When we were at the Desert Rock protest site he told us this story, and I will share it with you to the best of my ability.
“I spent some time in prison, for crimes against the State of South Dakota. And while I was in prison, I would be sitting in my cell – and there was one guard who would always walk by my cell and harass me. He would walk by and use his nightstick and run it across the bars of my cell. He wouldn't do this to any other prisoner, but as soon as he got to my cell, he would take that stick and rattle the bars as he walked by, and then he would stop before he got to the next prisoner.
This went on and I decided to fight back. I would watch out my cell for him to come through. And when he was close to me, I started singing. I would sit on my bunk, and sing the AIM song. And when he finished with striking the bars of my cell and moved on; I would stop singing.
This continued for a month...three months; and finally one day, as he was running his stick along the bars of my cell and I was singing the AIM song, he stopped.
“Banks,” he asked me, “Why do you keep singing. Why are you always singing that song?”
“Because,” I said, “It puts me at ease. It puts me at peace.”
“How can you be at ease, how can you be at peace?” he said. “You're in prison. You are in that cell. I see you in here every day. I get to leave this place. I get to get in my car, and go home, have a nice meal, watch some T.V., talk to my wife. And when I come back to work, you are still here. How can you be at ease with that?”
You know, Jun-san was with me at that prison in South Dakota. She walked across the state and sat outside the prison walls. I could hear her out there. It was winter in South Dakota – bitterly cold. But there she was, drumming and chanting..namu myoho renge kyo. And that put me at ease, and strengthened me. At one point, they invited her to come inside the walls of the prison, and do her prayers from there.
I was released from prison, and about a year later I got a letter from the Warden of the prison, telling me about this and that. And at the end of the letter he told me about this guard, the guard that would rattle the bars to my cell. He told me that this guard hd resigned from his job; and when the warden asked why he said,
“I want to find peace...the kind Dennis Banks has.”
Happy Birthday you old rabble rouser!
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