➤ NOT GANGSTER, LOVE, from p.21
ment that’s greater than themselves.
Because this is about liberation
for people that have been
enslaved for hundreds of years.
CONWAY:Well, we built a library,
is what we did. We took two cells
and lined the walls with books. We
had everything in there from “The
Black Book” to “The Green Book.”
But mainly what helped us was
Malcolm X’s autobiography and
“Soledad Brother.” They were what
prisoners with no consciousness at
all was willing to work through.
I did a number of programs. The
last one was Say Their Own Words,
which brought together 100 prisoners
and speakers from around
the country. It was a college level,
interactive program. At the end of
that program, they shipped us all
around the state, so we wouldn’t
continue it. Of course, when we got
to other prisons, we polluted that
population also.
We ended up building something
called Friend of a Friend, which
was an offi cial mentoring program
focusing on skills that members
of street organizations needed to
negotiate with each other. The last
prison I was in, every week, somebody
➤ BAKERY VANDAL, from p.22
bol of solidarity.
“Seriously? Do we have to bring
EVERYTHING into our store at the
end of the night??? Someone felt
the need to slice our #pride fl ag off
with a knife last night,” the post
read. “I know in the grand scheme
of what’s going on in our city these
days, this isn’t monumental. We
➤ TAIWAN PRIDE, from p.22
ent denominations, was canceled
when a controversy erupted in response
to President Tsai Ing-wen’s
Facebook post praising the Pride
festivities.
Organizers of the prayer event,
citing their opposition to marriage
equality and their pique over Tsai’s
support for Pride , then asked the
president’s offi ce to send an envoy
to the annual breakfast in place of
herself.
The prayer event was subsequently
would be murdered. And after
three or four years of Friend of
a Friend, it was down to two murders
a year.
SALDAÑA:We need to recognize
that mass incarceration is a reality
for literally hundreds of thousands
of families in our communities.
This is the legacy of racism, which
dominates this criminal legal system.
This is where mass incarceration
came from — imprisoning or
actually murdering grassroots
community leaders, and imprisoning
the communities that support
them. What do we do about it?
From the RAPP perspective, we
have to create legislation that will
correct this and ensure our communities
will never again be subject
to these racist policies. Doesn’t
matter what the crime or conviction
was. Doesn’t matter the length
of sentence. Doesn’t matter whether
the charges are violent or nonviolent.
The only way we can correct
this is by returning everyone
to their families.
CONWAY: I was in prison with
fathers, grandfathers, grandchildren.
That’s generations of people
— that’s genocide. But honestly, I
wouldn’t let everybody out. Some
can and will get a new one but
that’s not the point. It’s the WHY
someone would do this that’s disturbing.”
The fl ag attack is not the fi rst
incident of its kind in recent memory.
A man was slapped with two
counts of criminal mischief and
two counts of arson after he allegedly
torched Rainbow Flags twice
in less than two months last year
canceled after the General
Assembly of the Presbyterian
Church in Taiwan, which is on
the event’s preparatory committee,
said there was no point in holding
an event without the president in
attendance, according to Focus
Taiwan.
Tsai was a critical voice in support
of marriage equality and
championed the issue throughout
the turbulent period after Taiwan’s
Constitutional Court ruled in 2017
that lawmakers must pass a bill legalizing
same-sex marriage within
two years. Tsai’s Democratic Progressive
people might need to be incarcerated.
I’ve come in contact with
some serious sociopaths. They
preyed upon young boys in particular.
I’ve been almost forced to
kill some of them, trying to protect
young men. So Jose, I’m gonna be
honest with you. There are some
people I wouldn’t let out.
SALDAÑA:I’ve met a few like
that. But I don’t think laws should
be made based on that few. And I
notice that when they’re released,
after maybe 40 years, they’re committed
— a civil commitment — to
an institution. The state recognizes
there is something terribly wrong
with them. But it doesn’t actually
treat them until after they get 40
or 50 years out of them. This is
why I say that prisons should not
be for anyone. Because if they create
that law to imprison one sick
person, they will imprison others.
And those others are going to be
us.
CONWAY: You know, Jose, you’re
absolutely right. They need treatment.
Prisons don’t do anything
for them, except let them feed on
the young innocent population.
DAY:Jose, you had four kids
at Alibi Lounge, a gay bar in East
Harlem, and this past August a
South Jersey man was busted by
the feds for allegedly bombing the
front of an LGBTQ-friendly gym in
Gloucester City, New Jersey. That
blast damaged a Rainbow Flag
perched on a window at the gym.
Weiner said she and Williams
fi rst decided to hang the Pride Flag
in a bid to stand with the LGBTQ
Party ultimately voted
in favor of the bill last year that
when you went to prison. Eddie,
you had two. Did your mentoring
have anything to do with your kids
you weren’t allowed to parent?
SALDAÑA:It’s extremely diffi -
cult to be a good dad when you’re
doing a life sentence. I realized that
I failed as a father. A dad doesn’t
want to admit that. My daughter
once told me that I wasn’t there for
her. So I tried to make up for it by
helping these younger kids, to really
help them. It helped me keep
going…
CONWAY: Probably my major
regret is, before I went to prison,
I was so caught up in making the
world a better place for everybody
that I actually lost my family. I
didn’t take the personal time to
make the world better for my son
or my wife. I got a chance to make
up some of it with the counseling
programs.
That’s something I counsel everybody
now. No matter what you’re
doing, pay attention to raising your
children. Don’t sacrifi ce everything
for your politics. Politics are important,
but this is a long, long-term
fi ght.
To watch the entire conversation,
visit tinyurl.com/y6e898wr.
community. The bakery’s manager
and several employees are gay,
Weiner said, and she has several
friends in the queer community.
“We put it up like two years
ago and never took it down,” she
explained. “Why bother taking it
down? Shouldn’t it be up all the
time?”
Weiner added, “We’ll get another
one.”
brought same-sex marriage to Taiwan.
GayCityNews.com | November 05 - November 18, 2020 23
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