how to trash a human life

One of the most amazing human beings I've ever met, Eddy Zheng, is facing deportation because of mistakes made by his public defender when he was 16. Over a dozen state legislators, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and even the DA who prosecuted
Eddy for his original criminal conviction in 1986, have made clear to the
judge that he should be allowed to stay in the U.S.

Eddy's latest blog posting:

"Patience is..."
by Eddy Zheng
August 3, 2006

Patience is being woken up at 3:30 in the morning, getting handcuffed and waist-chained, being herded onto a bus, heading toward the uncertainties of the immigration court, sitting in a holding tank with 25 stressed out immigration detainees who are waiting for the judges to decide their fate, eating 2 peanut butter sandwiches, 1 eight ounce bag of potato chips, & an apple for breakfast, a balony sandwich, 6 sliced carrot sticks, 4 pretzels, & a bottled water for lunch, smelling the urine and feces as detainees walk over sleeping bodies to use the toilet, watching detainees hang their heads with deportation papers in their hands, envying the ones who receive bail, taking in the beauty of San Francisco's sunrise and sunset through wired and dusty windows, realizing freedom is so close yet a miracle away, allowing ICE agents to cop a feel before being chained up again for transportation, waiting 2 hours with handcuffs, waist-chain, and shackles digging into the flesh before getting on a bus, riding with the heater turned up high for nearly 2 hours in the summer heat before the driver notices his mistake only after hearing loud bangs and cries for air, being confined to hard plastic chains for 3 hours while the yelling of foreign languages supersede the roaring engine and tires tearing up the road, letting the jail deputy violate my body with his hands, receiving what was given for breakfast as dinner, then finally with butt sore, body dehydrated, and physically and mentally drained, at 10:35pm concrete and steel await my constitution - yet still believing that there is a better tomorrow.

Let yourself really see, hear, smell, taste, feel what you've just read. Now multiply that by the one million human beings in America's prison industrial complex. Raise it to the power of 10 for the thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis "detained" by the US, without charges, without trial, without hope. To the power of 100 for the 8,000 Palestinians (including hundreds of children) in Israeli jails. Recall that Israel is the only country in the world which legally permits the use of torture as a form of interrogation. Raise it to the power of 1000 for the men in Guantanamo.