Liberty or Death
By: Manuel Metlock, MA (April 2026)
What if I told you that the concrete walls and razor wire fences around institutions were not designed to keep people inside. What if I told you that they were actually designed to keep society out, so that they could conceal their secret. Illinois never wanted for society to see the individuals in custody who redefine their lives by transforming their pain into purpose. The many men and women who are incarcerated and who have withstood both the odds and the recidivism rate stand as testaments to what rehabilitation can achieve. If given the chance to return to society and defy the risk of recidivism, individuals such as Mr. Jeremiah Betts, with an associate degree and a recidivism rate of only 11%; Mr. Robert Curry, with a bachelor’s degree and a rate of 5.7%; and Mr. Michael Sullivan and Mr. Manuel Metlock, each with a master’s degree an a rate of just 0.01%, according to the Department of Justice, exemplifies what is possible when change takes root. Only 13% of the general U.S. population holds a master’s degree, while fewer than 1% of those incarcerated hold any degree at all.
The stories of those this country has caged and discarded are not missing, they are suppressed. Their absence from the news is not accidental; it is necessary for the survival of a system that depends on our dehumanization. As Malcolm X warned, those who control the media control the narrative. And the narrative America protects insists that Black and Brown lives are disposable. Mass incarceration is not broken. It is functioning exactly as designed. It is the modern expression of white body supremacy, an architecture built to contain, exploit, and eliminate Black and Brown people under the guise of “public safety.”
Prisons do not exist to rehabilitate; they exist to disappear. Courts do not exist to heal; they exist to legitimize violence with paperwork and procedure. Under this modern Jim Crow regime, children and emerging adults are sentenced to die in prison. Natural life and de facto life sentences are not punishment; they are acts of social execution. The state makes a calculated decision that certain lives are no longer worth the cost of imagination, mercy, or transformation. We were sentenced with the intent to bury us. But abolition teaches us that cages cannot extinguish humanity. What the system failed to realize is that it was burying seeds. Even in the most inhumane conditions amid toxicity and despair, people grow politically, intellectually, spiritually. Love survives. Resistance sharpens. This alone indicts a lie at the center of incarceration: that people are beyond change.
My late wife, Mrs. Lauren Metlock, understood this truth and lived it. She fought to make our names known in a society invested in forgetting us. She rejected the violent fiction that a human being can be reduced to their worst act. She knew that justice does not come from cages, it comes from accountability, repair, and the radical belief that people are more than what the state says they are. The question is whether we are willing to confront a system that depends on our silence to survive.
As of January 5, 2026, I will have served 25 consecutive years for the crime of which I was convicted. However, I am required to serve an extra 25 years solely for the purpose of deterrence. This means I have a 25 year gun enhancement as a first time offender. This is a legislative intent to deter a “free person” from the possibility of committing a crime that has not happened yet. In other words, “I die in prison, not for what I have done, but to deter someone else”. Please make this make sense to my daughters, my sister, my lady, and myself. I have paid my debt to society. Illinois asserts that its goal is to rehabilitate individuals. Yet, what consideration is given to those who have already been rehabilitated? There is a profound difference between the two. Rehabilitating is the journey toward restoration, a process still in motion, with work yet to be done. Rehabilitated, by contrast, signifies that the objective has been achieved, the process is complete, and any continued captivity produces adverse effects and constitutes harm. To continue confinement beyond that point is not justice; it is harm. So, we must ask: when is enough, enough?
Liberty or Death is not rhetoric, it is the choice imposed upon us. If we are not liberated, we are condemned to die in bondage, not because of the mistakes of our youth, but because of political agendas that reduce us to property rather than recognize us as human beings. Yet even within this reality, we remain fathers, husbands, mentors, teachers, and leaders committed to preventing violence and healing our communities. I teach inside carceral institutions, entrusted with preparing people to return to society whole and accountable. If I am trusted to guide others toward restoration, then I have already proven my own readiness for freedom. This work is rooted in purpose, not obligation. I do it because I believe in transformation, in accountability, and in redemption. This is not simply what rehabilitation looks like. It is what it means to emerge, healed, empowered, and genuinely restored.
"Liberty or Death" was the rallying cry of the American Revolution in 1775, and it remains just as urgent today. Historian Marc Bloch cautioned that misunderstanding the present is the inevitable consequence of ignorance of the past. History does not disappear; it disguises itself. The same systems that once terrorized in white hoods now rule in black robes, extracting young Black and Brown lives with bureaucratic precision. Patrick Henry's declaration, "Give me liberty or give me death," was rooted in the understanding that freedom is worth more than survival under oppression. Today, we are dying in institutional graveyards, quietly and predictably. Survival is no longer enough. I am tired of merely existing. It is time to fight not just to survive, but to truly live. To lawmakers, judges, prosecutors, and elected officials: your policies are killing us, and your silence makes you complicit. Reform cannot be cosmetic, incremental, or delayed for political comfort. Liberation must be real, immediate, and measurable.
To the public: neutrality is a choice, and it is not innocent. You do not get to celebrate freedom while financing bondage. This moment demands more than sympathy; it demands action. The question is no longer whether change is possible. The question is whether you will stand for liberty or continue to defend a system that chooses death.
And let this be clear: if liberty is not real for all of us, it is nothing at all. To learn more about Michael Sullivan, go to https://linktr.ee/michaelsullivan1, Robert Curry, https://www.facebook.com/JusticeForRobertCurry/; and Manuel Metlock, Manuel Metlock SRA Graduation Speech, 2022.
We are proud to announce that Manuel Metlock, a member of our Advisory
Committee and a beloved comrade, has created a writing series titled “Liberty or
Death.” In this series, Manuel will reflect on his experiences with incarceration,
explore how the prison system shapes our communities, and speak candidly
about oppression and the ongoing struggle for liberation. We look forward to
sharing more of his pieces with you all.
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