The people in Little Rock are friendly, alarmingly so. The politeness and hospitality here borders on invasive. Everyone is a guest in their state, and you are treated accordingly, lest you forget it. We are welcomed with questions and curious smiles. It is strange, especially coming from a long tenure at home.

Los Angeles is possibly the rudest city in the nation, and the population is exceedingly unhelpful. Once I was screamed at by the operator manning the switchboard for 911 for trying to report a dead body I had seen on the street. Apparently, I was not the first caller, and somehow I should have known that.

We are here to visit our friend Damien Echols, who is incarcerated at the maximum security prison in Grady, an hour outside of Little Rock. Everyone wants to know what we are doing here, why we are doing it, when we are doing it, what we expect to get from doing it, and when we think we will be done doing it. Then it is cheery smiles all around, that fade slightly once we get out of hearing range.

We have a glorious dinner with Damien’s amazing and lovely wife, Lorri Davis. She is a true hero in the face of injustice, and her work inspires me every day. We are meeting with their new lawyer, who is doing great work with the case, and the author of the book Devil’s Knot, Mara Leveritt, which is the definitive work on the West Memphis Three. We discuss at length the politics of the case, the difficulty of the appeals process, how hard it is to undo the damage that the law has brought on from its own mistakes.

Here is a remarkable group of women, committed to justice and freedom, who are invested not only on an extremely personal level, but on a philosophical one as well. The bottom line of all of this is that you cannot let the government throw people away, because there will always be a fine net of tenderness that prevents it. Humanity is a natural foil for inhumanity, and this is what will ultimately keep us going when all else has failed.

A kind of failure is evident when we approach in our rented minivan up to the prison. It is early in the morning, and already approaching 100 degrees, in lungstopping humidity. The insects are forming thick clouds near the ground, and they carpet the inside of the car when the doors are cracked open. We pass a large group of inmates, mostly black men, working the field with hoes. They break the ground with tools under the blazing sun and the heated gaze of many Boss Hogg type guards, with rifles at the ready, on horseback.

We must blink several times to accept the reality of this. It looks like Roots, which can never be a good thing. Not then, and certainly not now. I hope that these prisoners have done wrong, that they are being punished fairly, that they are supposed to be where they are, that their karma has brought them to this place, and not the bureaucratic unfairness of capitalist society. How can we be sure anymore? I have been around so-called criminals for my entire life, reformed and otherwise. What is common amongst them is that they will forever claim innocence, no matter what the accusation and how much evidence is stacked against them.

It is often easy to tell who is guilty and who is not. Here, it is less obvious. The story of the West Memphis Three makes you question whether any of the young men toiling in the muggy heat of the prisoner’s morning are deserving of their lot. Damien had told me that Jessie Misskelley once worked the hoe squad, and that he felt sorry for him.

We are stopped by the guards on the way in for an extensive search. They use this opportunity as an arbitrary and unnecessary show of power. They filter through Lorene’s bag and take out some Balance bars, but not others. A decision to leave my my hot pink Sailor Jerry pocketbook alone is made, presumably because there is a painting of a naked lady on the side. I take out big handfuls of quarters for the vending machines and carry them around in my sweaty fists. A female guard asks me about my elaborate gold arm bracelets that I wear high near my shoulders like a belly dancer. She wonders if they are ‘jewelry’ and sighs and shakes her head when I tell her yes, like having them on must be some kind of arduous task.

We walk through numerous doors, and then through a long, winding outdoor path. It would be a pretty day, with the cloudless blue sky above us, if we didn’t have to view it behind the scary razor sharp barbed wire and electrified fence. You want criminals to live like this, if they have hurt you, robbed you, raped you. If they have taken a life, then this is the life they should receive in turn. However, this is not what my friends have done, and they are not here because of their actions, rather the actions of a nefarious state.

I hate that my friends live like this.

We are brought to a large, refrigerated building, with glass partitions and steel walls behind them. After the slamming of countless doors, distant and then growing closer, Damien is finally brought through the other side of the glass. He is hard to hear through the air vents, but he is wonderful to see. Damien is beautiful like a girl, with a pale, delicate complexion that is Dove Cleansing Bar- worthy. I exclaim that he is 1/4 moisturizing cream, and Lorene says you can see them pouring the cream into the bar, just like in the commercial. Lorri and Lorene both think that he has a Johnny Depp quality, but I think that Damien is much cuter. Though we have never met face to face until now, we know each other well. He is an inspiring teacher and a remarkable thinker. His writing is a constant source of wonder, especially as he lives in this terrible captivity.

We sit for many hours, which go by much too quickly. He reads his poetry, which is eloquent and dreamlike. I am reminded of Lewis Carroll daguerrotypes, in the fragile, childlike features of his face. He wants me to tell Jason that he would like to find a way that they could communicate, whether it is through other people or relayed messages. Their closeness hasn’t faded, even after over a decade of being separated. When it is time for him to go, it is hard to say goodbye.

He is heartbreakingly buoyant. The years in this place have not weighed down his spirit. I read him a poem that Damien had written about him, and the look on his face is priceless. He talks about the heroic efforts of the WM3.org crew, Burk, Kathy, Grove and Lisa, how they are who come to mind when he hears the word ‘hero’. He is grateful for the thousands of supporters that write to him from all over the world. He works in the law library, helping other inmates with their cases, and through his own service, he has a formidable knowledge of the legal system. I promise to write and encourage him to write his story, like a letter to the world.

He plans to have the hands of the clock put on it at the exact time of his release, to commemorate it forever, when the time comes. He is adorable and full of boundless hope. The last thing that would be expected from someone serving life in prison – optimism, but his outlook is impossibly sunny.

I wish our nation had as good of a forecast. For all our talk of freedom, we have a country that is decidedly unfree. We talk of liberty as a right, but in fact, it is a rare privilege. Watching the Democratic National Convention, from afar, as a direct result of a loss of freedom, which is bad, but certainly not nearly as heinous as the loss of the freedom of the West Memphis Three, I cannot help but fear the worst.