Will Youman wants to be known as the next Public Enemy. He also believes that most people should read The New York Review of Books. The hip hop artist and self-proclaimed creator of cultural resistance calls himself "the Iron Sheik" and this afternoon, he's munching on nachos in a small Berkeley café that's covered in murals advertising justicia.

Tall, friendly and principled, the Iron Sheik discusses land dispossession and consumer-oriented hip hop. As a Palestinian American hip hop artist and activist, both these issues are personal ones. His latest and only album, "Camel Clutch 2003," is named after the bloodthirsty chokehold of the famous 1980s WWF wrestler The Iron Sheik. The Sheik of Berkeley is not quite so hardcore. "I don't want to just be known as the pissed off Palestinian," he explains. His Camel Clutch is the truth about the history of exile and suffering of Palestinian people for as long as there has been an Israeli state. Most of his songs narrate the history of Western imperialism in the Middle East, particularly in Palestine, by discussing artists and poets as well as political theory and theorists.

While journalists labor over the technicalities and hypocrisies of the Bush regime, the Sheik takes a lot less time to say the same thing. His radical words, though slightly awkward, could definitely get him deported. He introduces his "Oil Anthem:" "It was Henry Kissinger who said oil is too valuable a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs." Then the beats roll in and the Sheik raps:

"Bush is itching to remove Saddam/His answer is to kill every Iraqi with a bomb/But the US helped him attack Iran/In 1980, they wanted oil from Teheran/that regime change was about Khomeini/America helped Saddam even though he was crazy/He used chemicals but there's something absurd/the US gave him the gas he used to kill the Kurds"

He sounds more like a freestyled textbook than an underground rapper, but the Iron Sheik's been spinning rhymes since junior high.

The Sheik grew up in Dearborn, Michigan, a small city outside of Detroit, known to some as the Arab capital of the United States. After eighth grade, he moved to a nearby town that had a significantly lower Arab population. This was when he was confronted with the identity of "Arab American" that he identifies with so clearly in his music and activism. Before high school he says that though he was growing up as an Arab American, he never thought of himself with that label: he was Palestinian as opposed to Lebanese or Iraqi, Christian as opposed to Muslim.

The Iron Sheik perfoms.

The Sheik's parents sent him on a bus to protest the first invasion of Iraq when the Sheik was 12, but his rhymes have not always reflected the times. He says he started out rapping mostly "I'm better than you stuff," though he was raised in a politically active household. He was listening to Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest and KRS-One. As he got older, he tried to use his skills and that influence to address issues that were affecting him as a Palestinian American living in the boondocks of Michigan. During his senior year, he hooked up with another politically-minded Palestinian American hip hop artist and they had a couple of gigs, but the Iron Sheik remained frustrated with the bling-bling that his generation embraced.

When The Sheik started college he gave up creating hip hop; he didn't see any way to reconcile his activism and organizing with the pleasure of making beats. The first song he wrote, "The Tale of the Three Mohammads," for a movie with the same name by Nasri Zacharia during the Sheik's senior year, transformed his focus. He had some friends who were Arab American spoken word artists, and they helped him understand the power of fusing culture and politics to achieve the same goals he and his "ideological activist" friends had been working towards.

The Sheik persevered and at 25, he has just cut his first album. He's not doing Palestine to make it big, however, he's doing hip hop to spread the word about Palestine. He explains, "I'm doing it because I have kind of a greater goal. Because [hip-hop] started as a grassroots mode of resistance." In his case, he feels that his role as an activist and hip hop artist is "to give the Palestinian narrative."

Currently, those who surround the Sheik want to steer him in the hip hop direction, which means tightening up his beats and diversifying his content. "I'm expected to talk about more--not just politics, you know what I mean," he explains shyly. "I don't want to write a song about getting drunk or something, but I might want to mention that when the Intifada started I felt so powerless that I got drunk for two weeks straight before I got my act together."

Despite attempts to cut loose (the line "you're not an activist/you're a mactivst" will appear on his next album), the Sheik vows to keep it real and reach out especially to Arab American youth. He believes it's deeply important to promote pride in the Arab American identity when Arab Americans are constantly slandered and treated as terrorists. His song "Growing Up" points out that,

"We're treated suspiciously, cuz we are Arabi, meaning deadly/Some hide their identity and claim Italy/Or some other country . . . Macking at clubs trying to spit some game/Ali's name becomes Antonio from Spain."

The Sheik plans to address these issues directly in his immediate future through what he calls "publishing and cultural development." He and a few others are about to start up an online Arab American magazine called "Al-Mohajer" (the migrant). The purpose is to build community among Arab Americans and "promote an Arab American identity."

