| A Whole World You Are Technically
From, But No Longer Of by Kevin Foster There is something fascinating about seeing the world through the internal bars on a prison transport van. Watching the countless cars go by as your driver speeds to your destination. Wondering where those people are racing off to and who they are. Observing buildings flashing by with unknown purposes being fulfilled within. Then marvelling at technological miracles such as L.E.D. billboards, something that either didn't exist in your day or was too expensive. Cars all slick and shiny in models you've only glimpsed in commercials. This buzzing river of humanity as it flows down a highway in quests to do any number of things. You sit, a passive observer seeing a whole world you are technically from but no longer of. And you wonder why? Surely in some of those nameless people there are those less honorable than you. Some who are more self involved. Perhaps more dangerous. And you realize that you may have once been dangerous due to ego or stupidity or selfishness, but now all these years later you yearn for any chance at redemption. To once more be trusted enough to be a faceless, nameless and most importantly, numberless human being. Not a slave in a cage. Not someone else's property who must do the master's bidding or face punishment. Meanwhile all those humans hurry about their lives oblivious to the fact that the white van they pass is carrying those the state has condemned in their name, by their proxy. Even if they did know, I doubt that in their myriad of challenges and obstacles they face each day many would concern themselves with the plight of such wastes of humanity. I don't blame them. When I was free, I was oblivious too. Like them I had far, far too much to do, you see. And such a huge and fascinating world to explore. Adventure and new sights at every turn. Colors and sounds and feelings long forgotten. The point of such musings is to my mind two fold. First, there are some people in those cars, buildings and walking various streets that do care, and in them we glimpse a compassion and generosity we should aspire to. For in the madcap world full of rushing to and fro with never enough time in a day, the fact anyone would willingly choose to share any of it with us is a miracle. Second, and I hope equally important, is the fact that just because someone did something wrong, hurt someone or committed some crime, does not invalidate them as a fellow human being with all the innate goals, hopes, and dreams free world people have. We just know as slaves ours are going to be infinitely harder to achieve. And for many of us the main goal is simply a chance at redemption. A chance to walk down the street unchained and not having to see the none-too-subtle change when our escorts tell those wonderful hardworking people, "He's death row", in a none too quiet whisper. True freedom doesn't lie in unfettered access. It lies in knowing other people trust you just enough to walk the streets and in being honorable enough to deserve it. As one of my favorite philosophical quotes goes, "Be kind to everyone you meet, for you do not know what they are dealing with." And as you race from hither to yonder every once in a while imagine the world from someone else's perspective. Even that of a convict on a prison van. As we so often imagine yours. May we all be more honorable, compassionate, and kind. |
| Donny Dillbeck Was My Friend by Kevin Foster Donny Dillbeck was my friend. A simple statement of fact but one that has profound qualities. For those of you who read this newsletter you will probably recognize the name, recently a few of his friends (myself among them) honored the hundredth day since the state of Florida murdered him. We did so with a quiet remembrance that included breaking bread. And for those who didn't know my friend let me say this... he would be woefully disappointed in me because he told me just prior to his execution not to be angry. To not get pissed off and want to burn the whole world down and for the last hundred days that has been impossible because I live in his world. Not the semi-civilized world most of you inhabit, ours is ugly, made exclusively of steel and concrete, filled with the most unrepentant people on the face of this good earth. Here amongst our peers, Donny was one of the few trying to be a better human being. To enlighten himself and help anyone else trying to find a better path. In a cesspool he was fresh air. And they killed him. However, he wouldn't want people building him up into something he was not. He was a smart ass. With an admittedly borderline juvenile sense of crass humor and a fuck you attitude delivered in a nonchalant way. A survivor of childhood abuse and neglect. A survivor of gladiator school, what we insid call dangerous prison camps full of violence-loving young men who despite being locked up do not stop seeking to victimize people. He was a man who had experienced violence and doled out a measure too. But in the end, he was also a decent human being. A true friend. But not a "good guy." He rejected the corrupt hypocrisy of the "good guys" out there. The two-faced politicians, the lying adulterous preachers, the "honest" cops who turn a blind eye to other officers doing wrong. In his quest to be better than he was the day before, he recognized what many do not... Namely that in order to be a better version of yourself you have to first take off the rose-colored glasses and be honest about who you are. He did that by coming to terms with what he had done and who he had hurt by unflinchingly examining both where the system failed him, but more importantly, where he failed himself and his fellow humans. For many people just taking that first step seems all but impossible. I know far too many people who sabotage their own improvement and happiness by failing to start from a place of honesty. I have the privilege to say that in the last five years of his life I was his best friend inside. We would walk for hours, every yard discussing religion, politics, philosophy. While this may sound like grand conversation for a couple death row prisoners, it was a simple fact that there was no limit on the depth of our talks nor their range in scope. I miss him. Like Donny, I too, came into the system