By Danny Thomas

As Virginians, we are still reeling from the shocking loss of political fairness and equality with the election of Youngkin and Miyares. Even today, I find myself asking what if McCauliffe hadn’t commented that “parents don’t have a right to dictate their children’s education.” You could clearly see his momentum wane by the second – as he also recognized this and brought in the “big guns” like Obama and national figures in the education realm in an attempt to repair the damage accrued by this statement.

In any event, this constant shifting of the political winds has created angst in the hearts and minds of so many, particularly minorities of all kinds, especially the prisoner’s of Virginia and their families. Consider the fact that at least 500 men and women housed in Virginia D.O.C. were excited for the opportunity to be released from prison only to have this moment snatched away at the 11th hour. I can recall the anxiety I felt after serving 20 years in maximum security with the expectation that I’d be shipped to a medium, only to have it snatched away. I can only imagine what it feels like to expect your freedom then have it taken from you to serve political interests.

Consider the children expecting their parent to come home only to suffer the gravest of disappointment. It is difficult enough to explain to young children that you’re away from them because you did something that you shouldn’t have, then plan your reunion, then build their expectations only to find yourself letting them down again. Psychologically, the idea of defeat is ever present and the circumstances we live under will either nourish the defeat or starve it – unfortunately incarceration provides a full course meal for the defeatist mind.

It is astonishing that so many of us and our families are able to thrive in spite of the pervasive nature of ” learned helplessness.” The incarceration of family becomes a shared experience in which both suffer separately, but equally. Although visitation and phone calls serve as a type of “numbing agent” for the soul, both are left with a hollow place in their consciousness for which their is no immediate gratification, the only remedy requires freedom from the carceral restraints that bind us yet separate.

Our knowledge of the carceral system will ensure that we can experience a healthy existence in spite of the enormous obstacles we face. The wellness of our selves and family is predicated on just how resilient and resolute we prove to be. There is no magic pill or how to book to mimic, the wellness we seek is born from our recognition of “the open enemy,” the politician that has industrialized crime for the sake of creating jobs in their respective districts; the one who refuses to recognize that poverty is the mother of crime and not genetics as many of them would presume.

The sure strategy against this pathology is our education and advocacy against the system that seeks to break our will and define us as a valueless people. In the words of the immortal Nelson Mandela, “the attack of the wild beast cannot be averted with bare hands.”

In Struggle,

Danny Thomas, #1054249
Green Rock Correctional