Dearest Miss: Today is Wednesday, July 13th. I’m finally under the 3-years-to-go mark, that milestone was passed last Saturday. My release date, providing I maintain my good time credit, is July 9th 2014. Only 1,091 days to go to that glorious date on my calendar.
Marc and Jodie, May 30th 2011Marc and Jodie, May 30th 2011One of the ways to lose good time credit (47-54 days), and get put in the SHU (solitary confinement) for 90 days, lose your visitation rights for a year, and phone & commissary privileges for a while too, is to fail a drug screening urine test. Today I had one of those, for the first time in 15 months in the US federal prison system. I am not concerned, because I do not drink the homemade wine/alcohol that is made and consumed by many inmates in prisons, nor have I ever smoked tobacco, marijuana or any other drug, nor consumed any drugs in any way in 15 months of incarceration.
So I am fine. But the drummer for the band that existed before mine, Laid-Back, a superb band of Brian, Grizz, Terry and Branden, was broken up because Branden tested positive for marijuana and he’s been in the SHU (Special Housing Unit – solitary confinement) for 60 days now. You don’t get to play in a band when you’re in the SHU. You get absolutely nothing’. So it impacts big time when a member of a band tests positive. That’s why Laid-Back was disbanded, and Grizz and Terry reformed with me on bass guitar and a new arrival, Damian, on drums. Our band is named STUCK (as in ‘Stuck In Prison’).
I did the five tests to qualify to receive my GED (General Educational Development) and got the highest marks in all five tests – it was posted on the board “Marc Emery – Valedictorian”. On April 1st 1975, I quit high school only three months from graduation to open City Lights Bookshop in my hometown of London, Ontario. I never have needed any high school diploma as I have been in business for myself since I was eleven. (On January 1st 1971, I started Marc’s Comic Room, a vintage comic book business by mail order and retail run out of my bedroom, and prospered. By March 1975, I decided to open a vintage, antiquarian and used book shop in the downtown of my hometown, which still operates today under different owners). But here in prison they seemed determined to have me get my grade 12 completion, so I obliged. My mother was constantly hectoring me to get my high school diploma even a decade after I became a successful bookseller in London, Ontario, so if they have a town crier in the afterworld, I hope she’s heard the news that I have finally, 36 years later, graduated high school.
When I was at D. Ray James Concentration Camp for foreigners in Folkston, Georgia, a place I still loathe the memory of, I was bitten by the most venomous spider in all the United States, a Brown Recluse spider. Often very dangerous and even sometimes fatal, this bite caused a huge swelling around the bite marks on my left buttock, and within 10 days caused a two-dollar-coin-sized hole in my buttocks that seeped blood and pus for over two weeks, finally healing completely after 45 days. Over four months later, it has left permanent scarring and a purple discoloration. It also caused me to contract MRSA, and penicillin resistant Staphylococcal infection. This is unfortunate, as MRSA is often fatal. In fact, one of the inmates in my unit at D Ray James also picked up a MRSA infection just after I did and they couldn’t control it at D Ray James, and reports from other inmates claim his leg was recently amputated and then the infection was still untreatable so he died as a result of this same bacteria I now harbor permanently in my body!
So now this is one more hazard of prohibition I have to deal with for the rest of my life, along with the stress this causes you and its potential life-shortening impact on me. If I die in prison, or because of prison-related causes, it’s imperative that all my supporters in the USA, Canada and around the world remember who was responsible for putting me in a US federal prison for peaceful, consenting activities that harmed no one and advanced a great movement. This list of villains in that case is large.
Along with this deadly bacteria I now carry permanently inside me, waiting to be activated, I have been beset by painful boils on the upper cleft of my buttocks (where the MRSA culture was extracted) and now hemorrhoids, which I have never had before. The hemorrhoids come because of pressure caused by all the hard surface seats that are in the prison. The chair in my cell, the seats in the Chow Hall and Rec area, even the toilet seat surface, all are steel, hard, and very uncomfortable. I can truly say that 2011 has been a genuine pain in the ass for me!
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