I feel safe when...

This year for Night Out for Safety and Liberation, we asked people who are currently incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison in California to share their thoughts about what safety means. Read the below post by Juan Moreno Haines who is a Senior Editor with the San Quentin News:

At 59 years old and having sat inside prisons for the last 20 years, safety is knowing that my life has never lost its value in the free world.

I feel safe by having the opportunity to say everyone has value, that change is the only constant, and embracing each other with equanimity is comforting.

I feel safe when I can tell you that how I am living is unjustifiable and you understand that it is in our combined interest to improve my living conditions.

I feel safe when those who are in power are protecting my individual rights so that I can lay my head down to sleep in the cage that convicts call a cell and guards call my home.

I feel safe when I am able to talk to, meet with, and strategize with friends and colleagues who are doing identifiable things that would ensure a promising future for our community.

I feel safe when our community leaders realize that the school-to-prison pipeline is real and understand that corrective action is to empower teachers to use all means necessary to keep our children in school and to graduate them and to send them to college to become good citizens.

I feel safe when I am working with anyone willing to deconstruct prisons through creative projects, like Restore Oakland, that is designed to embolden returning citizens.

I feel safe when I am empowered to go forward with an idea that would improve the availability of self-help programs inside prisons that helps incarcerated people reunite with their family.

I feel safe when I am empowered to effectuate dialogue between parties who normally do not agree.

I feel safe when government policymakers believe that their directive is to bolster the dignity of all the people, no matter what, especially the ones who rarely have a voice.

I feel safe when the good people in government are truly doing the people’s work and are succeeding in improving the quality of life for the lowest socioeconomic strata in our society.

I feel safe when I can go to the yard and play with youngsters on the basketball court and instill into them some fundamental truisms, such as, the basic tenet of the game is that it has to be played in accordance to established rules.

I feel safe when after the game; a youngster comes up to me to shake my hand and he is looking forward to the next time we can play together.

I feel safe when I know that I can talk to that same youngster, no matter what he’s done, and take him into a self-help group that would get him to look deeply into himself, seeking betterment.