Free Marc Emery

Randy Clarke from New Westminster, BC performed Johnny Cash’s song “Folsom Prison Blues” for me in the prison music room, using one of the three guitars they have there. However, it’s been adapted for this prison, and is now called “Folkston Prison Blues” – you can listen to it online!

Adam Bowen of the BCMP Lounge at the Marc Emery’s Cannabis Culture Headquarters in Vancouver performed at the Tuesday night “Jams in the Key of Green”. Randy is going to adapt other popular songs with lyrics that speak about our life here at D. Ray James, so look forward to more songs online performed by Adam with lyrics by Canadian inmate Randy Clarke of The Mojo Stars, his band when he was back in BC.

Folkston Prison Blues

Music by Johnny Cash, Lyrics by Randy Clarke

I see the Chow Hall comin’
It’s rice and beans again,
And I ain’t tasted real food
Since I don’t know when

If they let me run this prison
We’d make some changes fast,
Another microwave and TV
And volleyballs that last
We’d have chicken, pizza, burgers
No more rice and beans
It’d be the sweetest prison,
They have ever seen

VIDEO AT BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE – OR CLICK HERE

The song really doesn’t do justice to the geography where DRJ is situated. At a health and safety meeting in the library, we were warned of the dangers of the blazing sun and humidity from February to October. My left buttock spider bite is in its 12th day (as of Friday, March 4th) and still weeping pus and blood. This nasty wound will take another 15 to 25 days to fully heal, so the health and safety meeting warning about spider bites, especially from the local toxic Black Widow and Brown Recluse, was too late for me. Other insect dangers include mosquitoes that carry Dengue Fever, avian (bird) flu, and swine flu. Fire ants have huge ant colonies in the sand here. There are no-see-ums, little tiny bugs that swarm and bite, and sand fleas in the sand that covers most of the terrain here.

All of these proliferate because we are beside a massive swamp area called Okefenokee (O-Kuh-Fen-O-Kuh, from the Seminole Indian meaning ‘swampland of misery for white man’). Oh, and then there are venomous and dangerous rattlesnakes that are here too. They advised us that sand and brick reflect the sun (of course, it’s ALL sand and brick here, plus razor wire and fencing), increasing the risk of sunstroke, eye damage, heatstroke and sunburn – but they don’t sell or provide sunglasses or hats! DRJ’s advice is to drink lots of the very bad-tasting water that comes out of the taps here, or consume beverages with electrolytes (such as Gatorade).

Acting Warden Zenk, who is GEO Group’s Vice President of Regional Operations, is determined to make an impact here. Today he made a commitment to have an additional microwave and television in every pod by April 10 – that’s 5 weeks away. That has somewhat mollified the dissatisfaction among inmates, so they are optimistic but skeptical that this will come to pass as promised.

As of today, visitation is now allowed on Thursday and Friday in addition to Saturday, Sunday and Federal holidays, which will ease over-crowding. At some point they will institute limits on the number of days you can have a visit in a month (possibly no more than 8 days of 16 – 20 visitation days a month). Jodie can choose to come see me on less-crowded Thursday and Fridays, or, if she is feeling indulgent, Thursday, Friday, and part of Saturday. Still no movement on the hand-holding ban in visitation, so that remains to be rectified. [Note from Jodie Emery: As of March 26th, visitors are allowed to hold hands with inmates again thanks to new policies. This is HUGELY important and sincerely welcomed!]

Six beverage vending machines will be going outside in the yard and recreation areas. They will dispense soda and power drinks (like Gatorade) for $1.50, and bottled water for $1.00. Once a week, an inmate can buy a $15 chit that the vending machine recognizes. So for me that’s 15 bottles of cold water a week, which I will appreciate. My only concern will be adequate stocking of the machines. With 2,000+ inmates and unrelenting heat, the machines will run out daily, I suspect. These machines will be operational in the next week with cards for sale in the commissary.

I put my order in for the 4 GB MP3 player, which can hold up to 700 songs out of a catalog of five million songs. At $1.60 a song, I’m going to be limited to 5 songs added each week, or 20 a month ($32.00 monthly), that counts against our $320 monthly spending limit. I already reach $320 by the third week of every month because I buy a lot of food like spaghetti, spaghetti sauce, salmon flakes, tuna, mayonnaise, etc. and that adds up. The $106 for the MP3 player however does not count against the $320 monthly limit. I believe the beverage card is also debited from the $320 monthly limit, so it will be a lean final week at the end of every month for me. Good thing photo copy cards and postage stamps are not deducted from the $320 monthly limit or I’d be screwed. [Note from Catharine Leach, who transcribes Marc’s newsletters for sharing online: In a letter to me dated March 8, Marc writes: “I just discovered that we inmates are being ripped off by having postage stamps applied to our $320 monthly spending limits. In my case, this is devastating as I spend $100 a month on postage stamps, which so far had not been deducted from my $320 spending, but while I suspected they were incorrectly deducting it from my totals, now I have receipts that prove they are screwing me and every inmate on our spending limits.” The prison has acknowledged this error but cannot refund the money taken so far from inmates.]

I should get the MP3 player around March 25. Choosing my first 5 songs to load will be a fun challenge, when it happens. They’ll have to be songs I can play dozens of times, over and over and over! [Note from Jodie: The money for MP3 players has been debited from accounts, but no players provided yet; also, the satellite is broken because they placed it where baseballs and other sport balls hit it, so for now, downloads aren't possible even if inmates had MP3 players.]

The property department said my property from Sea-Tac FDC that went to Taft CI, my original destination, was shipped here on February 18, twelve days ago. R&D (receiving and dispatch) said they are tracking it and hope to have/find it soon. Property is due to arrive within ten days after an inmates’ arrival. As of today, it’s been over three months for me without my personal belongings.

Evening of Wednesday, March 2, in the Law Library

Dr. Davis just confiscated Z Magazine and The Economist, my magazines being read by two inmates in the evening law library session. She also confiscated tattoo magazines that an inmate was photocopying designs from. I was able to get my magazines back from the Captain on duty and the other inmate recovered the Tattoo magazine, but was told can’t photocopy it because of copyright reasons.

When a number of inmates complained that not a single English Language magazine has been ordered for the law library in 5 months, and they said they wanted National Geographic, Dr. Davis reiterated her assertion, in front of 20+ inmates, “We’re never going to subscribe to National Geographic, it’s way too sexually explicit!” That nearly set off a riot, as inmates were all thunderstruck by that classic Dr. Davis remark! They got all rowdy and irate, and followed her out into the hallway to voice their outrage at being treated like children. I’m interested to see how Acting Warden Zenk deals with the anti-intellectual Dr. Davis, because she suffocates the law library and the reading library. Not one new book or magazine in English has been put in the law or reading library. She has forbidden me from donating “unauthorized” magazines like National Geographic and The Economist to the reading library. There wouldn’t be a single law book or legal periodical in the law library if it weren’t for me. There wouldn’t even be a Spanish-English dictionary in the law library if it weren’t for me. I broached this to Dr. Davis in front of the other inmates “because you won’t order any magazines for the inmates in the 5 months DRJ has been operating.”

What complicates matters is that Dr. Davis actually owns the land the prison is built on. Why Dr. Davis has this pull is inexplicable to an outsider, but according to locals who work here, her family is the political power in the community going way back. Yet the Folkston community is largely in economic ruin, so they haven’t been particularly good stewards of the community for all the “influence” the Davis clan must have. Everyone wonders what the deal is in regards to Dr. Davis working here on land she leases, presumably for 50 or 99 years, to the state, the Federal Government, or GEO Group.

Thursday afternoon, March 3, Law Library

In the library today I found myself in the unusual position of explaining to a particularly despondent cynical inmate, who is very upset about being designated here, the few advantages of being sent to D. Ray James. He is still in the “I can’t believe they sent me to this awful place” phase. I like this fellow, he’s clever and wryly funny in his assessments of this forlorn gulag, but he doesn’t have intellectual activities to keep himself busy and contented. He is bitter and brooding. I summarized 3 distinctly good things about this place:

1) We’re safe here. All inmates here are ‘deportable aliens’, so very few have ever been in a US jail before; if they have, they are certainly here for illegal re-entry, which can net 4-5 year sentences for a third or fourth illegal entry. Most have jobs and family in the USA and are highly motivated to return to the US despite the extraordinary potential prison penalties. These inmates have neither a criminal mind, nor an institutionalized mindset (a “convict mentality”, as it were). There are no prison politics here in any way like there is in a US Federal prison for Americans. In a BOP (Bureau of Prisons – i.e., not private prisons) facility for Americans, you have white supremacists, chicano gangs, black gangs, all the various urban gangs, Hell’s Angels, crackheads, tweakers, and lots of yard politics. You are far more likely to be knifed, raped, or sexually assaulted in a BOP Federal prison than in these Immigration designated federal prisons. A US state or federal prison has numerous race, ethnic, and other cliques and castes. It’s very much a segregated and tenser scene. Here there is no tension between inmates, no gang issues, no race problems; in fact, there is a great deal of unity in our non-Americanism. We are all grateful to not be among American inmates even as we complain about receiving inferior amenities than American inmates. Inmates here cooperate seamlessly regardless of language, race or social status. There is no violence or sexual intimidation of any kind in the 4 months I’ve been here. Compare that with ANY state prison or most US Federal prisons that house Americans.

2) The second distinct positive is that NONE of the Correction Officers (C.O.’s) are jaded or hostile to the inmates, as is the case in the BOP facilities for Americans or in state prisons. The C.O.’s at D. Ray James are just mostly local people trying to do a job under virtually identical conditions as inmates for 8-hour day four or five days a week. I have not seen any examples of abuse of inmates with prejudice, meaning any injustice or unfairness has been a result of institutional incompetence or dysfunctional procedures and policy, not a vindictiveness or mean-spiritedness by a C.O.