The Sheik sees himself as a role model, but stresses the inherent obligations, saying, "I really want to reach out to the Muslim population a lot, but if I swear too much or talk about drinking then I'll alienate them. My political message is greater than that. At the same time, I kind of want to be honest. I like to have fun, too. Because if you're all serious you lose your connection to the people. It's kind of a contradiction because it doesn't match up with the reality, but in some ways it does. If you go to Palestine, people are having fun, laughing, having weddings, partying. If you go there, as long as people aren't on their deathbed or getting shot at, they're trying to maintain their humanity."

As far as activism goes, the Sheik isn't content just to rap about the rights of Palestinians. Just after the start of the second Intifada, the Sheik founded one of the leading Palestine solidarity groups in the country, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). He had just moved to Berkeley where the words "Free Palestine" were barely beginning to decorate car bumpers. Frantic to contribute to the struggle, the Sheik and a friend mobilized an equally frustrated group of Berkeley students to create SJP. It has become a diverse powerhouse, founded on principles of equality, rights and liberation. Many other inspired campus groups then sprang up around the country and joined in a national divestment campaign, a movement to end financial support to Israel from U.S. colleges and universities.

Though SJP has disintegrated slightly in the past year or so, the Sheik believes it will bounce back. He wishes that people who want to work on Palestinian solidarity wouldn't treat it like environmentalism or feminism, but would defer to those that have deep knowledge of the nation and the struggle. At the same time he acknowledges, "The trendy activists bring some optimism. A lot of experienced activists would say, 'we'll never pull this off, the Zionists will shut us down,' when the trendy activists might say, 'we can do this.'"

The Iron Sheik has family in Israel, and has traveled to visit them. He stays connected to what's happening over there, and believes that the liberation movement in the United States takes its cue from events in Palestine. He feels that it's ridiculous to discuss a solution to the Palestine-Israel conflict when "it's not like we're close to the finish line or even halfway there." According to the Sheik, people get hung up on establishing two states (one for the Palestinians and one for the Israelis) or one state for both peoples, when really those things aren't really in activists' hands. "What's in activists' hands is how much do people really know about what the Palestinians are suffering."

He pauses, but unable to resist, he adds, "So where I fit in, I see the refugees as vital, I see Jerusalem as vital. I don't want a crummy Palestinian state. If they're going to give us a state, it has to be 100% real sovereignty." He's referring to "the refugee problem," a vague expression the Western world uses to describe the forced expulsion of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland in 1948 when Israel was founded by Britain and the United Nations. The Sheik wants to see the refugees' rights and demands for return taken seriously and wants Jerusalem returned to the Palestinian people who currently have no control of their territory's former capitol. The Sheik reflects that he would "rather have no state at all" if sovereignty is "given" to the Palestinian people--essentially, he believes anyone who "gives" sovereignty can take it away.

The Sheik's grandparents are Palestinians with Israeli citizenship living in Israel. He describes them as "a complete underclass." When he visited them, he says he "had this constant feeling of being inferior. There were soldiers all around. When we would go outside, Israeli kids would come up to us with video cameras, making fun of us." He points out that the Palestinians who live in refugee camps usually get the most attention from many Palestine solidarity activists, because of the intensity of poverty and overcrowding that exists there. He explains that the Israeli military controls Palestinians living in the camps through curfews, checkpoints, and closures, "everything from the use of water to access to medicine is controlled by Israel."

When there are closures and curfews many kids can't get to school, and so some have organized to have a school by phone, and they attend their classes by calling each other. "The spectrum of resistance is wide," says the Sheik, noting that, "when the occupation is so total, resistance is going to be total." Palestinian youth sometimes talk back to Israeli soldiers, dismantle roadblocks, or even just claim to be Palestinian, which is a mode of resistance for a people whose existence has often been denied.

There's also been a rise in hip hop expression from the Palestinians. The Sheik says that many have been inspired by Tu Pac. "Not necessarily his words, some people don't even understand his words, but just the energy from him." Some Palestinian hip hop artists have Israeli citizenship and live in the hood, like TN (Tamer Nafar), and some are coming out of the refugee camps. The Sheik says, "It's kind of a resurrection of the origins there, people trying to claim a voice out of their oppression."

Likewise, the music of the Iron Sheik addresses the silencing of Arab American voices in this country, as well as political policy and political theory. Another song on "Camel Clutch 2003" is called "Conversations with Edward Said." In this song, the Sheik mixes a speech Said, a prominent Palestinian cultural and political theorist, gave at Berkeley with his own rhymes, discussing "Palestine and the Universality of Human Rights." The Sheik asks about Israeli policy, "Which one is most blatantly a violation of the United Nations?" Said answers dryly, "extra-judicial criminal assassinations." It could be an editorial in the Sheik's own New York Review. Noam Chomsky might blast it out of his car windows and get pulled over. That's why the Camel Clutch is an anomaly. The more hyped up media you read, the more down you get to the Iron Sheik.

