Gangster desciples from Chicago love tight pants for some reason and since i was changing sweat pants into sweat shorts one of them asked me to skinny his khakis. i did such a good job that he came back and had me skinny all his pants his shirt and sweat shirt and sweat pants. then all his homies saw how tight his clothes were and wanted their clothes just as tight and in some cases so tight you could see the hairs on their legs. not really but you get the picture. once they went to the rec yard all their homies form the othe units saw how tight their clothes were they wanted their own clothes tightened up. so needless to say i had plenty of business and got plenty of experience sewing and “fitting” clothes to the point were i would carry a home-made measuring tape with me every where i went.
i was also making dream catchers. and then they started selling tablets and someone asked if i could make a tablet stand so they could watch movies one their desk. i used card board and Elmer’s glue and started making tablet stands and tablet cases out of extra material form the sweat pants i cut into sweat shorts. with this material some one asked if i could make a bucket hat and at first i didn’t know what that was until some one showed an example from watching the tv show ridiculousness. the black guy always wears a different bucket hat each show and i was soon making personalized custom fit bucket hats.
all this with a sewing needle and ingenuity. i made pillows too. which were technically contraband because i would take the stuffing out of mattresses and cut up a white sheet and craft a pillow of any size. then i got sick with it and made a pillow for my homie that was shaped like a butt and woman’s crotch. anatomically correct, with holes. i even made a bikini for it. i made it as a joke and a test to what i could do with my sewing skills. the fella’s in the unit went crazy and i sold about five of them in all each one for around 24 dollars.
we went on lockdown one time and i had this Elmer’s glue and a big piece of card board under my bed so i cut up some pieces and made world war two era tank with a rolling track and the turret could turn 360 degrees and the gun barrel could go up and down. sold that for 30 dollars. three of them. started making a figurine out of card board that could stand up. my friend Arthur had recently given me a book on samurai arms and armor and i built a full set of armor with greaves for the arms and legs with the flaring shoulder and leg protectors. it was historically accurate because the book breaks down each individual componant. i even sewed the leg protectors on with spun string and made a kimono underlayer out of black cloth i got from UNICOR. i started working in UNICOR after i bacame eligible for FSA.
every so often we would get hooked back into practicing Jitsu inviting new guys in but they never lasted because by that time we were so far ahead that they would feel as if we were just toying with them. seriously after learning the basics and starting on the advanced manuevers wrestling with newbies was like picking on little kids even if they wrestled in high school. nothing compares to Jiu Jitsu when it comes to unarmed combat. the more my students learned the more i discovered new techniques for myself and once i refined them i would show my students and always stayed five steps ahead of them. just when they thought they had me i would pull something new out and blow their minds. one guy even called me a wizard who never taught all his secrets no matter how much my student learned. little did they know i was learning along with them just on a higher level. it blow my mind.
any way all good things come to an end. everything has its season and the season for all these things i had done had come to an end for me in Pekin. Arthur moved to a veterens unit that just opened up. my points dropped back down to low security status and i put back in for Colorado. unfortunately for me Thomson AUSP was redesignated as a low security due to the high demand for low security facilities and i was sent there. this is where i am now and i have learned a new degree of disrespect, unfairness, and unprofessional standard from the BOP and its employees. here i have learned that as long as humans have power over other humans lives they will do things that deny those individuals the dignity all human beings deserve. i have witnessed bullying and lack of oversight. i have been victim to unjust punishment so the officers can be paid more for putting us on lockdown for unspecified reasons. i have seen officers who would treat us inmates as people be harangued and become pariahs in the eyes of their own coworkers. i have felt the pain of my fellow inmates who only wish to do their time and program be part of a large force of unrelenting persecution at the hands of our handlers who have no worry of being held accountable because the the ones who would be their overseers turn the blind eye to their action against us. i don’t know where these officers come from or who trained them to treat us this way but it has defeated many of us here in Thomson when we did not know that programing at the mediums or highs to earn the right to come to a low security would bring us here to be picked on by the new young BOP generation of workers.
so i write every day in some hopes that when some one reads this they get a small bit of understanding of what we inmates go through every day. when the killers are the ones with the officers uniform on and we have no way to prevent doing what they want and taking everything we have from us if they want to, which they did back in June. so this is where i am at right now.
