"Et tu, Post Office?"

I subscribe to email alerts from FAMM (Families Against Minimum Mandatory Sentencing) and yesterday I receive a FAMM email from Julie Stewart (Originator and President of the Organization). As I read it I felt that heaviness that descends when one acknowledges that the road ahead is all but impossible ...YET ... not quite ... not enough to stop one from taking another step, and another...one after the other, in the singular hope that one CAN make a difference. That things can and will change for the better.

The feeling I was left with, after reading her email, led me to contemplate one of several areas one confronts discrimination, if not just an attitude ‘adjustment', when one is merely caught up in the Prison world as a supporter, family member or an advocate for change. One of my experiences has to do simply with how I am, and have been, treated at the Post Office.

There is a shift in ‘attitude’ that happens when ‘civilians ’, those with no personal experience in our nations prison system, realize that YOU do. I remember when we first moved to Taft, and I started frequenting the local post office, the veritable “chill” that would confront me once the postal clerks read where my manila envelopes were addressed. I had somewhat expected this, after the year of mailing items to the County lockups my son was housed at the year of his prosecution, Spokane mail clerks were the first to exhibit an attitude that clearly relegated you to “second class citizen” stature. So it wasn’t a new experience when we relocated to Taft, to live close by the Prison my son would spend his next decade at. Taft is a small town, albeit a “Prison Town”, many locals were employed at the close by Taft Private Prison, and besides, small towns in general seem to be more ‘judging’ by nature, or at least its been my experience, having lived in small towns most my life. More “wary” and suspicious of newcomers.

The initial smiles of the Taft clerk disappeared, an abrupt and a ‘professional only’ demeanor filling its place, my first trip to the local P.O., as I handed over my manila envelopes addressed to Taft Correctional Institution, with my sons name and I.D. number glaringly displayed. I grew used to this, most all the clerks, all women, though professionally friendly enough, gave off the same vibe. Over time one grows a thicker skin, and over time, in the next 5 years, as I was at the post office almost daily, we eventually developed a relatively friendly repoire, the girls and I. It always took my smiling face and an extra effort on my behalf, along with a willingness to be met with some unpleasantness, but in time I won them over. And it wasn’t as if this was out of the ordinary for these clerks, that I was a ‘rare’ type of patron, one who had a foot in the Prison Netherworld, LOL, I learned from the very start, as our mail was delivered right to our front door at Taft, that the delivery clerk was a young woman whose brother was serving a 7 or 8 year sentence (for drugs) in a California State Prison. So these Postal clerks weren’t ignorant of, or immune to the hardships that come with being a family member, loved one, of an inmate. Besides, with the statistics being what they are, 1 in 100 americans is incarcerated in the US today. While Americans represent about 5% of the worlds population, nearly one quarter of the entire worlds inmates have been incarcerated in the US in recent years. With California having more Prisons than any other State in the nation, it soon came as no surprise when we often encountered others with intimate or personal knowledge of our system. My husband, as Safety Director for a large electrical contracting company, constantly meets crew members who either have done time in prison, or have someone they know (family or friend) incarcerated.

Moving to the city of Bakersfield when we purchased a house after 5 years of renting our bungalow at Taft, the process started anew. New post office, new clerks. But I must say, all the clerks at the new post office (on Wilson St) were openly friendly from the start, two in particular, a hispanic gentleman (Manuel) and a blond, older woman (can’t remember her name) who were wonderful to me. I miss them. Perhaps this particular location got more than its fair share of mail to Inmates, who knows, but the three years I frequented this particular office were relaxed, and the clerks always had a smile and a friendly word. One can’t imagine how grateful I felt for this small kindness! No tension as I’d wait my turn in line, wondering how the clerk might behave towards me on any given day. Interestingly, even as we would talk about all manner of other subject matter, no one, not at Taft, nor at this Bakersfield locaton, ever asked any personal questions about the intended recipient of my mailings, and for all I know they thought I was mailing envelopes to my husband, not my son.

Now that we have sold the house and are living in an apartment in a different zip code of Bakersfield, I am now using a new Post Office. Yesterday as I took two large manila envelopes to be mailed I watched a gentleman clerk being very friendly and outgoing to the customers ahead of me. When I laid down my two envelopes it was not my imagination that a very palpable “chill” descended. He asked what the contents were, I replied “magazines’, he then asked if there were any letters inside the envelopes and I replied no, just magazines … I assume the question was asked so as to determine whether the items qualified for Media Mail prices vs Priority ( about a half price difference). If one includes a letter with a Media Mail item it cancels out the Media option. He then proceeded to charge me Priority anyways. I had told him I would pay with my Debit Card. Rather than allowing me to swipe my card thru the counter machine, he asked for my card (??) as well as my I.D., proceeding to then run it through himself, handing me a receipt. When I wasn’t asked to enter my PIN I knew he had run it through as Credit, not Debit which I prefer, and asking him if that’s what he did, he said, rather awkwardly, ‘”well yes, I did” to which I replied ‘I told you I would be using Debit, but thats fine, it’s a done deal”, smiling to defuse the situation, despite his unprofessional and albeit rude attitude from the beginning. He just stood there, you could see he was embarrassed (?) but more likely upset I’d ask him to void the transaction and rerun it as Debit. That’s what I should have had him do, but why add fuel to fire. I suspect this is the type of service I can expect from him going forward. Its clear he has a very negative disposition towards anything Prison related.

Its seems the very word PRISON, in a conversation, or on an address, makes most everyday citizens uncomfortable. It represents a ‘dark’ alter world perhaps (?) that I suspect they don’t even want to acknowledge exists. Its this very attitude that prevents change in our system. This DENIAL, this unwillingness to even acknowledge a system voters and Law Makers continually voted to make more punitive and tougher over these last 3 decades. And that many, ignorantly, still continue to vote for today. Until one is caught up in the system, either directly, or just being a friend or relative of the incarcerated, one rarely comes to grips with the broken, oppressive system we have in place.

And so, in reading Julies email that I will copy and past into a following post, I felt an ‘almost’ resignation in her tone, her words, as she calls on all of us to step up, in some small way, because “Every drop in the bucket eventually fills it up.” Julies letter is next.

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” ~Leo Buscaglia