Page 9 - Sonoma County Gazette MARCH 2020

FREEDOM cont’d from page 6
This little account is about freedom and what that word has
come to mean for me.
SQ is built along the coastal bay, practically right up to the water – a high, fortress-like tower dominates that point. Across the bay you can make out a housing development nestled into the coastal hillside, an upscale one I’d imagine, given its location. Anything along the San Francisco Bay is high- end property. One assumes any developer would sell his soul, or is that an oxymoron, to get his hands on the property on which San Quentin sits.
Prison not only confines the human body to a designated space, approximately an 8 x 10 cell, it also restricts practically all human activity except thinking. There is no freedom of choice, all decisions are made for the prisoner by the prison authorities: when and what to eat, when to sleep and get up, when to bathe, when to exercise, what to wear, with whom you can communicate and so on.
You walk out of the prison and take deep breaths of sea air as if to cleanse and revive yourself, and you heave a sigh of gratitude for the cries of the gulls. You feel the ocean’s breeze, sometimes a cold wind and invite the chill. You notice your own footsteps and feel your body as it carries you to your car and then...wherever you want to go. Any direction you choose and any destination you want. And you realize in that moment, that is freedom.
Even when to die in some cases. Everything we take for granted in our everyday lives, no longer applies. Inside those drab cinderblock corridors life is regulated and regimented every hour of every day, week, month and year until you’re out, or dead. That’s life in our prisons for the masses.
Freedom is not “just another word for nothing left to lose.” Freedom is not a word. It’s not a concept. It’s not a lyric in a song no matter how good that sounds. Freedom is something real and tangible. Freedom is the freedom of having choice. And don’t let anyone tell you different.
When you go to prison in this country you have abandoned
Your life, for all intents and purposes no longer belongs to you. Your life belongs to the state and its representatives, the prison officials. Your life, defined by choices, the choices that govern almost every aspect of it is in the hands of others, and what you want or don’t want, what you need or don’t need, and how you want things to be or not is no longer up to you. In a sense you have been reduced to zero.
your freedom of choice in every respect.
Leaving SQ after a visit I’m always struck by two things:
*Jarvis Jay Masters was wrongfully convicted of the crime of taking part
in the plot to murder a prison guard in 1985 and became a victim of both a corrupt legal system and wholly incompetent legal representation. Despite a wrongful conviction and decades of imprisonment he has led a remarkable and highly productive life. His full life story can be accessed at: www. freejarvis.org. A biography about Jarvis’ life and accomplishments, four years in the making, written by noted author/journalist David Sheff, published by Simon & Schuster, will be out this year, 2020.
What it means to be free, and the odd contrast of the beauty of the natural environment just beyond the prison walls.
www.davidsheff.com › the-buddhist-on-death-row
San Quentin State Prison Frank Schulenburg / CC BY-SA- creativecommons.org
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