Check out the rap version of this article!

Click here for a link to the Iron Sheik's homepage

Zoe Chace, 21, is a former WireTap intern.

Ward Connerly is the main supporter for Prop 54, which would make it illegal for the government to collect or track racial data.

"SI SE PUEDE!" shouts Rocio Nieves to a group of about two hundred adults. She stands at the top of the San Francisco City Hall's white stairs in the middle of California doctors, lawyers, professionals, politicians, and social justice advocates who have come together in the boiling sunshine to hold a press conference with the message: No on Prop 54. The same dramatic showdown of resistance is being held simultaneously at L.A.'s City Hall. Rocio demands, first in Spanish then in English: "How many of you are going to go out in the street and educate our voters who can't be here right now? We all know how bad this is. I want each and every one of you to volunteer." Rocio is 20 years old, and she reminds the audience that Proposition 54 is most detrimental to California's youth of color.

In case you hadn't noticed, this was the summer of sequels: "X-Men II," "Charlie's Angels II," "Matrix Reloaded," "Legally Blonde II," Operation Desert Storm by Bush and Cheney II, and Proposition 209 II. Prop 209 dismantled affirmative action in the California public schools in 1996. Its sequel is Prop 54, which forbids state-sponsored collection of data based on race or ethnicity. Prop 54 means that you will no longer check off a box stating what race you are on any public document.

This might sound good because your race shouldn't determine the type of services you receive from the government. In an ideal world, we would be living in a colorblind society where everyone is treated equally. The problem is, we don't live in an ideal world and according to opponents of Prop 54, people of color routinely face discrimination. Eliminating racial categorization doesn't mean discrimination on the basis of race will go away. It will, however, mean that you will no longer be able to prove that there is a pattern of discrimination in everything from healthcare and education to voter access. Marisol Melendrez, a high school junior opposed to Prop 54, says, "No matter what, people respond to one another by physical appearance. We're not treated equally."

Some people feel that the government's racial categories simplify their identity. The American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI), official sponsor of Prop 54, states that Prop 54 will "junk a 17th century racial classification system that has no place in 21st-century America." When I called up the ACRI, Diane Schachterle's cool voice answered my questions like an advertisement. "Youth will not learn to categorize themselves any longer," she told me. "Teachers have called me and they say that their students don't know who they are. Now they'll all be Californians!"

		"Prop 54 is being brought forward to erase racial identity so that it's not obvious that people of color are the majority." -- Rocio Nieves, Youth Force Coalition

Identity, however, is not something many people want to throw away. Marisol believes that Prop 54 would lower people's self esteem. She tells me, "I'm proud of who I am. I'm not an American, I'm Puerto Rican." Rocio believes that it deeply frightens the Republicans that "minorities are not the minority population anymore in California," and so it is in their interest that Prop 54 is being brought forward. "Prop 54 is being brought forward to erase racial identity so that it's not obvious that people of color are the majority." Many of those that Prop 54 claims it is trying to save -- youth of color -- are organizing to defeat it.

On the other side of Prop 54 is Ward Connerly, University of California governing board member (regent), housing businessman, and the proposition's main supporter. He introduced Prop 209, which has flung open the door to challenges to affirmative action policies all over the country since 1996. He then founded the ACRI, a non-profit that has heavily funded Prop 54 and Connerly's promotion of California's anti-affirmative action stance. The ACRI itself is funded by various extreme right-wing organizations, such as the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee. As explained on the Media Transparency website, "Bradley is the largest, richest, and most politically influential of the conservative foundations." In addition, Connerly has become a multi-millionaire since he introduced Proposition 209 because his salary from the ACRI has grown exponentially as he spins out more proposition campaigns, in and outside of California (conscious of the debt, he has even affectionately named a race horse that he owns a share of "Two-O-Nine").

Since 209's passage, the University of Michigan and other Midwestern universities have seriously considered terminating their affirmative action policies. Now that the Supreme Court has upheld affirmative action in the recent lawsuit against the University of Michigan, Ward Connerly has burst into Michigan with fiery determination and a beefy bankroll to send the affirmative action decision to a state referendum. He's sponsoring a Prop 209 twin in Michigan and investigating the possibilities for the same action in a few other states. Bill Bielby, president of the American Sociological Association, said at a conference in Atlanta that, "If it's successful in California, then it will be coming to Georgia... Ward Connerly is part of a well-funded and aggressive social movement."

		From the work that these coalitions are doing, word about Prop 54 is getting out.

