend. Ancient letters and cards and photos dating back to when I first began this odyssey in March 2005. I’ve still got a few more miles to go but I’m getting closer. What a long, strange trip it’s been.

One of the more beautiful artifacts I found in my locker wasn’t all that old… 2016. It was a motion to correct an illegal sentence. In a landmark decision, the United States Supreme Court had struck down something called the “residual clause” of the Armed Career Criminal Act. When the ruling was made retroactive, it opened a small window for me.

The prosecution argued that my sentence should remain at 379 months, that I was the exact type of criminal that Congress had in mind when they enacted the law. In response, my public defender authored this masterful brief that took excerpts of the essays I’d been writing for years and wove them into her argument. She also attached copies of my book covers.

When I say writing saved me, this is part of what I mean. I began Consider the Dragonfly because I was sick of the hamster wheel of prison life and wanted to do something different. I was just trying to live right, trying to be a better man, trying to salvage what was left of my dumpster fire of a life. I had no idea that years later, some Supreme Court decision would get me back into court and those same words might help get me home. Yet that’s exactly what happened.

But it wasn’t just my words. It was yours. It was all those letters of support that were attached to the back of the motion.

Reading them on my cell floor the other night for the first time in years had me a little emotional. My mind was flooded with images… Of my brother Keith at his computer, of Kelly and Marcus in their living room working on drafts, of Hailey with a notebook at the kitchen table, of Lindsey in his office between patients, of Mimi after church, of Ashton… Of all of you guys. You know who you are. For a brief moment, I could see you in 2016. Putting your busy lives on pause to write a federal magistrate because you believe in me, because you care, because you want me home. I’m lucky to have such incredible people in my life. Lucky to have family and friends. I’m surrounded by men who have no one. Many don’t even have release dates. “There, but for the grace of God…”

In the end, the judge rejected the government’s argument and resentenced me to 288 months. It still sounds like a lot, right? But those seven years and seven months of freedom I got back represent seven more Christmases, seven more years to play with a generation of nieces and nephews who were born since I’ve been away, seven more years with Mom…

Thank you again.

Posted
July 28, 2020
Category
Criminal Justice Reform, My Story, racial prejudice, racism
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One more shot

February 2007. In a cramped courtroom in Milton, Florida, a small town just east of Pensacola, I sat handcuffed and shackled in a jury box, shoulder to shoulder with twenty other crackheads, meth cooks, and burglars. Like most of them, I was awaiting my fate. Unlike most of them, I wasn’t sweating it. My fate had already been sealed. Or so I thought…

One year earlier, a federal judge had sentenced me to 379 months in prison under something called The Hobbs Act. Right around the same time I signed a plea agreement for a concurrent state sentence that amounted to twenty years for armed robbery. Once the dust settled, my release date was close to three decades away.

And I was overjoyed.

Okay, maybe not overjoyed, but definitely grateful. With my record they could’ve buried me. But they left me a sliver of daylight. That’s all I needed. One more shot.

Yet here I was back in court. Considering the lengthy sentence I was already serving, it seemed odd that they would waste money and manpower transporting me back from prison on a violation of probation. Especially since the charges were from 1991, when I was 17 years old. In my mind, the worst was over. A concurrent sentence felt like a foregone conclusion. So inconsequential that the public defender who was assigned to represent me never even bothered to visit the county jail to discuss legal strategy. Since the gain time laws from the early 90s would apply to whatever sentence the judge imposed, even a fifty-year term would not change my release date. I was pretty much locked in for 2035.

So you can imagine my reaction when the clerk called my name and I hobbled over to the lectern where the prosecutor announced that the state was seeking a life sentence. (Excuse me? Did he just say life?)

“Does the defendant wish to speak?” asked the judge.

I scanned the audience for Mom and located her sweet bifocaled face on the second row. The same face that had been attending my court appearances since I was 13 years old. She stood. I turned back to the judge. “Yes sir.”

Different families have different skill sets. The Trumps are proficient at real estate, the Mannings excel at throwing footballs, the Partridges played musical instruments. If there’s one area where me and Mom kick ass, it’s begging judges for mercy. We’ve had a lot of practice.

I told his honor that I was already serving concurrent sentences of 31 and 20 years. Told him that I had pleaded with both the federal magistrate and the toughest circuit court judge in Escambia County for these sentences. That as things stood, I would be in my early 60s when I got out. Mom would be in her mid-80s. I had this one last chance to be a good son, to be there when she got older and needed me, to repay her for believing in me. And even this was a long shot. Lots of things had to fall our way. But a life sentence would extinguish even that hope.

