I plan to focus on most exclusively on the social context and how prisons fit in as just one more domestic institution in our social fabric. However, it was suggested to me today that I tell you a bit about myself my background in order to frame my future comments and by way of giving you a point of reference for what I have to say. Well, I begin that by saying that I don't think that I am either personally or politically extraordinary that's another way of saying that you and I all of you and I are not totally dissimilar and what happened to me is not so far out of the realm of possibility for any of youI spent the first 19 years of my life as a model citizen who went along and got along and made no waves. He was a product of the American dream and who had all the earmarks of progressing down that path to fulfill my future role in that same American dream and taking part of all the fruits of the society. Well, something went wrong and I'm not too sure exactly what it is. But I found a voice that was very timid and quiet at first and that voice altered the most powerful word in our language and that word is no and that came in the form of saying no, I will not go into the army. No, I will not kill. I was in college at the time with the to us deferment which was a mark of the privileged white middle class educated College attending youth out of college for a year and went over to Europe. I lost the to us deferment my application to be recognized as a conscientious conscientious objector was denied Samara lie at the local at the state and finally at the presidential levels. I got the word while I was doing some menial work in Paris, but if I were to come back to this country, I would eventually go to jail. There was no way of avoiding that I came back I refused. Action and over the next year there was a lengthy process and very costly process of litigation. Justice is hard to find in this country and even when you don't find it it costs you a lot. I went to prison and I would say for the first year of my imprisonment. I was a model prisoner as I had been a model Citizen and then once again, I found that very quiet shaky voice that uttered again and most powerful word in our language which is no and it came in the form of saying no, I'm not going to turn my back when my brother convicts are being nailed to the cross of policy regulations. No, I'm not going to turn my back and do my own time completely individualistic. No, I will not cease my efforts to form Community. They were prices extracted for that. I wound up doing approximately twice the length of time served by the average were resistor. I was transferred seven times lost to parole dates spend a discernible chunk of time in solitary confinement and have absolutely no regrets. So much for myself. Now I begin what I wanted to say. I begin with the story. In the latter part of the 19th century Jesuit and other varieties of Christian missionaries came back from rural parts of India and other parts of the East to a Victorian society in Britain with Tales of unprecedented horror and Terror cruelty and barbarity what was going on in the rural sections of India, so cruel and unbelievable that it shook the Victorian society to his very Roots victorians being totally oblivious to the form of Cruelty that they were visiting on their own populations and could hardly believe what was going on. one of the stories they've brought back which has been chronicled and tomes of Jesuit history is this That in reports of India children who were unwanted and could not be cared for we're given over to a number of individuals precursors of the capitalistic mentality who in the social level Incorporated all the virtues of Corporation greed these men took the babies who were perhaps a month old at that time and they put them in Earthen jars. Which boat will perhaps a foot high and the baby's a month old will put in vertically with their hands and their neck coming up through the opening in the top of the jar. They were fed sporadically and badly now nutrition was a way of life over there. Anyway a whole was not in the bottom with which to dislodge the human excrement and get out as the baby grew. It didn't grow its limbs conformed to the shape of that Earthen jar. The babies are very malleable at that age and finally their bones calcified and took form of precisely that Earthen jar with her hands lot in this position after four months the men who did this would break the jars would put the babies in a larger jar with a would grow a bit more where the limbs again would conform to the shape. That Earthen jar with her hands a lock like this again growing a little bit more in size and becoming more calcified and fossilized that would be done one more time at the age of perhaps a year and a half. At the age of 2 years then the child was in such a position that you could break that Earthen jar and the baby would remain in this position with the legs crippled beneath it with just the Torso that conform to that shape of the Earthen jar these men within transport these mutants to street corners where they were dressed like this and beg they would be collected at the end of the day. The money would be taken from them. They were given bad and sporadic feedings and they continued like that until they died, which is about a year later that process went on and on. Well, I have a design for that story as by way of applying that to our society see I would claim that their members of our society who are taken away from people who don't want them and you cannot support them and they're put in the form of an Earthen jar and they're