3) The third plus is that inmates here get far fewer ‘shots’ or disciplinary write-ups than are given out in BOP or state prisons housing Americans. American prisoners are far more into the prison drug scene, the moonshine scene, the prison politics of race and dominance. Those vices or attitudes are virtually non-existent here. Considering there are 2,000+ inmates, many housed 64 to 80 in a dorm, that is truly remarkable. I have never seen or even heard of any illegal drug here, not one cell phone, not one act of assault. Those vices and acts are rampant in prisons housing Americans.

At Sea-Tac FDC, eight inmates in one day were found in possession of and high on marijuana AND methamphetamines. All were sent to solitary. I knew of several inmates that failed u/a’s (urine analysis for illegal drugs), and all were American. One group of inmates produced a fruit based batch of cider each week. When it was discovered we were locked down for two days. Three inmates in my unit were extorting one for thousands of dollars in commissary or else this victim of extortion would get beat up. The victim’s PSR (Pre-Sentence Report) had indicated he was a ‘confidential informant’ for police after his arrest in order to get a lower sentence. Inmates who are found to ‘cooperate’ are usually beat-up or extorted, but this was a uniquely American thing.

The repellent white supremacist I wrote about briefly in my SeaTac FDC blogs would punch, assault and intimidate this slender, small 20 year old boy from Alaska in what I thought was a kind of sexual intimidation, but it was ostensibly because the delicate young man was playing dominoes with my black friend Robert. The 20 year old was told to fraternize less with blacks and more around whites like the white supremacist, who terrorized him unrelentingly. I witnessed first hand the young man get sucker punched in the side of the head by this thug, knocking the young man right out. On another occasion the 20-year-old walked by the white supremacist and just got punched in the thigh viciously spontaneously as part of daily intimidation and terror. These events I couldn’t write about while I was at Sea-Tac FDC, because those inmates could receive my blog comments in their Corrlinks email and, without question, would have punished me with violence if I reported (“ratted”) them out.

When I was at Oklahoma City FDC for one week prior to coming here, the most frightening week of my prison sentence was listening to these skinhead, heavily tattooed 10+ years-in convicts explain all the violence, politics, fear, suspicion, and cliques I would have to familiarize myself with, even at a ‘low’ security federal prison. Because they were all American, they had no experience in an all-foreigner prison like D Ray James, and described no doubt a fairly accurate portrait of the tension that exists in a US federal prison for Americans. They thought that they were doing me a favor, but they just succeeded in scaring me more than I have been, before or since.

While most, if not all, of us are grateful not to be among that kind of American prisoners, most of the inmates here have lived in America for 5, 10, 20 years or even all their lives since age 3 or 4 when their parents brought them to America. Many have ‘green cards’ or ‘permanent resident’ status and some have never been to the country of their birth since they were a child, and have no ties at all there, but will be deported to their birth country anyway.

I told my disillusioned fellow-inmate that while I, especially, understood his frustration, there are indeed circumstances to be grateful for, even if it is only in the absence of violence, intimidation, and mean guards. For me, however, I have to say I am grateful for my American friends, virtually all strangers to me – many of them mothers, in fact – who send me books, put money in my commissary, and write me genuinely caring and uplifting letters. My great wife Jodie has received enormous help from Americans in coping with our forced separation.

So I am blessed to have two paradoxical spheres of security and safety while incarcerated; I am in prison with non-Americans, and I am indebted and grateful to my loving American supporters. I especially salute my great helper Catharine Leach of Rhode Island. She has done incredible work on my behalf, including rallies in Washington, D.C. and Providence, Rhode Island. She sends me research, each Canuck hockey game summary, even gets me in her local newspaper. She writes me incredible letters every two or three days, all the while looking after two children and her husband, and a demanding full-time job. Many other mothers, not all but mostly American, have made it one of their duties to help Jodie return to me to Canada and be of whatever help they can to me. I will never forget the nation that incarcerated me is still the greatest source of inspiration for me. So it goes, the paradox of my relationship with the United States is one of my lifelong themes.

On March 14, I will have served one year – 365 days – on this 1,825-day (5 year) sentence. With a good time credit of 235 days, that is 600 days of 1,825. So I have 1,225 days in my sentence to go if I get marooned in the US gulags; July 7, 2014 is my release date if my transfer application to Canada is refused. As of March 16, my application for transfer will have been at the US Department of Justice for two months. Between April 16 and May 20, I expect to receive my response. If approved, the process moves to the Canadian government, where the norm to decide applications is 4-6 months.

That means by September through November 2011, the Canadian government could approve my application, and within 3 months after that, I would be back in a Canadian Federal prison. Under current law I qualify for full parole after November 16, 2011. I have included ‘Attachment A’ to show the criteria involved in treaty transfers. I qualify in the affirmative on all 26 criteria, so under the rules as outlined, there is no grounds to deny my transfer at the American end, nor under the criteria set out by the Canadian government.

My property arrived! Most prized are my wonderful photos of Jodie! Oh it was sweet to see them again. How gorgeous and lovely my incredible wife is! – sigh – Other items use are my Sony radio and my Koss headphones. The radio is powerful and can pull in more stations more clearly than the one that was issued here, so that is an improvement. I have my book light and even a replacement bulb. My autobiographical book chapters, notes, and political writings arrived also. Next week I’ll finish an editorial about Stephen Harper and his war against “change”, “the 60’s culture” and the contemporary representatives of this “culture” – the cannabis culture.

Help get Marc home with an easy phone call or message:
www.freemarc.ca

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With 420 just around the corner, the Toronto Freedom Festival is in jeopardy and the Seattle Hempfest survives! Marc is assigned new work in the prison and Jodie talks about a looming federal election here in Canada. To find out how you can help defeat Harper and the Conservatives go to:
http://www.cannabisculture.com/
http://whyprohibition.ca/
http://catch22campaign.ca/

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February 19 to 28 – In this issue: Warden Booker leaves the prison; GEO Group Vice President of Regional, Mr. Zenk, takes over as Acting Warden (he spoke with Jodie Emery by phone on February 10); a disruption in Q Building on February 22 (9 inmates go to SHU, solitary confinement); and a confrontational visitation on the long weekend of February 19-21.

On Tuesday this week Hispanic inmates initiated a boycott of the larger Chow Hall at lunch while GEO Group Vice-President of Regional Management, Mr. Zenk, was here. The timing was deliberate. Inmates are frustrated and increasingly intolerant of the seemingly willful management indifference to regular and routine “low” security protocols that occur at B.O.P. and even other GEO Group and CCA facilities. Rules here are invented daily that follow little rational thought or Bureau of Prisons procedure/policy.

Later that day, it was announced Warden Booker was moving on, leaving DRJCF in any case, and V.P. Zenk would be Acting Warden for a period of weeks. I have already had a conversation with him and he’s a good listener when I recited a brief catalog of grievances. But action is what the inmates are measuring, and there is little to point to here in the way of actual results. DRJCF has been open 5 months now and very little progress is evident; indeed, in many areas (visitation, food, quality of the yard), it has gone backward.

Some critical areas of inmate dissatisfaction:

– Food is nutritionally inadequate and monotonous. Surveys will circulate by the staff next week to sound out inmates’ desires on the food in Chow Hall. But action is what is in short supply.

– Numerous essential and other items so far have been denied to us at the commissary, including hats, sunglasses, calculators, fresh vegetables, alarm clocks, bathrobes, sleeveless undershirts, digital language translators, thermos, sweatbands, sewing kits, tennis balls, knee wraps, and other items we are allowed to posses, but cannot get (unless they arrive from our previous prison property).

– Two televisions are inadequate for 60 – 80 inmates and there are numerous altercations over them already. An additional TV is promised for each Pod in April. The wait is so additional electrical outlets can be installed.

– The tap water here tastes very bad, yet no bottled water, juice or soda is made available to buy. Vending machines have been promised but have yet to arrive. [Note from Jodie Emery: Since this was written, vending machines have been installed.] Inmates cannot posses or use cash so the purchase procedure will invariably take weeks or months for DRJ to put into play, which brings us to…

– MP3 players have been promised for over 3 months but have yet to be put on sale in the commissary. The better MP2 player, a prison issue one called “Secure Media Systems”, will cost $100.00. Downloading songs will cost $1.60 per song.

– Remarkably, over 500 handballs have been rendered unusable by the looping razor wire that is on every fence throughout the compound in the five months DRJ has been in “business”. The volleyballs being used are lopsided because of lacerations from hitting the razor wire. Basketballs and soccer balls are very worn, yet DRJ doesn’t spend money to replace them. This razor wire was recently reinstalled at this facility even though “low” security federal prisons are only supposed to have razor wire atop of a perimeter fence. The previous state prison that originally had this excessive razor wire installed was a medium-security prison housing some generally bad dudes.

– The visitation room seats only 26 inmates and their guests out of a prison population of nearly 2,000 now, causing visits to be terminated early to make room for arriving visitors, and hand-holding between inmates and their spouses/mothers/family has been inexplicably banned.

Later on that Tuesday the Associate Wardens were dispatched to all the pods to make promises on these and other areas, but inmates simply put no credibility on the word of management. The so-called ‘town hall’ that afternoon reeked of desperation and disingenuousness.

It has been hot here for weeks now, and it’s only February. When the wind blows, a sandstorm blows across the compound. All the grass that was here when we arrived is long ago dead and what little remains is rooted to sand. The entire place lacks topsoil for grass to root, so for 6-8 months there will be sand blowing about, getting in our eyes and mouths. Mosquitoes and sand fleas will be here soon. We are surrounded by the United States’ most famous swamp, Okefenokee (pronounced O-kuh-fen-O-kuh).

