Welcome to my cellblock, Mr. President

This Thursday, President Obama will become the first president to visit a federal prison.

I hope he gets a chance to see where I bunked in July, 1968, when I was imprisoned there after being sentenced to five years in prison for refusing to fight in Vietnam.

But more than that, I hope he gets to meet with inmates sentenced to 20 years or more for minor drug offenses.

Thank you, Mr. President, for shining a light on a human rights tragedy of major proportion and vowing to do something about it. May your leadership inspire others to help us discard this heinous system of warehousing millions of American men and women, costing us billions of dollars and wasting millions of lives.