How I’m Weathering the Pandemic

My name is brother Khalfani Malik Khaldun. How am I weathering the pandemic?  Well, alright, you know, I’ve always- I’ve been in prison since I was 17- you know, it’s like 33 years almost. So with, with the shock and the reality that this could have been something else worser, it had me uneasy. I did experience a little bit of depression. I’ve been experiencing a little bit of anxiety and a little bit of anxiousness because I would like to see and hear that it’s over. So, you know, what I do on a daily basis, I assure that my area is clean. I shower regularly and I encourage the brothers around me to do the same thing.

And I work out. I exercise. I exercise every day when I can. And I try to give me a little cardio so that I can release any type of bacteria that’s in my lungs. I drink water so I can filter out my kidneys. You know I’m dealing with an issue, a few issues like high blood pressure. Hypertension, a little bit of depression – I got chronic depression. And so there are days when I’m a little bit down. And I try to work out to reduce the stress and the depression, and I feel better. 

So with the pandemic, being a part of the reality right now, I think that there’s things that I’ve been able to do to not worry so much about it, is to write about it and to hope, that my words and my thoughts on it to be encouraging to others and their family members and some of the  families, if they may be contacting they loved ones in prison. 

So that’s, that’s what I do on a daily basis. I believe that they’re not really being completely honest because they trying to say that it’s one person. And instead of saying that the officers were contracting it and bringing it in here or being exposed to it, they want to say that their first case study is a prisoner who came in from a level one facility.

So, but they don’t know that we’ve been already provided information that several officers had it. So I believe it entered this facility a long time ago, because the way they wasn’t telling us anything [transcriber could not parse] they came with masks, with the face masks, you know, that’s what whole prison. When they started shutting down certain little programs, they came in and stopped us from going to recreation.

We can’t even go out to the gym no more they’re forcing us to go out in, you know, temperamental weather –  sometimes it’s hot sometimes it’s cold – but lately it’s like really hot, hot. But they’re forcing us to go out in the elements. Not saying that I don’t like it because I’d rather be exposed to the air, you know, and the sun and so forth.

They began a process of preparing without telling us. They began to tell us, “Oh, we don’t want the three people sitting at the table when you go to chow. The table seats six people! One, two, three, four, five-  yeah, six people! And maybe now you want three people at the table. So what do you want to do? Force a bunch of people to stand up.

So they came with that. Then they came with the masks then they came with the cleared off uh, access to recreation and to the gym area. Then they started to come with these cancellations of religious services. For those they didn’t have to have outside volunteers are still allowed to go to their religious services.

But now they’ve done away with that. From, from an activist stance on the inside, we can start to document anything that is not correct. As far as if we think that they’re lying to us, we can file grievances, we can file complaints to the warden and anybody who’s being denied any medical treatment, we need to start filing medical reports about the lack of care, the negligence and the indifference.

It’s important that we start to do this now at this [transcriber could not parse]. Due to the fact that they still allow some access to food, sales, events that means they trying to cater to the prison element here, to pacify. So I think the more they take away, the little pacifications during this period, the greater the resistance. So that’s something that I learned years ago, you know, being a part of efforts and struggles on the inside. 

And then for those on the outside, they have to show the brothers and sisters in these prison systems from their areas that they are in support of us. If they can send messages on the inside and let people know, that y’all are not being [00:05:00] forgotten, that we are out here to supporting you. And from time to time do a little rally outside of the prison and get the media involved so we can turn on our TV and see that there’s a lot of people out there supporting us.

My name is brother Khalfani Malik Khaldun.