 Want an e-mail when there's something new? Join the e-mail news list today! selected writing Unreasonable Search and Seizure Nigel Parry, Sunday, June 1st, 2008 
"I'm back in New York to try to retrieve my property from the police, who have now seized it for a total of 15 months. Police Property Offices are uncooperative coat check booths for the damned." In order to retrieve his work tools, Nigel Parry returns to a city in which he was incarcerated for two months to negotiate the NYPD and the District Attorney's red tape. Read of Nigel's adventures in the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  From Ramallah to Rikers Island (Part 1) Nigel Parry, Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 
The following series of journal entries were written while I was incarcerated in Rikers Island Correctional Facility from January to February 2007, and have seen minor edits for clarity and the addition of extensive, explanatory footnotes, but have otherwise been unaltered for publication. A Series Epilogue appears at the end, written at the time of publication. "Writing about Palestine was one thing, writing about Palestine within me and how it has played out through me is something I have increasingly begun to consider in depth. And it's about time." From Ramallah to Rikers Island (Part 2) Nigel Parry, Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 
"I point out all of this because my experiences are not the exception. They are the norm. I would like to believe that there are people out there to whom this means something. It is said that societies are judged on how they treat their weakest members. Prisoners and the mentally ill, stripped of all rights and control of their life, are in a terribly vulnerable position. Is how we are treating them making our world better or worse?" From Ramallah to Rikers Island (Part 3) Nigel Parry, Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 
Confinement is frightening. For sure everyone, at different stages in their lives, has had to cope with different levels of constriction of freedoms. But full-on, uncompromising, adult confinement is utterly terrifying. Once you realize that there is no reasoning with this reality, this immutable fact, and that there is only coming to terms with where you are ahead, this is the point at which fear begins. From Ramallah to Rikers Island (Part 4) Nigel Parry, Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 
"All previously simple tasks reduced to a complex process of multiple steps, a form of modern prayer that gives formerly insignificant acts new weight and purpose. Hours were spent over days just to collect the components required to write this, where a quick walk across a room would have sufficed. It took five days to get a cup when I first arrived and a week to get a blanket, toothbrush and toothpaste." From Ramallah to Rikers Island (Part 5) Nigel Parry, Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 
There's a line in the Bruce Cockburn song "Dialogue With The Devil" that goes "He knows how hard it is, to hit the ground and mean it," that has been reverberating the last couple of days. Tonight, I got to hear how messed up my business has become, and tomorrow I get to bury my home, something I have done before under different circumstances. "That's what happens to everyone at some point in here," says B, a 39-year-old African American man, "They lose their job, their place to live." From Ramallah to Rikers Island (Part 6) Nigel Parry, Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 
"In the first three weeks I have been here, I spent two sick, including the current week, and one hovering on the edge of illness. The source during the first week was understandable, given the dirty concrete floor bed for the first three nights and lack of blanket for the first five. Week two I bounced back a little, and the third week has become about the unhealthy environment and cumulative effect of the bad food." From Ramallah to Rikers Island (Part 7) Nigel Parry, Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 
A long and painful day spent in the bullpen system between Rikers Island and the Manhattan Criminal Court. The object of all of this has been to get bail reduced to a manageable amount of around $2,000 from the original $8,000. Back in the bullpens on Rikers, one African American inmate who introduces himself as "Wolf" questioned me about my experience of prison. From Ramallah to Rikers Island (Series Epilogue) Nigel Parry, Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 
The computer at the Rikers Island bail office, across the bridge from Queens, had me listed in the computer as "sentenced", which of course was impossible, as there had been no trial or any admission of guilt. So there were delays. As I had been warned by my dorm mates, these last 24 hours since then were indeed "the longest day". I didn't get onto the streets of New York that night until well after 10:00PM—over 5 hours after bail was paid. |
      
 FROZEN MINNESOTA gifts
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| [ top of page | selected writing | home ] Content & design ©2002-2008 Nigel Parry and nigelparry.net.  |