ID: [A drawing of a giant, disintegrating American flag with someone hanging on and swinging from the dangling threads of the flag. Text reads: What, to the American Incarcerated Person, is your Fourth of July? The Marshall Project.]
“I’m a federal transgender inmate, and I’ve been incarcerated since 2010. Being a double minority — a transgender and a Black person — the Fourth of July is nothing but a good meal in the chow hall.
Growing up, I didn’t know that I was on a pipeline to prison. I remember being harassed by police in the streets of Galveston, Texas, standing on the corner with my friends. Then I would watch other young people standing on the corners in their White neighborhoods who didn’t get harassed.
There’s this profound song called “Scholarship 2 the Pen” by a rapper in Houston named ‘Lil Keke. Like the title suggests, I didn’t grow up hearing about college or how I could get financial aid. Instead, I went into a Scared Straight program, which didn’t do anything but show me what prison was like. Meanwhile, in more suburban and White neighborhoods, kids heard questions like, “What college are you going to? Who are you going to intern for?” It was no surprise that I eventually caught a case.
Today, with Donald Trump in office, it seems like they’re rolling back all of our rights. I’m incarcerated here with a lot of Black men who were literally sitting in front of the television when Trump was getting elected saying, Oh, he’s gonna let us out of jail. I told them, “No, he’s not. He does not care about you.”
All of this is why the Fourth of July is nothing more to me than a big hamburger with all the fixings, a ‘brat or two, some watermelon, and some type of ice cream dish.
- Ayana Satyagrahi in What, to the American Incarcerated Person, is your Fourth of July? From the Marshall Project
