In prison, as elsewhere in society, presidential elections lead to more than the usual amount of discussion of political issues. This year even more than most as—after many previous disappointments—measures were approved by the federal government giving those imprisoned a small amount of relief. Revision of the crack sentencing law, the making of consequent sentence reductions retroactive, and passage of the Second Chance Act (authorizing needed transition programs for released inmates) have made a meaningful, visible difference. Although far from sufficient, these provide a realistic basis to hope that further, more fundamental reform, can be enacted. The fact of any positive government initiative, in turn, gives electoral activity a relevance long lacking, offering a concrete path by which hopes may be realized.

This is true even though there is no obvious connection between sentencing reform and the presidential elections; the subject not having been raised by any of this year’s presidential campaigns. At this moment, for a significant number, that relevance is expressed in support of Barack Obama’s presidential bid—though not out of any illusion that sentencing reform is at the top of his agenda. Understanding the reasons for that support constitutes an argument why those outside prison should also support Obama’s candidacy as a means to advance the overall agenda for social justice. What follows is an account of the substance of discussions I’ve had, observations I’ve made, to explain that connection.

To begin with late last summer, those in this federal facility who saw the Bush Administration as hostile to their interests (unsurprisingly, a larger majority than in the outside world), generally expressed the wish that Hilary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee—she was someone known, the Clinton Administration was identified with a healthier economy in which jobs were more plentiful, and she was perceived as a fighter who could take on and defeat the Republicans.

In other words, on grounds that Clinton herself identified as those which could win her the nomination and general election. For those critical of the Clinton record, hope was put in rumors of a Gore campaign, in the thought that some candidate yet unknown would emerge, or hope was denied with the sentiment that the fix was in and Bush would handpick his successor or find some way to stay in office. Little thought was given to Obama who was seen as coming from nowhere, and of having little chance to win.

Personally, I’ll add that, while busy working on my appeal, I felt more distant from the primary process, from the elections, than I can ever remember being. Dennis Kucinich expressed my politics, however, there appeared to be even less of a movement behind his campaign than during his previous run, and thus made me unsure what purpose was served. I liked John Edwards’ focus on poverty and economic injustice, but also believed that without tapping into deeper social concerns, he would be no more successful than Richard Gephart, Tom Harkin or others who had run on similar themes. Hilary Clinton I opposed because, of the leading Democratic candidates, she was most hawkish on the war and overall foreign policy; as well as because her campaign approach was antagonistic to efforts by Howard Dean, by local activists to ground Democratic Party work in local communities. As to Obama, I vacillated, knowing of his past activism, but not seeing enough in his Senate record or campaign approach to sufficiently differentiate himself from Edwards or Clinton.

The people around me, however, were beginning to notice a difference though I failed to see this until being transported early in 2008 to one than another county jail en route to and returning from my appeal hearing. My awareness deepened on Super Tuesday in a small, crowded unit, everyone grouped around the one, omnipresent TV set watching with enthusiasm reports of Obama’s victories. Significant in this to me was not so much the enthusiasm, as it was the reasons given: Obama was supported as someone who would end the war and devote resources now going to Iraq to jobs, housing, education—the message of his commercials shown repeatedly on TV in the run-up to the Virginia primary. Added to this was a more subtle reason which, even if not as directly articulated, was equally critical in the support Obama enjoyed and continues to enjoy from those imprisoned. To put it in unremarkable language, over the course of the Fall and early Winter, Obama came to be seen as a candidate capable of bringing people together, capable of winning. In and of itself, there is nothing unusual about this; Hilary Clinton’s lead assumption was that she would be better able to win than anyone else, while virtually all mainstream candidates present themselves as unifiers. Thus it is important to see that the way in which Obama is seen as bringing people together has a specific meaning for prisoners as a challenge to the marginalization to which all are subjected, for black prisoners in particular as a challenge to prejudice and racism. A challenge met by connecting the insecurities felt by the majority of working Americans, with the sense of grievance and injustice experienced by those trapped in poverty. Poverty, I’ll add, in which the way out is ever more difficult to find except by paths beset by roadblocks that lead to being behind fences such as that which I can see while typing.

