Tag: Slavery

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Slave Narrative #41: Real Thoughts and Experiences from the Perspective of Massachusetts Prisoners

My Letter to America
Journal #8

Damn…don’t you know America? Men and women are dying. Not all but just a select demographic who’ve been marginalized to poverty, prisons and penal structures. They put people from these places in prisons because they’ve decided to no longer suffer from the many societal pains that derive from the environments they’ve come from. So, the question surfaces, what can be done about a system designed to augment margins and repress people who are doing all they can to go outside those margins?

America, we’re tired of your sneak hatred, we’re tired of your racism and the continuation of investing into institutions that perpetuate different modes of slavery. In prison, the lowest tier of civilization within America, is left outside of rule of law and persons within these places are snuffed out from the world, left to suffer in isolation. The system of communication that’s so widely used in society is nonexistent within the confines of your various “departments of correction.” Others don’t know about said horrors which exist until they’ve been arrested and thrust into the shock of being thrown into a society within a society. These places really do no good for your long term health because they tend to erode the chastity of liberty which begins to leave a filthy stench of hypocrisy.

I ask, why does premeditated murder exists, why does crack and heroine still so often make appearances in my community, why is unemployment always concentrated in the places I’ve grown up and was raised in? Why are laws manufactured and tailored to antagonized me and my pool of friends? You act dumb sometimes and as if you don’t know why you behave the way you do at times. DO you think or do you just act, because when I act without thinking you oppressively incarcerated and do all you can to break my spirit and keep me tunnel visioned to the immediate wrong at hand opposed to the larger wrong that you’ve perpetuated, and caused me to forced my hand.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve not scribed a sob letter to this because we’ve been called to ACT and act is what we will do. We will no longer allow you to force your oppressive hands upon us. I’ve suited up — along with the millions of others to address and do away with your abuse. Eyes at times have grown weary, but yet we’re wide awake and strategizing. What? You ask me who I denote when I profess, “We’re.” We’re, being we are, is the people who are fed up with your B.S. and have resolved to suffer no more. We see that you derive excitement from our suffering, while you live in every bit of accordance to your dream. Well listen, our dream comes directly from a place of longing in which we will die in order to bring into fruition. Don’t stay up though, because while you’re sleep go fighting your sleep — we’re wide awake and moving about in rhythmic waves of action to fight your system!

Your champion & student,
Derrick Washington

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Slave Narrative #38: Real Thoughts and Experiences from the Perspective of Massachusetts Prisoners

James Alexander

by Al-Ameen

Fireless neoslaves weigh light on Lady Justice’s scale
Pumping gallons of fear through hearts of emasculated spirits
Defeat, disillusion, and despair is in every breath of air
Attitudes of inconvenience about a just cause, just-cause
Fifteen hundred disunited we stand, united we fall

Synthetic highs chill pride and cloud the true value of fire
Opportunistic C.O.’s turn prison hustlers and king pins
Men fumbling prime years nursing invisible wounds with K2
Content with a couple books of stamps and some paper to chew
Physically present but mentally absent without leave
The CRA exploiting and dissecting souls for practice
To them we are unwanted corpses waiting to happen

Matchbook men, we are struck but not enflamed, rather we enflame people who are tiny as matchsticks while we are the anti- thesis of smooth we are rough. Hence the reason why standing on one neoslave makes the whole damn prison administration feel tough.

Chemical combustion combinations we know all of them
Their toxins pollute our oxygen
and dims the resistance
and cools the awakening
and smokescreens the entrance to substantive equality

Let them fill up segregation!
Our voices will still be heard!
The narratives will still be shared!
From Norfolk to California!
Even if defeat seems certain,
Never concede or compromise
Take justice only on just terms
Terms which permit our presence in sessions and assemblies
Terms which respect neoslaves’ rights and humanity
Terms which proscribe contracts to be signed with disenfranchised blood

No hypocritical Declaration of Independence
And no more exception clause within the 13th Amendment
No more second rate citizenship for non-white immigrants

Or witness a fire so intense it can rest of water
Call it a James Alexander
Hotter than their Easter Monday
Torching the lives of three-hundred and twenty-two neoslaves
The birth of a new renaissance
Its flames are colorful. Freedom on our terms – wonderful.

