The last few days, I’ve been sending letters out about this Living Heroes project. The idea is to make sure our political prisoners are not rotting in jail, forgotten.
About this, a reader writes, excited to get involved with the effort and also not sure how to even get started writing a letter.
A reader writes:
=====
This project sounds amazing! I will absolutely subscribe financially. I’m also intrigued about wanting to correspond with a prisoner, but I’m not a writer nor do I know what to correspond with. Will you provide some coaching about how to correspond?
-A Reader
=====
He’s wearing prison issued drawers. He’s using prison issued soap. He’s eating prison issues bologna (which is really a lot more low-grade soy than low-grade meat). Everything smells like prison. Everything tastes like prison. And it is really a place where the lowest of the low end up: both those working there and those residing there.
It makes one want to vomit just thinking about it. Anyone who calls some of these places “club med,” is sort of missing the fact that it’s a really scummy environment that you need to get used to.
Sure, some places have classes and some places let you work in the community. Some places even allows you private time with visitors. But when the lights go out at night, you are back with the lowest of the low.
It’s no way to live.
And then a piece of paper comes for you. You could almost smell it, and it would smell like the real world, but that doesn’t happen, because everything gets xeroxed and then given to you, unless of course there is writing on more that one side, in which case it just gets sent back, or perhaps thrown in the garbage.
Jimmy, and Joe, and Bubba, and Scrawny are all nice enough people to talk to, excepting the fact that at least one of them, you are pretty sure, you would never want to invite into your home, because you know there would be a problem. And you wouldn’t trust another one of them in the same room as a woman. And definitely never should a child be in his presence, even if supervised.
Things are well and good, except this — these people that you interact with each day are all living in a pretty miserable bubble and most of them are pretty miserable with some awful habits that you don’t want to wear off on you.
And you know this, you are the average of the five people you surround yourself with most. So you try to read from the prison library, because that’s kind of like surrounding yourself with someone but it’s all lousy stuff. A Christian group was kind enough to have a book drive from neighboring communities, and Christians donated because they thought donating the books THEY DIDN’T WANT to a prison was in some way an act of charity. So the selection looks a lot like someone’s garbage, which it is. The rest of the books, bought with government funds are very woke, while the classics are all in Spanish, which is part of some government program to rehabilitate immigrants as far as you understand.
So he signs up for a class, but he doesn’t make the cut to get in. And later when he does get in, the teacher is lousy and some of the time doesn’t show up. And there’s not a great way to let a prisoner know that you’re not coming.
So a lot of the time is spent in utter, hopeless, lifeless boredom. That and picking up habits you best not pick up, from people you don’t want to pick up any habits from.
Is it like hell on earth? No. It could be a lot worse. It’s just not great — especially if you are there during the best years of your life and because government lured you into a trap that they sprung on people saying:
“Please count the votes better, instead of ignoring the election results you would prefer to ignore since the orange man has been bad for the endless supply of wartime money laundering that makes the rich men north of Richmond filthy rich.”
There’s a reason every other parasitic industry on earth wants the US Government to declare a “war” on this and a war on that. Those wars mean big money.
And orange man, for all of his faults (that every one of us non-swamp creatures could point out), was bad for the bottom line of that group. So they got rid of him through ignoring the real election results and letting the vote count go on until he was gone. When it was time to make the states stand by their election work and certify the election results, they sat that process out, instead acting like a rubber stamp.
You can maybe understand why you are in prison when that happens to you — you threatened the financial comfort of some powerful people who depend on selling the DC politicians and the American people on the necessity of these endless big government programs that are poorly managed, cause more harm than good, and are easy to funnel money from. Only, there was a problem — the American people had started to become a lot harder to convince, especially once they had a taste of Trump in office.
Yeah, you can maybe understand why you are in prison when something like a J6 hit job happens to you. But it doesn’t make what happened right.
It’s important to remember, they aren’t there because they actually committed a crime. They are there because they demanded very powerful people have a real election instead of just making up the results they wanted.
It sucks being in prison, but that’s a very heroic thing they did.
The truth is this: almost anything you write is better than what they are doing in there.
Almost anything.
You promise to be something a little different in that awful day. You are even kind of neat. You are writing the person a fan letter of sorts.
“Hey — I heard about you from a writer named Allan Stevo, who is starting a group to get you and all the J6 prisoners released, pardoned, and awarded presidential medals. It may seem like a long shot from where we are right now, but I agree with Allan that one day we might have a country just like that. And you know what, I just wanted to send you a note to say thank you for being brave. In fact, I think it’s fair to call you a national hero. And if you would do me the honor, I’d like to write you once in a while and maybe even hear back from you. I’d like to ask you to be my pen pal. To start off, my name is [A Reader], I live in [A State], and I spend my free time doing [A Hobby]. I work [A Job]. I have [A Family] or [A Dog]. And while I know you might not write back about this topic, I was shocked by what our patriots did on January 6 and then came around to realize that you were heroes entrapped by our government. I think a lot of people are realizing that. I used to vote Green Party or Democrat, but now I am a Trump voter. I volunteer at the local Republican party on Tuesday nights and am looking for a new church still since my old church of 24 years still hasn’t opened since Covid. The pastor talks about every new variant like some kind of sheeple. Hey, I don’t mean to be long winded. I just mean to say hi and thank you. And I know you guys don’t get much news on the inside, so in my next letter in a week or two, I’ll update you on some of the most interesting (and encouraging) news I’ve noticed over the last few months — if you were there on January 6, I’m guessing you like the news.”
Just spend a few sentences introducing yourself. And say some about what you think.
That guy has to negotiate all day long the subtle politics of Jerome the 300 pound gay rapist, Hector the short fused shiv supplier, and Roger the Hell’s Angels capo (with a shorter fuse than Hector). Do you think that letter (and every letter you send) won’t mean the world to him and be read over and again?
You will be a slice of normalcy. A slice of encouragement. A reminder that even though his four-year-old won’t see him for three more years, that life will be okay. And you know what, if you’re into God, don’t be shy to send a Bible verse or two that come to mind.
Tap here if this is something you’d like to get involved in and might like to support: https://livingheroes.org
Allan Stevo
Since all mail sent to a prison inmate is usually opened and read, let me suggest that you send postcards instead of letters, to make the censors' jobs easier. According to Dr. Ron Paul, his congressional office staff were instructed to put postcards from his constituents in his case to be read during debates, FWIW.