Angels with Dirty Faces. Walidah Imarisha
next day: my adopted brother Kakamia Jahad Imarisha, and James McElroy, nicknamed Jimmy Mac, a New York Irish mobster (I will refer to him as Mac in this text, for clarity). I would see Mac first, then my brother.
Mac was a hit man who worked for the Gambino family, a part of the nucleus of what then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Rudolph Giuliani dubbed “the most savage organization in the long history of New York City gangs.” Mac was a member of the feared Irish Mob, the Westies. The Westies ran Hell’s Kitchen from 1966 until 1988 with a brutal yet simple motto: “No corpus delecti, no investigation.” They cut up the bodies of their victims, stuffed them in plastic black garbage bags and tossed them into the Hudson River on a small island they dubbed “the graveyard.”
This was the man I was interviewing, thanks to Kakamia, who was doing time with Mac in this maximum security institution where Mac, a federal prisoner, had been transferred “for his protection.” Mac was in California rather than closer to his home of New York City because he and the other Westies had worked for the Mafia, specifically for John Gotti, the most powerful don in the underworld at the time. Mac testified against Gotti after his and the other Westies’ convictions. The federal prison system shipped him west to ensure he would not become a body to be hidden, himself.
Mac turned down an interview with 60 Minutes and the New York Times, but agreed to talk to me because I was “almost family,” as he said in his letter letting me know I had been approved for visitation. I was excited to write a piece about him. The idea of being his family made me more than a little uneasy.
* * *
“What did you say?” I said, my embarrassment and exhaustion making me as curt as the blonde guard glowering at me.
“That underwire I made you cut out of your bra when it made the metal detector go off—you can’t just throw it away in the bathroom like you did. I need you to get it, bring it to me. I will give you a slip that shows you checked it in, and when you leave, it will be returned to you.” The guard clipped her words, as if not to waste any more breath on me than was absolutely necessary.
“But I don’t want the underwire back!” My voice peaked with frustration. And it was true: I didn’t. I was angry at myself for forgetting the most basic component of my prison uniform: a sports bra, sans underwire. I had already ripped up a brand new bra to meet regulations. I did not relish the thought of going back into the cramped bathroom, rummaging around in the trash with the used tampons and dirty crumpled tissue paper to pull out two small Us of metal, just so I could get them back at the end of the day. What was I going to do, sew a whole new bra just to put them in?
“This is prison policy.” Her tone, laced with a hint of malice, suggested she was addressing an unruly and slow five-year-old. “If you do not follow procedure, you will not only not be allowed into this facility at this time, I will flag you so that you will not be allowed back in the facility until we know that you will properly follow the rules established for your safety and the security of this institution.”
I swallowed the anger and rebellion that rose up. I reminded myself that every time any prisoner came to the visiting room to see me, they were strip searched and sometimes body cavity searched upon entering and leaving. I’m getting off easy, I told myself.
I marched stiffly to the bathroom, not making eye contact with any of the faces watching. Unlike the guards’ hostility or detachment, the other visitors’ faces showed understanding, fear, and relief—they knew next time it could be them. Setting my mouth in a hard line, I reached into the garbage can, willing myself to actively not think about what my hands might be touching. I finally brushed the thin metal strips, pulled them out. After burning the top layer of skin off my hands with the scalding hot faucet water, I returned to the wooden desk, the underwire from my bra clipped wings digging into my palm, and unceremoniously plunked them down on the table.
The guard swept them into a plastic bag and paper-clipped it to my ID, which went back in a drawer. She took her time writing out a yellow slip that would entitle me to reclaim my valuable property. As she handed it to me, she said, without a trace of a smirk, “Welcome to this correctional institution. Enjoy your visit.”
* * *
After walking through three locked metal doors and showing my ID four times, I entered the prison visiting room. It resembled a school gymnasium with linoleum floors and stucco walls. The room was full of dingy white plastic tables and chairs. Visitors crowded into the space looked like they were on a picnic gone awry. A guard sat lazily at the front desk, elevated so you had to look up as you handed him your paperwork. He assigned me table number six, in the middle of the room, then promptly went back to staring off into nothing.
I sat, nervously smoothing the front of my “uniform.” I tried to look like the professional and experienced journalist I was—not the easiest task, given my multiple piercings and streaks of blue dye crowning my large afro. A punk rocker in my high school days, I had decided there were additional ways to fight the system that existed outside of mosh pits, but I still clung stubbornly to my counterculture roots.
The metallic sound of bolts sliding from the roller pounded like thunder, signifying a prisoner was coming out. From the ugly flaking blue door stepped someone who could only be Mac: late 50s; short but wiry; light, thinning hair combed stylishly. He walked like the former boxer turned enforcer he was, jawline set hard and penetrating baby blues sweeping the room. They fell on me, and his mask melted into a smile.
I stood awkwardly and went for the handshake, which he promptly swept aside in favor of a brief hug. “Ah,” Mac said as he sank into the plastic chair. “I woulda known you anywhere, you look just like your brother.” We get that all the time, which is funny since Kakamia and I aren’t related by blood. Instead of correcting Mac (not the best start to an interview I decided), I offered to buy him something from the vending machines with my plastic bag full of quarters. He accepted a coffee. As I stood up, hefting the baggie, he joked, “I coulda used that real well in my old line of work.” I walked away, gingerly feeling the weight of the makeshift weapon I had unwittingly carried in. Thank goodness they made me check that underwire, or I could have done some real damage.
* * *
We, the general public, take prisons for granted, and at the same time we try our very best not to think too hard about prisons themselves: what happens inside of them, what leads up to someone going into prison. We allow ourselves to be lulled to sleep at night by the fairy tale that only bad people end up in prison: as long as we are good, we don’t have to worry about what goes on behind the walls. In this tale, it is only individual bad decisions that land people in prison; there are no larger forces at work. As Angela Davis wrote, “The prison…functions ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues afflicting those communities from which prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate numbers.”
If we begin to get troublesome thoughts, looking at the statistics that show that seventy percent of those incarcerated are people of color, wondering about communities left with gaping wounds where people once were, we always have the nightly news to comfort us. The news obliterates centuries of inequality and oppression, leaving only Black and brown hands in cuffs, shown at higher rate than whites, despite the fact that whites commit more crimes because they are the majority of the nation’s population. Eighty-one percent of Americans get their understanding of crime from the media, rather than personal experience, according to “The News Media’s Influence on Criminal Justice Policy,” and Americans believe corporate media, especially television news, to be reliable and credible.
Over the past twenty years of doing work around incarceration, I have learned many things first-hand about prisons, things not shown in the news. I have learned rules and regulations. I have learned tension and despair. I have learned brutality and monotony. Most of all, I have learned many prisoners’ lives were cages before they ever stepped into a prison. I have learned that poverty confines, hunger contains, homelessness chokes, powerlessness restricts, and oppression destroys. I have learned we all have prisons in our lives, and most of us are too frightened to look directly at them.
And I have learned