July 26, 2014

Dear —-,

How are you doing my brother? Still standing strong (in here), maybe not quite as numbered though. I asked a gentleman today if he wanted to join an I.O.A. meeting. When he told me no I asked him why and he said because the C.O.s don’t give a shit. Yet I can’t help but feel my lack of experience as a speaker holds some responsibility.

this comic accompanied the letter

But then I think of a biography I read of Abraham Lincoln. He was a terrible speaker but over trials and failures he endured and it was precisely his speaking (and his wife) that got him into the White House. That case law you sent me (about food and prison/jail) was excellent. It showed a lot of failures that other inmates who pushed a suit ended in. Yet is is just those failures that can give us inmates an edge, for we can learn all the right things to say where they went wrong. A lot of unjust contradictions that ended unfairly. Shows us really what ‘justice’ is. Right now instead of getting the inside IOA members active we’re trying to organize and build bridges with their help so they know IOA is a collective power and that everyone is free to bring their ideas with them (text omitted)…I am glad you are informing others of the coming inmate council (text omitted)….I am going to contact the ACLU soon (on religious discrimination) and plan on taking initiative with the pencil petition at our next IOA meeting, probably tomorrow. We’re going to set two days a week as regular IOA meetings. Keep me updated on pod reps! Oh, yea, I finished A Feast for Crows. If you happen to run by book 5 of A Song of ICe and Fire called A Dance of Dragons by George R.R. Martin that would be awesome!

Still trying,

S. Y.