My Precious Friend Is in Pain... by Mike Peloso

Recently my comrade and soulfriend asked me to describe how we, as outside supporters and friends feel about the suffering of our friends and family inside the death row walls. He said that we aren’t used to really express our own feelings of hurt about the way they are treated by the system. At least, we don’t write about it and publish it to the public…it’s always our comrades who do. Their stories, protest updates and poems are on the site. And each and every one of those writings is powerful. Some really make clear what is going on inside. Others are such probing words about emotions of all kind that it really reaches your heart.

When my precious friend asked me why we don’t express our feelings to the world, I actually wondered why myself. And I asked my colleague DRIVE supporters about it. Their reaction was like mine…really not gotten to the point to write it down but some also said: “How would my comrade and friend feel when I talk about my pain explicitly? Will that be an extra burden to him? What is my suffering in comparison to his? Nothing!”

Of course that is true…our pain is only a fraction of what our comrades are going through but then again, maybe it can be a support too when we share our own feelings of hurt and helplessness. Actually I am pretty sure about that. Plus people outside need to know and deeply realize how far the impacts of the inhumane treatment of our friends and family reach. My colleague Charles wrote a powerful article about it….

When the DRIVE protest started in November 2005, I was first and foremost impressed by the spirits of all men involved. Their strong vision, their dedication to the struggle that could be felt from the very beginning, their solid preparations…I was so inspired and grateful to be friend of a DRIVE soldier, my friend, and later I was grateful to be a humble part of it all.

Then, the actual protests started and comrade after comrade resisted. Slowly but surely we, the outsiders, got a lively impression of the struggle, the non-violent actions and the following retaliations. We saw UOF tapes and read the protest updates. Now, the feeling of gratitude was accompanied by shock about this reality. I remember watching that first video; first I could feel my friend so well, I felt the adrenaline myself and I was shocked. And hurt: “They are treating him like an animal in a cage… one that has been defied and tortured before”. I felt like taking the first plane to the president of the USA, shake him real good and ask him what the heck is wrong with him….as if I didn’t know yet that the system is insane…believe me I did! But getting such a reality check this way and in this matter, where my dear friend is the victim of it, that is different! Also, if I had been able, I would have flown to him right after I had visited the president. I wanted to comfort him, tell him it is gonna be okay! Well that I couldn’t do….which means stress, hurt, compassion….. Yes, to get a full and deep feeling about what is going on at death row and about what my soulfriend and his comrades have to go through means emotional stress. I felt like wanting to run the stress out.

Which brings me to my beloved psychology. Because I have found myself reacting to that stress in a typical way…not new to me but typical. A way most activists will react: they get active! That’s why they are activists: they get active when something important is at stake; they can’t bare just feeling some threat or hurt…someone else’s hurt that is in fact our own too, because we are able to feel someone else’s pain when they trigger our own little baskets of pain to open a bit.

Even more so, a lot of us can feel other people’s pain even better then our own…that is since we found powerful ways to not feel stress we couldn’t face at the time it hit us. We found smart psychological ways to handle it, to be able to cope. We put it in a little basket and go on with our lives. But when that happened we developed these sensitive tentacles for other people’s pain.

So becoming an activist is a pretty selfish job…it creates a possibility to re-live and therefore process some old pains by feeling our friends’ hurt. And what we could not do for ourselves, as it happens face that pain and do something about it, we can do for someone else or for a good cause. Because of our psychological dynamics we became active problem solvers (instead of passive avoiders accepting reality). We got very motivated to solve some problems too, even in cases we rationally know we cannot always. We became social worker, psychologist or activist…… (Always remember, nothing human is to be generalized but this is often truth).

Anyway, it is my truth. Though my pains are not like my soulfriend’s pains. We are talking a different degree of seriousness. Still. I feel his hurt and I have to act. As I am writing this down I feel it may well count for all those men inside too. Those who just have to resist, to act. Doing nothing is feeling pain that is to painful, even unbearable. Doing nothing may make one feel so depressed that life (literally) begins to end. Doing nothing may turn the hurt into hate. That hate can be internalized or acted out…neither is gonna help in any way. That is, by the way, why I feel non-violent resistance is not only politically but also psychologically powerful.

So when I heard and saw all about the protest and the way my friend is treated, I could only act, get active…. Meaning…getting behind my PC at first…starting somewhere… doing what needs to be done…

I still do and it helps not getting moody about this human drama going on at Polunsky every single day again. It’s fair to say not about Polunsky only…my own prison, how much more human that is compared to the US ones, delivers a daily portion of misery also. But I can stay happy and alive because I act, because my locus of control is an internal one. It’s well-known in psychology that people who have an internal locus of control are more satisfied in life than those with an external locus of control….is your life and the events that happen in your own hands or do you find yourself in a situation where you feel handed over to all kinds of outside factors? In that case you are much more vulnerable.

And you know what: that is another thing that I so much admire in our brave friends inside: unless the total lack of freedom, they maintain a sense of internal control. They have found ways to structure their minds and acts, to have control no matter how much the system tries to control them….and this is why they keep the will, love and lust to live….I guess….don’t wanna sound knowing it all…

Because damn I don’t really know…I can’t feel what my friend does and I wish I could for one moment. Out of solidarity, to be able to reach a deeper understanding. That I want because among all my feelings there also is my fascination for the USA judicial system in which it is possible that men are murdered by the state, where men are treated less than animals and everyone feels that it’s legitimate. Where prison systems drive people to humiliate others, where guards can only survive when they submit to become humiliating authorities, where fear exists to just talk to an incarcerated person, a person! Where only black and white thinking exists, literally and figuratively.

Even more it has always fascinated me how one human being can attack another. And I understand and feel why that is… it’s the hurt again transferred into rage. But if aggression and murder are so premeditated I have a hard time getting that. I hate not understanding things so I get active again…try to gain knowledge that makes me understand. And my friend smiles at me when I am telling him I am ready to study some more sociopolitics. He could be a PhD at that. And I am happy to learn from him and not only him…I have been overwhelmed by the erudition of some comrades, their articles and poems. If only the world could see!

The world can see! Today 15027 people hit the DRIVE site! That is a lot, not the whole world but a nice beginning. I am excited. Everyone can see what DRIVE, the protest, is about. And it’s growing. Some days I am really grateful it is growing. Other days I have to admit I lose a little faith. And this I have a hard time admitting. This I don’t want my friend to know. I don’t want any comrade to think a supporter is doubting about how we can achieve what DRIVE wishes too. Because, everyone can see my precious friend is in pain. Everyone can see people, men, sons, fathers, husbands are in pain and yet, where are all those people feeling that hurt and act? Where are they? Sorry, I have to admit, those days exist. Must be in my soulfriend’s head too. But Gabriel won’t give in so who am I to ever do so?

Peace, Love and Solidarity!

In Struggle,

Mike Peloso

The author is a dutch prison psychologist and supporter of the DRIVE Movement (http://drivemovement.org) on Texas Death Row to improve prison conditions. She can be reached at: M27@orange.nl

D.R.I.V.E.

DEATH Row INNER-COMMUNALIST VANGUARD ENGAGEMENT