made to rest with her hands out like this locked in place where they're malleable lens will no longer become edible and will calcify in that position and a whole will be knocked in the bottom of that open pot to dislodge that human excrement and they'll live like that those members of our society are the convicts are the prisoners. It's a sense of cultural destruction of manipulation and exploitation in the most horrible form. So that what you have is no longer recognizable as a man or a woman or a child but only a sculpture of Flesh Canoe writes that there's nothing so unimaginable as an evening in jail that comes from the stranger. There's nothing so unimaginable and heart of this growing as an evening in prison so he can scarcely imagine the burden I have to tell you what it's like to spend not only an evening in prison, but years out of your life more to watch others who will spend a lot more time than you will imprison doing that when you leave they will stay there for years and years and years many of them and some of the most sensitive we'll never get out in their entire lives. There's a pervading brutality a sense of Injustice, which is on unheard of in regular Society its own form of corruption and all of that happens without reprieve you come to find a deadly and I use that word advisedly deadly because men died a deadly hypocracy of a system that murders a man's mind as it physically destroys his body men who are locked into shape like this to be turned loose eventually to put back on the street corner where they have to beg because of their past experiences. There's mindless punishment. There's purposeful chaos and their endless examples of the snake pit those who were entering Dante's Inferno were admonished abandon all hope ye who enter here and the same thing could be writ large over any porthole of any American prison. But how can you imagine what it's like to exist in society where physical and mental tortures are common where deprivation is constant? And without reprieve where racism becomes a form of religion or forced homosexuality is a matter of everyday occurrence were more murder and extortion or viewed as the simple facts of life. And all that thing done with the tacit consent of Administrators who deal in putting men in cages. What do you suppose is real in such a world like that or reality is being trapped in a narrow cell where you can lie on your bunk in touch all four walls at one time. It's where you can't stretch its waking up in the morning to discover that there's no water in your cell again. It's waiting in line in an endless line for me. Love macaroni and beans. It's being Jarred out of a sound sleep. I appear some buzzer to have to stand barefooted on Cold Stone to be counted. It's forgetting your name and memorizing a number. It's shining your shoes when you have no place to go. It's bitter instant coffee, which is made with lukewarm water. And that's all you ever get and reality is standing in that big yard and seeing your face reflected in the thousands of your brother context. There are other forms of reality reality is also moving a tiny strip sailed for 57 days or for six months or for two years naked with no bedding a constant 24-hour White no water. No toilet. No are surrounded by Kate layers of your own excrement. And I'd never bugs if you're white reality is making a knife under the eyes of a correctional superintendent because you're going to use it on one of the niggers if you're black reality and many prisons is stealing a spoon from the cafeteria and sharpening it against a rock so you'll be able to defend yourself. Reality is five minutes a year before parole board as you saw last night. All very real reality is also known for many people not knowing ever ever when Freedom will finally come. They're 1.3 million people incarcerated in this country at this time. That's an idea of the terms. We're dealing with 1.3 million in spite of all of that prison is not seen as a specific problem. No matter how many rated ex-convicts will stand up here and go before radios and televisions prisons are still not seen as a problem. They're seen as a place to get rid of problems and we people who will not conform to social priorities. Well, there's some confusion and this is very clear. There's some confusion about prisons in this country because America unlike other countries has never really quite decided what it wants its prisons to do. And I figure if we put our heads together and stretch our minds we can come up with nine reasons for criminal punishment one. Hurting the prisoner so that he will feel free of guilt having paid for his ACT. To using the criminal as a scapegoat for others in society who feel similar criminal impulses inside of themselves and by punishing a criminal Purge themselves of the same desires. 