Then Mom spoke. She told him she was a widow, that I was her only child, that we moved to Miami when I was ten where she had to work 14-hour days to support the family and that’s when things started to unravel in my life. She told him that despite my lengthy record, I was a good boy (I was 33 at the time). That whenever I did return home, I would be returning to a strong support system. She told him that she still believed in me. Then she tearfully begged him to have mercy on our family.

By the time she returned to her seat, even the prosecutor was misty-eyed. The judge not only sentenced me to a minimal concurrent sentence, but expressed regret over not being able to legally reduce the sentences that the other judges had imposed.

A lot of miracles have happened since then: the books, new people in my life, new nieces and nephews, soul-stretching experiences, a Supreme Court ruling that resulted in years being slashed from my sentence. I’ll be coming home sooner than expected and, God willing, I’ll have the opportunity to be a better son, better man, better human being…

But I think about that day in court often. More so lately as the national conversation seems to be gravitating toward criminal justice reform. What if my mom was not so meek and soft spoken? What if life made her bombastic? What if my words came stammering from a meth-ravaged mouth? What if we were less articulate, less fluent, less groomed?

What if we were black?

I’m not a fan of the term “white privilege.” It’s thrown around as if it’s some Universal truth that can be applied across the board. There are poor people of Scots-Irish descent scattered from the Bible Belt to the Rust Belt and all throughout rural America who have been scraping out a living for generations. People who have never experienced any privileges, white or otherwise, since their ancestors came west. To lump them in with the wealthy or even the lower-middle class in this country, to call them privileged, is as erroneous and out of touch as declaring racism dead.

But there are also people of color within a five-bunk radius of where I live who share my exact charges, have fewer priors, and are serving life in prison. Were they slammed because of their race? Or did it have more to do with their socioeconomic class? Maybe it was bad luck. Maybe they just had the wrong judge. Or the right judge on the wrong day. Maybe their mothers couldn’t show up to court because they were working, or deceased, or enslaved by addiction, or in prison themselves. Or maybe it’s all of the above — some intricate algorithm in the judge’s mind that distills all of these variables into a term of years.

Whatever the reason, I’m grateful to live in this body, at this time, with this release date, and Ms Doris as my mom. I’m grateful to have another shot… And when I reach the other side, I’m going to fight like hell for the humanity and hope of those I leave behind. This is my mission.

Talk about a privilege.

Posted
June 15, 2020
Category
extremes, interconnectedness, life philosophy, My Story, the middle way / moderation
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The secret of the middle way

The options are pretty clear-cut: either support defunding the police or support the murder of unarmed black men by law enforcement. Vote for Donald Trump or hate America. Throw Molotovs with antifa or march in lockstep with white nationalists. Kneel during the anthem or high-five George Zimmerman.

With all the publicity that the extremes have been getting, you would think that the radical left and xenophobic right are the only two paths available. Yet everyone I know—black and white, free and imprisoned, Republican and Democrat—falls somewhere in the middle. You may have an uncle who attended a Trump rally, but do you honestly know anyone who is hellbent on initiating a race war? There may be some peaceful protesters in your orbit, but how many people do you know that are talking about blowing up police stations? (WTF)

I’ve always considered the extremes to be polar opposites. Distant outposts on a straight line. At the far left would be communism, take a step toward the center and there’s socialism, another step and there’s liberalism, another step and we’re squarely in the middle. Keep moving right and there’s conservatism, another step and there’s nationalism, one more step and we arrive at fascism. Of course there are gradations and degrees of each ideology but I figured that, at least on a rudimentary level, the line was an accurate model.

I was wrong.

It’s not a straight line at all. It’s curved like a horseshoe. With each extreme on either end, far closer to its ideological opposite across the way than the middle which resides top center. The extremes have much more in common with one another than they share with those in the middle. This is true in every movement. Racial, political, even religious. Radical Islam and hardcore Christian fundamentalism share the similar concept of a harsh, unforgiving God, the same disdain for progress and science, the same subhuman treatment of women. Even though they are sworn enemies. The leftist idea of defunding the police could just as easily be pushed by the paranoid right, suspicious of government overreach and martial law.

Rabid fervor and intolerance are identical out on the fringes. Just check out those wreaking havoc at the protests. Can you differentiate one side from the other? Bloodlust cancels out any motive or cause and the violence hums on a frequency all its own. From the firebomb hurling neo-right to the cop car flipping far left to the police cracking skulls with batons. Extremes.

My own life is a study in extremes, although not in any of the aforementioned ways. But on a personal level. Drug abuse, risk taking, crime… The middle was strait-laced and boring. People were partying on the edges. Vibrant life was pulsing out there. I kept getting sucked in. But life on the extremes is unsustainable. I’m lucky to still be alive.

