Morning Inmates Quotes

Bedtime makes you realize how completely incapable you are of being in charge of another human being. My children act like they’ve never been to sleep before. “Bed? What’s that? No, I’m not doing that.” They never want to go to bed. This is another thing that I will never have in common with my children. Every morning when I wake up, my first thought is, “When can I come back here?” It’s the carrot that keeps me motivated. Sometimes going to bed feels like the highlight of my day. Ironically, to my children, bedtime is a punishment that violates their basic rights as human beings. Once the lights are out, you can expect at least an hour of inmates clanging their tin cups on the cell bars.

For eight years I was an inmate in a state asylum for the insane. During those years I passed through such unbearable terror that I deteriorated into a wild, frightened creature intent only on survival. And I survived. I was raped by orderlies, gnawed on by rats and poisoned by tainted food. I was chained in padded cells, strapped into strait-jackets and half-drowned in ice baths. And I survived. The asylum itself was a steel trap, and I was not released from its jaws alive and victorious. I crawled out mutilated, whimpering and terribly alone. But I did survive.

While disease had thus become an inhabitant of Lowood, and death its frequent visitor; while there was gloom and fear within its walls; while its rooms and passages steamed with hospital smells, the drug and the pastille striving vainly to overcome the effluvia of mortality, that bright May shone unclouded over the bold hills and beautiful woodland out of doors. Its garden, too, glowed with flowers: hollyhocks had sprung up tall as trees, lilies had opened, tulips and roses were in bloom; the borders of the little beds were gay with pink thrift and crimson double daisies; the sweetbriars gave out, morning and evening, their scent of spice and apples; and these fragrant treasures were all useless for most of the inmates of Lowood, except to furnish now and then a handful of herbs and blossoms to put in a coffin.

But I think there’s a man down in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, named Peter Stevens. Probably running a very new small hotel in this year of our Lord 1976. I’ll tell you what I know and what I think; that’s about all I can do, isn’t it? • • • On March 12th, 1975, the cell doors in Cellblock 5 opened at 6:30 a.m., as they do every morning around here except Sunday. And as they do every day except Sunday, the inmates of those cells stepped forward into the corridor and formed two lines as the cell doors slammed shut behind them.

But Hans Beimler survived Dachau, escaping certain death just hours before the SS ultimatum expired. With the help of two rogue SS men, apparently, he squeezed through the small window high up in his cell, passed the barbed wire and electric fence around the camp, and disappeared into the night.7 After Private Steinbrenner unlocked Beimler’s cell early the next morning, on May 9, 1933, and found it empty, the SS went wild. Sirens sounded across the grounds as all available SS men turned the camp upside down. Steinbrenner battered two Communist inmates who had spent the night in the cells adjacent to Beimler, shouting: “Just you wait, you wretched dogs, you’ll tell me [where Beimler is].” One of them was executed soon after.8 Outside, a huge manhunt got under way. Planes circled near the camp, “Wanted” posters went up at railway stations, police raids hit Munich, and the newspapers, which had earlier crowed about Beimler’s arrest, announced a reward for recapturing the “famous Communist leader,” who was described as clean-shaven, with short-cropped hair and unusually large jug ears.9 Despite all their efforts, Beimler evaded his hunters. After recuperating in a safe house in Munich, he was spirited away in June 1933 by the Communist underground to Berlin and then, in the following month, escaped over the border to Czechoslovakia, from where he sent a postcard to Dachau telling the SS men to “kiss my ass.

Even at the time, however, National Guardsman Callahan could see that the abuses happening to prisoners following the retaking were fueled by outright racism. Callahan overheard one trooper bragging of shooting a black inmate with a .357 and watched him then give a “White Power salute.”54 He also saw “a prison guard sergeant telling this very tall, yellow-skinned black to strip” and when the man refused, the sergeant “told others to hold him down and then kicked him in the head like a football—he went limp.”55 Another Guardsman overheard one trooper saying to another over by a food stand outside Attica’s walls that it was “hot work killing niggers.”56 Racial hostility was in fact so intense that during the legislators’ tour that morning, even Assemblyman Arthur Eve was showered with invective. “Guards [were] yelling at Eve—get your nigger ass out of here.”57

EARLY MORNING IN THE yard at the Men’s Reformatory at Anamosa, prisoners lounging about, doing lazy time, and here comes John Wayne Gacy, inmate number 26525, moving fast, a man with things to accomplish.

On August 31, 1939, SS men dressed in Polish uniforms took over a radio station inside Germany and broadcast messages urging Poles living in eastern Germany to rebel against the Nazis. The bodies of prison inmates were dressed in Polish uniforms and left on site as if they had perpetrated the act and had been killed by German police.8 The transparent ploy would be cited as a preemptive Polish hostile action by Germany. Despite this, British and French diplomats begged the Polish high command to retract the mobilization order. The next morning German troops stormed across the border and World War II in Europe began.

When Big Pete first arrived here at Salton’s death row, everyone said to me, “Yo, B! (my name’s Brian, but that ain’t so cool, so all my brothers calls me “B” instead) What’s it like being Big Pete’s cellie?  You scared he gonna kill you in your sleep?”  I just smiled and let them guess.  It gave me some respect with the other inmates that I was a brother sharing a cell with the big, white, killing machine—and was still alive every morning.  But they didn’t know Big Pete like I do.  And I’m sure gonna miss him when he’s gone.