Last Sunday I was bitten on my left buttock by something that put two holes in my skin and I’ve had a painful swelling and infection since, making sitting and sleeping painful and difficult. I’ve been applying ice-packs to it at night and taking ibuprofen but it hasn’t subsided yet. The C.O. did give me an emergency permission to visit medical Wednesday night even during lockdown, and the nurse and doctor at medical moved quickly to examine it, gave me the ice-pack and antibiotics, which has had a very good effect of reducing the pain, swelling and infection by Friday afternoon, which is good because Jodie visited this Saturday and Sunday and I had to sit on it for 5-6 hours each day! Thanks to the nurses and doctor in medical! It started weeping Saturday, and now is drained (what a mess!) by Monday. I still continue to take the antibiotics and put fresh bandages on the area. After one week I can now sit comfortably. [Note from Jodie: Marc was bitten by a brown recluse spider, one of only two toxic spiders in North America. More details in Jodie’s videos at www.YouTube.com/PotTVNetwork and in Marc’s upcoming blogs.]

Across from the law library, the ceiling caved in, a huge mess, as water from broken pipes above the ceiling was leaking for weeks with no correction from maintenance until the light fixtures and ceiling came crashing down. Inevitably, the air conditioning in various units will break down. The inmates feel aggravated plenty now; 6 or 7 months of unrelenting hot and muggy weather will fray tempers further. It took DRJ 3 weeks to fix the heat for Pod 2 in Q building back in December. There was no heat but nothing was done until temperatures dropped below freezing and it became a liability issue for DRJ.

The inmates’ photographs ($1 each per print) started being done against a wall in the yard. After lining up for several hours on Sunday and finally having their pictures taken, Coach Williamson, in charge of the photo program, somehow deleted all 150 photographs taken that day, necessitating all the inmates to line up once again in the hot sun to have their photos redone. When they received them the following week, at least half of the prints had the inmate’s head cut off at the forehead. They had the option of lining up yet a third time in the hot sun for yet another photograph! At DRJ, even the simplest of things gets bollixed, and when these aggravations happen daily, it drives the inmates nuts, and they are always talking about the latest aggravating DRJ fuck-up.

Along with photographs I have taken every visit with Jodie, last weekend I had 5 photos taken of me in the yard. One of me and my friend Peter (Mennonite, with 9 children), one of me and another friend Bradley (a great fellow from my area at home), one of me in my khakis, one of me holding the clutch of envelopes I routinely carry to and from the library, and one of me wearing a khaki ball cap, sunglasses, and a pen clenched in my teeth, channeling the Hunter S. Thompson or General Douglas MacArthur, my alternate persona on the yard here.

I heard that visitation last weekend was tense. Eight women who came to visitation wore open-toed or open-backed shoes. They were ordered to buy closed-toed shoes at the only nearby store in tiny Folkston, a dollar store, before they could be admitted to visitation, as the visitation area was now considered a “construction” site due to painting – which, of course, makes no sense at all. Hand-holding is still forbidden, yet permitted at all other GEO Group and B.O.P. “low” security facilities. Guards have been standing right beside inmates and their guests instead of standing in the guard area at the front of the room. Several inmates and guests got into shouting matches with guards standing closely adjacent to visitation tables.

Vending machines, the source of lunch for visitors and inmates, are frequently empty or dysfunctional. The staff, apparently, purchase bottled water during the week from these vending machines so that by visitation days on Saturday and Sunday, there is no bottled water left in the vending machines for inmates and their guests! This has been true for numerous food items too. The following weekend, February 26 and 27, Jodie and I had a wonderful visit, but not being allowed to touch each other’s hands – or anything at all – for the 7-hour visit is very irritating and upsetting.

I did the paperwork this week (before I was locked down Wednesday and Thursday morning) for the inmate who has been trying to get GEO Group to replace his dentures that they lost last June, and have refused to replace with the excuse that since last June, the inmate has had less than a year remaining in his sentence (he is scheduled for release mid-June 2011), so they don’t want to spend the money. This despite that GEO Group or Federal Marshalls lost the dentures in transit and this fellow’s guns are swollen and bleed with most meals!

On Tuesday night, February 22, there was a noisy display of disruptive behavior in Q-2 Pod (my pod) when I was in the law library. At 7:00 pm I saw an inmate having some kind of seizure in Q-2. Two inmates went to the pod door leading into the sallyport where typically there is a C.O. There wasn’t one at this time – and, in fact, it would be 10-15 minutes (disputed) before a C.O. appeared to respond to the inmates pounding on the door. The emergency buzzers in each pod have been disabled, as my friend Bradley found out when he complained two weeks earlier (see Attachment A) “because a C.O. is always on duty” in the sallyport! The C.O.’s first remark, I heard it, was “If y’all didn’t cry wolf so often I would have responded sooner.”

The fellow was taken away, and then brought back 30 minutes later, where he had another seizure. This time the C.O.’s responded promptly, but took him out to the sallyport and laid him on the floor and held his head, which probably the correct response for a seizure or seizure-like situation. Quickly after this, however, inmates in Pods 1, 2 and 3 all got rowdy and threw objects at the guard observation window that towers above the door to the sallyport, made noise, and were rebellious. No one was harmed or attacked; it is really an expression of disgust with how every aspect of this place is aggravating and frustrating to the inmates. GEO Group receives $1,008,000.00 a WEEK to operate this facility, but it is very slow to spend any of it on amenities that are common at all other GEO Group Federal Prisons and B.O.P. Federal Prisons.

After the inmate required medical attention the first time, I was in the law library, where I was held until 10:30 pm and then returned to the Q building, which was locked down all through Wednesday until Thursday morning, when we were allowed to go outside and to work. Nine inmates from Q building were put in solitary and may get a disciplinary transfer to a medium-security prison, which nonetheless, might be a step-up in terms of living conditions compared to D. Ray James Correctional Institution.

If I were there in Q-2, I would have tried to discourage what I regard as futile and foolish over-reaction. It made a mess of our pod, got 7 people from Pod 2 in solitary, and had us locked down for 36 hours. I tend to believe venting and writing complaints to management and officials is painstaking, but ultimately more effective than disruptive behavior, which virtually forces the institution to take retaliatory action. But I am fairly alone in seeing that point of persuasion and communication, and DRJ makes it very challenging for most inmates to find satisfaction using the exasperating grievance process to motivate institutional change and improvement.

It’s probably just as well I wasn’t there because I might have been regarded as a traitor for speaking out against it, plus I am only one of few English speakers and without speaking Spanish I probably would not have prevailed.

On Wednesday, I received about 25 books in the mail, half in Spanish, about 7 magazines, and 3 catalogs, so they were distributed around to the inmates who needed some calming activities during lockdown. The timing was good for those books! Many of these books arrive with receipts from ABEBOOKS, Thriftbooks, or Amazon.com among others, but no clue as to who paid for them or sponsored them. Peter Maverick of Massachusetts has been a HUGE contributor of books, over 50 so far about spiritual matters, in Spanish and English, history, fiction, biographies.

Brand new books I received include #7 & #8 in the #1 Ladies’ Detective Series, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, and The Fountainhead, four new books by Herman Hesse (Demian, Narcissus & Goldmund, Steppenwolf & Siddhartha), Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, a Biography of Henry Ford, Mark Twain’s Autobiography Vol. 1, and American War Machine, which I wrote of in “Injustice & Cruelty As A Laughing Matter”, my editorial on Canadian and American politicians who laugh off the marijuana question. (Read that editorial in my previous blogs at www.cannabisculture.com, with a wonderful over-the-top painting of me nailed to a cannabis crucifix in ‘The Garden of Weeden’, juxtaposed as a sacrificial Jesus straddling the US and Canadian borders. Lady Liberty licking the blood flowing from the nails in my feet is quite the touch. I look forward to comments about the painting and the editorial it is paired with. The painting was done by Chris Wright of London, Ontario, Canada, someone I’ve known since he was a youth, whose work I truly admire and love.)

While I personally have enough reading material for a month, I still won’t discourage my supporters and friends from sending books and magazines in Spanish because the need is huge, especially in the infirmary where sick inmates can’t get out of bed. Books in English are greatly prized by the few other Canadians here. All the many magazines I receive get circulated to dozens of inmates each until I lose track of them. I even received, from Cindy Sleeman of North Vancouver, copies of Hispanic newspapers from the Vancouver ‘Latin American’ community of my hometown. Cindy has sent me a slew of great books, magazines, Spanish, English, including four from Alexander McCall Smith.

Thank to Mary Dague and Jimi Lawrence of Farifax, Virginia for books they sent. Mary sent Cutting Stone and The Longest War and the biography of Henry Ford. Jimi sent me some #1 Ladies Detective books and a 100 years of the GPO (Government Printing Office). Jimi has worked at the GPO for almost 30 years now, and is proud of his work there.

I very much appreciate the flood of books and magazines. I supply them to the infirmary, particularly Spanish magazine and books, as well as the inmates throughout D. Ray James. Today I had a ‘Santa Claus’ bag of new books that I simply will not be able to read (I have 20 lined up in my ‘Must Read’ box) so I supply the 12 other Canadians here and other English speakers I know who need books. Randy got my History of Black Sabbath because he’s a professional musician (and a delightful person), Grant from Montreal chose The Trial by Franz Kafka, and Short Stories by D.H. Lawrence.

I received some excellent books on Mexican folklore, histories of each Mexican State, in Spanish. The Mexican inmates relate to their state (Sinoloa, Chihuahua, etc.) and even have gatherings with food in the yard. It is a bonding thing, but also a bit of a mutual protection if the need arises. My friend, Peter, who is Canadian but was raised in Chihuahua state in Mexico until he was 13, is considered one of them, so Peter has 85 amigos here who hail from that state. Peter says this protects me too, as Peter and I are known to be best friends; we always eat and hang out together, as Peter is in pod 2 with me. I don’t need any protection as I have no enemies among staff or inmates, but it may one day be handy to have.

Thanks to Chris Goodwin and Erin Gorman for sending many wonderful Facebook pages of comments and political debate (which I really enjoy, so encourage people to send), and their frequent personal letters. Chris and Erin are setting up a downtown Toronto retail store and activist center for freedom called Freedom Culture Headquarters, or The Freedom Store. It will be a retail store selling libertarian, anarchist, anti-government, pro-freedom t-shirts, stickers, books, buttons, DVDs, magazines, posters, and all manner of product that speaks to liberty. Another part of the building will be used for Freedom Music nights, Freedom Debates, readings, lectures, even Freedom Comedy. Another part of the complex will be used as the Freedom Party of Ontario recruiting and campaign office.

