First Week December, 1997

We are also getting ready to take a trip upstate to the prison in Auburn New York to visit my "adopted" younger brother David. I joined a support committee for him a few years ago, that some Asian elders had begun.

Dave is a Chinese national who came to New York from Hong Kong illegally when he was 18 years old. He got a job in a Chinese restaurant where he worked the typical 14 hour day. When business got slow, he fired David and refused to give him his month pay.

Dave admits that he broke into the bosses house, and stole something equal to the value of his pay. He says he was wrong to do it, but had no money, didn't speak English, and was stranded in Long Island at the time. He was imprisoned for the minor crime of theft in June 1984.

In March 1986, two years later, he was transferred to the Clinton Correctional Facility. Within less than two weeks of his arrival, a Black inmate was stabbed to death in the yard. A tower guard over 100 yards away identified David as the killer even though David was not in the immediate vicinity, and had no blood on himself.

At the time David spoke very little English, could hardly converse with the other inmates, and as a new arrival did not know the dead man (who had also recently arrived from another prison).

No murder weapon was ever found, and there was no blood on David, even though the medical examiner testified that the wounds were so deep, blood would have to have been on the attacker. Dave was apprehended minutes after the stabbing, with no time to wash or change his clothes. He believes that he was picked by the guard because being Chinese he would stand out in a group of almost 600 mostly Black prisoners similarly dressed.

The translator for his case spoke a different dialect than his, and had no experience with court procedure, legal terminology or simultaneous translation. During the trial she said she could not translate Dave's exact words, and that the two of them had a "language problem", but the court said they had no one else who could translate.

Many of the Black inmates offered to testify that David did not commit the crime, but they were not allowed to testify. In August 1987, he was found guilty of second degree murder.

He's been in jail now for a total of thirteen years. He went in when he was nineteen, he is now thirty-two years old. He has taught himself to speak, read and write in English, and has become an active supporter of human rights issues. Evergreen and I visited him last year (I dreamed it first, then we just got up and drove for eight hours!) The guards told him we were Immigration coming to deport him, and he almost did not come down for his visit. Thankfully, he changed his mind, and that is how we first met him.

I send him copies of Back To The Blanket Journal, which he shares with the Native American and African American prisoners there. He is very aware of the Native American situation in the US, and more politically astute than many Americans.

One by one his appeals have all been rejected. There is one appeal more, and that's the end. Even if he wins this appeal, he will be deported due to the new immigration law (if you have any arrest you can be deported). He has been in this country so long that he doesn't have any real connection to Hong Kong (and now it's changed hands.) He fears he won't be welcomed coming back as an ex-offender.

So, Ish, we plan to make our visit soon, before the snow begins. Driving is hell up there when it snows.

By the way, I sent BTTB to the addresses of prisoners who had been e-mailed to me. Have any of them received the Journals? Recently, the post office has been playing strange tricks with the issues I've sent out. So if any of you have relatives whose names you sent me, and they didn't receive it, please let me know. I will try to follow up.

Well, it's 1:15am. Have a good day tomorrow, y'all.

*n*