I was a decade into this prison sentence when I stumbled upon the secret of the middle way. I found it in Michael A. Singer’s brilliant book The Untethered Soul, a book that changed my life. In his explanation of the Tao, the invisible thread that passes through everything, he uses the following analogy:

“A blind person walks down a city street with the use of a cane. Let’s give that cane a name—it’s the seeker of extremes, it’s the feeler of edges, it’s the toucher of yin and yang. People who walk with the use of that cane often tap from side to side. They’re not trying to find where they should walk, they’re trying to find where they shouldn’t walk. They’re finding the extremes… The extremes create their opposites, the wise avoid them. Find the balance in the center and you will live in harmony.”

Hard to argue with that.

Posted
June 11, 2020
Category
kindness, music, My Story, writing
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0 Responses

Jason Isbell

“I hope you find something to love, something to do when you feel like giving up. A song to sing or a tale to tell. Something to love. It’ll serve you well…”

I think Jason Isbell had his baby daughter in mind when he penned these lyrics, but they feel like they were written specifically for me. All of his songs do.

I discovered him a decade ago on NPR’s World Cafe right around the time I was working on my first novel. The homogenized rap and metal on corporate radio felt soulless and prepackaged and did nothing to inspire me. The Indie artists on World Cafe seemed more honest, more creative. Tuning in became part of my writing ritual. A ritual that has evolved over the years. Mainly because tablets were introduced to the prison system in 2018, I barely listen to my radio anymore. But I own every album by Jason Isbell. From the obscure side projects with Elizabeth Cook to his “Sea Songs” with wife and fiddle player, Amanda Shires, to all of his releases with his band, The 400 Unit. When I finally get my hands on a guitar again, his music will be the first I learn. I envision a free me on Mom’s back porch with an acoustic, finger-picking St. Peter’s Autograph. It’s coming…

A friend of mine told me Mr. Isbell is one credit short of a master’s degree in storytelling. I can hear that in his music, in the details he presents in his lyrics. “Sharecropper eyes” and “burning Ferris wheels” and “old women harmonizing with the wind…” Dude is the most gifted songwriter this side of Dylan.

But it’s not just that. In an era where southern men are increasingly judged by the size of their MAGA hats, his songs are a rallying cry for kindness and courage and humanity. Don’t believe me? Check out these ten Isbell standards:

1) Traveling Alone — “Damn near strangled by my appetite. Ybor City on a Friday night. Couldn’t even stand up right…”
2) Cover Me Up — A story about finding your soulmate.
3) Last of My Kind — A country boy attempts to make sense of neon lights, dirty sidewalks, polluted rivers and the invisible homeless.
4) If We Were Vampires — His wife shadows his vocals in this haunting song about love and time.
5) Overseas — Blistering guitar riff. “This used to be a ghost town but even the ghosts died out…”
6) 24 Frames — You thought God was an architect? Now you know. It’s almost like he told his bass player “you can hang out on this one.”
7) Live Oak — Classic Isbell storytelling
8) Elephant — A song about watching a friend die from cancer.
9) Only Children — “Remember when we used to meet, at the bottom of Mobile Street, to do what the broken people do?”
10) Flagship, Chaos and Clothes, Alabama Pines, However Long, Something More than Free, Dreamsicle (I added a few bonuses just in case anyone shares my enthusiasm.)

The highest compliment my fellow prisoners pay me when they read my books is that they recognize themselves in the stories, that I’m writing their lives. Jason Isbell has a similar effect on me. I can hear my reflection in his songs.

Since his new album Reunions dropped a couple of weeks ago, and his music is such a big influence on my life, I figured this was overdue.

Posted
June 7, 2020
Category
miscellaneous, My Story
Comments
1 Response

A shining example

A month ago I had a little rift with someone I love very much over Trump. (Who else, right?) This was my first real taste of a phenomenon that free people have been experiencing with friends and neighbors and coworkers since 2016. I have always assumed that anyone intelligent and empathetic and kind would reflexively reject Trump’s lack of humanity.

If only things were that simple.

I’ve known this girl since she was a baby and there is nothing dark about her heart. She is the embodiment of innocence and light. She just has different views. But what was really troubling for me in this confrontation was my own response. The way my blood pressure skyrocketed, the way I stammered, how empty I felt when we hung up. I was so rattled that I began questioning my own beliefs. Maybe I had a blind spot. Maybe I was drinking the “liberal media” kool-aid. Was I biased against Trump from the outset? I thought I had written something around his inauguration saying that he deserved the benefit of the doubt, that America’s success was tied to his success as president. I went back through my essays, searching for evidence of my own open-mindedness and instead found this from 2017.

