How would you advise me to advocate more effectively for reforming systems so that people would have oppruntunties to earn freedom?
Since you have been in prison you are the best person to speak and advocate for us in here. I have been in now for just over 16 years with just a few weeks to go and over the years I have communicated with outside advocacy groups and they keep telling us “hang in there we are working on things. We are going to get something done”, never telling us what they are doing or how the results come out.
What needs to happen is to gather former prisoners and become an advocacy group that can go to Congress to speak in front of them so they can hear firsthand from us. When we go to speak to Congress we tell them how the BOP is failing to correct and help federal inmates. Like you said in your book “Earning Freedom, Conquering a 45 year prison term” , The BOP would not let you write your books as they were after you your whole sentence. I have seen that firsthand and that prevents me from being an advocate as I have always wished to do and to help others. I was scared and you were not. You never gave up and accepted what the BOP did to you with your transfers and housing you in the SHU. We need to show Congress and the BOP how they are failing for the high recidivism rate because they are not giving us programs and they are being prison guards and not correctional officers. We need to keep pressing the BOP and Congress to listen to us so they can make changes to the First Step act and have it apply to all federal inmates and not just selected ones with certain crimes. If those inmates prove to the BOP with First Step programming and good conduct then they also need to be given the chance for those oppruntunties.
