A holiday message from Thomas Bartlett Whitaker, founder of Minutes Before Six:
I have much to be thankful for this year. Indeed, 2024 turned out to be the best year I’ve had since my commutation in 2018. I was finally released from administrative segregation after 17 years, a tale that I will be detailing starting the last week of December. This has presented me with myriad new challenges, but I find after so many years of struggling in some of the worst prisons in Texas, I have become tempered — or perhaps annealed might be a more accurate term. What vexes many of my peers seems like luxuries to me now, because when I say, “it could be worse”, my worse is an order of magnitude more awful than theirs. Life in the wasteland has taught me to take careful note of the little beneficial events that come my way, and to feel exceedingly grateful for each of them: the set of staircases that I now have access to all day long for exercising (and free access to the shower whenever I want, without getting stuck in there for an hour or two waiting for some random CO to remember my existence), the bit of fresh air that I get to feel on my face when I walk to the chow hall, contact visits with my family. Most of you know how close I came to ending in 2018. All of this is bonus time.
Similarly, I am profoundly grateful to have access to a site like this. I live on a wing with nothing but lifers. There are powerful currents of ennui and despair that blow through and taint everything around me. Having a sense that I am speaking truth to power — or even just communicating in some sense posterity, who I hope is both wiser and more intelligent than we poor primates — gives me a feeling of subjective meaning that I have always felt was the only defense against the nihil. I am thankful to all of the volunteers that make this site work: all of the typists and editors and fact checkers and digitizers that help convert what we writers witness into something that is consumable on your end. You ladies and gents are the best. I appreciate the members of the board that steer this sometimes leaky, creaky ship though complicated waters. I know we contributors are in good hands, going forward. I thank the writers who toil in obscurity and without compensation, striving to find some pathway to redemption. And I am especially appreciative to you, the reader, for continuing to come here and bear witness to uncomfortable truths about our nation, our conception of justice, ourselves.
As always, we exist on a shoestring budget. None of our staff receives compensation for the hours they spend managing operations of the site. I’d like to ask that a few of you step up and commit to helping us continue our work. You can do so by donating here, or by sending a check to:
Minutes Before Six
2784 Homestead Road #301
Santa Clara, CA 95051
All donations are tax-exempt. With your help we can continue to shed light on a government function that you pay for, and which purports to be acting in your interest. There are not many sites like this anywhere in existence. If what we do here matters to you, consider volunteering. You can find out information on how by emailing Dina at dina@minutesbeforesix.com. And come join our social media sites (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter/X) and share an article or two that you felt were powerful. Our media team has been doing great work the past year, and word of mouth is the only way a site like ours can grow.
For the first time in years, I’m excited about what the future holds. I thank you all for choosing to walk a few paces with us. May your 2025 be full of light and hope.
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