In 2022, when I was incarcerated at Willard-Cybulski Correctional Institution in Connecticut, guards told us we could hold a Thanksgiving feast — but only if we funded the celebration through donations from the men in our unit.
We took pride in the challenge. This embodied the spirit of our dorm — a special therapeutic community called “the change unit,” which aimed to foster a sense of fellowship and treat the underlying issues that often lead to incarceration.
So we got to work. During morning meetings, peer mentors exhorted us to donate and let us know which items were needed and which items we had in excess. Soon, the food started rolling in, safely stored with the unit’s mentors.
We decided everyone would receive a meal, whether they donated or not.
I was new to the dorm that fall, so I watched as people bickered over who was cooking what and what time food would be served. It was like a restaurant kitchen on a busy Friday night.
When Thanksgiving arrived, everyone ate.
The courses included prison staples: meat wraps made of a chips-based dough stuffed with different commissary sausages and fish; rice seasoned with adobo and sazón; options for those whose religion prohibited consumption of pork; and cake donated from the kitchen.
Served by the mentors and others who cooked the food, some people ate in the dayroom and others ate at their bunks. A counselor brought tablecloths, themed napkins, serving trays, paper plates and plastic forks. Yes, forks, not sporks — which are often the main permitted cutlery in prison. By prison standards, it was a holiday miracle.
A holiday in jeopardy
A year later, we decided to run the feast again. Though the dorm now held double the amount of men — 90 in total — we thought it was essential to come together for the holidays.
Starting the first week of November, we, along with staff, solicited donations almost daily. Our counselor supervisor secured two sheets of cake from the kitchen to serve as dessert. I was excited for new residents to have the same experience that brought me so much joy during the previous gloomy fall.
At first, it seemed as though people were less enthusiastic this time around about making the feast happen. Donations came slowly: a few soups here, some bags of rice there and, on occasion, a hot beef stick or turkey sausage. In the blink of an eye, it was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. We were warned that if people didn’t donate enough by the end of the day, we’d have to cancel our celebration.
Around noon, I was summoned to help inventory the donations. What I saw surprised me. There was a table full of food. I had no idea where it came from. It was commissary day, however, and people must have felt the giving spirit. The dorm had rallied in the final minutes of the fourth quarter to secure enough donations.
Everything was looking up. We had everything we needed: fish, pepperoni, hot beef, turkey sausage, tuna and mackerel; almost 20 bags of chips to be used in the wrap dough; bags of white rice by the dozen; and almost 100 ramen noodle soups. We’d be able to feed everyone — and serve seconds.
During Wednesday’s first shift, a counselor brought bowls, trays, napkins and tablecloths. The kitchen delivered our cakes. Staff was again notified of the party. We knew to cover all the bases so our feast would go off without a hitch.
But during the second shift that day before Thanksgiving, we received bad news. An officer informed me that the captain, who had not known about our feast, confiscated our decorations, utensils and even the cake. According to the officer, the captain said he was not informed by the administration of any kind of holiday celebration.
I should have expected no less. It was prison, after all.
But the news still enraged me. Our unit was constantly lauded by officers as a quiet and respectful dorm. We had high standards and rules. The fear of moving to the general population deterred people from undesirable behavior. Major infractions were mostly nonexistent, so it seemed to me like they nitpicked to remind us that we were under their control.
A change of heart
Around 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving, another holiday miracle occurred. An officer returned our supplies and dessert. The Thanksgiving feast was back on.
I suspected the administration changed their decision after receiving unhappy phone calls and emails from our unit’s staff.
The morning of Thanksgiving, we got straight to work on our feast. People dumped rice into unused trash bags. They added seasonings, meat and hot water before sealing the bags and shaking them up to mix and cook the ingredients. Others set out making wraps, crushing chips in bags and adding hot water and saltines to make a dough before rolling it out and adding different types of meat marinated in a mixture of jelly and barbecue sauce (a surprisingly delicious combination).
I directed traffic, along with the other peer mentors, and we served food from the clear garbage bags they had been cooked in. We served the food in plastic cups. Instead of paper plates, people ate from contraband plastic-foam tray lids.
Everyone ate. We offered seconds before serving the cake. My bunkie portioned out the dessert and topped it with an icing drawn from the cream filling of Oreo-like cookies.
It was much like the year before. Everyone was away from their families, but still looked happy at a time when being happy was difficult.
As I watched everyone laugh and eat, and wipe their mouths with “Gobble Gobble” turkey-emblazoned napkins, I approached an officer.
“Have you ever seen anything like this before?” I asked.
“Like this?” He shook his head. “Not in my 15 years of working for DOC have I seen anything like this. A whole block cooking and eating together? Never.”