as a teenager. Arrested at eighteen and condemned the day after my twenty-first birthday, I have grown up on death row. It is for lack of a better description "my world," and this place is what most people think it is: a place where evil doers come to wait to die. Most are not openly repentant. Most do not want to be better. They just want to be free. The old joke is that everybody in prison is innocent because that is what they claim. Donny wasn't. He owned his wrongs and wanted nothing more than to help others, to teach the younger guys not to make the same self-destructive errors. To hopefully leave the world a more positive place. I think he did that in his way. The proof is the way those who knew him in the end view him. While he would be the first to admit he hurt people, he would also acknowledge that he never wanted to again and that he really had found peace and wished he could gift it to all. Let's be frank one more time. The system failed Donny. Any adult who claims to be a reasonable and decent person who also believes that fifteen-year-olds should be given life sentences doesn't know a damn thing about prison or neuroscience. Young people's brains aren't fully developed until their mid-twenties and the last region to mature is the very area responsible for impulse control. Couple that with childhood trauma and exposure to violence at a young age and any rational adult will know that intense therapy is required to help that child deal with those events. Instead, the state threw a child into an adult male prison population and had the nerve to wonder why he became so desperate to extract himself that he would commit violence trying to get away. We humans like to rail at the Divine, "Why, why, why?" when far too often the fault rests with us and our own inability to show others the care and concern we want for ourselves. How many of you would want your fifteen-year-old son condemned to life in prison? I wager it's very few if any, regardless of what they were accused of. Yet people have no problem with it when it happens to others, often siding with the sensationalized media coverage and "glad those thugs are off the streets." Donny understood this hypocrisy and vowed to remove his part of it in this world. He never claimed to be a victim, even though he was. He never shied from his crimes. He was willing to hold them up in the light of day and simply wanted everyone else to do the same. Be honest with themselves if no one else. So, when you think of him, think of the smart mouthed guy who would encourage the world to seek its better self and show each other and the rest of us foolish mortals a little more compassion and mercy in our mistakes. It's not about you. It's about us. Make the world you wish you lived in. My name is Kevin Foster and Donny Dillbeck was my friend |
| The Sleight Of Hand by Kevin Foster Freedom is an illusion. And not a particularly good one. Like a mediocre magician playing at wowing the audience, its true nature has more in common with the sleight of hand. We are always fascinated by the shiny object, the trending topic, or the outrage of the moment. But it's a shell game to keep the masses from thinking, from learning or looking too close to see how the trick is done. When we are trapped in circumstances we don't know how to get out of or situations we cannot pretend to control, we panic. Fearful of losing our personal freedom, our personal autonomy. Something that always has been an illusion, true freedom is anarchy and luckily most of us don't live in that type of world. Instead we trade some true autonomy for some sense of security. For the majority, that is the smart play. It builds a safer world even at the expense of true freedom. The thing we forget is that it's always a shell game, a trade off of factors, but the very idea of true freedom in any external real sense is always and has always been an illusion. The only true freedom a society can possess without devolving into anarchist chaos is the freedom of the mind/spirit. The ability to go into oneself and shape reality, constructing your own reality, your own narrative. People do this all the time. Sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. Most, however, fail to grasp the significance of such freedom. In our minds we can build worlds, become anything, alternate from God to devil and from villain to superhero. Introverted can become extroverted. In short, we can be whatever we want. We can construct that world in our mind. It is our only divine power. To manifest our will. In the landscapes of the mind these can be whatever we want, we fantasize and ponder scenarios that would make us ashamed if anyone knew and embarrassed or horrified if they found out. We build ourselves up and tear ourselves down. Who hasn't berated themselves wildly for failing at something they truly wanted? The point is when we are trapped by circumstance, by either physical, financial, or simply personal limitations, we are still free in our minds. We can dream. The paralyzed person can walk. The cowardly can be brave, the weak can be strong. The broke can find a windfall. The lonely... love. Because it's all make believe. Here is the secret: Life itself is make believe. So, make believe, dream your dreams, but understand that the divine power within you grants you the ability to not just fantasize but (should you wish it) to manifest your reality. Perhaps not the whole thing. Not yet. When Leonardo Di Vinci was designing helicopters in his mind he didn't have the technology to make it real, but his thoughts led others to achieve that dream. We all share inspiration and stand on the shoulders of giants. We live in a technological world full of miracles so commonplace that we think nothing of the awesomeness that they are. All because people were free in their minds. Free to create the world they wanted to live in. A world with antibiotics, a world where humans could travel to the moon, a world where finding connections could be a mouse click away. Yet in that freedom we must take care to guard against our own worst selves. The persistent little voice in the background that whispers, "You're not good enough," or that destruction is better than creation — it's not, it's just easier. Any fool knows this. While many of us struggle with internal doubt and mental health challenges, we have a duty to ourselves and those we love not to devolve into worse versions of ourselves. Because truly what we create and indulge in our minds can seep into the real world causing real pain and suffering. So, strive to clean the internal world of villains, put the naysayers in the stocks, short circuit the negative thoughts. Understand that you already are a superpower, an awesome being of unlimited potential. You just have to decide what type of person you wish to be, what type of world you wish to live in, and then figure out the steps to get there. Manifest your will. What will you be with such freedom? A benevolent spirit helping solve the world's ills and injustices or something worse? The freedom of your mind/spirit is not an illusion, it is the foundation upon which real world heavens or hells are built. Choose wisely. |