There is a massive coalition to defeat 54, which includes students at the University of California, both graduate and undergrad; Californians for Justice (CFJ), a statewide organization which has a long history in grassroots youth organizing for racial and economic justice; and the Youth Force Coalition at the Youth Empowerment Center in Oakland whose sole full-time staff member is the dedicated, articulate, multi-tasking Rocio Nieves.

Californians for Justice

On a recent Thursday evening, CFJ youth leaders organized a training on Proposition 54 in the CFJ office in downtown Oakland. Marisol stood at the door and greeted me. She and her peers, fresh out of CFJ's Summer Leadership Academy for high school juniors, are fully aware of the dramatic impact Prop 54 will have on their lives and have committed to educating and organizing within their communities -- not easy if you and those you chill with are not allowed to vote.

		"CFJ depends on racial data. They need statistics to show evidence [of racial injustice]." -- Marisol, high school student with CFJ

Carmen, one of the adult leaders in CFJ, approached Marisol and the other CFJ youth last December with statistics on the California high school exit exam. You have to pass the exit exam in California in order to graduate, and CFJ's campaign attacked the exam for unfairly punishing students of color by denying them a diploma when the state had failed to provide an equitable, high-quality education. Marisol was one of the speakers at the July 9th rally against the exit exam in Sacramento, and she tells me that "it really felt good. I was a part of the delay." For her, there is a clear connection between the two campaigns: "I want to be in a school where I can succeed. CFJ depends on racial data. They need statistics to show evidence [of racial injustice]."

At the training, KP, a tall young high school student in shiny red, spoke easily to the 25 people in the small rows in front of them about past CFJ campaigns to defeat California propositions since 1995. The white board they had set up displayed the obvious ancestry of Prop 54 in multicolored marker:

Prop 187, which denied all public services (such as education and health care) to immigrants; Prop 209, which struck down affirmative action in the California public schools; Prop 227, which outlawed bilingual education; Prop 21, which increased punishment for "gang-related" crimes and required that more juvenile offenders be tried in adult court; and Prop 38, which allowed voucher distribution. If Proposition 54 passes, it will be impossible for CFJ to prove the damage that those past propositions have done, further silencing those communities.

Near the end of the training, Marisol asks those in the audience if this law will have an impact on our communities. An older man rises and says rather softly that this initiative will deal a huge blow to American Indian rights; he points out that without recognition as an ethnic group, their sovereignty will be even more precarious. Native Americans, he says, like every other community, won't be able to prove discrimination, environmental injustice, juvenile injustice... as KP says solemnly, "This affects every single body."

UC Berkeley

Meanwhile in Berkeley, UC students, inflamed by the passage of 209, are launching their own anti-Prop 54 campaign. They refuse to allow the chapter to be closed on affirmative action, and claim that if this measure passes, the impact that the absence of affirmative action has had on students in and out of the UC system can't be determined.

The meeting that I attend at UC Berkeley's Senate Chambers is not a presentation, but rather a window into a skillful college campaign. The group is very diverse in race, sex, even level of education, though everyone is in their early 20s or younger. Anu, an undergrad in round glasses is facilitating expertly, surrounded by bright colored posters big as blackboards. My contact Peter notices me and waves, though we've never met before. He also has pert glasses, a beaming face and a sweet, enthusiastic voice. He scribbles down ideas as they occur to him on a piece of poster board. September is speaking rapidly. She is a young woman in a denim jacket with a pin that reads "No on the Information Ban" in bright orange. She is describing the outreach they did at the Omega film festival.

		The meeting that I attend at UC Berkeley's Senate Chambers is not a presentation, but rather a window into a skillful college campaign.

Peter, Anu, September and many others in the room work at the Bridges Multicultural Resource Center in Berkeley, which is, naturally, a group that is very experienced in building coalitions. An exact group of people, they are the only ones I've run into who enjoy referring to Prop 54 as the Classification of Race, Ethnicity, Creed and National Origin Initiative (CRECNO). Peter excitedly tells me about the Students Supporting Affirmative Action at U Michigan, who are also fighting Connerly three time zones away.

The group discusses action plans while Peter frantically hops from huge list to huge calendar, marking down everything. "There's going to be a Law School spoken word anti-CRECNO fest in September," announces Guy, the eager-faced young law student, and it's hard not to laugh. He also wants to throw a big block party outside Connerly's house. Jessica, Chairman of the Student Government at the Grad School, who is typing relentlessly on her icy white I-book (which matches her manicured toes), says "we should bring Barbara Lee to campus, no matter what."

"It's not we," says the vocal white guy in the corner, who has been interrupting constantly, "The Campus Democrats are bringing her if she comes." "Ooooooooooooooooooooooh" the rest of the room responds. Close to the end of the meeting, Peter demands that we pass a clap around the room. That is this coalition, he says, we are just going to keep spreading the word and double our numbers.

