In the homeless shelter where I sleep, so that I can do this work with my every breath for Palestine, there are two hundred and fifty men on this 50 and older floor. It is all open except for three quarter length walls that divide us into cubes they are called. Each cube is further divided about 10 men on one side and 6 men on the other. I sleep by the dividing wall that separates the two portions of our cube. I am on a lower bunk.
There is a fair degree of turnover in the shelter. About a month ago the bunk kitty corner from mine in the adjacent part of the cube became empty. And several days later the new occupant arrived, Mr Williams. Every 10 days the occupants of each cube in rotation are assigned a detail it is called, a chore that takes 10 minutes or so to keep the shelter in order. That day after we do our detail is also when we can have our laundry washed and dried and stuffed immediately back into a laundry bag so that it is totally wrinkled.
I'm so grateful that Mr Williams, probably my age early sixties, a small man, black of course, and as gentle and nice a man as I can ever recall encountering, it was the day before his first detail day and he heard about laundry being done but he did not understand all the particulars so he gently and shyly approached me, I think I had a grocery bag in a hand from some donations I picked up at a coffee shop to donate to the guys in the shelter. He rightly judged that I was going to discard the bag and he asked if he could have it for the laundry. I said sure. We need to write our names on a piece of paper and put it inside the bag but, I forget just how he asked the question, he asked I think if I had a pen to write his name on the bag. At least that's what I understood him to ask. I searched in my backpack and found a marking pen. As I type this I am in tears again, will you write my name on the bag please, he ever so politely asked. He does not know how to write. Sure, I answered, so grateful to be able to help, so grateful he trusted to ask me, so outraged at us all for allowing such neglect of our brothers and sisters.
I did not know his name at that point so to enable me to write his name he handed me his identity card. It was his card from prison. The only identity this mid-sixties man, so gentle, so respectful, so unassuming, the only identity card he had was a card from prison.
About a week later I was in the large television room where there are wall outlets where I could charge up my batteries and Mr Williams was there. He was walking into the room and he commented to me that he had to go plug in his ankle bracelet or it would go off because it was running out of charge.
I am gone all day most days so I rarely see Mr Williams except when he is going to sleep or already asleep and I am in the process of doing the same. After I realized that this dear soul might be tied to this shelter having just been released from prison I wanted to be in a position to ask him if he needed me to go to the store to get him anything. Finally, the opportunity presented itself. No, he replied I don't need anything. Thank you. Maybe it was later than that day, or soon after, he saw me and said, I don't need you to go to the store, but I wonder if I could borrow 50 cents. I started to hand him 5 dollars and thought better of it, guessing that he might want singles for the various vending machines, so I gratefully handed him four singles. Oh, he said, I will pay you back. No, I said. It is for you. And here are those tears again. Must be the cold.
Today in my half hour ritual of putting on layer upon layer of sweat pants and other stuff I became aware Mr Williams was asking another fellow directions to a bank branch. I am thinking that maybe his time with the ankle bracelet is past. He heard me speaking to another fellow of the fact I would be on Capitol Hill. He asked me directions to his bank and I gladly called it up on my computer and a map. Anyway he cleverly put two and two together, this shy man who seems a bit lost and confused about life, and upon realizing I was headed toward his bank branch asked if he could walk with me so that he would not get lost. I'll be happy to wait while you get ready, he said, seeing that I needed more time to get my warm clothes on. Of course, I said, feeling so honored and blessed that I could offer a little bit of help.
As we walked I guessed he would not mind me asking the question, so I asked, why is a man who is so obviously very nice, why were you in prison? He replied, in my prior homeless shelter I saw a credit card, I thought it had been lost. I used it, it turns out it had been stolen, so I was in prison for 2 years. He said this with no anger, no outrage, no question, no objection.
I sit here on Capitol Hill where the elite scum of the earth walks past. If Mr Williams should be in prison for 2 years for what he did after what we have done to him, so much deprivation, then 100 percent of the Senators, and 100% of the congressman should be in prison, in solitary confinement, tortured, for the rest of their days.
Every once in a while it plays through my mind what interface and interchange I will have with the judge when I am finally in court, prior to prison, for my attempts to reform our deadly and dying culture. It seems extremely likely to me that within moments I will politely and honestly tell the judge, quite possibly before she or he asks, your honor I hold this Court in complete and utter contempt. I hold the United States injustice system in total complete utter contempt with every fiber of my being. No, it was not Mr Williams that caused this in me. What I see every day for many many years has this in me. But my experience with this lovely man just brings it to the front of my mind just now.
And now the Congress creatures begin to slither by. Soon, if I am still mobile, I may be able to stagger back to where there is some warmth. Pray for me. Be a prayer for my family in Palestine.
posted from Bloggeroid
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