HM Belmarsh prison, or Hellmarsh as the inmates call it, is a category A prison situated in the South East of London. The prison service manual states that Category A prisoners are: “Those whose escape would be highly dangerous to the public or national security. Offenses that may result in consideration for Category A or Restricted Status include: Attempted murder, Manslaughter, Wounding with intent, Rape, Indecent assault, Robbery or conspiracy to rob (with firearms), Firearms offences, Importing or supplying Class A controlled drugs, Possessing or supplying explosives, Offenses connected with terrorism and Offeses under the Official Secrets Act.” In other words, Belmarsh prison is filled with some very bad people. But there is nothing to worry about. Belmarsh is a state of the art facility. High walls, well-trained guards and a system of electronically controlled Mag-locks that secure every door on every cell. Even in the event of an EMP or similar power outage there is a hardened back up battery that keeps the cells secure. The batteries last for sixteen hours. Or until 10:00 am in the morning. It is now 10:01 am. Belmarsh houses approximately eight hundred and eighty inmates. Or, to put it more correctly - Belmarsh used to hold eight hundred and eighty inmates.

Even at the time, however, National Guardsman Callahan could see that the abuses happening to prisoners following the retaking were fueled by outright racism. Callahan overheard one trooper bragging of shooting a black inmate with a .357 and watched him then give a “White Power salute.”54 He also saw “a prison guard sergeant telling this very tall, yellow-skinned black to strip” and when the man refused, the sergeant “told others to hold him down and then kicked him in the head like a football—he went limp.”55 Another Guardsman overheard one trooper saying to another over by a food stand outside Attica’s walls that it was “hot work killing niggers.”56 Racial hostility was in fact so intense that during the legislators’ tour that morning, even Assemblyman Arthur Eve was showered with invective. “Guards [were] yelling at Eve—get your nigger ass out of here.”57 Any white inmate who had stood with the black rebels in D Yard also suffered special abuse. Doctors from the National Guard reported hearing troopers and COs punctuate their beating of white inmates—the “nigger lovers”—with bitter refrains of “This is what you get for hanging around with niggers.”58 So deep was the guards’ and troopers’ hatred of Attica’s surrendered prisoners, and particularly the black men among them, that for days after the retaking they engaged not only in physical abuse but also in the wanton destruction of these men’s most basic and necessary possessions. A trooper forced Jack Florence to pull out his dentures and hand them over, then threw them “on the ground and stepped on it.”59 In addition to smashing the men’s false teeth that they needed to eat, troopers and COs mangled eyeglasses and ground them into the dirt, and tore apart every necklace and smashed every wristwatch they happened to find on a prisoner.

Here is a true story. A sixteen-year-old prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp was raped by a guard. Knowing that any prisoner who appeared without a cap on morning parade was immediately shot, the guard stole his victim’s cap. The victim once shot, the rape could not be uncovered. The prisoner knew that his only chance of life was to find a cap. So he stole the cap of another camp inmate, asleep in bed, and lived to tell the tale. The other prisoner was shot. Roman Frister, the prisoner who stole the cap, describes the death of his fellow inmate as follows: The officer and the kapo walked down the lines.… I counted the seconds as they counted the prisoners. I wanted it to be over. They were up to row four. The capless man didn’t beg for his life. We all knew the rules of the game, the killers and the killed alike. There was no need for words. The shot rang out without warning. There was a short, dry, echoless thud. One bullet to the brain. They always shot you in the back of the skull. There was a war on. Ammunition had to be used sparingly. I didn’t want to know who the man was. I was delighted to be alive. What does morality say the young prisoner ought to have done? It says that human life has no price. Very well. Should he therefore have consented to lose his life? Or does the pricelessness of life mean that he was justified in doing anything to save his own? Morality is supposed to be universal and categorical. But the lesson of Roman Frister’s story is that it is a convenience, to be relied upon only in normal times.

Feed your soul through service Sometimes you can work all day and you’ll get tired physically. But there are times when you go out of your way to be a blessing. You get up early to help a coworker. You stop by the hospital and pray for a friend. You mow a neighbor’s lawn after work. Doing all that should make you tired and run-down, but you feel energized, stronger, and refreshed. Why is that? When you do the will of your Father it doesn’t drain you, it replenishes you. You may volunteer in your community each week. You may get up early and go to church on your day off, maybe serving in the children’s ministry after working all week. You may clean houses in the community outreach Saturday morning. You may spend the afternoon at the prison encouraging the inmates. You’d think you would leave tired, worn out, run-down, and needing to go home and rest after volunteering all day. But just like with Jesus, when you help others, you get fed. Strength, joy, energy, peace, wisdom, and healing come to those who serve. You should be run-down, but God reenergizes and refreshes you so that at the end of the day you aren’t down, you are up. You don’t leave low, you leave high. God pays you back. Every time I leave one of our church services, I feel stronger than when I came in. It doesn’t make natural sense. I put out a lot of energy, spend long hours, and shake a lot of hands, but I go home reenergized. Why? Because when you serve others, making their lives better, lifting them, healing those who are hurting, you are blessing them and being blessed yourself. You are being fed. You’re being filled back up. If you’re always tired and run-down, with no energy, it may be that you’re not doing enough for others. You’ve got to get your mind off yourself. Go to a retirement home and cheer up someone who is lonely. Bake your neighbor a cake. Coach the Little League team. Call a friend in the hospital. As you lift others, God will lift you. This should not be something you do every once in a while, when you have extra time. This should be a lifestyle, where it’s a part of your nature. You don’t have to do something big--just small acts of kindness. A simple word of encouragement can make someone’s day.