Community Workshop This Saturday!

Join us this Saturday morning from 10 am – noon for our third Inside Out Community Workshop.  Free breakfast provided by The Upper Crust bakery, child care provided and lots of laughter and fun for all.

Go here or here for details.

See you there!
Kat Craft

The Not So Great Divide

Conspire alum Lauren Johnson continues her series on incarceration, recovery and life in general. 

I have recently been getting into some intense and tiring conversations with a friend of mine. This is a guy who I use to buy drugs from, and I also used to babysit his two year old daughter. He was arrested in Williamson County for possession of methamphetamine and was sentenced to LIFE! A life sentence these days translates into 40 years. I know someone else that served 10 years on a murder charge – go figure! Part of the reason for such a large sentence is that they used a criminal history from 20 years prior to enhance the charge. I have been writing him for the last 9 years. In the beginning of his sentence he accepted Jesus into his life and you could see it in every letter. I enjoyed getting his letters because you could feel the positive energy seeping out of the paper. Even in the midst of his circumstances he had such a positive attitude that it helped me to keep a positive perspective too.

In the last year or so I have noticed a different undercurrent in his letters. I started a dialogue with him about it and asked him what was going on with him. I got a few vague answers: he hasn’t been at peace, he hasn’t been cultivating his relationship with God the way he should, and reasons such as that. I believe him, but the theme that I detect is more like an infection and now I feel hateful energy coming out of his letters. It isn’t anything direct but it is noticeable. Not too long ago he asked me to look on the computer and see if I could find any information about a racially motivated riot at a state fair in Wisconsin. (Ed. note – much of the coverage of this incident is highly charged and could be triggering, especially the comments.)

I read some of the article, and then sent it to him, not really aware yet that I was fueling a fire. In his next letter, he asked me to research something else for him. He wanted to know what race is most likely to commit violent crime. In the hopes that I could find some statistics that would level the fire out, I did do a search. Unfortunately the majority of the results that search led me on, all came to the same page. A page with information from the KKK. This time I decided not to send the pages to him. I did tell him the basics of what I found and also mentioned that it held a lot of bias considering the source.

He has since written me back with the goal of having a debate. He asked me to do more research and said he is willing to accept being wrong if I can prove it.

I did write him back, I sent him the statistics that I found in my research on drug laws and arrests and statistics on those along with some information that I found from a website I found. I included that information to get him thinking in a different way. I also told him that as far as I am concerned the statistics he is looking for, are irrelevant. In my eyes, anything that spends time fueling hate or ill feelings towards others is wasted time. The time spent looking for reasons to separate us from others could be better spent on education or spiritual development.

I know that a racial divide exists in prison. It appears intensified there and has become a part of the culture that seems impossible to change. This seems to be even more true in the men’s prisons. My experience in the woman’s prison system is limited. I have only been on a few small units, where most of the women had small sentences, I don’t have first hand knowledge of how the entire system operates.

I do get an idea based on the things I see in the letters. It is subtle, but it is there. Why is racism more pronounced in prison? My best guess? Because when inmates arrive to get processed in, they are all essentially the same.. It is a method similar to what is used in the armed forces boot camps. Everyone starts on the same level – for men that means the same hair cut, same clothes, and the same basic belongings. When they walk in the doors they are just like everyone else there. First timers don’t know what to expect and try to find a way to fit in. The most obvious commonality would be skin color.

I remember an ice breaker activity we did in a training session for the peer educators there. The instructor placed stickers of various colors on the foreheads of all the participants and then told everyone to find the people they belonged with. There were no further instructions given except that we couldn’t talk. Interestingly everyone still managed to group themselves by the color of the sticker.

Sometimes I struggle with how to deal with dialogues like the one I am having with my friend. There is a part of me that wants to fix it. The part of me that wants to say something to change the way things are or the way my friend thinks. There is a part of me that wants to give up and says stop wasting your time writing these people. I have prayed about how to handle it as well. I keep coming up with the same answer. I don’t have to fight, I don’t have to argue. It is not my responsibility to convince these people to change. The best thing I can do is operate out of love, and by doing that, be a good example. That is often the most powerful thing anyone can do. It may not be an immediate effect. It is, however, highly effective. Looking back on my life, the people that have had the biggest impact on me weren’t those who preached, or scolded. They weren’t the ones who talked the talk. It has always been the people who lived as the example. So I will continue to write my friend. I will answer his questions to me honestly. I will live as an example, and not give up. I will allow love to transcend the disagreements. If that doesn’t change anything for him, that is okay. It may impact someone later on down the line.

-Lauren Johnson

Paralells

Lauren Johnson, Conspire alum, continues her series on addiction, incarceration and life in general.