If you’re reading this, and I know you are, below is some of the back story that informs my opinions. This is what I couldn’t shoehorn into an emotional 15-minute collect phone call. I love you.

A shining example

Blame it on George Orwell. He once said that it’s impossible to enjoy the writings of someone with whom you take political issue. For this and other reasons, I decided to steer clear of politics in 2017. I even made it a New Year’s resolution. I consider my novels to be letters to the world and want these posts to read the same way. I thought this year I would include more humor, more story, more music. But like many Americans, I’m already backsliding on my resolutions, three weeks in.

For this I blame another George: Stephanopoulos. Last weekend I watched him stroll around the White House with President Obama for a final interview and as the outgoing Commander-in-Chief answered each question with the same poise and equanimity that have been the hallmarks of his tenure in the Oval Office, I knew I had one more political post to write.

I campaigned for President Obama in prison visitation parks in the Deep South. I spent much of 2008 convincing mothers and fathers of lifers that the Supreme Court justices and lower appellate court judges that he would potentially appoint could one day mean freedom for their sons. Or at least provide hope. He did not disappoint. Eight years later he leaves the job as the biggest criminal justice reformer in the history of the White House.

He was also the most gifted orator, certainly of my generation. Over and over I watched him run circles around his opponents in presidential debates (horses and bayonets, anyone?). He did it with humor, too. Remember the press dinner in the lingering aftermath of the birther allegations? He had the band strike up “Born in the USA” and came out pumping his fist like Springsteen. His State of the Union speeches were honest and engaging. His presidential addresses, especially after tragedies such as Sandy Hook, the Boston Marathon bombings, and the Dallas police murders conveyed hope and healing to a heartbroken nation.

But it wasn’t just words. It was action, too. Despite being hamstrung for three-quarters of his time in office by a partisan Congress that needed him to fail, he still managed to tame a gluttonous Wall Street, rescue American icons Ford and Chevy from the brink of extinction, steer us out of an economic crisis that cost the world 40 percent of its wealth, and commute the disparitive sentences of hundreds of war-on-drugs prisoners.

Oh yeah, he also got Osama Bin Laden.

However, his legacy will not and should not be tied solely to this historic hit on America’s most notorious enemy. But rather to the kindness, tolerance, and humanity he displayed over the last eight years. Just how kind was he? Well, I wrote him a letter and he wrote me back. Think about that. Amid all the global tension, intelligence briefings, and thousands of voices clamoring to be heard, the leader of the free world took the time to respond to a prisoner.

Critics will point to the ACA as a failure. Maybe. Millions of Americans who are now insured would probably disagree. I have no voice in this debate. As a prisoner, my health care expenses are limited to the five-dollar copay I’m charged each time I visit the clinic. I do believe that no idea is born fully formed and eventually, some future administration, possibly the new one, will iron out the kinks in Obamacare, repackage it, and present it to the American people as a glowing success.

Critics will also point to race relations as a failure. On this I vehemently disagree. Because of President Obama, the issue of race is no longer the elephant in the room. It’s a hot button issue. A water cooler issue. And people from all walks of life are expressing their opinions. If there is ever to be a united America, it has to start with an open line of dialogue. His polarizing presence in the White House alone has nudged us into having these uncomfortable conversations.

But the main reason I admire our 44th president has nothing to do with diplomacy or policy or statecraft. During one of the darkest periods of my life, as I tried to claw my way out of the immense hole I had dug for myself, President Obama was a shining example of what leadership looks like, what self-mastery looks like, what manhood looks like.

I found this quote from Michelle Obama scrawled in the journal I used while writing my second novel, With Arms Unbound. It’s from the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. “Even in the toughest moments, when we’re all sweating it, when all hope seems lost, Barack never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise. He just keeps getting up and moving forward … with patience and wisdom and courage and grace.”

I hope that one day, when I leave the world of prison behind, my future wife will hold me in similar regard.

I know this election season has been vitriolic and divisive. Despite our new president’s numerous faux pas, head-scratcher cabinet appointments, and thin-skinned cringe-worthy tweets, I do not wish him failure. To wish him failure is to wish America failure. At minimum, I’m hoping jobs continue to grow under his stewardship. His entrepreneurial chops could well prove to be a huge asset for the country. But no matter how prolific Donald Trump’s triumphs, Barack Obama will be a hard act to follow.

Since this has to end somewhere, I’m thinking a good place would be where the journey began: on a Tuesday night in November 2008, Grant Park, Chicago. After an historic landslide victory over John McCain, a younger, less gray president-elect put the following question regarding change to the spirited crowd of thousands: “When are we going to realize that WE are the ones we’ve been waiting for?”