Freedom Party is a pro-freedom registered political party in the province of Ontario, Canada that was founded by Robert Metz and I in 1982. It is now headed by a brilliant man, Paul McKeever, who did the remarkable video documentary of me called “Principle of Pot”. I have actually never met Paul McKeever in person, but we have a wonderful correspondence while I’m in jail. Paul is brilliant and I recommend his writings and blog as genius. Paul is a national treasure on the threshold of discovery by the people of Ontario and Canada. My great friend and a man I have admired for 32 years as a staggeringly lucid thinker and advocate for individual freedom is Freedom Party’s President, Robert Metz.

Watch "The Principle of Pot" for Marc's life mission and accomplishments explained! CLICK HERE!

Chris Goodwin currently heads up Ontario’s famous Vapour Central, a marijuana consumption lounge in downtown Toronto, 667 Yonge St. Chris was inspired by me in 2003 to open ‘Up In Smoke’ in Hamilton, Ontario, where baked goods were sold and marijuana consumed on the premises until the final visit after over 300 police visits put it out of business, and Chris was sentenced to jail for 4 months. Then Chris headed up Vapour Central in 2006, and has made it an incredible success. Chris and fiancé Erin will jointly be running both Vapour Central and Freedom Culture Headquarters.

The name is meant to be a tribute to me as co-founder of FREEDOM Party and Cannabis CULTURE HEADQUARTERS. I love this project and name. It is a retail project I have dreamed of doing myself and think Chris and Erin are perfect for doing this even better than I could. I can’t wait to see the “Jefferson is my homeboy” t-shirt and others by Bureaucrash at the Freedom Culture HQ. They will stock Free Marc t-shirts and all manner of FREE MARC material too. Chris and Erin expect to be open by mid-April; the location is the old Toronto Art Glass location at 2B Dundonald St, Toronto, Ontario, right off Yonge Street, and the website is www.FreedomCulture.ca (it will be online in the coming weeks). Naturally, repeal of prohibition and legalization of consensual activities will be a priority of this unique retail activism store, and I wish them all the best.

Send a quick letter to help get Marc home:

www.FreeMarc.ca – click “How You Can Help”

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March 10th, 2011: Jodies shows us pictures of Marc and his fellow inmates at D Ray James Correctional Facility, and shares their stories, one that illustrates the horrors of the drug war. More artwork to share from the artist inmates. Jodie also talks about an upcoming election and how you can help to stop the Conservatives.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2YpzcakgDU

March 18th, 2011: Jodie testifies at the Washington State Legislature's Ways and Means Committee about legalizing cannabis. She meets John McKay, the man who prosecuted Marc and has now changed his mind. Hempology 101 at the University of Vancouver Island has been canceled. Pictures and news of Marc and more amazing art the inmates have made. Please continue to write to the Dept. of Justice and The Bureau of Prisons. Get all the info at http://freemarc.ca/

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m88SV11j2Gc

Part 2:

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Sunday, February 12: The cruelties just pile up here at D. Ray James. Jodie just visited me and there’s a new rule: NO Holding Hands! Wow! After being able to hold hands during the entire visits at Sea-Tac FDC in Seattle, and during Jodie’s first five visits to DRJ, we could hold hands the entire visit. This new rule is very distressing and disappointing.

But even worse, at 11:45am, with Jodie’s visit just under 3 hours of the 6 available hours, our visit and several others were terminated because the visitation room was over-crowded. There are 1,600 inmates here, with 1,000 more inmates to come, yet there are only tables for 27 inmates and their visitors! Other Federal prisons have visitation on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and Federal holidays, but here it is only Saturday and Sunday and Federal Holidays. [Note from Jodie Emery: As of March 3, visits are now allowed on Thursdays and Fridays. More news to come in future blogs.]

Most visitors of inmates here come several hundred to several thousand miles in order to see their loves one. Jodie has to come over 3,000 miles to get here. Now she can’t even hold my hands! This is also crushing for all the inmates who now have to sit up to 6 hours without any contact in these “contact visits”. The children will think there is something wrong or distant with their parents if they are unable to hold hands. This new rule of deprivation has no explanation because DRJ is one of the few prisons free of cell phones or illegal drugs, yet for the first 4 months, inmates have been holding their loved one’s hands on visitation day. [Note from Jodie: The explanation given later was that a couple was seen getting too close, so the warden instated the new rule to prevent any couples from touching at all. Inmates and family members are still requesting the rule be rescinded.]

Minimums and low security facilities for Americans have outdoor visitation areas, and even the warden’s instructions for visitation in the DRJ Policy & Procedure book indicate there is an outdoor visitation area expected here. Those inmates with just one visitor could double up with another at a shared table to alleviate overcrowding, certainly better than terminating their visit, you’d think.

Jodie also had to wait in the waiting area for 3 hours because her ride back to Jacksonville wasn’t returning to DRJ until 3:30pm, when visits end. Her cell phone, purse, and money couldn’t be brought into the building because DRJ doesn’t have any functioning lockers for visitors to put their property in. They are expected to leave it in the car they came in. This makes it impossible to come by taxi or be dropped off: where are you going to put your purse or cell phone? [Note from Jodie: The next visiting weekend, lockers were installed for visitors.]

Jodie left here very sad and distraught, crying for the 15 minutes prior to being taken away. I know right now, as I write this, she is fuming in the waiting area, no book or anything to read, and nothing to keep her occupied while killing three hours. It was a very sad Saturday on my birthday/Valentine’s Day weekend. No holding hands, just and omnipresent dread and repression during what is supposed to be the highlight of life here at D. Ray James.

Tomorrow is Sunday. Jodie will be visiting again, fortunately. I just hope she doesn’t say anything inflammatory and provocative to the staff for three hours. I’m unsure how to go about trying to rescind this new, inexplicable policy of no contact during a ‘contact’ visit, but I’ve thought of having affected families and spouses of inmates call the regional office of GEO Group, or even the warden here. I’ve put in a cop-out (complain form) to the warden regarding the no-contact policy, as well as one for the way too tiny visitation currently at one time; a federal prison of this size should have space to accommodate 3% to 10% of the total inmate population. That would mean 48 to 160 spaces for inmates and their guests/families.

I was reinstated officially to work in the law library. Dr. Davis’ first remarks to me were, “Did you have a subscription of National Geographic sent here under my name? Because one has started arriving and I just put it right in the garbage. Also, Mr. Emery, you can only work in the law library Monday to Friday, during the morning and afternoon. You cannot work in the law library in the evenings or weekends. And you can NOT do any legal work for inmates in your unit.”

I said I would come to the library in the evenings and work on my own projects. I said nothing about the remark about not helping inmates while in my unit, and you already know what I think of throwing out a magazine of impeccable quality like National Geographic.

Thursday, February 17th, 9:30pm:

Today I was eating the canned green beans at lunch when my left rear molar made a jarring ‘crunch’. I had chomped down on a rock, or stone – bigger than a pebble, anyway. The vibration of noise inside my mouth was a thunderclap and I thought I’d broken a tooth. I was eating carefully because inmates in the ‘chow hall’ had warned me that there was grit in the green beans, and 7 or 8 stones had been discovered, the hard way, while eating the green beans. The stone was the size of one of my molars. It’s not the first time either stones have been in the canned vegetables, although it’s a first for me. Yet another reason to be wary of the food here!

Friday, February 18th:

Despite my complaining, I am always looking for good news to report. I would love to have the problems at D. Ray James rectified. In fact, so would many of the C.O.’s that work here. They say it is more difficult a job when inmates are surly. It is 80+ degrees Fahrenheit (27+ degrees Celsius) in the hot blazing sun today, and air conditioning in “L” building broke down last night. It is going to be 9 months more of consistently hot and humid sun-burning days, and the staff and inmates are affected equally. So an aggravated inmate population does no one any good.

One of those frustrations for the law library staff was the difficulty in having an inmate named Thanongsack Phuangkeo get married to his fiancé Christine at the prison. He started his first request November 23rd, 2010 and after many delays, refusals, and confusions over responsibility for the procedure, Warden Booker put his approval in writing to Nang (as he is called) today! (See attachment A.) So once the Justice of the Peace is arranged, the first wedding at D. Ray James should happen in March sometime in the visitation room, so possibly Jodie and I will be witnesses.

By the way, if anyone is wondering, this marriage cannot save Nang from his ‘deportable alien’ status, but Laos does not have a repatriation agreement with the US, so it’s not immediately clear to me what happens to Nang after his sentence is up. Cuban, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, and some other nationals do not get deported to those countries because of a lack of diplomatic protocols relating to deportation and repatriation.

Perhaps the best news I’ve received so far in jail was a YouGov poll in the February 12th edition of The Economist showing a MAJORITY of Americans in every age group and both Democratic and Republican voters want LEGALIZATION, taxation, and regulation of marijuana. So it is now a matter of WHEN, not IF – sooner rather than later. We have reached the point of obvious inevitability. So 2012 must be the year every US state with an initiative and referendum process gets a legalization/repeal of cannabis prohibition question on their state’s ballot.

Here’s what I said in my interview in High Times, due on newsstands in the coming months, to the question: “What is the most important thing for the cannabis community to concentrate on at this point?”

My answer is: “Legalization initiatives must be implemented in every US state where it can be done for the November 2012 vote. Not just California and Colorado and Washington, but Alaska, South Dakota, Oregon, Washington D.C., and ALL of the other states with an initiative and referendum process (check your US State here: http://www.iandrinstitute.org/statewide_i%26r.htm ). Eight or ten or 12 states with cannabis legalization on the ballot will create the synergy required to begin the last phase of our liberation: the repeal of cannabis prohibition in the House of Representatives, in the Senate and with the President.