By the end of the meeting they have triumphantly planned a press conference, an activist training, regular voting blitzes, tee shirt designs, several concerts, many, many outreach events and two big teach-ins (one of which was accidentally scheduled for September 11th before the vocal Dem flew out of his seat, grabbed Anu's pen, and changed the date). Much of their on-campus outreach is planned for events like the Raza-sponsored welcome for Latino parents and students, or at the Minority Graduate Student Orientation. Post-209, the regents tried to change the latter to the "Diversity Student Orientation" but the students fought it and won. In the post-Prop 54 era, I think, these student groups might not be allowed to exist at all.

Youth Force Coalition

I finally get to meet Rocio Nieves one afternoon at the Youth Empowerment Center, a converted warehouse near the West Oakland BART station. Standing outside the door to her tiny office, I hear her talking to someone on speakerphone. It turns out she's on the phone with Carmen, the adult organizer at CFJ. Suddenly I'm watching a play, where on one side of the stage, Rocio is furiously emailing Youth Force Coalition members to tell them about the Week of Action she and Carmen have just planned, and on the other side is Carmen telling BJ, Marisol and the others that Youth Force has just signed on to their hardcore street-walking voting initiative for the week leading up to October 7th. At Youth Force those kinds of phone calls are happening all the time.

		"This affects me directly," she told me, smiling directly. "I speak truth to the heart."

Youth Force Coalition (YFC) is made up of youth representatives from social justice organizations all over the Bay Area who meet once a month because they've agreed that, as Rocio says, every issue is tied to the Prison Industrial Complex. The YFC was founded when Prop 21 (the juvenile incarceration initiative that CFJ also fought) was proposed, and has continued to fight. For the Prop 54 press conference, Rocio, the only young adult to speak, prepared her first ever draft of a speech. When she got up there, she threw it away. She has been organizing since she was 12 years old. "This affects me directly," she told me, smiling directly. "I speak truth to the heart."

Rocio and the YFC were not the only ones at the August 7th's press conference at San Francisco's city hall which blew up the news about Prop 54. Though the CFJ youth were preparing their presentation all day in Oakland, other CFJ members came out to pass around information on Connerly's shady financing. Certainly the L.A. chapter of CFJ was out at the press conference in L.A. UC Berkeley students were happily networking. The coalition that crowded the staircase were almost all people of color, with what appeared to be the youngest among them holding up the biggest signs ("We need to WARD off discrimination").

"The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce," declared a man as skinny as his tie, "is inexorably opposed to this dumb proposition. Philosophically, business institutions rely on data." "Niche marketing," whispers a young African American woman to her 50-year-old, weathered white activist friend standing next to me. Dr. Michael Sexton, chairman of the trustees of the California Medical Board, tells the story of his recent nightmare of having patients strewn all over the emergency room with breast cancer to tuberculosis, not being able to treat them effectively because Prop 54 had "robbed [him] of critical data used to diagnose" his patients. Barbara Lee shouted louder than any other speaker that "this is the beginning of the end of Republicans and extremists and they will not steal California," and managed to squeeze in that "we will stand together against the Recall," while everyone screamed and clapped for her previous statement.

		The Republicans dropped $2.5 million on Connerly to promote Prop 209. The Democrats dropped only one-quarter of a million on the opposing coalition.

That was nothing next to Eva Patterson, San Francisco civil rights attorney, who said, "Excuse me while I hijack this press conference to announce that I'm running for governor" to wild applause. She reminded the old 209-guard that just before Election Day in '96, there was a statistical dead heat of whether or not 209 would pass until the Republicans dropped $2.5 million on Connerly to promote the initiative. The Democrats dropped only one-quarter of a million on the opposing coalition. "You expect people of color and progressive people to vote for you," she addressed the Democratic party, "then we need something back. If you want us to vote against the Recall, vote against Bush, don't leave us in the wind." She demanded $1 million dollars. "The Republicans support their activists. SHOW ME THE MONEY."

It was uplifing to hear and see so many people come out against Prop 54. Hearing Lee and Patterson speak, it felt like it was possible to defeat the well funded campaign of Connerly. When I turned to leave the press conference, I walked straight into a group of 14-year-olds who were just learning about the issue for the first time. They told me they were going to tell their parents to vote against 54. For a moment, we were all sure that we were going to win.

Ironically, the October 7th election itself had come into question by U.S. District Court Justice Judge Jeremy Fogel, as reported in the California Contra Costa Times on August 16th. The Times reported that The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights in San Jose had filed a lawsuit under the federal Voting Rights Act demanding that federal officials examine the recall election process before it moved forward. They claimed that Monterey County had consolidated polling locations to the disadvantage of people of color and had hired very few Spanish-speaking poll workers. The Times explained that the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 to protect minority voters primarily in the South who faced discrimination at the polls.

