Back to the resilience of captives in departments of corruption such as myself within the illegitimate Virginia Department of Corrections. You’d be surprised to know just how opposite two people can be and still agree on a single premise. As an example, I offer G. Gordon Liddy, of the right wing and Dr. Timothy Leary on the left. Both endured confinement for their various indiscretions, and mostly as political prisoners, also known as scapegoats. And both came to the exact same incontrovertible fact that all prison guards are scum and un-American in their evil.
Both were ardent in their political stances and in their open disdain for the petty tyrants that are the staff of all prisons. To that point, it is indeed ironic that our current government is openly labeling the U.S. citizen, mother of three, who was brutally murdered by the masked goons who resemble the brown shirts of yore in all but name. Were we to open Black Laws Dictionary — my copy is the 10th edition, 2014 — we would find that, speaking strictly from the perspective of the law, that in fact, prison guards and arguably law enforcement agents on the whole, meet the exact definition of “state sponsored domestic terrorist.” No one will appreciate that fact, but it is still a fact for good or ill.
This leads us to an important point, and one most Americans only partially understand. Most of what we are being told is simply wrong. Another example is the use of the word “anarchy.” It doesn’t mean anything even remotely close to the pitchfork and torches image given by government and media talking heads. According to Black’s Law, “Anarchy, noun. The political belief that there should be no government and that instead, ordinary people should work together to improve society, specifically, sociopolitical theory, holding that the only legitimate form of government is one under which individuals govern themselves voluntarily, free from any collective power structure enforcing compliance with social order through force or through coercion.” Not quite the false definition and illusion of disorder they sell you on the regularity on the news. To the contrary, actually, and that is the real threat to the parasite class of pseudo nobility that has usurped our rights.
It must be resilience that allows the barrage of falsehoods to roll over our shoulders, the long train of abuses to go unchecked and without resolution. If not resilience, then it must be ignorance, or, worse yet, a total lack of care that permits the growing obvious danger now present in every community; resilience that allows ongoing tolerance of a deliberate indifference by our so called “elected officials,” people like Tim Kaine and Mark Werner, Virginia senators. I use these two as examples because in 2016 and 2017 both senators received letters reporting, not only attacks by police upon a U.S. citizen who had committed no crimes and was home alone, experiencing a mental health crisis, but more brutality after the fact, which left the victim with permanent damage to his vision.
Those letters to the senators received replies that stated quite plainly, paraphrased, “Sorry, we can’t help you.” This is in their own home state, mind you, and silence is consent, as the old adage goes. I have these documents among hundreds and 1000s of other pages safely stored with my family in Philadelphia. It is this sort of deprivation that allows the Virginia DOC to continue to operate with impunity, even as staff are routinely being reported for all levels of criminal activity, no investigations of inquiry of any kind that are worth a damn. Point in fact, a staff member at Pocahontas was just nabbed bringing $96,000 worth of drugs onto the compound. This is happening all day, every day, across the state of Virginia, and no one’s doing a damn thing about it. And that’s the bottom of the barrel, or the tip of the iceberg, if you’d like, of crimes being committed.
Resilience, that is what keeps some of us from giving up altogether; resilience after numerous beatings, repeated acts of other criminal abuses, harassments and violations of law and rights. It is resilience that keeps us, keeps me, from acting on the darkest impulses of self harm. I face 1000 suicides every week in my mind and heart, and it has been that way for the last decade. That is not a call for help, and I have never acted on those ideations. It is simply a matter of fact and a testament to the destructive powers of the Virginia DOC and the prison industrial complex as a whole; to government in general, and most of all, to resilience. Resilience, it is how I and so many others under the boot of oppressive authoritarianism, get through one day at a time while we wait for the masses to finally see the reality of the situation. All through history it is resilience. My name is David Annarelli, contributing writer at prisonjournalism.org, davidannarelli.wordpress.com. Find me on Instagram, minutesbeforesix.com. Prison writers. Everywhere else on the internet. Thank you very much.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