“To begin your state initiative process to repeal your state laws on prohibiting personal possession and cultivation, you can join an existing campaign to gather signatures to put the legalization of cannabis on your state ballot, or organize the campaign yourself with others you recruit on Facebook, Twitter, and at rallies and community meetings. Don’t wait for the big donors or MPP or NORML to organize these initiatives. Individuals, right now, in mid-2011, should investigate the initiative process in their state, start a Facebook group, recruit and begin collecting email addresses of signature gathering volunteers. Take the language used by the Washington State activists at Sensible Washington that was used in their failed 2010 try, or their 2011 attempt, and then adapt it to your state.

“Contact me for advice! Just because I’m in prison is no reason not to pick my brain and experience. I have over 50,000 friends on our Facebook pages, the vast majority being Americans. I will direct those from your state to join you. I am available all day, every day, even behind bars to help, guide, inspire, mentor, assist, and advise on your initiative campaign. YOU CAN MAKE MARIJUANA HISTORY STARTING TODAY! You can make marijuana legal in your state by November 2012. Where your state has no initiative process, you CAN donate to, and go to, a state that does have it, and gather signatures with them. Every American must do their duty and their part in this historical final push. We have the numbers, we have the righteous cause, and we are – I speak of my fellow Americans – able to do this. You CAN make history! Never underestimate your power as an individual to change the world! I never did, and I did change the world in many ways that carry on today!

“The other important goal for Americans is to help Congressman Ron Paul get the Republican nomination for President 2012. Ron Paul is the cannabis culture’s greatest friend and ally in Congress and he has consistently spoken out against the drug war and cannabis prohibition. He has voted against the budget for the Drug Czar’s office, the budget for the DEA, every single time. Ron Paul has co-sponsored bills to legalize possession of marijuana, industrial hemp, truth in trials (so med users can testify about it in Federal Court), and many other repeal or reform bills regarding prisons, drug prohibition, policing and the unconstitutionality of federal drug control. He is a brilliant and wise man who, to me, is America’s greatest hero. Former New Mexico Governor, Gary Johnson, is a great man who is also seeking the Republican nomination. My ideal ticket for the 2012 election is Ron Paul for President with Gary Johnson as his Vice-President nominee.”

I submitted 16 typewritten pages of answers to 16 questions High Times editor Malcolm put to me. The most HT can print in their magazine is 4 or 5 pages, so I am hoping they put the entire interview online at HighTimes.com, which will be seen by many in addition to High Times’ substantial print circulation. I’d like to be on the cover of High Times; knowing that a great bud is always required on a cover that sells the magazine, a photo of Jodie and I in a massive cannabis hemp field, taken in the Prince Albert area of Saskatchewan in 2009 on the Farewell Tour, would be ideal, I think. Tell High Times you think so too.

Jodie was able to have a phone conversation with the regional director of GEO Group, a supervisor of this D. Ray James facility, in fact, on Friday, February 18th. This is hopeful in itself, that GEO Group is willing to listen. Jodie had left a message at the GEO regional headquarters, and got a call back the next day. She spoke to him about the recent decision to ban hand-holding during visitation and the overcrowding issue at the visitation area, and the GEO Group Regional Representative listened and took notes, so that is encouraging. He is apparently coming to D. Ray James in the next week ahead, Tuesday, February 22nd – Friday, February 25th. He will be discussing the matter of visitation protocols with the warden.

Jodie encouraged viewers on her popular “The Jodie Emery Show” on www.YouTube.com/PotTVNetwork and www.YouTube.com/JodieEmery to call the D. Ray James Correctional Facility at 912-496-6242 to POLITELY voice your concerns about the new policy of no hand-holding during inmate visits. I too have encouraged inmates here to have their family call GEO Group or the warden at DRJCF to express, POLITELY, the rehabilitative effect of contact visits WITH CONTACT that are obviously acceptable at all other GEO Group Federal facilities. You can see that particular segment of the “The Jodie Emery Show: February 17”, as well as the follow-up show where she discusses her conversation with the GEO Group Regional representative. Jodie always knows the right approach to take. She is so wonderful a spokesperson. I learn a great deal from her patient style of communication. We make a great team together, and I can’t wait to be home!

Marc Scott Emery #40252-086 – Unit Q Pod 2
D. Ray James Correctional Facility
PO Box 2000
Folkston, GA
31537
USA

HELP GET MARC HOME! Write a letter to the US and Canadian government telling them to approve his transfer application, which they both have – addresses and an example letter are posted under "How You Can Help" at www.FreeMarc.ca

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February 8-14: On January 6, Warden Booker told me I was to be reinstated to my job in the law/reading library. After three weeks of waiting and going to the library daily in any case, I saw on the call-out sheets (daily assignment sheet) in late January that I was assigned to pick up garbage on the compound in the afternoon and evening. Considering any inmate can do this job but only 4 or 5 English speakers in the entire population can do the paralegal/secretarial work I was doing on behalf of the 1,500+ Hispanic inmates here, this new assignment was clearly an attempt by someone here to thwart the warden and humiliate me.

About 7 days ago I saw the warden and brought this to his attention. He remarked, “I’m a man of my word,” and proceeded to make a call on his cell phone to correct the ‘error’ on the call-out sheet. I left him to do that, and 7 days later, 30 days after the warden said I was reinstated, I am still unassigned but still available in the law library. We shall see what happens. [Note from Jodie Emery: Marc has since been reassigned and now works Monday through Friday in the library.]

I would get paid 12 cents per hour to do either job. What I can’t understand is how a private corporation like Geo Group can legally hire all these “deportable aliens,” none of whom have visas to legally work in the United States. Have they received a special exemption from the Federal government that allows a for-profit US corporation like GEO Group to do what no other US business entity is allowed to do: hire illegal aliens to work in their factory/business/enterprise? Many of these ‘illegal aliens’ here were undocumented workers doing labor for US businesses and they were incarcerated for doing precisely that. So by what political or legal alchemy can these same illegal “workers” be hired by GEO Group to essentially maintain this ‘industry’ here at D. Ray James Correctional?

And this business of 12 cents per hour: if you don’t concede to work on the assignment given to you, you can be put in solitary confinement. So a private, for-profit, US corporation, answerable only to shareholders, can put any inmate here in a lonely dungeon for 23 hours per day if they refuse to be a slave? The Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery “within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” So either GEO Group seems to be illegally hiring illegal aliens, or employing slavery, or both, but I’d like to know what law permits a for-profit US corporation to do either.

Meanwhile, GEO Group has cut back on the hours of many of its employees here. Many Correctional Officers (C.O.’s) have had their hours cut from 40 to 32 hours a week. This was an unhappy bit of news for them because most, if not all, full-time workers cannot easily readjust their lifestyle and obligations with a 20% cut in pay. One extra unpaid day off in this economically depressed area is not something anyone who works here needs. One C.O. drives 52 miles a day to come to work here at D. Ray James, that tells one story of how difficult jobs are to come by in south Georgia and north Florida. The collapse of the housing market and the reduction of tourism from the recession and the Gulf oil spill have turned south Georgia and north Florida into one of the areas of highest unemployment in the United States. A competently run prison would be a benefit to the inmates here AND the local population so desperate for gainful employment.

More and more I am concerned about the quality of the water we are drinking here. The staff largely drinks bottled water, which is not available to inmates except in the visiting room, but staff have been buying all of the visiting room water bottles. That’s why the machines are often out of water for visitors on weekends. The water that we inmates have to drink is yellow when put in a white cup, smells, variously contains debris, paint flecks, etc. The water tower that recently was embellished with a massive GEO Group paint job has never had a filter changed within it, if it even HAS a filtration device within it all.

Ominously, the subcontracted group responsible for our very poor food diet, the Canteen Corporation, is about to get replaced by GEO Group’s own food services. GEO Group ran Rivers C.I. in Winton, North Carolina, which was closed down by order of the NC legislature, and many inmates from Rivers are here. All uniformly agree the food at Rivers was the worst they had ever encountered in the Federal system. So, incredibly, it’s possible what is already a monotonous and repetitive diet deficient in vitamins B, C, calcium, potassium, essential fatty acids and so much more, plus high in starches, sugars, and protein, is about to get even worse!

It would seem very few people running the show here are qualified to do so. The psychologist on staff has no degree in psychology or psychiatry; he’s a drug and alcohol counselor of some kind. The welding teacher has no credentials in welding. The recreation director has no credentials in health, fitness or physical education. The library does not have a certified librarian (it usually has no one supervising at all, to save money), and the director of education has no degree in education. The chaplain does not have a Masters of Divinity. Not a single Corrections Officer has ever worked in a Bureau of Prisons facility before; therefore they have no experience with federal regulations of federal prisons. Many of the staff here worked at the state D. Ray James prison, but state regulations are substantially different than federal regulations, and that results in a fair bit of confusion.

Most B.O.P. minimums and lows have an outdoor visitation area. D. Ray James has, according to the D. Ray James Procedure Statement, an outdoor visitation area. I sure hope one is planned because thus far, it’s not available. I will be asking the warden if one will be provided here, consistent with his statement SEC-014.06, which was signed by him only a few months ago: “Visitation may be conducted in a designated outdoor visitation area if approved by the Shift Supervisor. Only inmates who have had clear conduct for six months and have no security issues within the facility will be allowed to have visitation outside.”

Occasionally the visitation staff tells the inmates and their visitors not to hold hands, even though it is called a ‘contact visit’ and from my understanding, every federal minimum, low and medium security federal prison in the B.O.P. system permits handholding. The staff in visitation are otherwise good.