Eight years, three novels, and a couple of miracles later, I can point to that speech as a major turning point in my own journey. Thanks for the inspiration, Mr. President. I can’t speak for the rest of the nation, but in my little corner of captivity, you will be missed.

Posted
June 4, 2020
Category
miscellaneous, My Story, racial prejudice, racism
Comments
1 Response

Reconciling Minnesota

In the late eighties, somewhere between Iran-contra, Exxon Valdez, and a World Series earthquake, I was handcuffed and driven from the Dade juvenile detention center to Miami International Airport. I had the dubious honor of being the first Florida juvenile delinquent to be sent to an out-of-state program. A place called Sherbourne House in frigid Saint Paul, Minnesota.

I remember the double takes and raised eyebrows when I stepped off the plane in shorts, a t-shirt, and a mullet, with only a rumpled brown lunch bag as my luggage. It was December in the Twin Cities. Everyone else was dressed for the occasion. The van driver had no problem picking me out of the crowd.

As we drove down the snowy streets to the former rectory that would be my residence for the foreseeable future, I had no idea I was heading into some of the best days of my troubled youth. Ice fishing, Twins games, sledding, skiing, snowball fights… Definitely a different experience for a Florida kid.

But the memory that stands out the most about Minneapolis-Saint Paul is the same takeaway most visitors to the area have: The people are so nice.

In Miami it was nothing to see grown men come to blows in a traffic jam on the Palmetto. Or cars speeding by a stranded, broken down family in the hazard lane. That would never happen in Minnesota. The low income neighborhood where Sherbourne House was located was home to people of Nordic descent, plus Vietnamese, Somalians, and every gradation of black and white on the color spectrum. They all waved and smiled when the van drove by. Every time. But they wave and smile in the south, too. It’s not just that. Minnesotans cared for each other. Like “cared” as an active verb… Checked on each other during brutal winters, shoveled snow from neighbors’ driveways, looked out for the elderly among them. In short, they were a community.

I think this is why it’s so difficult reconciling the Minnesota in my head with the one I’ve been seeing on TV. Where police kneel on the necks of unarmed citizens while the life drains out of them, like big game hunters posing over a trophy kill. Where molotovs fly and struggling small business owners weep and precincts burn.

This is not the Minnesota I remember. But then America as a whole is pretty unrecognizable right now.

Posted
April 30, 2020
Category
interconnectedness, miscellaneous, My Story, On My Block, prison reform
Comments
2 Responses

2020

They passed out masks at my prison last week. Triple-ply polyester squares made from uniform pants that are mandatory when we’re not eating, sleeping, or bathing. As if the barren, windswept Times Square footage on the evening news was not eerie enough, or the daily death toll on the GMA news ticker, or the images of shiny, late-model SUVs in five-mile-long food queues… Prison life just went from dark to dystopian in the elastic snap of a mask.

Although I’m convinced that a third of my dorm already had the virus back in February (myself included), the pandemic has not officially reached the prison where I am housed. Not since authorities began keeping track, at least. But it has ravaged two of my previous camps. Sumter Correctional had one of the biggest outbreaks in the state, and Blackwater Correctional has had four deaths with hundreds under medical quarantine. I have so many friends trapped in those places. We’ve grown up together in the prison system. Their families and my family brave the weather and the rudeness and the indignity on the weekends in order to spend a few hours with their sons and husbands and brothers. Or they did until visitation was canceled almost two months ago.

I’ve been hesitant to write about the corona virus. In this era of daily televised White House briefings, where Dr. Fauci is a household name and the president is faced with an enemy he can’t dismiss as fake news or a witch hunt, where the NBA playoffs have been canceled and the NFL draft is held online, where everyone is talking about hot spots and flattening curves and social distancing, what can I possibly add to the conversation? I’d rather talk about books and music and football.

But these essays are more than social commentary. They are chronicles. Mile markers. One day I will read over them as a free man and remember where I was when each was written. What was going on. And as much as I want 2020 to be known as the year Tua took his talents to South Beach, the year Brady became a Buc, the year I finally finished writing this novel… all these will be footnotes in the annals of history. 2020 will forever be known as the year of the pandemic. The year when everything changed. The year the handshake died, the mall breathed its last gasp, and the world was reminded of just how interconnected we all are. Rich and poor, black and white, American and Chinese, convict and guard, conservative and liberal. If we learn nothing else during these troubled times, hopefully it will be to put data and science before politics, to say “I love you” while we have the shot, and to take better care of our grandmothers and grandfathers. There is no them… only us.

Stay safe out there.

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