[resipsa]

Tom managed to get a phone call out on Friday. He’d been told to "roll it up" meaning he'll be moved tomorrow. He believes he's on a plane to Oklahoma City, at least that's the word on the cell block. For security reasons the guards will never tell you where you're going.

Oklahoma is a central processing area, from there he could be shipped anywhere in the country, spending months on buses which deposit inmates at a series of gruesome county jails, for stays of a week to a month, before they're deposited in a federal facility.

This is a lucrative arrangement for county jails, they get paid a nice stipend every time they house a federal prisoner.

Of all the things federal inmates must endure this "diesel therapy" is perhaps the worst. You sit manacled on a bus all day, with no access to a bathroom, water or food. If you're lucky, the guards remember to throw a rancid bag lunch at you, usually containing things that should not have been sitting un-refrigerated on a bus all day. If the person next to you throws up or soils themselves after ingesting this salmonella sandwich, you sit in it with them, the guards are not going to clean it up.

The county jails where you're housed on your way to your final destination are the worst of the worst, you're put in whatever they have for temporary housing, often filthy isolation cells reserved for punishment, because that's the only place available. As one person put it, "Those puddles on the floor are urine, vomit or blood. Pray for urine, it's the least toxic of the three."

As a new arrival you're at the bottom of whatever food chain there is. You are at terrible risk of rape or extortion, you don't know your way around this new facility and have no friends to guide you. People know you probably won't be there long enough to complain effectively about whatever treatment you're receiving, and they take full advantage, believe me.

The marks his fifth move in seven months, a grueling ordeal for an elderly man with arthritis. Tom asked me to thank everyone once again. You are the people who made this period of his life bearable, He asks after you often in his phone calls and is so grateful for all the support.

As soon as we know where he is, I'll let you know. Please feel free to re-publish this on any web site where it might be of interest.

[Reprobate]

I'm not even going to get into my experiences with our "hero's" but this story kicked up somthing and I gotta turn up Rage's "the ghost of Tom Joad" so loud I hope everyone can hear it.