Although federal judges ruled on September 5th that Monterey County had not violated the Voting Rights Act, this is an excellent example of the kind of civil rights violations that would not be investigated if Prop 54 were passed. If Prop 54 were currently in place, such a lawsuit could not even exist because there would be no official record of where people of different races or ethnicities lived in California. CFJ's BJ Victor says simply, "Without the data, we can't prove that institutionalized racism is alive and kicking."

Zoe Chace, 21, is a WireTap intern.

In November of 2002, Jesse Carr, a twenty-one year old college student, went to a protest against the School of the Americas. The U.S. combat training school in Fort Benning, GA, is notorious for training Latin American soldiers to commit human rights abuses in countries such as El Salvador and Colombia. He pled "not guilty" to the charge of trespassing, and was sentenced to three months at a women's minimum-security prison in Connecticut. Jesse is transgender, and at the time he had begun hormone therapy. Apprehensive that he wouldn't receive his testosterone shots in prison, his partner, Sarah, formed a list serve called "jesseinjail." The list serve functioned as an immediate advocacy call to School of the Americas Watch activists, transgender activists, prison rights groups, and Jesse's friends. Sarah also typed up letters Jesse wrote from prison every week and sent them out to the group. Jesse's observations went far beyond his own experiences making the letters an inspiring and informative document of daily life in a women's prison.

Jesse had been taking a shot of testosterone every two weeks for about five months when his incarceration began.

Alderson, West Virginia

4/9 - 4/12:
So it's about 3:30pm on Tuesday and I've almost done my first 24 hours here. First of all, I have great news about tranny-stuff: I spoke to the medical director today and it looks like they will let me continue hormone therapy during my time here. They're sending a medical release to Dr. Murphy and once they have my records they'll order testosterone.

I think the best short way to describe Alderson is that it is like an inner-city boarding school, and I think that's my main gripe so far -- why do we spend money on education, free health care, drug rehab, etc. IN PRISONS but not in the larger community where they could actually PREVENT people from ending up in prison?

At first I tried to take comfort: at least I'm not here for 5, 7, 12, 22, or 33 years (I have met women w/ these sentences.) But soon that comfort felt hollow and false, because really I'm saying, at least I'm not Black or poor or involved with men. So instead I've been thinking Kathy Boylan [fellow SOAW activists] did 6 months here. Clare Hanrahan did 6 months here. Liz Mcalister did 2 1/2 years here. That 18-year-old last year did 6 months. I can do this.

A few days after living at Alderson Jesse was told that he had to move to Danbury Correctional Facility in Danbury, Connecticut, because they had previous experience with "transsexual" inmates. He took a Greyhound by himself, arrived late, and wound up in the "hole"-- "a tiny cell with peeling paint, a metal toilet, and literally behind bars." It's officially called the Solitary Housing Unit (SHU); it is medium security.

Danbury Correctional Facility, Danbury, Connecticut

4/15:
I was awoken at 6 in the morning w/the question, "Carr, you want rec today?" In the hole you get 1 hour outside M-F. I said yes and 1 or 2 hours later they came, cuffed me behind the back and took me "outside." It is concrete floor and wall with chain link enclosing you, including over the roof. No grass, no animals, no dirt, not even an unobstructed view of the sky or sun. Joyce Ellinger [fellow SOAW activist] is down the hall from me, she's been here for 9 days "pending classification." That's what I'm here for too, according to the sheet I got this morning. They literally call it being in the hole for paperwork.

Day 2, evening:
I made it out of the hole after just one night! Since my expectation was to be there at least a week, I am thrilled. I had a bad run-in w/ a C.O. [Correctional Officer] though, and it turns out he is my counselor (d'oh!) He was doing my paperwork and then looked up and said, "I hate protesters. I hate them even more now than I used to. And I'll tell you another thing, I'm glad about what we're doing in Iraq, I wish we would do even more destruction." He had a lot more to say about my age, my stupidity, and then had the gall to say that I was "FREE" thanks to what was happening in Iraq. The man is doing my paperwork for my entrance to PRISON.

4/21:
Jesse got a job as grounds keeper. He worked seven hours a day, seven days a week.

Facing North of the Camp is UNICOR, the prison's sweatshop. UNICOR products are sold mostly to the military or back to the prison itself. I sleep on a UNICOR mattress and wear a UNICOR uniform. When it is cold I wear a UNICOR winter coat and even some of my hygiene products-- comb, toothbrush, etc. are UNICOR. When I hear about prisons having no money, I wonder why? The inmates care for the grounds, clean the buildings, fix and maintain the equipment, do the laundry, cut people's hair, work in recreation, the library, the law library, and even as teachers for $5.25 -$20 per month. Most of the materials used in the prison are old, broken, or made in UNICOR where women are paid, at most, $1.15/hour (50% of this is subtracted automatically to go towards restitution or "the cost of incarceration"). Health care is a joke, and the food certainly is not gourmet� where is the money going?