3 the need of some to feel morally Superior by sustaining outcasts and in a despised and degraded condition for keeping the criminal out of circulation Five Revenge imposed by the state to prevent the victim or his family from taking revenge on the offender as in Family Feud's 6 revenge in the name of society so that the public will not impose its own form of Vengeance as in lynch mobs 7 deterrence of the Criminal Who are being hurt. We'll decide that committing the crime is just not worth it eight two terms of others who sing the criminal suffer will not imitate his crime and 9 finally reforming the criminal that you will learn to live in peace with Society. If you trim all of those down, I think we can kind of posit them in for functional categories protection deterrence punishment and Rehabilitation. one by one thinking that if you put somebody in jail who's committed a crime Society will be safer. That doesn't sound all that illogical perhaps but it's not so it's not so difficult to explode that myth approximately every year. There are nine million crimes committed in this country. Most of those crimes are white collar crimes income tax crimes out of those nine million crimes 1 and 1/2 percent of those criminals are incarcerated 1 and 1/2 percent out of 9 million crimes. The factor of deterrence that putting him in prison will deter him from future crimes and will determine deter others from committing similar crimes doesn't hold much weight either. It's been proven in study after study after study. If you have your choice of imprisoning a man or not imprisoning a man has committed a crime if you don't imprison him chances are that you will not be as likely to commit future crimes. The chances are raised considerably if you send him to jail that he will commit more crimes. It's also one specific example in one year the city of Los Angeles doubled the penalties for attacking police officers. They doubled the maximum penalty in the same year attacks on police officers doubled themselves as it turns was not working. The question of punishment. Maybe there's a valid concept about talking about just societies punishing somebody who's infringed one of their laws. Which is all very well and good if you go in for Retribution and taking Vengeance on somebody who has not done what you want him to do. It's also some major point in saying that what rights does a country have who is responsible for the most brutal and vicious crimes ever committed in the history of the world what righteous that country have to this punishment on an individual all the individual crimes that are committed by individuals in this country over a 10-year period with still not compared to the crimes that this country commits in one day in Indochina. What wretched talk about punishment. The finally Rehabilitation Rehabilitation means Conformity. It means being housebroken the root sense of that word through definition means to have again which gives you some idea of where property comes in our society that a man is measured not by his worth as an individual but by how much property and he has and what exactly he does have to have again, but there's no rule that Rehabilitation. There's just Revenge Revenge in a society where property and profits are sacred and a cure is pronounced when a young poor black brown captive succumbs to the values of his captor who is white middle class and that alleged there's a whole mentality involved in this it used to be that group therapy was the thing that you get a bunch of discontents together and you make them talk about their problems and somehow things are going to iron out. Well, some of that group therapy has been withering on the vine. It's not valid because it's certainly not working. And so the masters of the society in a wondrous stroke of Genius have come up with something called behavior modification a modified version of BF Skinner. There are places like Vacaville California Patuxent, Maryland where lobotomies were being used or psychosurgery is being used and on the federal level. There's a place which is going to cost about 15 million dollars opening up in bunner North Carolina and out of that pleasure coming articles that say criminals can be brainwashed now in the true Spirit of 1984 solitary solitary confinement is referred to as the adjustment Center and ordinary cells would be called are called behavior modification units beatings physical beatings with billy clubs are known as a version therapy and increasing use of drugs in Michigan, which isn't too far away. There's the Jackson State Prison up down up John and Parks Davis to the lording largest pharmaceutical concerns in this country have $500,000 worth of Laboratories inside that prison. For a dollar a day, they use human beings as guinea pigs, Jessica mitford has done some research on this and she was actually told by one social scientist that criminals in our penitentiaries are fine experimental material and much cheaper than chimpanzees. prison officials are very fond of of creating Illusions prison is very much an illusory world see and so you can talk about prisons is therapeutic communities, which are talking about prisons that are holes and you can designate hacks screws correctional officers as institutional superintendents, but they're still Cagney's like wardens out of a very bad Warner Brothers 1932 movie you can describe the offenders as maladjusted or deviant, but your understanding but understand that you're talking about a population that is Young poor and black and you can talk about psychotherapy but know that the psychiatrists in Persian prison are rats and sniffs sniffs has snitches after the people who control prison You can refer to change in that system as reform but know that all you're doing is allowing legislators to pour more money into an institution that will go for guns and guards more and better locks higher and stronger walls. I suppose there's no better way to punctuate this myth of treatment and concern then the for me to describe a correctional association meeting forum is a kind of place where correctional officers from all over the country will come together and they will give sociological papers and they will learn from each other Industries have booths there with which to sell their Wares and in one of these that Jessica. Mr. Mishra porcelain there was there was a line of three booths the one selling educational clerical