I think it is interesting to see parallels popping up in my life. I have recently noticed that I am building myself back into the person I was meant to be, one action at a time. I think that is also how I destroyed myself. I realize that at some point the lines that were drawn in the sand slowly faded with no trace of where they once were. Boundaries moved further and further back until they were all but gone. I know this happens to others as well. It can apply specifically to the drug use, but it tends to spill into all areas of life.

Trying to control usage is actually like a step into the addiction. It is somewhat clear that the potential for a problem exists and so heading it off seems like a good idea. This is the part where the person makes rules for usage. “ I will only drink/use on the weekend”, “ I will only do it x number of times a month”, “ I will stop at x time and go home”. At some point though, we come up on the line in the sand and move it back just a smidge. Talk ourselves into just a little more, just a little longer. Make an addendum to the rule that makes it acceptable for now. I think you can see where that leads right?

During my last incarceration, my husband and I had gotten into a fight over the phone. I don’t think I called him back for two weeks because I was so furious. I don’t know if I am the only one that does this, but later on while I lay there in bed, I replayed the conversation in my mind, and said all the stuff I had been too flustered to say before. Specifically I was (in my mind) telling my husband, “ When YOU do X then it shows me that you don’t trust me.” God took this opportunity to interrupt my mentally televised programming and tell me something about myself. It was almost as if He had tapped me on the shoulder and whispered in my ear, “ By the way, when you are out there stealing, you are showing me that you don’t trust me to provide for you”.
I wanted to argue; we weren’t talking about ME! But I understood that this was a lesson that I needed to get.

Stealing isn’t something that I always did and honestly, most of the times I did it, I was a nervous wreck. It wasn’t big stuff but it had become habitual. Somewhere along the way that line had been erased and I had no qualms about doing it, just a small fear of getting caught. I had a small presence of conscience that would occasionally ask me what it would take for me to change that behavior but itwas soft and infrequent. I wouldn’t walk into someone’s house and steal something, so I suppose there were some boundaries or rules for this behavior as well. Typically I would steal as I was shopping. Buy a hundred dollars worth of stuff at HEB or Walmart, and steal ten to twenty dollars worth of smaller stuff that fit easily into my purse. Perhaps I saw it as a bonus, but in prison,I was removed from that temptation. Out of seemingly nowhere I was being dealt with.

So I chose to listen and to make the vow to stop stealing. I chose to trust God to provide for my needs. I have to tell you that in the same way that the line slowly eroded, it is slowly being replaced. I came home and stopped blatantly stealing things, only to realize on a regular basis that there are so many other areas in my life where a small act of dishonesty is essentially the same thing. Amazing how far reaching those lines had gotten. I am proud to report that the more I find myself doing the right thing, the easier it is becoming.

This is not the only area that I have been tested in. Being labeled as an addict, I had to really consider whether or not to continue to use pain killers when I came home. I have been taking them for a few years due to back and foot pain, from a wreck that happened that broke my foot and left it in fairly frequent pain. I have never abused the painkillers and take them less than they are prescribed. In prison, I didn’t take them at all. There they offer ibuprofen, but to get that you have to wait in a long line at crazy hours of the day and night in extreme weather. It just didn’t seem worth it to me since most of my pain comes when I am in motion. If I am sitting or laying around I barely notice it. While I was there I noticed it occasionally which is why I began to struggle with the idea. I know too many stories that started out with someone taking pain killers for actual pain, that ended in prison or with a bad addiction. I don’t want to have that story to share later on down the line.

I should also mention that when I was doing methamphetamine I felt no pain, so I would often sell my pills. I also had people that I would buy prescriptions from to turn around and sell for a profit. So when I was evaluating this in jail, I prayed about it. The answer that I got, was that if I can do it HONESTLY, then I can do it. If I am not being honest, then it needs to stop. I do still take them. My doctor is aware of my history. I don’t take them as often as they are prescribed; I take them as needed, which is less. I don’t buy them from or sell them to anyone else.

The parallel with this situation is that when I got home I made it clear to everyone that this is how I was being led in my walk. At first it was almost like people hadn’t heard me say it. So when asked to go against it I would gently remind the person (and myself) that this isn’t how I do things anymore. I notice that each time I stand up for what I believe in, the stronger I feel in doing it. I also notice that each time the situation presents itself in a sneakier manner in an attempt to get past me in disguise. I am not falling for it. I like this side of the line in the sand better.

-Lauren Johnson

Conspire Theatre: working with conviction

Have I ever mentioned how much I love the puns that writers think up when describing Conspire and our work?  Every time I think, “Surely, there are no more puns!” another one appears.  Thanks to the Austin Chronicle and Katherine Catmull for a really thorough, well-written article about us.  Kathy actually came to one of our classes, which gave her a much greater understanding of our work and in her own words, turned into a Conspire convert.  Excerpt below and  click here to read the full article. 