In this respect, a broad parallel exists with what Jesse Jackson attempted to accomplish in his presidential runs—Obama’s success to date derives from pulling together the constituencies to which Jackson spoke in the 1980’s (and no one has seriously engaged since) and the constituency that backed Howard Dean four years ago. Noting this I’ll add what should be obvious, Obama’s political positions are not as consistently progressive as Jackson’s, and nothing remotely equivalent to a radical independent organization such as the Rainbow has been created. This has led some critics of Obama to dismiss or minimize the content of the support he has received as based on image alone; in particular, to condescendingly dismiss his support in the black community as based purely on racial pride. Pride is a factor, a more important one as the campaign continues—yet it is a pride that has content to it. Were his views those of Alan Keyes, he would be dismissed as Keyes always is. Were he a supporter of the war like Condoleeza Rice, he might still be respected (as many here respect her), but his politics would be rejected (as hers are rejected). Obama’s “blackness” alone—which to anybody paying the least bit of attention has never been his singular form of self-identification – would simply not have been sufficient to win him the support he has gained. Even agreement on the issues would not have been sufficient to garner for him the level of identification he has attained. As an example, one need only think back on Al Sharpton’s campaign four years ago—I can recall conversations here in Petersburg in which many expressed agreement with what Sharpton was saying, people who would then discuss which of the then candidates they wanted to see win, in which Sharpton’s name was absent. The reason: Sharpton offered no path out of that aforementioned marginalization. Obama’s mixture of a social liberalism that speaks to people across racial barriers is the content of that pride especially for those whose lives are still visibly and overtly circumscribed by barriers of race—it is the combination of a broadly defined liberalism and a broadly built campaign that has won for Obama a level of interest and support I have not seen in either of the other two presidential campaigns I’ve witnessed while in prison.

True, at this point Obama’s support has reached a tipping point so that many of those black prisoners who pay less attention to public affairs support him reflexively, unable to clearly explain why. Instead they base themselves on respect for more knowledgeable friends, as well as on a less definable sense of change in the air that is graspable. That is no different from how support for any candidate or any movement grows when it breaks out of the narrow bounds in which initially contained. For example, in 1967, anyone opposed to the war in Vietnam could—would almost have had to—been able to explain their reasons; by 1971 as opposition swelled, many opposed the war out of a generalized sense that it was wrong, even when unable to explain the reasons why. The challenge for activists is to take the possibility offered by such movements, by particular candidates, see them as moments of resistance and hope, and use them to deepen understanding, to strengthen the connection between understanding and action. A process that cannot take place if all that is seen in popular opinion is its limitations, weaknesses, lacks; respect for what those become active do see and understand is necessary if more radical possibilities are to be opened.

As I noted, during Super Tuesday I was at a county jail, a place where for most of the people present incarceration was of more recent vintage, thus feeling themselves still a part of a community to which they are tied by family and friends and to which they see themselves as someday returning. Thus, to me, it was particularly significant that, later in February, when I was returned to federal prison, I found an equivalent degree of support for Obama, the ambivalence felt last Fall long forgotten. I also noticed at the time that support for Obama had not yet translated into opposition to Hilary Clinton; he was the preferred of two candidates either of whom was thought worthy of support to end any attempted continuation by Republicans of Bush Administration policies. That respect for Clinton, however, ended once her campaign’s negative attacks on Obama began to be noticeably expressed in racially coded language a development that solidified support for him and left only hostility toward her.

Perhaps there was more empathy for Clinton at that stage in a women’s prison; her treatment by the media still brings up traces of the venom/trivialization to which the Clinton Administration was subjected, alongside the particular forms contempt/condescension and viciousness directed toward her as a woman. The problem with the Clinton campaign, as with the Clinton Administration while in office, however, is that almost always the response to such attack, the response to pressure from the right, has been rightwing shifts on either of the Clinton’s part—that was true on the issue of gays in the military, on health care reform, on welfare reform. During this campaign it has been over being “toughest” on defense, a response to attacks different from that of Obama.