educational opportunities so that you can teach inmates to type In the next Booth the American Bible Association was giving group discount rates on Bibles so that you could treat inmates with the word of God and right next to that was a booth selling a product called Federal steamer, which is a modified use of Mace and the label on those things read to the effect that you can use this and you will get a heavy weights punch to subdue an inmate. So you have the typing the Bible and the mace and very much a very much a parity and Luke ludicrous parody of the whole thing something that the cost across this country and and states and counties approximately $5,000 to keep a man in prison or woman or child for one year so that money you can send them to Harvard. So what is that five thousand dollars by? 30 cents per inmate per meal from within 90 cents a day for food for each inmate that doesn't take up a lot of money five percent of the budget of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. And I know also for in California is used for that highly tooted Rehabilitation purpose. So you're dealing with approximately ninety percent of the budget, which is five thousand dollars a year. It goes for guns and guards making better and more sophisticated locks and bigger and higher walls. The penal institution is a business a very real business and they make business for themselves. It's the kind of thing that is a very fine example of Parkinson's law that work will expand to fill the time allotted for it. The only purpose of the Federal Bureau of Prisons is to distribute about 80 million dollars worth of patronage for people who work in that system as there's no talk there about reform. All those people are interested in is not rocking the boat so that their monthly paychecks will keep on coming. I want to talk very much about the whole social context and how we see prisons as another social domestic Institution. There I think is no longer any any prophetic vocation in proclaiming the failures of American institutions today to meet the crises of the 20th century. They never did and likewise. It's no use to solely Proclaim that those institutions are the cause. Of those same crises that the chief function of Institutions today is to perpetuate themselves by perpetuating old myths like illusion is reality and style is performance and form is substance and being is public relations and direct action is something other than total involvement. Institutions Institute in humanity and when shoe Institute an institution, they can only dehumanize the relationships between those they were brought into being too helpful 82 and I suppose it's not really important to talk about just the isolated fact of failure of Institutions, but rather the character of that failure, which goes to the roots and institutions are self-serving self-justifying and self-perpetuating. And my point is that there is nothing endemic about prisons concerning that that that has I think as much to do with Morehead State College and Wesleyan University and any public high school and hospitals in this country and institution like the American Bar Association or the American Medical Association and I can go on and on and on. Who's in jail who's in jail, the young the poor and the black or brown or Spanish? That's not because the young the poor the black and the brown the Spanish commit more crimes. It only means those are the people who go to jail. So you have 9 million crimes of one form or another being committed every year all different crimes. There are some crimes like income tax evasion out of the site. Yeah. I had the thousands of income tax fraudulent statements only a fraction or caught only a fraction of caught those people are told to pay the money they owe and a small fine. Not so with the kid in Ashland Kentucky who steals a car to of the worst moments of my entire prison bits were done in a whole call Ashland Kentucky where the average age was 19 years old. I suspect that's not too far off from the average age of most of you here. Those were kids who came from Appalachia. They couldn't read very well. They didn't have a very exciting social life, but they saw TV and movies and read books and knew that to be a man in this Society. You have to be a chauvinist with women. You have to smoke the right kind of cigarettes. You have to drink the right kind of whiskey you'd have to drive the right kind of cars and you're judged by what you possess. Well, these kids didn't make it not at all. They couldn't even read the relaxing with whom they didn't have the money for booze and cigarettes. So they would take a joyride installed in the car with a six-pack of beer and were so clumsy and inept that they be caught immediately and put in a place like Ashland Kentucky where they would spend over two years. We're homosexuality was never the occurrence again where they were homemade tattoos where they were put there was a lot of glue sniffing where there were fights over who was going to take what seat to what to watch what television program and on and on and on those kids grow up to be the people who occupy places places like San Quentin and Folsom in Attica, but it was just totally out of anybody's imagination that the kid was still a car will be told where you got to return the car and you have to pay a fine. Because only white people and privileged people who cheat on their income tax at that sort of option. It said that if you steal a loaf of bread you can go to jail for a couple of years, but if you steal a railroad you'll make the social register. With the harriman's and the DuPont's the the