I’ve been reading ‘Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do (The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country).’ This is a marvelous book by Peter McWilliams. Peter was stricken with AIDS in later life and after Proposition 215 was passed in California, proceeded to participate in a marijuana garden (with Todd McCormick, who spent over 4 years in jail) and was convicted under Federal law for growing marijuana. Peter used cannabis to stanch the nausea form the cocktail of AIDS medicines his doctors prescribed him. The Federal judge had forbade Peter from using marijuana for his nausea, and days later Peter McWilliams died in his bathtub choking to death on his own vomit. Peter was an author of many books on positive thinking, emotional survival and personal wealth (titles include ‘Surviving the Loss of a Love’, ‘You Don’t Have the Luxury of a Negative Thought’, and ‘Wealth 101’). I decided to re-read Peter’s great literary contribution to law and philosophy, ‘Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do’ when the online curator of Peter’s legacy [click here] sent me a gift copy to inspire me here in jail. The book is truly brilliant and wonderful, at once straight forward and easy to read, and I’m learning so much; when you’ve been an advocate for 31 years, sometimes you think you can’t learn anything new about liberty, only to be proven delightfully wrong.

I found McWilliam’s discussion of relationships illuminating. “The idea behind laws against consensual activities is that if some people are in a bad relationship with something, then that thing should be banned. The problem is, that solution doesn’t solve anything: the problem doesn’t lie with the thing (or substance) itself, but with some people’s relationship to it. Yes, there are some things with which it is easier to be in a bad relationship with than others. Cigarettes practically beg for a bad relationship. But then, they were designed that way. For the several centuries prior to the Civil War, tobacco’s use was primarily recreational: people would inhale it, choke, get dizzy, fall on the floor, roll around. For the most part, people used tobacco (a botanical relative of the deadly nightshade) once or twice a week, and that was it. After the Civil War, the south needed a cash crop less labor intensive than cotton. A special strain of tobacco was developed that allowed people to inhale deeply without coughing. This let people smoke almost continuously if they liked it. It also resulted in almost immediate addiction. Almost every tobacco smoker is addicted. While there are many ‘social drinkers’, there are no ‘social smokers’. Smokers begin from the time they wake up to when they go to sleep… Addiction is a sure sign of a bad relationship.”

Sex, food, caffeine, gambling, religion, marriage, sports: all of these and virtually every other substance, activity or opportunity has the potential in all of us to be a good or a bad (or neutral) relationship.

Halfway through the book I’ve re-learned much about the US Constitution (and how, tragically, myself being a case in point, the United States has abandoned the Bill of Rights and other restraints on government), the history and ideas and strengths in the separation of church and state, and the separation of society and state. Peter makes it all fun too. I was being educated on every page with what seems like no effort.

The book I finished before Peter’s was ‘The 10 Cent Plague – The Great Comic Book Scare of the 1950s’. This recounting of hysteria that surrounded comic books causing ‘juvenile delinquency’ from 1949 to 1956, putting 80% of all comic books out of business by municipal, state, and in Canada in 1949, Federal laws. There were huge public bonfires of comic books in dozens of communities, and a frenzy of indignation blaming comic books for all manner of crime and youth corruption. The US Constitution was no more an impediment on the US Government committee that hounded the comic book industry with scurrilous hearings, nor was the Bill of Rights any defense against state and city laws that saw sellers and producers arrested, fined, and even jailed. Over 800 people lost their jobs in the comic book industry and never got them back, as it took the comic book industry 15 years to recover. The hysteria resulted in censorship that drove out of business all the best comic books and left only the innocuous to survive.

At various times in US history, movies, television, more specifically horror movies, marijuana, racy pulp magazines of the 30’s, gum cards (Garbage Pail Kids), rock and roll records, religious “cults”, dance crazes, and more have all been subject to local or even state censorship, but none of the whipped-up furors ever had the destructive effect on free expression as did the 1949-1956 anti-comic book crusade. At its peak, comic book publications issued in 1952 totaled nearly 100 million copies monthly, by 1958, laws were passed, distributors, printers, producers, newsstands, intimidated, distribution was down to under 17 million copies monthly.

Sometimes censorship is disgusting on the smallest scale. The reading library here at D. Ray James Correctional is kept as useless as possible. No current books of the last 10 years, virtually no educational texts in math, English, science – nothing at all for a student to learn. No contemporary books like James Patterson, Stephen King, etc. Just beat up old library books from 10-40 years old, of no use to anyone. No magazines had been ordered since D. Ray James opened 4 months ago. Then one magazine arrived today, a Hispanic magazine, ‘ALMA’. It’s a terrific publication, and while it’s in a language I can’t read, it made me wish I could. It contained articles and interviews with Noam Chomsky, Mario Vargas Llosa, Jean Michel Basquiat, Orson Welles, and Ryszard Kapuscinski. There was a series of famous photographs by the “Three Giants of Photography” Stieglitz, Steichen, and Strand. The quality of all the magazine’s photographs is very good, the material very elegantly laid out, and it was clearly all very intellectually superior material.

Dr. Davis brought the magazine into the library, and before our very eyes scrawled in thick black marker “D R J C F” (the prison name initials) across every one of the 112 pages of the magazine. The reason given was that the Halle Berry photos were too lascivious, and that marking up every page would deter theft. I copied a selection of 16 pages of the defaced ALMA to highlight the experience of seeing a beautiful magazine defaced, while knowing the perpetrator is head of Library and Education Services. This one act describes the desperate and hopeless situation facing anyone here who wants to see the library here function with the noble purpose of knowledge and enlightenment.

I will admit I’ve been depressed over the most recent 8 days since Jodie’s visit on January 29 and 30. My daily life is full of frustrations and aggravations, but I can usually try to forget these hassles of D. Ray James life and move on. But as happened to me around Christmas for 10 days, sometimes a darker, more pervasive malaise sets in, and this makes each day an ordeal. My property should have arrived within 30 days of my arrival. But it hasn’t. It was sent to Taft where I was supposed to end up, but at the last minute I was somehow sent here instead. I miss my Sony radio, Koss headphones, and nighttime book light, my photo albums of Jodie. I’ve only had a half dozen to a dozen photos of Jodie in the 3 months I’ve been here. Jodie’s most recent letter to me did not arrive. One sent to me eight days ago from Alabama has not arrived. (Jodie was emailing letters to our friend Loretta who printed them up and mailed them here, usually it takes 2-3 days to arrive, as is typical of all US mail to me, vs. 6-8 days for a letter from Canada). Originally Jodie was going to try to send me a letter every day, once we no longer had “Corrlinks” email like at Sea-Tac FDC. In 5 months at Sea-Tac, she sent me approximately 500 emails and I sent her over 1,000 emails in that time (she saved every one of them). But Jodie is very busy, so in December I received only three letters and in January only one letter. Her letters are usually 4 to 8 typed pages full of wonderful detail and I treasure them above all others, but I am crestfallen at her sending me so few of them lately.

Today, when I went to the post office to mail Jodie a Valentine’s Day gift, the post office was arbitrarily closed. It is only open for one hour on Tuesday and Thursday, from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm, so when they close like that, with no explanation, it is very frustrating, as I have waited since Saturday to mail it (it’s in a home-made tube and needs weighing and a customs document to ship by mail), and if I had been able to mail it today, there was reasonable hope it would arrive by next Monday on Valentine’s Day. Of course, the obvious thing would be to hand it to her myself this weekend when Jodie visits me on Saturday February 12, and my birthday Sunday, February 13, but of course, here at (‘We Put the “D” in “Dysfunctional”’) Ray James won’t allow that.

Exercise of any kind, sit-ups, push-ups, jogging on the spot, walking around the pod, has been banned and inmates have been threatened with insubordination write-ups if they continue. All inmates are now ordered to exercise out in the yard only. To do sit-ups in the yard would be cold or muddy or dirty or uncomfortable, but that’s the rule, whether it’s raining, cold, hot, or humid. Currently we only get outside 5 to 6 hours daily tops, but are awake and in our pod up to 18 hours daily. There is no explanation for this enforced prohibition on stationary exercise. My sleeping has been disturbed for four nights in a row, usually I sleep soundly and without interruption, but these last few nights I am awake much of the night, shuffling and shaking. Most of the English speakers I know are fatalistic and sad or certainly resigned. I am more annoyed with the shrill whistling, yowling, yelling, and repeated childish voices that some of my Hispanic dorm mates persist in doing (reminder: we don’t have cells, we’re put into dorms with 64 bunks beds). Not all of them are annoying, mind you, but just enough to make me rue at the thought of three and half years of this depressing place. All these things and the additional daily frustrations are getting to me, I fear.

My eyesight is getting weaker. I need new prescription for glasses. I have no confidence in the medical services here. If I did get a new optometric prescription for my lenses, I’d mail it to Jodie and she’d send me a new pair of glasses. My request for a dental cleaning 7 weeks ago has thus far been ignored. I was assured that I was put “on the waiting list”. I haven’t had any dental work of any kind since I was put in jail last May.

I had written to my wonderful supporter and friend Catharine Leach asking her if Rhode Island had an initiative process, so cannabis legalization could be put on the ballot. The voters of Rhode Island voted for one in 1996, but the legislature did not pass an initiative process bill into law. There was also proposed legislation in both the House and Senate in 2010 to pass an initiative process and no vote was ever taken, thus the bills died. So that was disappointing, as we both wanted to get a legalization initiative mirroring Washington’s on the ballot in 2012. I think Rhode Island voters would approve legalization into law by the ballot if they had the chance.

A Maine state legislator, Diane Russell (Democrat), has made the news by introducing a legalization bill in the statehouse there. While 40-55% of New Englanders may support legalization, legislators who represent that view are still virtually non-existent. This is also the case, perhaps even worse, in Canada’s provincial and federal governments. That is why I was so excited to believe (mistakenly) Rhode Islanders could go through an initiative process.

Malcolm MacKinnon of High Times made an attempt to interview me here at D. Ray James for a feature article, but owing to High Times’ stated support of marijuana, the warden here turned down the request. So Malcolm submitted 16 questions to me and my expansive and candid answers should show up in an issue of High Times out in May or June. Jodie will also have some comments regarding her perspective on coping with my incarceration.

