Doing Time Behind Bars for Protesting Against Torture Print E-mail
Written by Robin Lloyd
Monday, 10 April 2006
ImageMy 'self-report' date to prison is April 11th. I will be incarcerated in FCI Danbury, Connecticut for 90 days. Prison, I'm imagining, is the exact opposite of my cat.
It is cold, she is warm. It’s made up of metal with hard edges: she of curves and silky hair. sensory deprivation vs. sensuousness. Then there is her purr. I ask Google "Why do cats purr?" An answer: "Cats purr during both inhalation and exhalation with a consistent pattern and frequency between 25 and 150 hertz. Various investigators have shown that sound frequencies in this range can improve bone density and promote healing." There is no more safe or comfortable feeling than resting with Miss Whitey purring in the nook of my arm. I think I’ll make a CD of her sound track to play while I’m going to sleep in prison. Better yet, I’ll give it to the warden for him to play over the loud speaker to the whole cell block. I’m sure this would lower stress.
Miss Whitey is sitting on my lap as I read A Question of Torture by Alfred McCoy.
The last few weeks I’ve been on a ‘speaking tour’ talking about the history of the School of the Americas – the institution in Columbus, Georgia where 'torture manuals' were revealed as part of the curriculum in 1996, and whose continued existence is causing me and 31 other committers of civil disobedience – or prisoners of conscience – to face incarceration on April 11. Talking and reading about torture as a force underpinning American foreign policy, the Abu Ghraib photos, and continual headlines about the US concentration camp at the Guantanamo base in Cuba, has flung open the doors to the dungeon for the American public. We look in and see the vast black hole of our hypocrisy and cruelty. I hold Miss Whitey as I make the descent.
http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/792/
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