melons the Carnegie's The Rockefellers the harriman's and Kennedy's Right Down. The Line did was to steal but they were very very big about it. And they did it from poor people in Cuba and Latin America and South America and China and all over this country and for that they made the social register. Nine million crimes committed a year. Okay, only out of the nine million crimes only a fewer clutch only a small number are caught out of those who are caught only a few were prosecuted out of those who are prosecuted only a few of her if you go to trial. How do those who go to trial only a very few are found guilty out of those who are found guilty only a very few receive a prison sentence and out of those people who receive a prison sentence only a very few eventually wind up in jail. You have this marvelous filtering down and what you have the bottom are the young the poor the Spanish in the block. That's not that's not coincidental. If you have money, you can avoid jail. If your parents know the right people you can avoid jail. If you have an in with a judge you can avoid jail. If you have a slick attorney, you can avoid Jer if you're any good plea bargaining you can avoid jail and the people who have been victimized in our society are the people who precisely have none of those benefits and who wind up in jail. I think that's political. And I would call the majority of people in this in prison in this country today political prisoners because if they had been wiped and middle class and somewhat articulate, they wouldn't have to be in jail if they could come up with 200 dollars bail. They wouldn't have to spend two years in jail. This has happened. I should also in terms of the social context ask the question of what constitutes criminality real criminality later on. I'll tell you about my good friend slick. Willy slick Willy is never going to hit the streets. They'll never hit the bricks. He'll be in jail for the rest of his life because in a moment of white-hot passion slick what he did something he'll regret for the rest of his life and he killed his wife. Because that woman got him so mad and he'll suffer for the rest of his life on the other hand. I know of a man who was accounted for the systematic deaths of three hundred people every day for four years and that guy is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and his name is Richard Nixon. I know of another man who did his undergraduate thesis at Harvard who said that it's very very good for the super powers in the world to foment tension to foments little Wars throughout the globe so that they can work with concepts of containment and change and expansion and we should they talk with each other that was his undergraduate work. He continued that with his graduate work. He was so successful that he used to be an advisor to the president now he Secretary of State and by God that man did win the Nobel Peace Prize what constitutes criminality is it my friend slick Willy? Or is it somebody whose crimes are totally dispassionate and very calculated? I anticipate one of your questions, which we'll get into in. I'm done and it and that's what you do with people like Charles Manson. Or Richard Speck or Charles with me what we very pure people called Psychopathic Killers and if I can be just half sardonic for a minute see I would suggest that you give them a uniform and you put them in a B-52 when they can continue doing exactly the same things they were doing but on a much larger scale and when a lot of parades and metals and social sanctification for it, I spent three years in prison. I was transferred seven times. I'm at hundreds and hundreds of men and I didn't meet that many criminals because I would say this and recognizing the arrogance and the the in humidity in doing so that I never met any criminals because most of the criminals live in the White House and they stalk around the corridors of the Pentagon. I would just beg a redefinition. Of what constitutes criminality? Prisons are run on two things Tony and I got into this a little bit yesterday. The first one is fear that inmates can be counted on to be motivated solely by fear. Fear of not obeying the rules and losing a good job fear of losing a good housing Arrangement fear of losing good days fear of losing a good parole chance fear of being locked up in solitary confinement fear of actual physical beatings fear of being transferred to a more secure more medieval institution-wide CEOs who are in jail or always told that they better behave or they'll be put in a maximum-security prison prison or ostensibly they'll be rape within 20 minutes all dissident blacks in the federal system are threatened with transfer to Terre Haute, Indiana. There's a big massive maximum security penitentiary there Indianapolis is the clan capital of the country and the word is put out very very quick that if you're a black and don't behave you're in big big trouble the more murders in Terre Haute than any other Federal Institution, and they're never solved. And the blocks are always the ones who died. The second premise that prisons are run on is the premise that inmates can be counted on to be at each other's throats more than they'll get together to suggest redress of grievances in nature not to be totally faulted for that. There are product of environments and Society. And indeed this whole thing about running on fear and running on being at each other's throats is precisely the way our society is being run in prison is a bit more clear the authorities foment tension between the black Muslims and the Black Panthers. A foreman tension between