Jack Shuler, Truth Out - If I leave early, LaMar has to return to his cell. So I stay the whole six hours. But the time passes quickly with conversation about his Cleveland childhood, and about US history and literature - including a long discussion about the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass and whether or not Douglass ultimately valued the spirit of the Declaration of Independence. I say he did, and LaMar isn't sure. We go back and forth. It's clear he's not just questioning Douglass' agenda, he's questioning the US agenda - and mine.
LaMar says he read very little before prison, and he searches for words sometimes, mispronounces them occasionally, and then will ask how to pronounce them correctly. "See this is what happens when you learn to pronounce things via dictionary," he says, and laughs. "If I hadn't gotten this sentence, I wouldn't have read. I wouldn't have met Richard Wright. Of course, I'd prefer to have met him outside."...
I get up to pee once. LaMar doesn't move the whole time. Not after one OJ, one cappuccino and one Pepsi. The next day when I point that out to one of LaMar's friends outside, he says that LaMar doesn't want to get up because then they have to put the chains back on. Then they have to strip search him and it's dehumanizing...
For 19 years, Keith Lamar didn't touch another human being. He met with people - talking through plexiglass separations. No touching. No handshakes. No hugs. No way to feel the solidity of someone else's flesh or to sense another heartbeat. In January 2011, LaMar along with Jason Robb and Siddique Abdullah Hasan went on hunger strike so they could have human contact.
The strike lasted 12 days. Before it began, LaMar wrote, "We who have been sentenced to death must be granted the exact same privileges as other death-sentenced prisoners. If we must die, we should be allowed to do so with dignity ... the opportunity to pursue our appeals unimpeded, to be able to touch our friends and family, and to no longer be treated as playthings but as human beings who are facing the ultimate penalty."
He told me that he knew he had the upper hand all along.
"See, in order to kill me, they have to keep me alive. Now that's a hell of a thing," he says, chuckling, his expression wavering from smile to scowl to sorrow. . .
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