Hope

There’s a cliché out there where you are that says, “As long as there’s life, there’s hope.” Back here where I am, behind these walls, it’s in reverse: “As long as there’s hope, there’s life.” When the people who brought together the SAFE California Act decided that they would take our lives and put it on the ballot for life without the possibility of parole, what they in fact have done is told us that if we get life without parole, that we will have no hope of ever getting out of here. And if we have no hope, then we have no life. Here on death row, as sick as this sounds, many of us have life, because we’ve got hope. I don’t know of any other way to say it, but as long as there is hope, there is life.