The title is suggestive, it’s correct, true, and it was a pretty
cool song for the T.V. Show "Barretta".
As a criminal, you may have thought about what the
rewards would be in conquering a score or getting away with the act in profit;
but I bet you did not run a cost benefit analysis. In fact, I know that you
didn't. Did you weigh who it would harm? Did you weigh the cost in comparison
to your own freedom? Did you weigh the loss of years from your life? Did you
weigh in the fact being death could play a part in the unforeseen scenario? If
you had nothing to lose and you took this gamble I'd say that depression played
a major role in your irrational thought process. However, I am not here to
challenge your ideologies. The price is higher than you can ever think to
imagine in a rational state of mind.
"I am here to fight for
the right to live within a society that has somehow deemed they have the right
to say who could live and how they should live after having done
their time."
Forever, society has
placed its rules upon those that are less fortunate to commander the harness of
true living. Those in
power would suggest: If you're poor you can't live a good life, if you're black
you can't live a good life, if you've ever been to prison you can't live a good
life, If you're too fat, too ugly, too short, if you're disabled, if you're not
from a certain class or station in life you are less deserving of the very
earth that God himself created for us all to not only or merely occupy but
enjoy the fullness thereof. A person cannot change the color of their skin,
they can't change that they've been to prison, they can't change the time nor
the era or environment in which they were born into and before you go into a
full-off-rant about the world being cold but fair: YOU ARE WRONG. The world is
perfect just the way that it is, it is the people in this world that are cold,
nonresponsive, egotistical, self-centered, and unfair.
You know it. You know....
Before you try telling me and
the rest of the world that this world is based on a chronology of great
thinkers that should govern, as if they haven't been criminal in any way: YOU
ARE WRONG, they just hadn't been caught or paid to make their indiscretion go
away. Dirt can be found on anyone, no matter how great or small, and skeletons
are a dead man's bones, but he was once attached, and life can be what you make
it but it is also shaped and molded by circumstances, perception, and chains of
events.
Not only is history is a group
of lies agreed upon, it is also ever changing by those in power. At any case
the fact remains: WE ARE ALL HUMAN prone and given to error, bad ideas,
erroneous choices, great choices, ideas, and deep love, joys, hurts, pains, and
regrets. NOT one of us are incapable or exempt from the decisions of life, nor
fallacies; none of us are too grand to be touched by hunger, death, or
unforeseeable events happening to us. However, we can extract from within
ourselves the ability to forgive as God also forgives us.
WHO? Who are you to decide if a
person can obtain employment or housing because of their past? If the
crime has been done and the time has been served; why not allow that
person a chance to live a good life? Why not allow that person to become a law-abiding
citizen? Why harass them with your bigotry?
Why go to church on Sunday and
then treat your counterparts as less than on Monday? The very thing that THE
MAN (Jesus/ God) you went to church to observe, praise, collect an offering for
future encounters, worship, speak in his name, and smile that "fake
smile", and then turn immediately around and scorn those he has created
for having been born and born of God himself as he is the creator? With all of
the bureaucracy and red tape for an ex-felon life after prison is still a form
of serving time. With the lack of unforgiveness from society, a society that
has held that they would be given a chance once released are rarely given
anything; it is at worst an ongoing fight unless that person has money and how
can they obtain money if they cannot obtain a job? Ex-felons are bet upon, it's
almost a sure bet that they will return, especially with racial profiling being
a source of entrapment and tactic of those that have been sworn to protect.
"Families are impacted,
young lives are impacted, and you bear the burden when you fail to respond
correctly."
DCFS, DFAX, and PRISONS hold family’s
hostage, they hold generations inside of those cells, cracks, crevices, and
lack of reform or true-rehabilitation alongside of laws that should be ratified
with them. Don't get me wrong: when a crime is committed that
person should do their time. However, after they've served out their sentence
they should be able to make a living and provide for themselves and their
families. I know, you're going to open wide your mouths to say: it
was their decision, they made that choice, didn't nobody hold a gun to their
heads to make them commit a crime or crimes. AGAIN: YOU ARE WRONG. Tell me
this; what is a gun? A gun is a loaded weapon and is used by force under
duress, stress, fear, hate, anger, depression, and control. So, think a minute
and recollect what pressures, stressors, environments, situations, mental
challenges, lacks in perception, understanding or knowledge may as well be a
loaded gun because those things are also manipulated in some likeness of any
gun and has the same debilitating effects and affects as a steel-gun.
The before mentioned cost
benefit analysis those in power have projected to turn an almighty dollar for
upon the backs of those that simply cannot afford the privileges and
connections as others include prisons. Did you know that it takes in variation
of states anywhere from $30,000.00 to $76,000.00 per inmate to be housed? Come
out of your self-absorbed climates and smell the trash that you've thrown from
your own homes and realize that everyone plays a part in being his or her
brother's and sister's keeper.
Well, LMJ you seem to have all
of the answers! NO. I do not, but what I do know is this: You
cannot be angry at the person standing on the corner begging when you've kept
that person from being legal in his country among his countrymen as a
formidable working man or woman. You cannot bring drugs into their neighborhoods
and then point the finger at them for having taken part in a mental escape from
the carnage you have created and governed. You cannot throw the rock and then
hide your hand as if they are at fault knowing full well they had no jets nor
security clearances in which to bring the very thing into their world knowing
that it would stifle them, their people, and their communities to commit crimes
over and break-up homes over and shoot or be shot and killed over. YOU ARE
WRONG.
