I would like to start a discussion about ending solitary confinement. I'd like to start a discussion about the removal of MO wings - an "MO" is a "Mental Observation" inmate - from Rikers Island, to be set up in mental health institutions. You can't put people in jail for having mental disorders.

I really don't feel good about leaving my house anymore. I don't feel really good about being anywhere in New York City alone anymore.

If somebody is acting maladjusted - which means not happy to be at Rikers - the protocol, as I understand it and have been told by COs unofficially or officially, is to pepper spray that individual to sedate them.

I felt like there wasn't a political discourse. I felt like there was just one set of values, and any one set of values was wrong; that there should at least be room for conversation.

I can be all pissed off at the oppression of the state, but what does that really mean? Well, it's the tacit consent of a public.

Jail is just another micro-society. It just happens that here, the problems are far more out in the open, we don't live with the facades of lies that democracy or capitalism creates for us.

I would like to start a discussion about ending solitary confinement. I'd like to start a discussion about the removal of MO wings - an "MO" is a "Mental Observation" inmate - from Rikers Island, to be set up in mental health institutions. You can't put people in jail for having mental disorders.