And who is incarcerated here, anyway? At the moment, 4 or 5 SOA prisoners, to start with. Helene doing 5 years for selling drugs to support her own habit, who wants to be a drug treatment counselor when she gets out in 2005. Tracy who wants to be an out lesbian minister when she gets out, and has already been here 7 years. Women who used or sold drugs because they were poor, meaning because an income, any income, means food on the table. Women accused of conspiring with their husband or boyfriend who they couldn't escape because of beatings, rapes, and more beatings. Women who describe the welts that used to criss-cross their backs and list the broken bones, counting on their fingers. Women who didn't do anything but get accused and found out the hard way that there is no presumption of innocence for poor women, immigrant women, women of color. Women whose whole families are in and out of prison all the time, who have spent most of their lives in institutions -- visiting, being locked up, writing, visiting, being locked up again.

And mothers, so many mothers to so many children, carrying their pictures in their pockets, missing high school graduations, first words and steps, mothers saying, oh, my daughter has breasts now, saying, maybe when I get out I can get my kids back, do you think so?

I tell one woman about why I am here, about the School of the Americas, about the torture and murder and people kidnapped off the streets never to be seen again. "Yes," she says, nodding emphatically, and waving her hand around at all the women streaming by us. "Yes. We here are also the disappeared."

Everyday, for an inmate who got caught in the net of paperwork it's OK, I need my medicine. (The doctor's not there now.) When is the doctor in? (Oh, he's around, just keep checking back.) OK, I don't have a PAC # yet, where can I get one? (Talk to Mr. Tinelli.) Mr. Tinelli's not there right now. (Oh, he's around, keep checking in.)

Go see the doctor; I hear he's in now. Doctor, I need my medicine. Sick call? When is that? 6:30 in the morning? OK. Count time, everyone to their rooms, standing up, no talking, absolute silence. Excuse me sir, are you Mr. Tinelli? (No.) Do you know where he is? (Check his office.) I did, sir, he's not there. (Well, keep checking, he's around.) I haven't been able to make a call for two weeks. (Well, talk to Tinelli about it.) I don't have stamps, where can I get them? (Commissary.) When are they open? (It depends on your inmate #.) OK, how do I get a commissary order sheet? (They make them available.) Who does? (Commissary.) When and where do they do that? (I don't know, that's a good question, just ask around, someone will know.) Excuse me, sir, are you Mr. Tinelli? (Yes.) Well, my PAC # doesn't work and I haven't been able to call anyone. (Well, the woman who deals with that has already gone home, why don't you check back with me tomorrow?) Tomorrow. OK. What time should I come?

4/30:
So many women are here on drug charges. A lot of them didn't have any kind of access to a drug treatment program until they were put in prison. Even then you have to have a 'documented drug problem' to be eligible. This means that women who are here for theft or check fraud, who committed these 'crimes' to fund their drug addiction, aren't eligible because they're not here for drug charges.

One of the women in my room has HIV. She has done 7 months of a 60-month sentence. For a prisoner with HIV, given the 'health care' available, 4 1/2 years to go is almost like a life sentence. And I'm not exaggerating about the healthcare situation. You have to wait weeks to get x-rayed -- one woman was hobbling around with a cane for 3 weeks before an x-ray revealed a broken hip. She was ordered to be in a wheelchair by the doctors but the C.O.'s would only let her use a cane. I've noticed though that even if she'd had a wheelchair it wouldn't have helped much since there's not a single aspect of this place that's wheelchair accessible.

Still the most common sound I hear is the sound of laughter. Cynical laughter, joyous laughter, what-can-you-do? laughter. Me, I laugh every day, too. The women know Metielski gives me a hard time and they go out of their way to share crude and vulgar remarks with me regarding his sex life, drinking problems, and the size of his genitalia. It usually makes me blush, but I have to laugh, too, because I know I'm seeing survival in action and the worst thing you can do to a C.O. is have no respect.

Jesse missed two hormone treatments before Sarah sent out a call to the list serve to advocate on his behalf. They responded immediately.

5/2:
When I went to work on Wednesday morning my medical records were still missing. When I returned, not only had the records been miraculously found, my prescription had been phoned in to Central Office and I was assured that although I have missed two shots, I will not miss a third. "Your point has been made," said the unit manager. "Please call off the dogs." The phone lines of Danbury Corrections were shut down by the calls, stopping all other business from occurring. I am told that the warden is still unable to use her fax machine. "The most recent faxes have been from a bunch of nuns," says the unit manager, a look of absolute bewilderment on her face.