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SLAVE NARRATIVE #33: Real Thoughts and Experiences from the Perspectives of Massachusetts Prisoners

Mental Health in the Black Community:
The Genesis
By
Universal Born Allah

In order for true democracy to become a reality in the lives of the American citizens in the here and now we must first begin to meticulously examine with an impartial eye the very tenets upon which “our” democracy was found. Let’s start by defining what is the meaning of a democracy.

Democracy-  \ di-ˈmä-krə-sē \ n., pl. – cies
1: Government by the people; esp : rule of the majority
2: A government in which the supreme power is held by the people
3: A political unit that has a democratic government
4: Cap. : the principles and policies of the Democratic party in the U.S.
5: The common people esp. when constituting the source of political authority …

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus 2006

In other words a democracy is an institution of laws and principles through which the ruling class citizens exercises its authority for a common cause. Well, if this is so what are the said laws and principles that make up this institution of democracy? It is the fundamental unified body of ideological statutes that is designed to protect the rights of all citizens in our country otherwise known as the United States Constitution.

The United States Constitution was written and introduced in the year of 1780 about eleven years after America garnered er independence and a time in American history when disenfranchisement for Black people was at its zenith. When Black people were considered to be less than three-fifths (3/5) of a human being meaning even a stray dog had more rights in this country than Black people did. This simply shows that when the United States Constitution was inaugurated “our” country’s statesmen did not have the best interest of Black people at heart. Thus, the United States Constitution was not applicable to Black people in its birth period which would apparently explain why the very rights of Black people in American have been non-existent since our arrival into this foreign land in the year 1619.

Although Black people since the days of the Jim Crow era have been consistent in their demands to be recognized as fellow citizens of this country called America it is not enough to just make a demand for change for it is incumbent for us all as a unified people to be the change that we so desperately been longing for. Hence, in order to realistically address the issue of equal citizenship we as Black people must conduct a true inventory of self in initiating the process of being able to identify the origin or root cause as to why we have yet to improve the condition of our lives and stop running away from our past which brings me to the discussion of the ever growing mental health epidemic that has been plaguing Black communities across the nation for generations.

The current mental health condition of Black people in American ban be attributed and traced back to 17th century Sir William Lynch (better known as Willie Lynch) a once wealthy and powerful British slave owner who in the year of 1712 arrived on the bank of the James River in Virginia from the West Indies to give a presentation entitled ‘The Making of a Slave’ teaching slave owners in America how to methodically implement various techniques and tactics into the breaking process of the Black man woman and child starting with age, color, and sex turning the young against the old, light against dark, female against male and vice versa ultimately instilling a psychological sense of hate and distrust among the slaves and a false sense of security and trust within the slave wonder. Divide and conquer.

What is a very key factor in the speech by Willie Lynch that must be highlighted is the accentuation in the articulation of his narrative noting that if the methods of the breaking process was employed correctly the system would operate on its own accord eventually becoming self perpetuating in its effectiveness on the psyche of the Black mind that would last at the very least for the next three centuries. Despite the tremendous strides that Black people have made in this country thus far the distressful conditions of the Black family in todays society is evidently and affirmation to the foresight of Willie Lynch that must be seen for what is really is and not what it appears to be; that the mental illness of the Black community is essentially rooted in what is now called ‘the Willie Lynch Syndrome.’

The Willie Lynch syndrome is an unofficial socio medical terminology that defines the social dysfunctions of todays Black generation genetically inherited from our ancestors who experienced the hours of chattel slavery first hand. To further grasp this concept let’s define the word syndrome; a syndrome is an assemblage of signs and symptoms that develop together in characterization of a particular abnormality or ailment (author’s definition). The symptoms of the Willie Lynch syndrome include but are not limited to; self-hatred, domestic violence, Black on Black violence, and a complex of inferiority.

Needless to say these symptoms have been written off an disregarded by all institutions of society as a myth or science fiction in it’s relation to the Willie Lynch syndrome. Collectively these illnesses amount to what has been recognized as post traumatic slavery disorder.