the organized crime and Italians and young white CEOs. They foment tension between the Cubans and the Puerto Ricans. They film attention between the people who live in honor dorms and so blocks and the people who live in the jungle, which of the worst house in prisons are run on that on that premise. So we finally get to this question of Reform and everybody would agree that some reforms needed Richard. Nixon doesn't like prisons. He said this John Mitchell does not like prisons. He said that and he even said that before he was in danger of going to jail himself Norman Carlson who is the current director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons does not like prisons Clinton Duffy who is the head man in California does not like his prisons. And so we're in agreement. Nobody likes prisons. Some people don't like prisons because there are waste of money and you're not successful in making people conform and that's not exactly the same reason that I don't like prison. I'd like prison because Prison is just another institution is founded on racism and violence. So what I'm saying, is that no matter how much money you pour into prisons. You're not going to reform prisons anymore. Then you can pump all the finale hide you want into a dead body, but it's not going to revive that body and you'll never instill in that body and the any living characteristics. Maybe if you're lucky you'll prevent it from stinking, but that won't last all that long. I would compare prism to slavery and rape see how do you talk about reforming and institution like prison? How do you talk about reforming and institution like slavery? You can tell the slave owner to be more kind and gentle and considerate but you still had that monstrous fact that institution shouldn't exist. I think prison is almost as clear on a collective level as is rape on an individual level. How do you reform something like rape? Do you tell the rapist to be more kind and gentle and considerate? Yeah, I suppose. So if you're going to have that basic fact, I would rather get to the roots of the problem and not deal specifically with those. I am speaking longer than I had planned to I'm sorry to kind of to kind of bring this to a head. Now. We can do some questions. I would contend that there's no separating dehumanization in prison from corruption in legalistic systems. And there's no separating that from racism and violence that are inbred in all domestic institutions. And there's no separating that from a social social fabric which is based on economic prosperity for business that Injustice is Injustice is as in Justice and Injustice By Any Other Name will have the same disastrous effects with you call of expediency or common sense or practicality or there's no other way out. Well, let me finish with the story. Toward the geographical rear end of the prison in Danbury, Connecticut. There stands a huge wild caterwauling machine the flattens and choose a tin cans. Maybe you have one in your kitchen here. Ingo tin cans and outcome tin confetti and seem to me that that damn machine whirring and grinding along was the exact apt symbol for the Federal Bureau of Prisons and should have been on there should have been on their Insignia because what you have is inmates going into prisons to be whipped and tumbled and molded and melted and smelted into the elements of flat land and recycled dead men's Souls you empty them of everything that distinguishes them from robots and out. They come in so much 10 confetti to take their place in society much like those poor babies in India. Well that machine whirring and grinding to a lot of us to lessons and had two messages. The first was obey your obedience or your life your capitulation and your cooperation or your misery that is our game and you do things our way and you have nothing to say about that now resistance to that was very easy or easier. All you had to do was to resist that enslavement to get together with your brothers and try to work for the common good and they were pressed is extracted for that and many times they were almost prohibitive but many continued the second lesson taught by that man and can opener was much more subtle and much more invidious and much more cancerous. It said you have to be like us The we hold the keys and you don't so you will hate us and you will despise us and you will treat us exactly the same way we treat you but that basic relationship is going to stay because we have the keys in the power and you don't have any power and the keys and don't come around until you're able to muster up enough Force to change to change that relationship. That was a much more subtle because that told that taught us how to hate and that taught us how to treat our brothers exactly the same way that we were being treated by the prison officials. Overcoming that was a lot harder because we had to build community that's very fuzzy and nebulous and amorphous and very hard to talk about but it wasn't until we overcame that second threat of that machine that we were able to finally be free and to work with ourselves and for the common good. Now I can't in the prison isn't all that different from your Society out here the people out here are motivated by fear. And the people out here will be on each other's throats and backs were than they will get together for the social good. And just as inmates are taught people in this Society are taught that you have to be like the oppressor and the Own Way of the only way you change social institutions is to reverse that relationship by seizing power and by treating other people exactly as you yourselves