An American Radical:. Susan Rosenberg
He said his name was Levi and he was conducting the seder, because there was no rabbi. He added that he had to agree with Harv. I turned to a CO and said he had to call the lieutenant, the captain, the associate warden, or the duty officer—anyone who had not gone home.
Levi, it turned out, was a devout Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn, doing time for diamond theft. He said, “We will not have a seder with anyone in chains. It’s sacrilegious and we’ll sue for violation of our religious rights.”
That got a response. Several minutes later the captain, my old nemesis, walked in, acting as if he had just ridden up and needed to leave to relieve himself or feed his horse. He looked at me with the same degree of hatred I felt toward him and said, “Rosenberg, you are one pain in the ass.”
I responded, “Captain, take off the cuffs and chains. It’s ridiculous, and even you know it.” The captain was my personal Pharaoh at that moment.
He removed my handcuffs but, as someone who always had to have the last word, refused to remove the restraints around my legs. Then, as abruptly as he came, he was gone.
I told the men to let it go at that—time was running out, and we had to begin our service. We did, and throughout the meal Harv held my hand under the table; he would not let go. When we got to the part about fleeing from Egypt, every one of us felt a surreal edge to the whole thing. I told the men about being in segregation and asked them to spread the word so we women would not be hurt, so that other people would know just how difficult things were for us. Harv promised. We ate everything in sight, including all the ceremonial elements. It was a great seder and an experience, for me, of unexpected solidarity. While I doubted that any of my Jewish compatriots would have agreed with my views of the world, under those circumstances nothing mattered except our Judaism and us.
In September 1986, nearly a year after my arrival in Tucson, Alex and I heard rumors that the Lexington High Security Unit was almost finished. We had been wondering why the construction was taking so long since the HSU was in the basement of an already existing prison. Now the tension of our transfer grew with each day. Every time the doors opened unexpectedly I jumped, thinking we were on the verge of leaving. Even though I had visitors whom I had come to care for deeply, Jane, and friends from California, and my parents who had traveled to see me, where we sat and actually laughed at our situation and shared a great time, I desperately wanted to get out of Tucson. I had a feeling of foreboding there that cast a pall over everything, and the constant and intense contempt directed at both Alex and me was increasingly hard to deal with. I realized that the consequences of my life choices and my incarceration had only just begun, and I wanted to move on with things, as though I had a date with my own destiny, even if it meant worse conditions.
The morning they came for me was like every other morning except that the COs would not let me out of my cell until I had put my arms through the food slot backward so that they could attach the handcuffs securely. I knew the time had come. They would not let me pack my legal papers, books, or photos, much less the few personal items I had been able to keep. “Step out” was all they said. There were several women COs standing in the hall. Alex stepped out of her cell—handcuffed, as well—and I knew we were both going. They walked us through the doors into the men’s segregation intake room. It was five in the morning and very quiet. We yelled good-bye and heard Rosita’s and Debra’s good-byes echoing down the corridor. We walked out of the building and down a path that led toward the receiving and discharge room, but the COs turned and hustled us into the medical building. Right then I knew they were going to pay us back for being who we were.
I started talking. “Why are we here? What’s going on?”
One woman CO with whom I’d had some conversations throughout the year said, “We have to search you.” She wouldn’t meet my look.
“Search us? Oh no.”
We were all standing in the hall and then the captain and the associate warden showed up. The captain had papers in his hand; he shoved them at us. I saw the heading “Permission/Notification for High Security Contraband Search” and the boxes with writing next to them. The first box that was checked was “cavity search,” the second was “rectal.” They wanted us to sign the forms.
Alex said, “You can do an X-ray instead.”
The captain laughed. “No, we don’t have to and we won’t. You are going to a control unit and it’s our call on this. We have the right to do it.”
My voice was pitched. “You don’t have to do this.”
The captain looked at the associate warden; the warden looked at us, and nodded. Then he walked out of the building. I started to curse, but the next thing I knew the COs had surrounded both of us. Some of them took Alex down the hall and into a room; others held me in the hall. The physician’s assistant appeared, snapping his surgical gloves, and entered the room where Alex was. Within minutes there came a long, loud scream—“Nooooo!”—and I tried, without success, to get away from the COs and go to Alex’s aid. Then there was silence.
Five COs pushed me into an examining room. The physician’s assistant came in and said, “We can do this easy or hard. It’s up to you.”
I went crazy. I started hitting and kicking with every ounce of my being. I might have to do it, but I would not do it easy. They overpowered me, pushed my head down onto the examining table, pinned me there, and pulled down my pants. I kept kicking backward until they held my legs. I was cursing and yelling. “This is rape. You’re fucking raping me! You could do an X-ray. You know we don’t have contraband!”
The physician’s assistant took his fist and rammed it up my anus, and then he took it out and did the same thing up my vagina. He didn’t “look” for anything. The woman officer who had talked to me had to leave the room. That it was too much for her was merely an irrelevant triumph for me, but I was glad just the same. I was shocked, in pain, and so angry that I would have strangled one of them if I could. They all had to hold me to get my pants up and to cuff my legs. They half carried, half walked me down the hall out of the building into receiving and discharge. Alex was sitting on the floor against a wall. She was shackled with full chains. I sat down next to her. We didn’t speak. What was there to say? When the marshals came to transport us and I stood up, there was blood on the floor. They wouldn’t let me change my uniform or get medical attention. It was just policy. We left Tucson covered with the stench of hate.
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