At the risk of quoting Mephistopheles I repeat: Welcome to hell. A hell erected and maintained by human-governments, and blessed by black robed judges. A hell that allows you to see your loved ones, but not to touch them. A hell situated in America's boondocks, hundreds of miles away from most families. A white, rural hell, where most of the captives are black and urban. It is an American way of death.

The United States is Fast Becoming One of the Biggest Open-Air Prisons on Earth

Very few people in prison have voices that go beyond the wall. It's my job to do the work for them because they have no one.

Prison is a second-by-second assault on the soul, a day-to-day degradation of the self, an oppressive steel and brick umbrella that transforms seconds into hours and hours into days.

Politics is the art of making the people believe that they are in power, when in fact, they have none.

here and there in the barrios and the favelas, among those who have least, beat hearts of hope, fly sparks of Overcoming.

Elie Wiesel says that the greatest evil in the world is not anger or hatred, but indifference. If that is true, then the opposite is also true: that the greatest love we can show our children is the attention we pay them, the time we take for them. Maybe we serve children the best simply by noticing them.