{"id":1510,"date":"2023-09-25T10:45:21","date_gmt":"2023-09-25T15:45:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/?p=1510"},"modified":"2023-09-25T10:45:21","modified_gmt":"2023-09-25T15:45:21","slug":"20-years-in-the-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/?p=1510","title":{"rendered":"20 Years in the &#8220;Hole&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>By CJ Muchhala<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">I am like the canary that saved men\u2019s lives.\nNo wire cage for me but a barred cell\u2014\na square in which I could not stretch \nmy wings nor flap from perch to perch \nnor pace.\n \nI knew darkness night and day though\nlights glared, gutting all shadows, even \nmy own. \n\nI heard the music of steel clanging, \nkeys jangling, but did not sing or speak.\nWords half forgotten clogged \t\t\t\nmy throat.\t\t\t\t\t\n\nToday they left my cell door open,\nprodded me to leave. Wings weak \nfrom disuse, a croak for my voice,\nI am free\u2014not knowing how\nto be.\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Author&#8217;s Note:  We learned, through the pandemic lockdown and since, how destructive social isolation is to a human&#8217;s mental as well as physical health. Concern for &#8220;ordinary&#8221; folks was widespread. Yet the United States keeps thousands of men and women incarcerated in U.S. prisons in solitary confinement&#8211;unofficially known as &#8220;the Hole&#8221;&#8211;some for decades, in spite of the UN declaring the practice a form of torture. The latest statistics from The Guardian: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2022\/aug\/24\/us-solitary-confinement-prisons\">https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2022\/aug\/24\/us-solitary-confinement-prisons<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;We learned through the pandemic&#8230;how destructive social isolation is..Yet (we) keep thousands&#8230; in solitary confinement&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1500,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sept-2023"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1510"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1513,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510\/revisions\/1513"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareletter.milwaukeequakers.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}