John J. Lennon, currently incarcerated, earned his honorable mention at the 2019 MOLLY National Journalism Award, thanks to “stunning, big-picture” prison reporting from inside the system. He was awarded for three stories:
- “Spying on Attica” for The Marshall Project and Vice
- “A Turbulent Mind” for The Marshall Project
- “This Place is Crazy” for Esquire
At the awards gala on June 6, Lawrence Bartley of The Marshall Project delivered the thank you speech on John’s behalf. The speech was received with standing ovation from the audience.
Full text of speech below:
When I learned that I was going to receive a Molly Award Honorable Mention, a colleague of mine told me that Molly Ivins was a firebrand Texas journalist who used to call out George W. Bush constantly. I can appreciate a writer with moxie like Ivins.
I write first-person reportage pieces from the inside of prison. It’s a dangerous line I walk — attempting to maintain the respect of my peers in here while earning the respect of my colleagues out there. Being where I am, my stories are loaded with conflict: writing about Attica’s historical culture of abuse or the treatment of people in prison with serious mental illness.
When I was in Attica, the guards knew I was some kind of prison writer. Some liked me, some didn’t. Some would randomly ransack my cell. With pen and paper in hand in the yard, I’d scribble notes in hard-to-decipher shorthand. Then I’d type them up for clarity on a typewriter with a 7,000-character memory. I’d print out the pages and hide them between other papers in folders stacked on my cell floor. I still do this.
By the time those stories came out, I was transferred from Attica to Sing Sing, a more progressive prison with lots of programs. Sometimes, I have bad dreams about being transferred back to Attica. But I’d probably be OK if I were. Today, Attica has cameras and microphones in every crevice. It’s gone from one of the most dangerous maximum security prisons in New York to one of the safest. This is partly because of the good journalism going on at The Marshall Project.
Long-form journalism has taught me empathy. When telling a story, I tend to look for a sympathetic character who is confronting a complicated situation. In here, men with serious mental illness made good protagonists. I observe their struggles, interview them, learn about their upbringing, their time in institutions and jails. But if I were not a storyteller, I’d never do this. These men would be invisible to me, like they’ve always been, like they are perhaps to you. A part of me resents society for hiding these sick people behind prison walls — and what, you leave it to men like me to muster up empathy for them?
When researching my story for Esquire, “This Place Is Crazy,” the editors and I learned that ten of every eleven psychiatric patients housed by the US government are incarcerated. I take pride in exposing this crisis and showing how our great nation treats its most vulnerable people.
As you all know, it’s very hard to land stories in print today. It’s even harder when you are a prisoner behind the wall. Thank you for your recognition.