This difference was also seen in how, as the primary competition intensified, Clinton’s campaign began to redefine unity by writing out black voters. Although the loss of much of her initially strong base in the black community was inevitable once Obama’s campaign took off, she could have continued to contest for those votes and thus showed her efforts to be still inclusive. That she didn’t reflects a failure not on her part alone, but of too many other leading Democratic politicians in the recent past. Obama, by contrast, at no point attempted to play off any one constituency against another. For those listening, his story of being raised by a single mother, a mother who is white is heard and has resonance as a metaphor that speaks to crossing barriers. Assertions of pride, of self-respect are necessary to any movement that challenges the indignities to which people are subjected (it is, for example, the core element of any union organizing campaign), when such assertions are formed through identification with something larger, the potential impact is greater still. Therein too lies the possibility of overcoming the destructive tendency to pit forms of oppression against one another; the oppression that is most painful is that which is personally suffered—solidarity consists in using self-awareness of what has been experienced as a bridge to understand and connect to the experience of others. This is a difficult challenge, so to whatever extent Obama’s campaign has been able to achieve this should be respected. To see this point more clearly, prison realities should be considered.

Each of us here is unfree, subject to institutional restrictions on our personal liberty—a commonality across other lines amongst us in distinction to people outside. Yet that reality by no means dissolves all those distinctions, hierarchies, divisions, of race, gender, nationality, language, culture or class that don’t stop at the prison gate. To imagine any meaningful alternative politics that doesn’t speak to both layers of difference and commonality is to imagine an alternative politics devoid of actual living human beings in all their manifold complexity. That has been too lacking in both radical and liberal formations, it should therefore come as no surprise that when seen many are willing to risk being hopeful.

In this respect too, there is something to be hopeful about in that many white prisoners are also willing to consider Obama, and if such support is not as widespread or as strong as amongst black prisoners, it is nevertheless a sign of change. In this sense, a change brought about by the same combination of concern about the economy, opposition to the war and thus a willingness to listen and pay attention that wasn’t as much in evidence four or eight years ago. This doesn’t mean racism has disappeared—prison is a place where such distinctions and lines in the sand are drawn more sharply and openly then outside (again that dialectic of commonality and separation) -- and it certainly influences the attitude in the elections of many. But many not, and that is a tribute of Obama’s campaign and again reminiscent of Jackson’s with the same caveat as before, broader, less radical. I’ll note too that I’m less able to speak of the views (so long as engaging in such a breakdown) of Latino prisoners—for almost all whom I knew have been moved elsewhere over the past few months. That is a reminder that even the minimal rights that most prisoners have are better than their absence, as those classed as “alien” know too well.

As that should make clear, all my observations are purely anecdotal; nothing scientific about them. Prison life is peculiar, you can run into one person ten times a day, then he can switch work schedules or units and you may not see him again for ten years. Moreover, I don’t pretend to have captured everyone’s views, we have some committed Hilary Clinton supporters, we have John McCain supporters, we have all the normal nuances and divisions of political life. Nor do I want to create a false impression, most people here have never voted, have never attended a political rally or participated in a political meeting, while knowledge of exactly how our political system functions is sketchy. That is true outside prison too, but is particularly evident in confinement, as is the fact that many, many here fall into the category of don’t care/don’t pay attention frame-of-mind; seeing elections as simply a con game which politicians use to enrich themselves. In fact, the underlying belief—that social change is impossible so that one has to do what one can to get ahead – has a good deal to do with the choices made that subsequently let to arrest and imprisonment.

The cynicism and despair in such an outlook are understandable, as they become a rationalization to stand on the sidelines, however, they simply reinforce the problem of finding a way out. That is the frustration too of those people who reject the system and participation in it from a more radical analysis, people who can, of course, also be found in prison. For they have no clear way to connect an accurate analysis with what’s wrong with our society to a form of action that challenges the cynicism around us, that challenges the system itself.

Which brings us back to Obama’s popularity and its importance simply as a step—and even if a small step, a needed one before others can be taken. The conversations I’ve listened too and taken part in over these past months have made me a stronger supporter of Obama than I otherwise would have been; have strengthened my perception that his election could be a critical part of building a movement of resistance to our country’s current direction, could help provide the space or framework in which more radical alternatives are again spoken and heard. Could is the operative word, we don’t know if Obama will be elected, if he is no one can say for certain what his Administration would do. An answer to that won’t be found by balancing his progressive past with his highly ambiguous Senate record, nor by reading tea leaves into the vagueness of some of his policy statements against the definite strengths he has shown in his campaign.