| Memoir of a modern day slave by Kevin Foster The western world believes that slavery was a demon slain in the less civilized times of nineteenth and twentieth centuries. An abomination of a bygone era. The very concept of enslaving someone these days makes most enlightened liberal democracies and their citizens very uncomfortable. Note the revisionist history and whitewashing the current U.S. administration is engaged in. We don't like to think of a time when we leaders of civilization held others not just in bondage but also in the denial of their essential humanity. When we viewed people less fortunate as some how less deserving of recognition as our fellow humans. The documented history is so horrific it makes us modern people cringe in shame and disgust. And yet we foolishly and erroneously believe that demon of the human condition has been bested. That it only persists as a shadow in darkened places hiding a small unfortunate population percentage that has to be written off as the unstoppable product of criminals and traffickers. We don't think that slavery exist as a national policy in the western world. We are after all the world leaders in compassion, decency, and human rights. Perhaps. The truth is right now in america there are three million legally held slaves in the jails, prisons and work camps. People who have been deemed less. Deemed unworthy of self determination and freedom of movement. Deemed unworthy to share in the alleged "Rights" of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Welcome to America. A country of slaveholders who had the foresight to build a system that would eventually allow for evolving standards of decency to banish the evils of denying a sentient being its own right to self determination, unless convicted of a crime. Yet, when slavery was abolished in America the politicians carved out that exception to the blanket idea that all slavery is wrong. That caveat is incarcerated people. Those convicted of a crime. In America they are called many things... convicts, inmates, prisoners, offenders, but never what they truly are...Slaves. People who have been stripped of their essential humanity. Placed in warehouse gulags designed not to Correct, like many states claim but to break and terrorize. To humble, torture and teach through negative reinforcement not to want to be there in that condition. Each quickly learning that they yearn for freedom not just to be recognized as human again but to be liberated from the hideous conditions and psychological tortures of being a slave. In a system with fewer and fewer possibilities for release. A person with no right of refusal, you do what you're told, when you're told or you suffer. No right to self determination, you are on their schedule, their goals never your own. And not even the right to life. As I write this I am a slave on one of the many death rows sprinkled throughout the United States. A country whose own most precious founding document says, "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal endowed by their creator with certain INALIENABLE rights chief among them are the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Yet we enslave more people than the rest of western civilization combined. We call it mass incarceration. As if the euphemism somehow makes it right. While many European nations have tackled the same types of societal problems that lead to crime and done so without resorting to the mentality of either lock them up and throw away the key or execute them and pretend that it helps, the various states of the Union went another way. Beginning in the post civil war era the states who lost the ability to own slaves decided to start incarcerating them. Political opportunist used periodic swings in crime to justify ever harsher sentences and ever stiffer penalties. Whereas someone in my shoes in the nineteen sixties and seventies, would have served perhaps two decades behind bars and then been given a second chance, instead I was sentenced to death. The crime riddled nineteen eighties resulted in an expansion of draconian sentencing and now days even low level nonviolent offenders are getting life sentences. This is ultimately unsustainable and supremely foolish on the part of government. However here we sit... slaves. No rights, no liberty, no hope. As for me, soon they will exercise their prerogative and demonstrate one last time that I'm their property. They will strap me to a table and pump poison into my body because its not mine....it belongs to them...my slave masters. And that is the true legacy of American justice. From founding father slaveholders, to modern slave masters America hasn't evolved as much as people think. We are still trying to justify horrific human rights abuses as being either necessary or Justice. Yet the smallest school age child can tell you two wrongs do not make anything right. Nor does allowing politicians to turn fundamental, INALIENABLE Rights...into privileges that they alone bestow make anything safer, better or wiser. Because as they creep along pushing those Rights further and further away from SOME, they get closer and closer to being able to do so to ALL. Then everyone will wake up and understand that they have not been citizens for decades.. they are now subjects.. Subjects who are subjected to the will of the political class not, equals governed by fair laws. In other words...Slaves. |