It is a part of your plan to
but not allow him or her the right to work, eat, live, be housed, and forgiven
under the law when he or she has served their time. It's a vicious cycle and
something must be done about it; the thing is everyone knows it, just not
enough people care or the privileged has not found themselves without a dollar
to be able to post towards their circumstance or the issue hasn't hit too close
to home in order to care. The singer-performer PINK wrote and sang a song:
"Dear Mr. President", listen to it, hear the likelihood of the heads'
broken promises for votes cast and humans under God that he took an oath to
serve. Instead taking millions of people down roads of hellish past reminders
of what the still changing for the better world had to succumb to currently.
....and I wonder why: We
The People Allow it. HOW have we forgotten those cost benefit
analysis and the prices so many people have paid and what had been endured?
This world is just fine....
with its trees darning pretty-green leaves, sandy shores, clean drinking water,
fresh fish, star-filled skies, and natural foods in yield from the earth. It's
the people in it that is deeply flawed and blonde. Cries are not being heard,
those in power are eating off the fat of the land and the backs of those that
haven't access to the fat in which they too would like to eat. To survive and
LIVE. I don't mean exist, I mean LIVE.
So, what have you learned today
in reading LMJ? I will make it brief:
You've learned that you must
STOP treating people as mere dollar signs, you must be your brother's keeper,
you must love beyond walls, you must be willing to forgive in order to
truthfully follow THE MAN you go to church to worship, you've learned that it
is morally wrong to forfeit a man's right to provide for his family or her
family, you've learned that prison reform means this in short:
1) you can't have the 3x looser law in
place when you've created the barriers for him or her to return to prison.
2) Allow a person a true chance before
reaching the 3x looser law so that life can be rehabilitated, and redemption
can be found not only for them but for you as well.
3) You've learned that The President has the
power to set the tone and that if he doesn't' set it for all of us he's only
setting it for himself and his family and friends and we don't need that.
4) You've learned that in UNITY we can
be a part of a world that is already fine and waiting for us to catch up to
what really matters.
5) You've learned that crime is WRONG,
and you must pay, however, you shouldn't have to continue paying for the rest
of your life unless you've been sentenced to life.
....and hopefully, you've
learned that there is at least one human being that cares.
You can't make America Great
Again if it has NEVER been great in the first place; with all of its
exclusions.
I will leave you with this:
Department Of Corrections, (D.O.C)...
Take your clothes off! Medical history has to be done! Blood
drawn, pap smear.
Squat, cough, raise your nipples, spread your ass cheeks, wave
your fingers through your hair.
Open your mouth and lift your tongue.
Do you know where you are...D.O.C?
Blue suits worn a thousand times before and after you by anyone
it would fit or NOT.
Thick sliced bologna so thick that it can't be flushed down the
toilet, two slices of wet or dry bread maybe
W/mustard or without, If you're lucky a juice and or a piece of
fruit, a bag of chips…hum
...If no one has stolen it first,
The sound of your cell-e regurgitating up their insides of the
blows inside or NOT,
Constant flushing that rings throughout the entire jail from one
end to the other.
Whispers heard in the dark at night once each door is locked
through the vents. Who are you what’s your name? You sound good, sing somebody
(as someone sings in the back ground), that *****! Hook me up,
I got you boo; go on through the night and until those who
aren't crying for their first time on the inside or dope sick fall finally off
to sleep.
Do you know where you are...D.O.C?
Standing at the locked door agitated waiting for the sound of
the clicking and the popping of the doors set off round and round, to laugh, watch
TV, talk about God and read your bible, or your case. Argue, eat,
Sneak hugs and kisses and maybe more depending on who you are.
Until the resounding sounds of the clicking and the popping of the doors note;
Take it in for shift change and head count until lunch or dinner
time!
Do you know where you are ...D.O.C?
Opposition dressed up and down in darker blues and spit shined
shoes, the jingling of keys and heavy hefty voices filled with all of that
authority. Hated, be-friended, favored or NOT… mm the turn key.
For those cast aside from their families to work below minimum
wages for a piece of independence and a slice of freedom in its own way of outside
of the cell privileges.
Cliques: pretty, money, ugly, power: translated as juice, poor
commissary whore.
Begged borrowed friends, stole, hustled, permed, curled and even
dyed hair, crop cuts…
Ironed pressed mattress suits, worn in pride or NOT…
Until that day comes that’s long for by some or NOT...
Pack It UP!! Hey D.O.C, you...26th street bus waiting, phone
call making, cold Pepsi drinking, fried chicken eating, filtered cigarette
smoking, civilian clothes wearing take it in when you get ready to self-----trying
to
Have somebody to come pick you up...girl, boy, so where are you
now? Free or NOT…
What's your 1020?
(c) - L.M.J.
The number is staggering and shameful because there has not been loud outcries against what's happening within the black communities and to our young men and women to be exact. Over 64,000 black young men and girls are being abducted from their communities and no one is doing a damn thing about it. I had to read it in a newspaper. Something of this magnitude should be on the news EVERYDAY until these missing people are found and some answers to go along with them.
Daily you hear here and there about the harvesting of black organs, tricks and traps set for our young black women, girls, Men and boys with promises of jobs, and live-in situations back into slavery positions. This is not new new or fake news it is happening and I would like to know why mainstream media has yet to speak on the large undefined numbers of our missing relatives. I am always seeing amber alerts with regards to white female or male missing, I have yet to hear or see anything about one of my own in an amber alert. I guess maybe I need to go to congress and ask for a law with regards to a list black children's names to include our loved ones in an important STOP NOW, IF YOU SEE, WHITE VAN or Nissan with the licence plate number 25225-24453-6477464 alert.
