WARNING THERE WILL BE SPOILERS IN THIS, IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED THE ENTIRETY OF ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK SEASON 4 RUN AWAY UNTIL YOU FINISH.

Season 4 of Orange is the New Black has taken a turn for the absolute amazing. After season 3, I was worried I had lost my love for this tragically humorous show. I think this is the best season thus far, the writers and actors have delivered a story that both speaks to the struggles facing prisoners in private prisons, but also the struggles of everyday people across the United States.

I want to start this with a quote from Michelle Alexander's book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. "There are more African American men in prison, jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850." Just take a minute to think about that and how this plays into the private prison industry that is showcased season 4 of OITNB.

Watching this season of OITNB was hard for me, like others I have spoken to, watching the realities of a transgender being locked away in solitary confinement, watching the correctional officers mistreat and use the inmates, watching racial divides within prison walls, watching the lack of support for mental illness in both Lolly and Crazy Eyes, watching how private prisons care about one thing: money, and watching an officer kill Poussey Washington by suffocation and leave her on the floor for hours mirroring real life horrors of Eric Garner and Michael Brown's deaths has been incredibly emotional and difficult to process.

If OINTB made you feel uncomfortable too, good. It should have. We watch and read about the news but with the click of a button, the news is off, with the flick of our finger, the news story disappears off our Facebook timeline. What the writers of OINTB did was create a world where we were so invested in the characters like Lolly, where when they dragged her away to the brutal Psych Ward we cried. When they took the most innocent, one of the most loved and the one prisoner that truly showed the most potential once out of prison, Poussey, I sobbed. What the writers of OINTB did was bring the real world into a platform that we couldn't ignore (binge watching is an addiction, really your brain is addicted to the entertainment) so we could come to terms with how something like this could happen -- and with no consequence.

Photo/Netflix

This should make you stop and think. Samira Wiley does an amazing job as Poussey Washington, which is why we are so devastated to lose her as a character. And if the protests in Ferguson, New York, and Chicago (just to name a few) over that lack of consequence, then why have there been no changes?

As the show depicts, these correctional officers are war veterans, some still grappling with their PTSD, others just psychopathic. They were taken in to gain money for the prison with the least amount of effort but still have the power to control the inmates. In the real world, 31% of all correctional officers have PTSD from work environments akin to war zones, and with many veterans working as officers themselves, the high-stress environment not only takes a tole on the prisoners but their correctional officers as well, leading to more abuse and misuse of power over the inmates.

There are roughly 2.2 million United States citizens locked up in prison. That's a quarter of the world's incarcerated. When you're faced with that, it's hard to support the prison system that the U.S. currently has.

Orange is the New Black has already started to make a difference, has started a conversation that should have been started years ago.

(Here: “Orange Is the New Black” could help save trans inmate lives: Prisons continue to fail women like Sophia,Here: Orange Is the New Black: 'This show will change the fabric of our culture', and here: ‘Orange Is the New Black’ Season 4: Lori Petty Talks Lolly’s Fate, and here: Getting Your Period in Prison Is More Miserable Than You’d Ever Imagine, which lead to here: Providing Free Pads And Tampons To Incarcerated Women Is About More Than Hygiene).

Although it is devastating to have lost a beloved character of OITNB, we lose beloved people everyday to brutality across the U.S. To take action, contact your local government.

Washington is dead, but like the people she represents, her memory will not die.