I am feeling some bittersweet feelings, having left prison after some 17 years. I met so many people, from so many communities and families, who found themselves incarcerated for a myriad of reasons. As we move into this time of contention, where there will be conflict between the state and the communities we know – there may be more of the people we love sharing that hidden world behind bars and kept apart. To recognize and remember them is important and it keeps those ties we have to them strong. Please help me this June 11th, to send some love, some hope and a promise to remember to all of our people who are living behind bars.

I am including a poem I wrote for my Yale poetry class in prison. At Danbury, we had a tradition of hugging a certain tree in the parking lot as we got ready to leave one of the three prisons there, the camp, the FSL or the FCI. I was able to hug this sycamore tree, and to tie a new crocheted wrap that a lot of people at the FSL had contributed, so many stitches, so many colors, so many lives maintaining hope for freedom and the embrace of our family and friends.

The Freedom Tree

It’s the sycamore tree that’s in the parking lot,

From two day’s warmth, has put out leaves.

The bleached bark, peeling and stark, is shot

Against the sky, arms lifted in a silent plea,

The “Freedom Tree”.

Willing time to move forward, we see it expand,

The days are in those fingertips.

Buds break to burgeon into hands

That sweep the sky, wide, now that wind no longer keens

And grass grows green.

There is a wild crocheted belt that encircles it,

Proof that one of us made it out,

And left behind a sign that’s spun

From everything we dreamed, while we longed to be

Touching this tree.

Bob Marley also sang of a sycamore tree that was part of his songs about freedom and history. I hope that you will participate in this event, helping me mark a day to remember all the friends I left behind, and all of the people we are missing from our movement, and our communities. Anything will do, as long as it is braided or crocheted or knitted to show how we are all part of a whole together, and stronger together than any one strand alone. There is no particular color combination, as many as you have to weave together. We are all different, but all of us belong together and free. Please help me mark this very first Freedom Tree event on June 11th. 

Thank you so much for your act of solidarity. 

Love and freedom, Marius Mason