So what are the classes about then?

“I’m just big on playing games and joyfulness and laughter.”

Uh, play, joyfulness, and laughter? What’s the point of that? A few hours of silly theatre games over the course of a few weeks – what good could that possibly do a woman in prison?

That’s what I was thinking, anyway, until I visited that class. I came out a believer, and for one reason: It was so ridiculously fun. We were in a prison, and we could not stop laughing. And something inside you just knows that is good for you – that it is essentially good for you.

The women Conspire serves seem to know it, too. Craft describes an exercise she once tried “where women create a character who could be in the class with them, and then they discuss, basically, how she got to jail, what happened to her. And we made it about two days through that workshop, and on day three, the women all came in and said: ‘We have to talk to you.’”

Michelle Dahlenburg, Conspire’s associate director, interjects: “‘We’ve had a meeting.’”

Craft nods: “‘We’ve had a meeting, and we’re not doing this. This isn’t what this class is about. We know why we’re here, we know what we’ve done, we know all the shit that we have to deal with. This class is for reaching beyond.’”

Even though this story and my own experience told me that Conspire’s focus on joy and play was essentially good in itself, I found some science to back me up – and a tragic, close-to-home example, too. In the late 1960s, Texas Gov. John Connally’s Fact Finding Task Force for the Charles J. Whitman Texas Tower Case “unanimously identified [Whitman's] lifelong lack of play as a key factor in his homicidal actions” that led to 16 dead and twice as many injured. That’s according to Stuart Brown, then a psychiatrist at Baylor University and a member of that task force. Now, on his National Institute for Play website, Brown writes, “A lifelong lack of play deprived [Whitman] of opportunities to view life with optimism, test alternatives, or learn the social skills that, as part of spontaneous play, prepare individuals to cope with life stress.”

Grounding

Our class in maximum security is really coming together and feeling like a group, instead of a bunch of women shoved in a room together.  Under the advice of my therapist, who specializes in somatic therapy and recovery from trauma, I’ve been “grounding” the women at the beginning and end of each class.  I’m not an expert on this by any means, but grounding is something that has helped me immensely in processing and effectively handling my own emotions without freaking out or having a meltdown.  I used to have a very short fuse and could go from normal to rageful, panicked or extremely depressed in a few seconds.  I see this same kind of behavior from some of the women in my class – a careless word or action can escalate really fast into an intense conflict or into deep anger or sadness.  While it’s also helpful to figure out what’s actually underneath that anger or sadness – is it fear?  helplessness?  sorrow? – I’m not really equipped to lead that kind of work, especially in a group, especially in an hour.  So we ground.

It’s a way of being really present in your body and of soothing your nervous system so that you don’t experience those jagged highs and lows as much.  I’ve been doing this for about 2 years now and even at this point, I consciously do it 3 times a day and then unconsciously throughout the day as things pop up.  How I lead it is: Sit in a chair and take nice slow, deep breaths in and out.  Make sure you’re breathing deeply into your belly and exhaling slowly.  Notice how you’re sitting in the chair.  Feel your back against in the chair and in your mind’s eye, trace the outline of what parts of your back are touching the chair.  Keep breathing.  Now notice your hands and what they’re touching.  Feel the texture of whatever it is they’re touching and the warmth if they’re touching your own body – your legs or if your hands are clasped.  Keep breathing.  Now notice your feet in your shoes.  Feel which parts of your feet are touching your shoes and which aren’t.  Take a nice deep inhale, then exhale all of the air in your body.  Relax and let your body fill with air.  Open your eyes.

It only takes about 2 minutes and has already seemed to affect the mood of the class in max.  There are other factors at play as well, of course and I’m also trying to tone down my crazy energy and be pretty calm (but still fun!), which is interesting because when I get to our second class I need to ramp up the energy in order to keep the women in PRIDE engaged.  We had four new women in PRIDE today which brought our group up in size and enthusiasm, which helped.

Both of our classes went well today.  I really love when women’s talents start to come out, when the group feels safe enough for women to start taking chances and showing what great actors, improvisors and writers they are.  I wonder how they get to express that in their lives outside of incarceration.  Some have told me that they don’t or can’t but I know several women I’ve worked with have been musicians, writers, dancers or actors.

We talked about status again today, and next week we’ll see two character scenes, in which one character has higher status than the other but then for whatever reason, that status shifts.  Some of our pairs will be: pastor/congregant, car salesman/buyer, pimp/prostitute, drag rat/UT student, boyfriend/girlfriend.  I can’t wait to see them.

-Kat Craft