And What If We Unchained Him?

Recent Washington Post editorials on #IRAA focus on applicants’ adolescent criminality, but those aren’t the men I know.

It’s 2 PM on a Friday and I’m standing at the back of room 218 at the H. Carl Moultrie Courthouse in Washington DC, wedged between a wooden bench and the wall. The room is packed — a gentleman in joggers and a suit coat stands immediately to my left while another holds the door open behind me. A young child kneels before me, on the floor. A young clerk, visibly flustered, runs back and forth with stacks of plastic chairs.

My friend Halim Flowers, a “juvenile lifer” and DC native, takes a seat on a wooden bench up front.

I first met Halim over coffee at Tryst. I reached out to him on Instagram regarding an interview he’d done on food justice in prisons. He brought along Kristin Adair; the friendship and connection with both were instant. Halim shared more of his own story and I confided my anxiety upon learning B. — at that point a longtime friend — had gotten caught up in the local justice system.

“I know B.,” Halim reassured me. “He’s one of the good ones.”

I’ll admit, with hindsight, that I was nervous. It’s not every day you wake up and grab coffee with a man just released after 22 years in prison for accessory to murder. And while my writer-side would love to [insert dramatic Law & Order tension] here, coffee was just that.