What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?
I’ve been noticing how my work/ being has been reactive. There’s been a sense of scarcity and time urgency that’s been guiding my thoughts and actions. There’s been a hopelessness. Because some incidents are out of my control but which have impacted me. There’s been feelings of not being appreciated, feeling a lack of trust and working without purpose, moving away from my core values and moral compass.
I might have been using food or drink to numb my way through the shit. Through the ‘work’, not allowing myself to feel and be present. Really present to all the feels.
Do you feel me?
I know I need to take a step back and really look at the life I’ve been living. This is the only life I have and cannot be relived. I have a deep desire to change the system. To abolish the system and live otherwise.
And yet in order to change the system, I have to change my life, how I live my life. The way / how I live has to reflect the way/ how I want the world to be.
What does this mean in reality?
How I am just as much as what I do within the system will have an effect on system change. I have to be living my life with intention and purpose. Making sure I’m living my values, that I’m not compromising my integrity. That each decision I make is coming from that place of love and trust and hope.
That I’m not shutting down but open to togetherness but also trusting my gut that when I say ‘no’ it’s not from a place of malice but from a place of capacity and boundaries.
I’m learning, I’m sharing and I’m growing. Alone and in collaboration.
And I’m feeling and shifting into the practice and recognition that this is coming from a place of love and care rather than exhaustion and pain.
Small steps. Small acts. Small makes up the large. Small scales up to large.
I’ve got to be practicing the world I want to see now in my own life. Daily. Practice.
Love not hate.
Cooperation not competition.
Conversation rather than condemnation.
More care less harm.
More listening less violence.
The turn towards Mother Nature rather than against her.
A recognition in the value and worth of every human being regardless of race, class, gender, religion, ethnicity, age, sexuality, body type and body and mind abilities.
Nothing I’m flicking through is feeding my desires. Nothing is filling the void of just wanting to switch off and forget my troubles. Pap TV is what I usually call it. The stuff that renders me brain dead.
And then I happen upon The Alabama Solution. This is how I be sometimes. I feed an itch, a curiosity.
I shared the other day about my abolitionist tendencies. Well this Oscar nominated documentary is furthering those occupations.
Man oh man, this documentary hard hitting. And I dare anyone to watch it and say those inmates deserve the inhumane treatments, the injustice they receive in prison. I dare you.
There is a tendency to think people who do the crime should do the time and deserve everything that comes their way. They’re in prison so must have done something to be there and what befalls them in there, well they had it coming.
They be evil. They be degenerate. They be monsters. Lock away, throw away the key. We say.
This indoctrinated, conditioned response to crime and punishment, criminals makes us, the general public, no better that the ‘monsters’ we are condemning. That we are putting away and not caring about.
They be human beings, with flaws, vulnerabilities dealing with issues with no help from anyone else.
No chance of redemption or rehabilitation because they are left to rot. Or are exploited, farmed out as cheap or free labour.
This here documentary The Alabama Solution explores the lives of the incarcerated. The viewer gets to see what it’s really like in the prisons in Alabama. How they are beaten and killed and no one is held to account.
What is remarkable is that these men are behind bars, classed as the underclass of society, the forgotten people, not by their families I may add, but they still manage to coordinate a mass strike across all of Alabama’s prisons in protest of the treatment they receive behind bars. In a peaceful way , they are demanding that their human rights be recognised and that the Federal Government steps in to compel the state of Alabama to treat their prisoners right, with respect and dignity.
Prisoners from all backgrounds, 20,000 strong refuse to work as slave labour anymore in 2022.
They downed tools. They rationalised that instead of meeting violence with violence they chose to hit them where it hurts, in the economics/ money, rather than hit them in the mouth.
Straight away the Governor was trying to break the strike. After a couple of days, rationing their food. Prolonging feeding for up to 14 hours a day and then when they did feed them just small amounts of food. But together the men shared the food they’d been stocking piling . As a community they came together to make sure no one starved. There was unity. Unity never see like it within prison system as it suits the system to have them fighting each other. Divide and rule. Divide and conquer.
But together, standing together strong, there’s power there and that’s dangerous. And has to be suppressed.