I would like to thank four people, none of whom I know, who put $50 in my commissary account here at D. Ray James, over the past two months: Martin M. (twice!, on Feb. 7), Lawrence J. (Feb. 1), Matthew W. (Jan. 4), and Ashley N. (Dec. 20). That helps relieve the pressure off my wife Jodie to send me money I need for commissary, phone calls, photocopy machine cards, photographs, and more. [Note from Jodie: You can send Marc money through Western Union now! Go to www.FreeMarc.ca for details.]

A special thanks to Paul Maverick of Massachusetts who sent me 34 books over the last 8 days. 11 I will try to read, the remaining 23 I’ve distributed around the pod for anyone else to read. Many of them are on spiritual matters, U.G. Krishnamurti in particular, which isn’t really my interest, but two books by Paul’s father Maury (a columnist for Texas newspapers) and 9 books of historical nature I’m going to try to tackle.

By Sunday, February 13, my 53rd birthday, I will have served 335 days on this 1,825 day sentence, with 235 days good time credit. That’s 570 days from my total 1,825 to be served, meaning there are 1,255 miserable days to go if I get stuck in this American gulag for foreigners. (July 7th, 2014 is my US release date). If I get approval from the US government in June for my transfer to Canada, and the Canadian government approves the application in the following months, I could be home by early next year. Please continue to write letters and make phone calls for my transfer to be approved – the addresses and details are at www.FreeMarc.ca.

Marc Emery #40252-086 Unit Q Pod 2
C.I. D. Ray James
PO Box 2000
Folkston, GA
31537

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Marc helps make changes in the D. Ray James Correctional Institution in Georgia — and his bad spider bite is getting better. Jodie shares an amazing present from Marc, a purse made out of folded-up chip bags, done by the artist inmates. The Toronto Freedom Festival is not so free… denied a permit for the first time ever. Cannabis Culture will still be there with 40,000 others marching in the Global Marijuana March, which is still happening at the same location as the Freedom Festival, as always. Go to http://www.CannabisCulture.com for updates!

http://www.FreeMarc.ca/
http://www.CannabisCulture.com/
http://www.TorontoFreedomFestival.com/

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Jodie talks about a prison lockdown, the warden getting fired, Marc getting a bad spider bite (or worse?), and more. She shares a wall hanging made by inmates, and a beautiful piece of art from a supporter. Read Marc's prison blog at http://www.cannabisculture.com for his review of improvements made at the prison after he filed complaints. And plan ahead for the Toronto Freedom Festival and Global Marijuana March on Saturday, May 7th! HELP FREE MARC EMERY!

http://www.FreeMarc.ca
http://www.CannabisCulture.com
http://www.TorontoFreedomFestival.com

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I remember Irwin Cotler, Canada’s Justice Minister in the twilight of Paul Martin’s Liberal government, commenting that Canadians had developed a culture of tolerance for marijuana use in the nation. This was on the heels of the Senate Committee urging marijuana legalization, my 2003 Summer of Legalization Tour across all ten provinces of Canada, and our 6-3 Supreme Court loss attempting to find Canada’s marijuana prohibition laws unconstitutional. In mid-2004 Cotler coolly and confidently asserted that his government would have “to change these perceptions.”

Cotler wasn’t concerned that polls even 7 years ago were showing a majority of voters supported legalizing marijuana, and that as a democracy, his government should reflect our will (and the corresponding justice in this new paradigm). He asserted that Canadians were wrong in this new view, and that the government would change the minds of the people who elected them to represent that changed new majority view.

Irwin Cotler was confident because modern governments have total faith in propaganda. Such is their instinctive reaction whenever the public starts to think for itself.

Cotler then carefully calculated on television newscasts that it would take two years to switch the Canuck consciousness back to the dark ages of prohibition. So sure was he of success that his prediction was announced publicly in mainstream media. We’re going to brainwash you. There’s nothing you can do about it.

But has this really happened? While politicians at every level of government in Canada behave as if they have changed public opinion, the polls, YouTube, Facebook, television, radio, movies and contemporary books all show that they have not. In fact, polls show the legalization numbers are rising throughout the United States and Canada. They have been rising since I began my lifetime campaign to legalize marijuana in 1990. The numbers have never reversed direction. Every year the momentum to legalize gets greater, with majorities in every western US state, British Columbia, Quebec, and Ontario. All the other provinces and states have the support of no less than 40% of their voters in support of legalizing marijuana; double the numbers from the year I started my crusade in 1990.

What’s going on? Is this all some sort of political joke?

Many times have I met Michael Ignatieff, the current Liberal leader, and heard him speak. Every appearance I have seen him, he is asked, earnestly, about whether a Liberal government will legalize marijuana. Each and every time Ignatieff laughed off the legalization question, as he did again a few weeks ago, by saying we shouldn’t be talking about it so much. Ignatieff wonders why people are always asking about marijuana. There are so many more important things in life, he says. Like “digging ditches,” as he suggested once in Newfoundland.

Indeed, when it comes to “drug use”, Ignatieff declares, “I just don’t get it.” He adds everyone should be out getting a university education, starting a family and building a community. These are fine things for those so inclined, but to say you can’t do them and be a part of the cannabis culture is a lie. To say you can’t smoke marijuana because it will stop somebody else from pursuing these goal is intellectually insulting.

To say that cannabis and the people who consume it are anti-education, anti-family, and anti-community is really hate propaganda. This is exactly what Ignatieff and his ilk are saying. Can you think of any group the Canadian public ought to hate more than a group that threatens to destroy the Canadian family and the Canadian community? That’s how the government usually labels terrorists – or the cannabis culture – interchangeably.

The fact that Ignatieff and a great many politicians (including President Obama in his 2010 public response to the most requested YouTube question, which was about cannabis legalization) do this in a jocular manner is extra creepy. That’s because joking about maintaining marijuana prohibition in spite of the majority will doesn’t sound like hate. It’s a very interesting technique that seems to be exclusive to marijuana prohibition propaganda. At first, Ignatieff and his audience laugh at the question. “I expected this would come up…” begins a merry Ignatieff, warming up the room. Knowing chuckles come from the audience. A bond has been formed. We’re all hip and cool. We’re all in on the marijuana joke.

If you were talking about a crime that actually warranted the repressive laws of prohibition, it wouldn’t be something you’d be laughing about. Politicians don’t joke about arson, rape, murder, robbery, embezzlement. These are truly serious crimes. If a crime is serious enough to have police regularly smash into homes and hold taxpayers at gunpoint, put them in jail, take their kids, take their homes, well, that would not be a laughing matter. Declaring a culture war at the highest levels of government, empowering police and even ‘safety inspectors’ to invade the homes of Canadians over a plant that is federally recognized as medicine, well, that is not a laughing matter. These are the most serious things a government can do to its citizens in a society. These are things that Ignatieff normally would not be laughing about.

Politicians never mention shooting people, pointing guns at the heads of taxpayers and their children, or shooting dogs dead in their homes. They are never asked about it or any of the other horrific abuses of these bad laws. The people asking the questions, both the voters and the media, never mention the specific abuses and repressive laws within the legalization question.

This schizophrenic combination of laughter and repression is very bizarre. Sending a “culture” to jail while laughing about it is not the sign of a reasonable mind. Name another issue responsible for such barbaric laws that is discussed as a joke by politicians and leaders. There is none.

As to the matter of sending a culture to jail while using that culture’s music to get you elected so you can send them to jail, that is altogether Mephistophelean. Prime Minister Harper singing ‘I Get High (with a little help from my friends)’ and ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash,’ two songs created under the inspiration of huge amounts of marijuana, while Mr. Harper seeks to deliver a final solution (Bill S-10) to the ‘permissive drug culture’ that created such music, is, well, satanic. Mr. Harper co-opted the entirely wrong Rolling Stones song; he should have been singing, “Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and fame…”

Ignatieff is saying marijuana and the people who use it threaten to destroy the social fabric of Canada. Any other opinions are not tolerated because “I just don’t get it.”

That the existing government leader, Mr. Harper, has declared war against my people and our cannabis culture, with the flaccid acquiescence of Mr. Ignatieff, demonstrates how perfidious their musical hypocrisy and perverted sense of humor really is.

Mr. Harper holds my fate in his “hands.” He delivered me unto the fate of D. Ray James Correctional Facility, and he can approve my transfer back to Canada. Failing any inherent political compassion to return me to Canada, I believe Canadian citizens will pressure the government in Ottawa to act in a civilized manner, though this is a rarely realized action from the government of Ottawa. At the least, I hope the Angus Reid polls showing a clear majority of Canadians want me returned holds sway, if compassion itself is unmoving.

Some Canada’s churches have recently come out against mandatory minimum jail sentences for cannabis offences. US evangelist Pat Robertson has said that marijuana should be legalized on his 700 Club television religious program. Given the nature of the Conservative base, this is an important development. Given the fact that marijuana prohibition is essentially a religion and is falsely sold as such, this is an exceptionally important moment in politics. Even conservative guru, University of Calgary professor Tom Flanagan, wants the Conservative government to embrace an end to prohibition.

Canada is now sending heavily armed police smashing into a private home and holding a person at gunpoint, all because a skunk was found living under his porch – true story. It is now standard operating procedure in Canada for police to legally smash into private homes and terrorize taxpayers at gunpoint, all because of the smell of a skunk. No apologies are offered; no thuggery is too extreme.

‘American War Machine’ by Peter Dale Scott, a new and superb analysis of the insidiousness of the global drug war, documents the real reason all this is going on in Canada, the USA, Mexico, Colombia, everywhere on Earth. It is impossible to paint a more damning picture of prohibition and the gangster governments it has created. If you want to fully understand why marijuana prohibition is a globally enforced policy, read this book.

My preferred book examining the truly evil genocidal nature of the worldwide prohibition has always been Richard Lawrence Miller’s book ‘Drug Warriors & Their Prey.’ It’s still one of the all time greatest books ever written. But when it comes to understanding how drug prohibition has created global politics and wars for the past 60 years and counting, ‘American War Machine’ is the book. Think of it as Prohibition Meets Dr. Strangelove.