Post traumatic slavery disorder is the mental sickness of the Black mind stemming from the atrocities incurred by our forebears during the Black Holocaust that intimately correlates to the disparaging social impact currently destroying the minds of Black people generation after generation. Like the WIllie Lynch syndrome, post traumatic slavery disorder has also been overlooked and rejected by scientists in the medical field as a fable. But what makes post traumatic stress disorder anymore credible or worth researching than post traumatic slavery disorder? Is this not racial prejudice?

To begin reversing the effects of post traumatic slavery disorder pathologist, psychologist, psychiatrist, and nutritionist alike just first objectively perform their own independent research of this disorder to truthfully validate unto themselves and those abroad that post traumatic slavery disorder is an actual infirmity of the Black mind and one this study has been clinically confirmed as such they are mutually obligated to diagnose post traumatic slavery disorder for what it truly is; a traumatic psychological disease distinct from post traumatic stress disorder that has been rapidly killing off the Black population in America in astronomical numbers never seen before. One of the killing tools of PTSD that has been politically instrumental in the proliferation of the death of Black people in America is a clause that exist in the United States Constitution that was specifically designed to target Black people and is most certainly a contributing factor in the genocide of Black people that is alive to this very day. The infamous 13th Amendment.

The mental health of the Black community is the genesis to abolishing the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution which is a complete hypocrisy and a total mockery to the fundamental rights of our nations citizens particularly Black citizens as it prohibits the act of forced slavery while permitting involuntary servitude all in the same breath.

Politically speaking, this is a matter for Congress for in order to abolish the 13th Amendment the issue would have to survive the three (3) branches of the government. However this fight for constitutional reform must start from within the heart of the inner city community that have been mostly effected by it’s existence. But how do we expect to abolish the 13th Amendment, end mass incarceration, and life without parole (LWOP) sentences if we don’t collaboratively attack and reverse the autonomous cycle of Willie Lynchism at it’s root? Nowadays, Black people can’t even agree on more simplistic matters such as supporting Black owned businesses or attending community board meetings rather than always going to the clubs to shake our butts or make it rain.

Black people have suffered so much from psychological trauma that we’ve literally become numb and desensitized to the reality of white supremacy (or white nationalism as it is called today) and systematic slavery in all districts of todays society so much that registering our votes is no longer a necessity or of any importance especially since we’ve been tricked to believe that the Black vote doesn’t county for anything. But no longer can we be victims to the tricknowledge of popular opinion. No longer can we just sit idle around venting to each other about how unhappy or dissatisfied we are with the unfortunate conditions of our lives nor an we just hand around and wait for Congress to do for us what we are capable of doing on our own. No more excuses!

Our most greatest strength is in numbers so let the liberty of our people in captivity of the prison industrial complex (modern day slave plantation) be the common cause of the motivating factor and the incentive to unify and mobilize ourselves to actualize the evolution of true democracy. Because if we as Black people don’t step up and fight for this righteous cause then we are no better than the system we are suppost to be fighting against to bring our brothers and sisters home from prison. It’s on you, it’s on us. No more excuses!

-Peace

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SLAVE NARRATIVE #30: Real Thoughts and Experiences from the Perspectives of Massachusetts Prisoners

Jumu’ah (Friday)

In memory of my mother Deborah Denise Berry

By: Al-Ameen

“You might want to put your folder down,” C.P.O. Tiffany said to me as she dialed numbers into her land-line telephone.

“Why – what’s wrong?”

I put my folder down. I could feel my heart-rate begin to speed up on me. Tiffany is the 7-block C.P.O. She’s a Black girl with short black hair and a smooth brown complexion. She’s a small-little Black girl; with small-little hands; small-little feet; a small little head, a small-little nose on a small-little face. She just has a small-little body overall.

She stood behind her desk in her usual grey shirt, black pants, and black shoes (which I did not have to see to know she had on). In her uniform attire she he’d the phone to her right ear with the same side hand and shoulder while leaning over looking into her desktop monitor.

I have had a few run-ins with Tiffany in the past and she has never failed to rub me the wrong way.