How come we, the general public, the majority not behind bars haven’t been able to organise a strike? A withdrawal of our labour to bring the system to a stop?
One of the main spokesperson for the prisoners, Robert Earl, who had already been beaten to near death for being an activist for prisoner’s rights and lost the sight in one eye for it, was taken from his cell in a head lock and taken to solitary confinement.
Again a similar tactic is being used, a tactic used from time in the Civil Rights Movement for example, cut off the head of the movement, the leaders and the strike will fold.
And you think it would happen, as the prisoners are vulnerable, no one can see what goes on behind closed doors. No one listens to them as they are criminals, they lie and are untrustworthy. Right?
They’re murderers and rapists. But that doesn’t happen. As this action, this strike is more than one man. Someone else steps in to take th baron, to keep rallying the cry that the strike continues until the demand are met.
And the demands are not unreasonable demands. They’re not asking to be all set free. They’re asking to be recognised as human beings with rights. To be respected and protected from violence within prison. Violence from the guards who are supposed to be supporting their rehabilitation.
But how are you gonna rehabilitate anyone if you’re beating on them?
I must go back and complete my watch of this programme now and see how the strike goes. However, this strike was in 2022 documented in The Alabama Solution documentary which was a decade long project of capturing the conditions in prison by the incarcerated cell phones.
I’ve just read that the 3 main instigators of this strike, including Robert Earl, have been placed back into solitary confinement as of January 2025 in retaliation for their activism and standing up for the rights of incarcerated citizens. And probably because of their involvement in the documentary.
You see what I did there. Citizens, human beings, not criminals. The language we use is part of our conditioning. Language is power. And I refuse to continue to use such dehumanising language in reference to people who are incarcerated. They are still people with needs and wants, desires drams, pain and sufferings.
Solitary confinement. No contact with family. This is an abuse of power behind bars. Out of public view and no reasons are given for these movements/ punishments. Solitary confinement is a form of torture. It is not a safety and security issue to the individual but it is an abuse of power by the authorities and highlights what a vulnerable position incarcerated people are in when behind the pros walls. This is another example of the denying of human rights.
There is talk of another strike happening this year, the withdrawal of labour. This can only mean that conditions have not improved within the Alabama Department of Corrections prison facilities. So I already know the ending, what the conclusion of this documentary will be. But I will watch it to the end.
Not as a spectator in the spectacle but as a witness for these incarcerated citizens as they, by any means necessary, attempt to get their voices, their issues, concerns and fears outside of those walks. The least I can do is watch and listen and share.
My time of hibernation is coming to an end and there is a whole heap of resistance. It’s not as if I’ve got loads of work lined up. It’s the thought that my time will not be mine alone, to do with what I want come April and beyond.
I took a major risk taking/ making the time away to rest and dream. But for me there was no other choice. I think I was a bit burnt out around the edges and I needed to pull back and heal. And I have done that but there is no end point for healing. No rubber stamping a certificate.
I continue with my morning routine and hope to continue beyond the hibernation period. And this will be where the true test lies. To continue to love on myself daily before I have to meet the world will make the difference between continuing on the healing journey or coming to a full stop. As there can be no healing and growth and self-love if I don’t protect the time to {BE}.
Do lazy days make you feel rested or unproductive?
This morning’s gratitude
It’s been a bit hit and miss here over the last few weeks as I’ve been busy, walking and resting.
There are no lazy days. Saying a person is having a lazy day is such a imperialist, capitalist, white supremacy patriarchy judgement.
Our value does not come from how busy we are, how productive we are or how hard we hustle.
I’m done with that mentality and practice and conditioning.
I’m been resting up after my 96 miles hike for the lowlands to the highlands of Scotland and have felt no guilt or made any excuses for it. I’m luxuriated in the inactivity.
Rest is a weapon as I’ve said before. Rest is pushing back against a system which was set up not for my survival but destruction.
Rest is a Revolution. So while I write my morning pages from bed, cradling a hot coffee and a sugared ring donut, I creatively plot my next move in chipping away for the dismantling of the system.
This includes another coffee and another page of dreaming. I’m not lazing, I’m not having a lazy day, I’m creating friction, rebellion, freedom.
Living Wild Studios 