By Marino Padilla, An Incarcerated Affiliate of the IWW
My earliest memory of reading and writing was lost within a realm of Trauma induced disassociation. Because the clarity of how I’ve come to read and write has become distorted, even beyond my own understanding, I can only speculate from this point on where, what, why and how my literacy developed and evolved.
Like most children I learned the fundamentals like my ABC’s and 123’s from nursery rhymes and the teachers in school, but that was as far as my education went. I had ADHD and a learning disability because of the communication barriers my culture and community created for me.
In my culture it was a weakness to ask for help or a handout. I was taught to figure things out on my own, which stopped me from learning to read and write.
The children and I being raised in our poverty stricken community were taught by our elders the responsibility of work and the value of a “working man”. Education was not valued in my house. Education was important to the “privileged-people” with money, not “us”. It suffices to say, instead of adhering to the work ethics and value system my elders tried to implement, I rebelled and went against the grain. I simply refused to be trapped and confined in a social class that America designed to divide the black and the brown from the tan and the whites and the green from the rest.
I viewed America as a human body consisting of upper , middle, and lower limbs coinciding with America’s social composition. America’s head represents the “upper-class”. Their function of the body is to “think”. This is where America’s ideas thoughts, strategizing and organizing comes from. This social class belongs to “White-America” or “The privileged”. It was established by America’s founding fathers to rule this great nation.
America’s middle limbs represent its society’s “middle class” citizens. Their function of the body is to organize strategy to execute the upper class ideas and thoughts by being hands-on.
This class was strategically created as a medium to convince its citizens that the lower class has nothing to do with race or systemic injustice because the middle class had white (“under privileged”) citizens that belonged to it as well.America’s foundation is considered the “lower limbs”. This social class is a cesspool of citizens, predominantly black and brown, living in poverty, known as “the boot”.
Their function of the body is to carry the weight of America. This social class is where my ancestors came from and where I was raised. I was trapped in America’s boot against my will, which ultimately led to my rebellion and my illiteracy.
This lead me into my journey of trying to escape from this boot I’m trapped in. I entered into a criminal lifestyle, which eventually led to my incarceration, where I began to travel the road to literacy and ultimately learned to not only read and write, but earn a seat in a college prison education program (cpep) classroom.
Once in prison I met my first mentor “c-Allah”.
C-Allah had been incarcerated 25 years by the time I met him. He was someone I looked up to and trusted. One day he gave me a book to read, “48 Laws of Power” by Robert Green, and told me to write a book report. I was immediately embarrassed and felt like a loser for not being able to read nor write. I shamefully told him that I could not read nor write. C-Allah commended me on my courage to admit that I couldn’t read or write and he encouraged me by explaining that he was going to teach me not only to read and write, but the value of reading and writing.
In that Instance, something inside me changed. I don’t know if it was the sincerity of his words or the genuine love he spoke from that liberated me from my childhood perceptions around literacy and allowing help from others. It was in that moment that I decided to double down and confront the stigma and literacy barriers created by my social status in a country that promises liberty for all.
Because of the prison environment it was struggle after struggle and challenge after challenge learning how to read and write. The hostility of my surroundings demanded my undivided attention at all times. My progress was normally stagnated, and I was set back more often than not. C-Allah’s resilience and zeal to teach me the value of reading and writing is what kept me focused.
After nine brutal months of being mentored, I was sent to solitary confinement for six months. In those six months I learned so much about myself and I utilized the solitude to focus primarily on my studies. I finally finished my first book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”, by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon L. Lechter.
At this point in my journey, I finally understood what C-Allah meant about the value of education and literacy. I now realized that education and literacy is a tool that can be used to uplift me from the stigma of my upbringing and value system. “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” opened my mind to allow what I learned from C-Allah to take action in my life. I finally understood that “knowledge is power but without application, it is just information”. ~unknown. That book set me on my journey of Journaling, which later became my number one outlet to channel my feelings through. Journaling allowed me to capture how I think and how I felt at moments I didn’t know how to express otherwise.
When I feel like giving up on my academics, I think back to that child who was just a product of his environment when I entered this prison industrial complex at the tender age of 17. I had to accept C-Allah’s help to shift away from my childhood perceptions and learn the true value and importance of education.
From the time I learned to read and write, I fell in love with words and literacy. Now I paint my world with words and I cannot get enough of reading and writing. Pen, paper, and a good book has gotten me through several years of solitary confinement and through the darkest times of my life. Sharing my writings with people has had a positive impact on my life, because it has allowed me to connect to people’s pain, their happiness, and their story. Through reading self help books and thousands of books of substance, I’ve come to be the author of my own story, with the realization that I am th only person that can free that poor child trapped in the bottom of America’s boot.
-Reno 2023
“Knowledge is power, but without application it is just information.” -Unknown