By the time this article goes to print in April, I will have been out of prison for 90 days. If you’ll notice, I did not say that I have been “free” for 90 days. Freedom is perhaps one of the most difficult subjects one could write about. It is a subtle concept, a concept that requires context to ground it or it becomes entirely ambiguous and elusive. Freedom is not an object or thing. Freedom is essentially a relationship. There are relationships that reflect the demeaning and oppressive environments they arise from (like prisons, human exploitation, abusive marriages, and wars); and others that are mutually beneficial and allow one to exercise his or her creative potential, make meaningful contributions and to flourish in the context of family, community, society and true friendships.
Twenty-one years after my voluntary surrender I have suddenly been deemed suitable for parole, declared “no longer a danger to society.” My insistence of innocence hasn’t changed one iota during the two decades since my voluntary return. I consistently maintained that the 1969 shootout on the UCLA campus in which two human beings tragically lost their lives (and I was convicted) was not the result of any “conspiracy!” Now, after two decades of captivity, the parole board has finally set me “free.” Of course I’m thrilled to be out of prison and fortunate enough to be surrounded by so many of my family and friends, but like my son has stated in a recent article about that rearview mirror, “I can still see smoke rising from the wreckage behind me.” The pleasures I have on this side of the wall are burdened with the years and years of loss and aggressive obstruction of relationships exacted by the prison system.
The freedom I am now experiencing cannot be measured by how far removed I am from the walls of San Quentin State Prison nor by the inhumane treatment so pervasive in prison life. Freedom from those kinds of relationships, though important enough, is far less important to me than the freedom to reclaim my once captured life and be with my family and community. Each day I realize my freedom through my renewed relationship with my children: the freedom to embrace them, to hear their stories and to be fully present in their lives. That’s the type of freedom I choose to write about for this column. I celebrate that freedom, at the same time that I mourn the huge pieces of my life, which I can never get back.
No matter how much freedom you have or think you have, a lost relationship with your children can never be retrieved even when you are released from prison. No matter how hard I try, I can never recover the missed birthdays, proms, late night chats, inside jokes, graduations and marriages. Because of my incarceration I lost the ability to be the father I could have been. Paradoxically, prison also was never able to cage the unbreakable connection that I have with my children and family. In some sense, I remained free throughout my incarceration through our mutual love – even when I spent years without being able to even communicate with them.
The origin of the word “free” comes from a word meaning “to love.” It is the same word that “friend” comes from. I want to focus on this meaning of freedom, and not the shallow definition it usually has in American culture: having lots of options and doing whatever you want. Freedom is relationship, and it is something close to the heart of every human being.
