How To Send Mail To Mark Emery While He’s In Jail
Now that my e-mail works again, I have been in contact with the fine people at Cannabis Culture magazine, specifically Jodie Emery. As all of you are well aware, her husband Marc Emery is wrongly incarcerated in US Federal Prison for selling marijuana seeds. What readers might not know is that you can write Marc letters and send them to him! I have never been in prison, but members of my family have, and they always talk about how ‘letters from the outside’ were what got them through the hardest times.
I don’t know about you, but I plan on sending letters every week. Can you imagine if every marijuana consumer in America and Canada sent at least one letter a week to Marc? The sheer volume of mail would overload the prison, and would highlight the atrocity that is Marc’s incarceration to the point that they’d have to let him go (or at least raise one hell of a stink!). You might not be able to go protest in BC, but ANYONE can write and send a letter. Here are the instructions from Cannabis Culture on how to do just that:
To be safe, please send only hand-written or hand-typed letters. Photos are permitted, but PLEASE don’t send pictures of bongs, marijuana, plants, nudity, or anything illegal or inappropriate because it will be refused.
The only books that Marc wants right now will be sent by Jodie. Otherwise, when new books arrive, Marc has to give up the ones he is reading. In the next few months, an Amazon.com “wish list” for Marc will be set up.
ALL MAIL IS THOROUGHLY READ BY PRISON OFFICIALS. Do not write about illegal activities or anything that you want to keep private. The official guidelines are listed below.
Please write to Marc about what you’re doing in your life, the activism you’ve done, the silly little pleasures and joys of your day, the news about what’s happening in the world and your area, etc. Prison life is just endless boring repetition, cut off from the outside. Nothing ever changes and nothing new ever happens, so Marc would really appreciate getting reports from the outside world!
Mailing address:
Marc Scott Emery #40252-086 Unit DB
PO Box 13900
FDC SeaTac
Seattle, Washington
98198-1090
USA
The rules for prison mail are EXTENSIVE, so rather than post them all here, simply click on this link and make sure your mail follows the rules.
Jodie Emery was kind enough to grant theweedblog.com permission to post Marc’s blog entries. He has put up a total of four so far; the first one is pasted below. I will post one a day until we are caught up.
Report from US Federal Prison #1
May 24th, 2010
I share a cell with Oliver, a Jewish Iranian-Canadian guy (see Jodie Emery’s blog entry for more on fellow inmates). It’s like North Fraser pretrial centre, concrete & steel, but with a locker. Outside of our cell is the “range” where 60 of us eat, shower, watch Tv and play cards or dominoes or such activities, as well as walking the second level walkways for exercise.
We are locked in our cells from 10pm to 6am, and from 10am to 11:30am and 4pm to 5pm. The other times we can be in the range. Normally, the range is surprisingly quiet, most people are doing things, and the TVs are by radio signal only. An inmate lent me a radio with ear buds (my own one arrives Tuesday) and there are many, many FM music stations it can pick up, many quite good, so that’s a nice discovery. PLUS, get this, I can pick up CBC Radio One at 91.7 clear as a bell, so I can hear the news!
I asked other inmates how I could get a cell on the other side of the range, because the windows over there have sunlight coming through them, and we have no outdoor exposure here of any kind, no fresh air at all, but if I could get some sun that would be nice. You have to keep an eye on when an inmate moves out and then claim his cell, so I will keep inquiring. My cell doesn’t have a desk in it like some do, I could really use that for all my writing, there isn’t a flat surface in my cell for that.
The poor food is getting me a bit down, but getting my commissary goods on Tuesday will help. I hope the place I get sent to after here has better opportunities for vegetables or better food, but it looks like I’ll be in tough while in these prisons.
I’m helping a fellow who is coming off methamphetamine deal with his wasted life so far and helping to rebuild him into a good human again. You know this is what I’ll do with the inmates who always come to me for help, and of course they do come to me. But no one is really aware of my work in the field of drug addiction & recovery or my political activism, but since I don’t need help, its unnecessary that they know my storied career.
Having actual “fans” here might even be annoying because they might pester me for stories and I’m more into my studies here and listening to those who need help and working on rebuilding them into decent citizens and good sons and good parents and helping them see how and why they screwed up — I’m totally brutally candid with them and they appreciate it because I don’t want anything from them — and then how they can change and redeem their sorry-ass behavior with proper, responsible living.
All these people have kids and parents who are very sad and disappointed and I can rock them out of their self-centered obsession. Richie went through this with me in North Fraser, but he needs another good 6 weeks of me for him to reform. He was thief for most of 20 years, lying to himself and all others blithely, yet now he is 40 and at a crossroads.
Update sent on Monday evening, May 24th after entering his guilty plea
I left for court at 6:15am, was shackled in cuffs & chains from 7am to 5pm, 10 hours, with the exception of the half hour in court 2pm to 2:30 pm. Court was fine. I plead guilty as scheduled. Britney, Jeremiah, Allison Bigelow, and Joanne Vanderwolf (an employee from 1995) was there, Joanne was wearing a No Extradition shirt and was protesting outside because she brought her FREE MARC sign into the court. I was chained and waiting in a cold cell the other 9.5 hours. I haven’t had a shower or bathroom use yet, I can’t wait to get that done but shower time next is 7:30pm and its about 6pm now.
I was on TV here today as people protested at the courthouse. That’s what inmates here tell me. A number of them saw it and are introducing themselves to now because they realize who I am, including the Mexicans. A guard also read somewhere about the protests in Canada and around the world and said, “I guess a lot of those people are saying ‘Fuck those damn Yankees that took ya away'”, and I responded, “We love the American people, but the US government is bad.”
I’ll be sure to call or write later, after I wash and get centered again. Even though it’s horrible here, there’s lots to be thankful for, I suppose… That’s the thing about jail, you get the blues or internalized anger over things because everything is wearing on my spirit, and its only been a little over 2 weeks.