Attempts to look at political developments in such a way, rather, miss what is essential, as if government officials exist in an unchanging environment in which everything takes place according to an already written script in a world divided solely between the manipulators and the manipulated. Those who decry the illusion of supporting a liberal alternative to a system they correctly understand is impervious to fundamental reform confuse that issue—unintentionally giving more importance to the personality of political leaders or government officials than is warranted. Stringing along a list of sins of commission or omission of this or that figure, they isolate that person from the pressures of conflicting constituencies, seeing him or her as a product of pure calculation—thereby assuming a credulity on the part of people for supporting someone so revealed that itself defies reason, and implicitly accepting a powerlessness of people which if true would be reason for hopelessness. But lecturing people from a sense of superior knowledge is not organizing, for organizing begins with listening and understanding those with whom one wants to reach.

Understanding, that is why disenfranchised people would support a Harvard-educated candidate for president, why they would support someone who is not always concrete and whose proposed solutions don’t go far enough. The answer to that is not ignorance—without forgetting the extent to which the dominant media and our education system keep people ill-informed or misinformed about the world we live in; the fact is that counter-narratives speaking an alternative truth persist and have resonance because they are consistent with lived experience. The reason why more progressive candidates are unable to generate more than minimal support—Sharpton and Kucinich both come to mind as do varied third-party campaigns—is not because people disagree with what they say; rather its because the lived experience of many of those listening means they notice that there is an enormous gap between the details of what is proposed and the lack of detail of how any of those ideas would be implemented in the face of fierce opposition.

To go back to Obama, nobody knows what he will do, but if he is able to overcome our country’s racism and actually win election we can expect some initial efforts to rein in the excesses of the Bush Administration, some measures to ameliorate the worst conditions which people are experiencing in terms of rights, in terms of insecurity. For his corporate supporters that will be enough, for most of those voting for him it will be sufficient only as a first step. It will be up to those who want genuine social justice to build movements that give him the possibility of pushing further; finding out then whether he will or won’t remembering that the key will not be him but us (us defined as those who worked for his election, for social justice activists, the left) and what we do, how we organize. How we use the social solidarity the campaign is developing as the basis of a renewed social solidarity. Will that be enough—no, the structural roots of the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan, of neo-liberal economics, of the authoritarian aspects of our political culture won’t go gently in the night. Only, however, by working in good faith with attempts to improve what is, is it even possible to imagine the building of the necessary, broad-based, independent, radical formations able to press for deeper changes.

It gets back to linking thinking and doing, of learning through what we build. And even facing up to the possibility of defeat—which is not an uncommon experience to those who challenge existing power. Defeat, however, doesn’t have to mean disillusionment, certainly those in prison have suffered their share of setbacks yet most are able to find a way to try to live again. The key is to find a way to involve people, for only through involvement and forms of organization able to reflect on that involvement can people move beyond a particular victory or defeat. That is not an argument for a “realism” that fails to challenge what is, rather it is an argument for engagement that allows people to understand their potential strength. The better able we are to create forms of political activity that engages people; the better able we are to humanize even slightly the climate in which that involvement takes place, the better able we are to challenge a system that imprisons two million and more at home while killing indiscriminately abroad those who refuse to act as dictated.

I began by writing about sentence reform—it is an issue with which virtually everyone in federal prison is concerned. It would be impossible for me to begin to count the number of times over the years rumors have swept the system that parole was coming back, that the mandatory-minimum time sentences were going to be reduced. Rumors always proving to be just that, leaving in their wake the generalized sense that nothing ever changes, until the next rumor makes its rounds. A pendulum that reflects the essence of powerlessness, of having no means by which to effectuate anything other than one’s own immediate life (itself circumscribed). The source of wishful thinking as it is of cynicism, it is the rationale for political withdrawal. By contrast, in all the many, many conversations I’ve had/heard about the elections, I have not once encountered a single individual express support for Obama primarily on the basis that he will bring about sentence reform. Now in the back of everyone’s mind there may well be the hope that an Obama presidency might bring that possibility nearer (I admit to allowing myself to indulge that thought from time to time), yet when discussion goes forward there is far greater focus on the potential for change in our society’s overall direction. That is to say on hopes his election might lead to a more inclusive society, for only in such a society will the injustice, the madness of our penal system change.

In sum, radicals and progressives ought to join those—including those in prison—who have already decided to back Obama, see where the campaign can take us, see what can then be accomplished.

Kurt Stand June 2008