([Assata Shakur is a former prisoner at the Edna Mahon Correctional Institute in New Jersey.] It seems to me that [her] poem "Affirmation", which is so strong a statement about the human ability to overcome, belongs in these pages - B.K.)

Affirmation by Assata Shakur

I believe in living. I believe in the spectrum
of Beta days and Gamma people.
I believe in sunshine
in windmills and waterfalls,
tricycles and rocking chairs.
And I believe that seeds grow into sprouts,
And sprouts grow into trees.
I believe in the magic of the hands.
And in the wisdom of the eyes.
I believe in rain and tears
And in she blood of infinity.

I believe in life
And I have seen the death parade
march through the torso of the earth.
sculpting mud bodies in its path.
I have seen the destruction of the daylight,
and seen the bloodthirsty maggots
prayed to and saluted.

I have seen the kind become the blind
and the blind become the bind
in one easy lesson.
I have walked on cut glass.
I have eaten crow and blunder bread
and breathed the stench of indifference.

I have been locked by the lawless.
Handcuffed by the haters.
Gagged by the greedy. A
and, if I know anything at all,
it's that a wall is just a wall
and nothing more at all.
It can be broken down.

I believe in living.
I believe in birth.
I believe in the sweat of love
and in the fire of truth.

And I believe that a lost ship,
steered by tired, seasick sailors,
can still be guided home
to port.

8. PRISONERS OBSERVATIONS

"[Prisoners] are ... subjected to a dehumanizing process that someone on the street cannot hope to understand. Many prison guards refuse to recognize that the punishment prisoners receive is to be taken away from ... family members and communities - and to lose thelr freedom. Being sent to prison is their punishment, they are not ... sent to prison to be punished." [After the Madness: "A Judge's Own Prison Memoir," Sol Wachtler, 1997]

AQ, USP Lexington, Kentucky

"I would be more than happy to give you any information that will help to stop this kind of torture ... I will give you whatever is needed so that the public can see the truth."

SN, Los Angeles, California

"I know this isn't right. I'm not, nor ever have been on discipline ... HELP!

JRB, Limon Correctional Facility, Limon, Colorado

"I am 51 years old, have done time since 1967. I [have] been to Marion twice ..., been to Leavenworth twice, several other pens. I have served approximately 20 years in Wisconsin ... I've been four-pointed, chained between box door and solid door [in] segregation, chained to wall by toilet, to floor in hospital. I am not crying but I figured we were beyond this once we came into the 70s. But now the prisons seem [to] have the courts' and the government's approval to start all over again. ... and now beatings are treated lightly again because the president signed away our Constitutional rights and he is just as much a criminal as I."

KJM, Northern prison, Somers, Connecticut "I cannot find the rational relationship between writing a writ and being chained up. ... Are not stocks and other shaming penalties outlawed? .. There needs to [be] some light shed upon their machiavellian and draconian practices."