Author Scott is not hopeful this corruption will end anytime soon. The current political climate, he explains, is restricted to those who have the “domination” mentality. Prohibition funds their wars. As long as we have prohibition, we will have endless war. These two parasites have formed a corrupt partnership that now feeds off the world community.

How does authority rationalize, both for its goon squads and for itself, this abuse and corruption? How does it ignite that internal sadism without calling it sadism? How do you get people so wired up that they will smash into taxpayers’ homes and perform all the other global depravities that are the exclusive demented domain of prohibition?

Here’s how, as recounted by the Grand Inquisitor in ‘Brothers Karamazov.’ Dostoevski’s story opens with Christ returning to Earth during the Spanish Inquisition. Heretics are being burned alive as an “act of faith”. The Grand Inquisitor sees Christ raise a child from the dead and knows He’s the real thing. The Inquisitor has Christ arrested and visits Him in jail.

It is here the Inquisitor lectures Christ on the craft of public relations. In Dostoevski’s story, Christ is not to be taken only as a religious figure. He is used as a literary device to represent truth in any form. The Inquisitor is used to represent the suppression of truth by any self-rationalizing and corrupt authority – think Stephen Harper, Michael Ignatieff, or even my Inquisitor, former DEA Administrator Karen Tandy.

As not-so-grand Inquisitor Karen Tandy stated in writing upon my arrest on July 29, 2005, I was jailed for truth. The more I spoke, the more convinced Canadians and Americans became of the truth. Over those years leading up to my arrest, as I toured, spoke, published, broadcast, and ran for elected office, the more the citizens came to see cannabis prohibition as the evil it is. Tandy did not hide this. Like the Grand Inquisitor, she proudly laid it right on the line. I am in jail, as she put it, because I am a propagandist with my “propagandist magazine Cannabis Culture,” giving away “hundreds of thousands of dollars to legalization lobbyists” (i.e. truth tellers) “active in the United States and Canada.”

I am in jail precisely because I expressed an idea, specifically the idea of freedom of thought, the idea of truth. This is precisely what the Grand Inquisitor tells Jesus Christ: “What are we going to do with truth? Humanity is just too shallow, stupid, and scared to ever be able to handle the burden of the truth, which is the burden of free thought, of being able to think for yourself. Freedom,” claims the Inquisitor, “is simply too heavy a responsibility for people. It is easier and more natural for them to obey.”

“And if it is a mystery, we too have a right to preach a mystery, and to teach them that it’s not the free judgment of their hearts, not love, that matters, but a mystery which they must follow blindly, even against their own conscience. So we have done. We have corrected Thy work and have founded it upon a miracle, mystery and authority. And men rejoiced again that they were led like sheep, and that the terrible gift (freedom) that had brought them such suffering was, at last, lifted from their hearts,” explained the Grand Inquisitor to Christ.

Therefore, pontificates the Inquisitor, people like himself take on that responsibility by deceiving the masses for their own good. We give them a reason to live. We tell them how to live. We give them false hopes and phony beliefs. We make up lies so they don’t have to think for themselves. And Inquisitors can use all and any manner of torture and depravity to accomplish this end.

In the book ‘The Grand Inquisitor’s Manual’ by Jonathan Kirsch, his preface explains the atrocities that were committed by authorities over several centuries with impunity:

“Above all, the Inquisition relied on what it regarded as the extraordinary nature of the CRIME of HERESY to justify every excess and atrocity. These heretics were accused of being ‘thieves and murders of souls,’ and the war on heresy justified the deployment of every weapon in the inquisitional arsenal. To accuse someone of heresy and then allow him or her to go unpunished was simply unacceptable, a threat to the power of the Church. After all, the acquittal of even a single accused heretic would surely bleed away some of the dread and terror that was regarded as crucial in deterring others from false belief.

“Far worse, as the Church saw it, was the spectacle of a true believer of a forbidden faith who was perfectly willing to suffer bravely and die heroically for that faith. This was the real reason that the inquisition sought to avoid making martyrs of the accused heretics by torturing them into abject confession… Torture was not only tolerated but actively encouraged because the Church regarded the war on heresy as an existential struggle with Satan and his minions on Earth; the victims of torture nothing more than ‘traitors to God’ in the eyes of the persecutors. To the horror and sorrow of countless generations to come, the Inquisition demonstrated that the demonization of one’s adversaries makes it legally and morally acceptable to torture and kill them.”

“If only you had given them a miracle at the end,” the Inquisitor tells Christ, “you would have won them over. Easy. All you had to do was come off the cross.”

“But you did not do that,” the Inquisitor criticizes a silent Jesus. “You expected too much of these worthless souls. As a result, we have altered your work. And now they believe us. They will do anything we say. The very people you have tried to save will now destroy you on my command.” To prove this, the Inquisitor says he will order the mob to burn Christ at the stake.

Christ never says a word. His only response is to kiss the Inquisitor. Shaken, the Inquisitor opens the jail door and tells Christ to leave and never come back. (“The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea.”)

Even the cynical and hardened Inquisitor had some momentary compassion left in him.

I can only hope.

– Marc Emery
February 12th, 2011

Write to Marc in prison!

Rules and guidelines for sending books and mail are at www.FreeMarc.ca

Marc Emery #40252-086 Unit Q Pod 2
PO Box 2000
D. Ray James C.I.
Folkston, GA
31537
USA

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To begin with, on Monday, January 31st, I received a treasure trove of new books, nine of them, including Marc Twain’s Autobiography Vol. 1, ‘Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Writers and Artists Who Made the National Lampoon Insanely Great’, ‘Ain’t Nobody’s Business if You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in our Free Country’, ‘The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare of the 1950s’, ‘Last Call: The Rise & Fall of Prohibition’, ‘Uncle John’s Giant Bathroom Reader’, two prisoner lawyering books, some Buddhist philosophy books, 10 excellent letters from my serious correspondents, some photos from Jodie, and a few magazines. I’m receiving Surfer and North American Hunter magazines, gift subscriptions that my fellow inmates find interesting. I was denied a musical greeting card, but I’m aware of that because I received the proper paperwork advising me of its rejection by the mailroom.

 

All this unimpeded flow of books, magazines, and letters to me without having to go through the bizarre rigmarole I was required to do up till a few weeks ago had me reflect on progress here at D. Ray James. I got all my ‘cop-outs’ (complaint/request forms in the prison argot), and surprised myself with how many of my cop-outs have been resolved. I am often frustrated by the apparent lack or slowness here of progress at this facility, and I make it clear I think treating Canadians and other foreign nationals in the US federal prison system in a discriminatory manner is unjust. I regard myself an eyewitness, a truth teller, a journalist. So, I got out my file of official complaints/requests to management for a review.

 

This next section would have to be titled:

 

“In Defense of The Management at D. Ray James Correctional Facility”

 

Friday, November 19th, 2010:

To the Case Manager: “I would like to begin the treaty transfer process to return to the Canadian Correction system.”

 

Result: Process completed 7 days ahead of schedule when all my transfer paperwork is FedEx’ed to the US Dept. of Justice in Washington, D.C. on January 16th, 2011. The deadline was January 21st, 2011.

 

December 12th, 2010:

To Business Services: www.accesscorrections.com does not take Canadian credit cards for inmate deposits into their commissary accounts. It is also not possible to send inmates at D. Ray James Correctional Facility money orders to deposit into their accounts, nor are Western Union deposits allowed either. This makes the situation for Canadian inmates extraordinarily problematic. Will we be able to receive money by Western Union ever?

 

Result: On January 31st, 2011, it became possible for families and friends of inmates to deposit money in inmate accounts via Western Union. Canadians or Mexicans or individuals outside the USA must use cash and take the money physically to a Western Union location (in Canada, these are at Money Mart). The cost is $15.00 (which goes to Keefe Commissary Network) plus the fee that Western Union normally charges, anywhere from $5.00 to $39.00, depending on the $5.00 up to $2,000.00 being sent to an inmate’s account. This is a huge convenience for those who can afford these service fees, but it’s noteworthy that in the B.O.P. system for American citizens, a money order for the same amount, costing only $1.50 to $5.00 at most, can be mailed to that US citizen inmate’s account. Because these ‘for profit’ foreigner prisons must exploit every situation for the profit of GEO Group, the money order option is not available to us here.

When sending money to an inmate at D. Ray James (like myself, for example), you take cash to a Western Union, use the BLUE QUICK COLLECT form, with the following information:

Pay to: D. Ray James CF
Code City: DRayJames
State: GA
Acct. #: 40252-086 Emery
Attention: Marc Emery

(For any American depositing into my account, using credit cards at www.accesscorrections.com is a lower service charge.)

– 8(f) Nutritional information cards will be displayed for all prepared menu items listing calories, fat, cholesterol, and sodium content of each item.

– 9(a) A nutritional analysis will be conducted annually by a registered dietician to ensure they meet the Daily Reference Intake (DRI) for nutrients published by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of the Sciences.

– 9(c) All nutritional analyses will be certified in writing by a Registered Dietician. This certification will cite compliance with the DRI’s.

I have not been able to find a single staff person here at D. Ray James who can confirm that the filter in the water tower holding all the drinking water has been replaced recently or regularly. I believe, since the surrounding area around Folkston is swampland and Jodie and I saw flecks of blue and black debris in the drinking water provided to us in the visitation room (bottled water has hardly been in the vending machines in visitation for 3 weeks), that the filter in the water tower – if in fact there is one – is not sterile or effective, and that the water here is unfit for human consumption. The water here should be tested; Jodie says it smells and tastes strange compared to the tap water at home in Vancouver. I believe a public safety official would order the water tower filters changed regularly. The water in the surrounding area smells of sulphur and other brackish elements; considering the huge area around Folkston is a famous swamp (the Okefenokee Swamp), the water should be plainly suspect here. GEO Group just spent thousands of dollars painting its blue GEO Group logo on two sides of the tower, a 10’ x 30’ job, to cover the “Cornell” logo from the private prison company that was bought out by GEO Group. Here’s hoping they’ll invest that much in clean water.

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