I had a dream that I was in a south american prison. There was a catch in their justice system, that if you got a visa to go to america, you could get out of prison. Since I was an american citizen, it turned out I could get out of prison any time I wanted. But I didn’t want to just abandon these people. I wanted to help them get out of prison. My method wouldn’t work for them. I wanted to help them find ways to get american visas.

One day, people started grumbling about this guy. He was a bigshot in the prison gangs. Someone told me that he was working for an organization, set up by the warden, that scoured people’s applications for visas and looked for reasons to deny them. This pissed me off. It seemed like he was selling out his fellow prisoners and countrymen, probably for some sort of consideration from the warden – a better cell, or better treatment of some kind.

People were so mad at him that there was going to be a riot next time he was at work. They were going to beat this guy up.

I felt like that was something I could get behind. I wanted to help these people leave the prison, and this was a guy that was actively working against that goal. So when the riot broke out, I found a baseball bat and followed the crowd.

There he was, sitting at some sort of desk filled with paperwork, crushing people’s dreams. People grabbed him and started wailing on him. Meanwhile, I took my bat and started smashing up his desk. But then I saw what the desk was. He was working for the organization called “H.O.P.E.” They helped prisoners figure out how to fill out their visa applications. The warden didn’t like them, but was legally required to allow them to operate in the prison.

Basically, this guy was doing the exact opposite of what I thought he was doing. He was helping people get out of the prison, just like I wanted to. How did I get this message so screwed up?

The guards grabbed me and threw me back in my cell. As a result of my participation in the riot, the loophole closed for me. I could no longer leave the prison any time I wanted.

It turned out that there were some people whose applications had been denied by the US government, despite the help they had received by “H.O.P.E.” These people were mad at the organization, and talked about it as if “H.O.P.E.” were the ones who had engineered the denial of their applications. In truth, it was just very difficult to get the US government to approve these applications, and almost nobody got in. “H.O.P.E.” did the best they could, but they were up against big odds. Nonetheless, people took it personally.

So why was there a riot against this guy? It turned out that it had nothing to do with his participation in the visa process. It was just some internal gang thing. Someone trying to unseat his power or something. Maybe a rival gang trying to assert authority.

So basically, I had lost my freedom for nothing.