Sunday, April 26:
I was fast asleep after finishing my 2 glasses of milk for lunch when I was awoken suddenly by the other prisoners shouting “Sam! Sam! The protestors are back.”
The area used to imprison us has a day room with a TV, a couple of tables, 3 empty double bunkbeds, a few plastic chairs, and a toilet in the corner. Off the day room are 2 hallways with 6 cages. 2 cages hold 4 bunks, the other are single bunks. The prisoners here recall as many as 7 people locked out on the day room. Right now there are 5 empty bunks and no one in the day room.
Let me tell you, the protest kicked off a literal shit storm. They kicked everyone out of the other tier, because the protestors are visible from the windows. The side I’ve been caged in has a view of a brick wall, the sky, and a bird who has laid eggs in a nest on the window sill of the gymnasium. It’s actually called the Multi-Purpose Room (MPR), because it’s inhuman to house people in a gymnasium, but if you change the name, and set up cots a few feet apart, then it’s suddenly humane. It’s used to house the day laborers who work the farm that produces the milk they give us with every meal.
So they locked down one side of the tier forcing 1/2 of the prisoners into the day room. It’s a warm day and the air conditioner barely works. In the middle of all this, the toilet in the day room starts overflowing again. By overflowing, I mean water, toilet paper, and human fecal matter began spilling onto the day room floor. This has been happening regularly over the past few weeks.
The prisoners had had enough. They began banging on the door and windows to get the guards’ attention.
The guards come rushing in thinking there’s a fight or someone is hurt. Ms. Pouliot is visible upset and responds by searching the cages on the side facing the protestors. Meanwhile in the day room, Mr. Anderson, another guard, is getting an earful from prisoners who dealt with this very same problem 2 days in a row last week. His response, “It’s just shit, deal with it.” The prisoners explained this is a common occurrence, and happens every time the toilet in the day room next door is flushed. They asked why the water was turned back on, why no sign was posted, and why a trash bag wasn’t covering the other toilet. The guards had no answers… The searches continued. The diabetic who says he hasn’t eaten yet today had his bread seized. Ms. Pouliot removed 5 rolls of toilet paper, apparently all of it, from a cell that had 4 people. Apparently the rule is only 1 roll (no matter how full) per prisoner. As the searches dragged on others had boiled eggs removed, out cam an extra pair of socks, and then the prisoners needed to use the bathroom.
Of course they are not allowed to use the toilets in the other tier, and the day room toilet was out of the question. Everyone was fed up with the requests that go unanswered day after day. One of the guards, Mr. Wheeler, was told about the toilet the day before and the message was relayed to Sgt. Olett. Yet nothing was done.
Five days earlier, when I was allowed to use the law library computer in the day room next door for the first time, there was raw sewage on the floor, and the smell was overpowering.
Eventually the Officer-In-Charge (OIC), Mr. La Pointe. He did his best to stick his head in the door, and quickly move on. However, the prisoners were fed up with this routine, and Mr. La Pointe was kept engaged in a discussion. The TV was turned down, and the prisoners asked why after 3 weeks the problem hasn’t been fixed. La Pointe replied, “toilets back up on the outside.” “Yea, but you’re not forced to live there, and you can get it fixed. We can’t do that, this is where we live,” a prisoner replied. “Shouldn’t we have a basic right to sanitary conditions?” La Pointe replied, “You’re inmates, you don’t have rights.” The discussion turned to the immediate need of using the bathrooms. Apparently we were locked out of the tier because of the protestors. Apparently we might signal them through the mirror tinted windows. According to La Pointe, “The windows are there to let light in, not for you to look out.”
It’s amazing to see the Stanford Prison Experiment unfolding first hand. We’re not human beings, we’re inmates. Our captors are not people in here, they are actors wearing costumes, collecting a paycheck, counting on a fat government pension, and telling themselves “It’s the law.” Sometimes they forget, we’re all still human beings.
SamIAm