have been treated as the big social lesson and I close by saying it's just as empty for prisoners and prisons as it is for free people in a free Society three. I'm sorry for talking so long any questions. I'm giving her for that. right What made it possible for me to get out of the prison right? I have lost to parole dates. It was well known that I had done over twice the average length of time served and I think they knew that if they took away one more parole date, I would be going along fast. I think it was enough public support in the outside and there's enough support among other inmates that that I could be released. right I think it's one thing is very clear that if all prison would be shut tomorrow at it just totally disbanded tomorrow. That would be a lot better for everybody. And if you continue them as you're talking about 90% of over 1.3 million people who are in there who don't have to be in there for whom probation would work just as well as imprisonment and who do not have to be separated from society for the public good. Well, great. I'll be around for a while. If there's no more questions and maybe some of you can can take a long deserved a break and and the rest of us can continue talking up here. Yeah one. What can we do now? Right again, I would not separate the issue of Prisons from that social context. And I think what you do about prisons is what you do about any domestic institution and what you do about foreign policy. And that's to change it. Either question is how do you change it? And I would urge the non-payment of taxes the non-cooperation with governmental activities as well as organizing small communities of people who will deal with their own lives and with institutions. That's kind of a Patty answer. You spend your whole life answering it. right There's an estimate of creativity among the many populations. There's no doubt about that. All of that is stifled categorically and systematically stifled by the prison Administration. It takes extraordinary individuals. I think to overcome a lot of that and it takes a really extraordinary out of the ordinary set of circumstances where inmates can come together to form Community to get together in a Regular way to talk about their lives and what they can do as far as educating other inmates prisons even allow some amount of creativity prison wardens are very fond about showing off the inmate art exhibitions and they're very fond of living inmates write short stories with no political content. But as soon as you try to Channel at creativity and originality, which hasn't quite been snuffed out into something that has to do with politics, then you're in big trouble and that's when you run head-on into the into the wall. Yeah. Yeah. I've been a good example of last night of what happens to people who spend a lot of time in jail. It's the same thing that happens to people who spend a lot of time in the society that you look for the American formula of a quick way to get big Returns on little Investments and that has to do with violence of forcing other people to obey you that inmates have been so victimized by this is totally understandable that they would use some of the same operating motives and motifs to get what they want at the price of other inmates. So it becomes very very hard to organize non-violently because there isn't all that much return and you don't get a heck of a lot that you can put in your money or you can put in your pocket right away. There's another very very big difficulty in Danbury, Connecticut. There was a nine-day totally peaceful unequivocally nonviolent work stoppage for nine days the inmates ran that place and there were no there was no violence whatsoever. There was no destruction of property. There was no maltreatment of the guards and there were no hostages taken or anything else like that. We just stopped working. To talk about some very major things about the prison. Totally nonviolent after nine days the administration brought in the National Guard and Federal Marshals with tear gas and mace with billy clubs and vests and helmets and gym suits and they broke the strike very very viciously with a whole lot of violence and they segregated those people they thought to be the ringleaders and it was people eventually spent a lot of time in solitary confinement without ever having been charged for anything. There was no reason that they were given for being put there and eventually eventually transferred and gotten rid of that story was written up and it was taking to to an editor of the Sunday New York Times and he read it and said that it was very very well written there was a great piece, but it was only a nine-day peaceful work stoppage wasn't it? The message is clear in order to get anything across to the public. It has to be written in blood the less we had taken hostages unless we had broken some windows and strung up a couple of hacks. There was no coverage without coverage nonviolent demonstrations in prison. Don't go very far as there's no social sanctification for men who are in jail and isolation is the biggest the biggest de weapon in administrators Arsenal in dealing with inmates. Other than that, it's very very possible to organize organize just means educating And that just means sharing their lives with other inmates and it's certainly very possible to do that. Preferably with a low profile that is soon as you have a race silhouette your picked off so to speak. Great. Well, I won't keep you any longer. I'll be around on the stage and and we can do some wrapping up here and and see how that goes. So, thank you all very much.