I can only smile, for communities who have devoted their lives to struggles for justice are familiar with a type of solidarity that leaves many at a loss for words. Many of the people who helped in the advocacy process may have had no prior experience with or knowledge of LGBT, particularly T, issues, but knew simply that I was taking a stand for justice and peace and needed support. Those who called and faxed showed that we take our community everywhere and are never truly removed from each other -- not in fear, isolation, incarceration, or even death.

I can't help but wonder, what if every inmate had hundreds of people to advocate for their every right and need? Indeed, what if every person, long before the circumstances and choices of their life landed them in prison, had hundreds of people to advocate for their every right and need? That would be a revolutionary movement, and that is the type of movement we must build.

5/23:
At the base of a little five-step staircase that leads to the camp P.A.'s office [my friend] and I sit, waiting. We both need injections and the P.A. has forgotten to bring anything to do with our prescriptions -- no medicine, no syringes, nothing. He says he'll be right back, which in BOP-time means he may not come back at all.

We are discussing 9-11 -- she says to me, "When I heard that two planes had hit the towers and I watched on TV as they fell down, and I saw people jumping out of them to escape, I just felt so scared and helpless." She tells me, "I felt just the way I did when he used to beat me. You know, he once broke 32 bones in my body. I had to steer with two fingers when I drove myself to the hospital." It is like looking through one of those binocular-like toys with picture sets: two planes crashing two fists coming towards her face bombs streaming towards Baghdad, Kabul kitchen, bedroom, parlor as battlefields.

She has been incarcerated for 15 years and tells me "yes, yes I did what they said, I carried drugs onto airplanes and across national and state borders, lots of drugs -- pounds, kilos of coke and marijuana and dope. Yes, I did those things but mostly I am here for not picking up the phone and calling. They told me that if he was abusing me, making me do these things, I should have just left." I'm still back at 32 bones. Thinking, counting -- 8 fingers, what else? Nose, jaw, ribs . . . shoulder blade? Collar bone? Tailbone? Legs, toes, feet? We are facing each other, both staring kind of blankly at a spot over each other's shoulders. Finally I say, simply, "That's not how abusive relationships are. You don't just get up and leave or pick up the phone and turn them in for drug dealing." I tell her, "You don't deserve to be here." She nods and tells me more: how she managed to leave once and he found her quickly, managed to leave a second time, stayed in hiding for 3 months, but finally enrolled her kids in school. He called the Board of Education and found out where his kids were -- when she went to pick them up one day, he was there, waiting.

There is a word for this in prison -- there is a word for just about everything in prison. Women who do the dirty work, the illegal work, the stuff that gets you shot or arrested, because the man 'employing them' may very well kill them if they don't. Here they're called mules, a different woman informs me. She herself was a 'mule,' here for 5 years for selling crack.

It's been two hours that we've sat here. The doctor has not returned, and she says to me, what do you need an injection for, anyway? I swallow and hope she doesn't regret confiding in me after my answer. I have spent weeks perfecting explanations of gender, MY gender, transgender, in anxious anticipation of this very question. Of course, my mind goes pretty blank so I manage only, "I'm transgender. I get a shot of testosterone every two weeks." She smiles. When she was at another federal prison, her roommate was inter-sexual. She tells me, 'His name was Mike. He was such a sweet heart. I really loved him.'

Our conversation is ended as we're both called to the C.O.'s office and told that the P.A. will return between 9 and 10pm with our shots. We part ways, returning to our rooms. She has been incarcerated since I was 7 years old. She was just starting prison and she felt okay -- "I was basically safe," she says. "I mean, they were always telling me what to do, but I was used to that, you know?"

I don't know, but I'm beginning to get the picture.

6/21:
I don't think my life, my mind, can ever be the same knowing about people being in prison while I . . . do whatever I'm doing. It's a thought that has occurred to me a lot during my job. I work along the highway where people drive right by, literally 2, 5, 10 feet away from me, where on the other side of traffic there are businesses, homes, and an elementary school. And always I think, do they know? Do they know they are driving past mothers and grandmothers? Do they know they're driving by immigrants and poor people and dissenters? I ask it of the cars that drive by, the parents dropping kids off at school, the commuters and joy riders, and now I must also ask it of myself as I prepare to cross back over that line, and in my civilian clothing, get in a car and drive away.

Jesse was released on July 3rd, 2003.

For more information about the rights of prison inmates, visit the links on the website of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. To read more essays written by youth in prison or juvenile centers, visit The Beat Within. Zoe Chace, 21, is a WireTap intern.