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   From: void@invalid.noy   
      
   BY JEFFREY STERLING   
      
      
   In Mid-December 2023, Charles Glass, the esteemed writer, journalist,   
   broadcaster, and publisher visited with Julian Assange, an inmate at   
   Belmarsh Prison in the U.K. Assange has been confined there since   
   April, 2019. He is awaiting his final appeal to quash U.S. efforts to   
   extradite him to face some of the same Espionage Act charges I was   
   confronted with. Glass chronicles the visit in a recent piece in The   
   Nation. His account took me right back to prison. Glass’s visit with   
   Assange could have been a visit with me.   
      
   I fondly remember Charles Glass. He wrote to me while I was in FCI   
   Englewood, the prison I was bound in after being convicted of   
   violating the Espionage Act in 2015. He and others sent me a few of   
   his books, notably Americans in Paris and Tribes with Flags. I was   
   extremely grateful for such support. I had read them before, but   
   reading from prison allows a different perspective, even on paths   
   previously traveled. My prison eyes were reading them for the first   
   time. In some ways, his visit with Assange was a similar overture of   
   support for me and my experience in prison.   
      
   I make no attempts to compare myself to Julian Assange, but I know   
   what he is going through and what he is facing. Glass’s statement that   
   Assange’s “…days are all the same: the confined space, the loneliness,   
   the books, the memories, the hope that his lawyers’ appeal against   
   extradition and life imprisonment in the United States will succeed”   
   also applied to me. But, what was particularly profound for me was   
   reading about Glass’s experience as a visitor to someone confined to   
   prison. For me, time with a visitor was a highly-desired oasis in the   
   never-ending desert that is prison. It was the one time I could have a   
   more substantial connection with the world outside the prison walls.   
   Email and letters were always appreciated, but nothing could replace   
   actual contact, or at least being in the same room as a loved one or   
   supporter. The value of having a visitor cannot be understated, the   
   other days fighting against the droll, oppression, and monotony of   
   prison were all endured for the singular experience of a visit. I   
   imagine that Assange has had the same longing anticipation of an   
   upcoming visit, the one time in prison when you can be reminded that   
   you are still alive, still human.   
      
   Glass deftly characterizes the prison where Assange is being held as   
   “bleak,” and “inhumane”. I realized the same descriptors apply to the   
   experience visitors must face. Visitors and inmates alike go through   
   an emotional and offensive gauntlet just for the privilege of a visit   
   in prison. For me, it was a painful and desired rollercoaster of   
   emotions with the high of the visit and the low of the eventual   
   parting at the end of it. It was always a struggle to resist having   
   the visit tainted by the dehumanizing strip searches I had to endure   
   before and after each visit. It was difficult to truly understand that   
   my visitor went through a similar hell. Glass’s visit with Assange   
   re-informed me of the other side of prison visit.   
      
   When visiting anyone in prison, inmate and visitor alike are faced   
   with arbitrary rules with no real guidance or reason. It is a daunting   
   task trying to comply with the rules when they change at the whims of   
   the gate-keepers. I had a painful chuckle reading how the gate-keepers   
   deemed books Glass brought for Assange as “fire hazards” and therefore   
   not allowed. Belmarsh’s other restrictions on books, how they can be   
   received, and how many an inmate can have are not dissimilar to the   
   same arbitrary rules at FCI Englewood. There is no redress, no   
   challenge of authority at this level. If you want the visit or the   
   books, you have to follow the rules, whatever they are and however   
   they are enforced at the time.   
      
   Whenever my wife Holly would visit, I could sense her effort to be   
   strong for me and not give in to the hell she had to go through just   
   to have time sitting next to me and holding my hand. Time and again   
   she endured a gauntlet of nonsensical and punitively arbitrary   
   visiting rules. Holly never knew if what she was wearing would be   
   acceptable or if the body search would once again border on assault.   
   Approaching the prison on visiting day, she could only hope that the   
   gate-keepers were having at least a good day and maybe save her some   
   indignity. Some guards had well-founded reputations among inmates of   
   being unnecessarily cruel, particularly with female visitors. I was   
   also fortunate enough to be visited by other friends, including Norman   
   Solomon from Roots Action. In many ways, I felt horrible that they had   
   to endure such humiliation to come see me, prison is designed to prove   
   to you that you don’t have much worth, if any. I imagine that Assange   
   may have felt the same as he was visiting with Glass.   
      
   I always wondered what it was like for Holly and Norman waiting in the   
   visiting room with other “free” people who had been successful in   
   getting past the gate-keepers to visit with their inmates. Though   
   strangers to each other, they shared an unfortunate commonality,   
   hoping for nothing more than time with a loved one or friend.   
   Regardless of their lives outside prison walls, each and every visitor   
   has to hope that the system will at least allow for the simplest of   
   human needs, time.   
      
   Somewhat shamefully, I found myself a bit jealous to read that Glass   
   and Assange were able to be face to face during their visit. The setup   
   in FCI Englewood was a bank of attached chairs, Holly and I could not   
   face each other. Any motion to sit askew or move around in the chair   
   to face each other could be grounds for ending the visit. Once I found   
   Holly, we could have an embrace at the beginning and end, maybe a   
   kiss. I rarely let go of her hand during the visits. Once together, a   
   big chunk of time was spent deciding what to get from the vending   
   machines. Then Holly would have to leave me to stand in line at the   
   vending machines and then the microwave. The choices I had, if the   
   gate-keepers bothered with restocking were not much different from the   
   junk available to Glass to get for Assange. I know that Assange felt   
   as I did, regardless of the food in the visiting room. It was leaps   
   and bounds better than the food served any other time in prison.   
      
   Once the preliminaries were taken care of, we could get down to the   
   visit. But, there was never time enough. There was never enough time   
   to say or hear what you wanted or hoped. In prison, only during visits   
   does time move faster. A final embrace and then getting in line for   
   another strip search was how the visits with Holly ended for me. I   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)