The monotony of prison life is exhausting. The boredom forces us to look for something to find meaning in our new, unsatisfying lives. Many people find that motivation in jobs or programs.
But as a person who now uses a wheelchair, people assume I am intellectually disabled. When prison staff first talked to me, they would speak loudly and slowly. They also assumed I was unable to work.
With my background as a librarian, I applied for a job in the prison library. The staff member who rejected my application nervously stammered as she tried to explain why they couldn’t hire me: I wouldn’t be able to shelve the books on the top shelves.
My case manager should have been a source of information and encouragement to explore other alternatives. Instead, he told me he would have me “medically unassigned,” meaning there were no jobs available for a person like me. I wondered, did he mean a person with a college degree or just a person in a wheelchair?
I realized I needed to start a conversation about the place for people in wheelchairs in the criminal justice system. I wanted to replace the false narratives that had affected me and others. Finally, a conversation that revolved around us would have to include us.
I knew I needed to create my own space, since no one would do it for me. So I proposed an hourlong TV newscast that would air on the Colorado Department of Corrections station. On “inmate.com,” I would interview staff members and incarcerated people about the issues that mattered to them, creating a platform for their stories.
My idea came during a transitional time when the prison climate was starting to change. A more progressive attitude was slowly taking hold in Denver Women’s Correctional Facility. I decided to seize the moment.
But from the beginning I faced resistance from upper management.
“How can you run a camera from a wheelchair?”
“Who is going to help you write questions?”
“Are you sure you can be objective and not just voice all your grievances?”
“Why would anyone want to watch it?”
These questions exposed the very biases and stereotypes that disabled people and prisoners face every day. They also revealed how little they knew about me.
By this point, I confess, I employed some more tenacious tactics to force management to “provide” me with this opportunity. Each time they refused my proposal, I would claim discrimination on the basis of my disability.
While I have rarely used my ADA classification to gain something, it has often been wielded against me to deny jobs, opportunities and even housing. I was even denied living in the incentive unit at my facility because the state prison system decided my disability required a single cell, which is only available in a medium security unit. So, it was gratifying to flip the script to benefit me for a change.
It took three revised proposals and constant harassment from me over two months until management begrudgingly gave me three test runs.
As of this writing, “inmate.com” has aired 16 episodes. I have interviewed everyone from the executive director of the Colorado prison system and my facility’s warden to the people running programs, including college teachers, the managers of the cosmetology school, on-site coffee roasters and many ordinary incarcerated men and women.
We have discussed issues like low state pay, how the prison handled COVID-19, transgender women inside, clemency and why the patio in the incentive unit is so important to us.
I only get paid $14 a month to run the TV show. But what I lack in compensation, I have gained in expertise. I can now operate a camera, edit video, interview people intelligently and produce an entertaining and thought-provoking show. “Inmate.com” gives me a journalistic platform to ask all the questions I want. More than that, it brings me joy and satisfaction in a place normally void of light and dignity.