Once I stopped by her officer, during her office hours to inquire about the process of getting my name legally changed. During this entire brief waste of time her full attention was on her keyboard with her index fingers typing what was apparently more important to her than what I was asking about. The only time she looked up at me was at the end of a word or sentence she finished typing. Needless to say she did not help me at all and acted oblivious to the process, if any, that the state prison plantation provided for my inquiry. Those experiences are all too common here. Nearly all of the C.P.O.’s hired to help us offer us no help and are unprofessional in the process. It’s as if they vie against each other with who can do the least work. Then they are praised by the prison plantation administration with employee of the month awards for doing nothing. Now here I was again in C.P.O. Tiffany’s office bracing myself for another attack on my dignity.

Prior to being in her office I was sitting in the masjid (mosque) after the Jumu’ah sermon and prayer when the C.S.D Building officer informed me that I was being summoned back to my unit. I honestly thought that it was that racist, islamophobic, neo-slave hater known as Sgt. “Red Beard” calling me (I haven’t reached the U.S. Supre,e Court’s threshold standard of proof of discriminatory intent but I as well as every other neoslave here knows Red Beard is as intentionally low as they come). He is round like that chubby demon in the movie Spawn, average height, low hair-cut, full beard reddish like the hair on his head, and he wears glasses. When he walks he wobbles from side to side as if his legs are too weak to support his weight. He has a deep and nasaly voice that immediately goes from aggravating to excruciating to listen to once you discover how impudent he is.

I was thinking that maybe he had been rummaging through the refrigerator boxes and found the butter I had in mine, or had shaken down my cell and found the bleach I had in my locker. These normal household items are considered nefarious contraband in prison slave plantations. Most C.O.s operate “out of sight, out of mind” when it comes to these and other similar items, but Red Bears and others worst then him literally go searching for these items so they can write d-reports and send neoslaves back to probation or the hole. I remember when I first moved on the unit I wanted to move in the cell with an akhi (muslim brother). According to the unit rep (every unit has a neoslave representative) Red Beard said he would never move two Muslims in the cell together, and he never did.

When I entered my unit the unit officer, whose name is Potter, was standing in the foyer at the top of the flight of stairs listening to a neoslave speaking to him. As I came through the door he had his uniform cap removed, holding it by the brim in his left hand and rubbing his head with the palm of the same hand. He noticed me coming through the door to his right and nonchalantly broke his attention away from the neoslave to tell me C.P.O. Tiffany needed to see me. Potter’s eyes widened a little when he turned his head and looked at me. he pressed his lips together and spread them across his face, then inhaled and exhaled through his nose before speaking to me. But he does that a lot when he speaks so I consciously refused to entertain in my mind the allusion of his idiosyncracy. I ignored that it was a sign of what was to come, and that it correlated with what I would soon know. I guess I was optomistic because at that moment it was obvious that I was wrong about my initial thought that Red Beard had flagged me for contraband.

Walking over to the 7-2 unit when CPO Tiffany’s office is located, I felt hollow inside. It was out of routine for her of any C.P.O. to schedule an appointment so late in the day. After eight years of being counted more than three times a day, I, of all neoslaves, know that the state prison plantation runs on routine and operates like a well-oiled machine. In fact, disciplinary reports are handed out everyday for disrupting ‘the normal operation’ of the institution.

What made her operate outside of her normal routine for a neoslave? I though. I entered through the door, went up the flight of steps, checked in with the unit officer, and headed to her office. The door was open so I looked in but waited at the threshold of the doorway until she glanced in my direction, which I interpreted as a sign of her tacit approval to enter. I walked in and sat down in the chair she has in her small office directly in front of her desk reserved for neoslaves. “You can close the door,” she said as I settled in the chair. She lifted her small-little smoothe brown face off the phone and thrusted her chin in the air towards the door as if I needed a non-verbal gesture as well to understand what she asked of me. I closed it. She picked up the phone. “Your wife…Nia…I have to call her for you.”

“Can I just call her back on my unit? I have money on my phone.”

“Nope. I have to call for you.”

She used every object in her office as an excuse to look away from me. I heard they were trained to avoid looking into the eyes of neoslaves. The hollowness inside of me expanded even more. My heart was racing at double the speed now.

“Hello…Nia…Is this Nia…I have yous husband here o.k…And I have to put yall on speaker. OK…OK, one second.”

She pressed a button on the phone base that turned on the speaker-phone then she hung the phone up. She pushed the phone closer towards me to the top end of her desk and I learned forward in the chair.

“Nia.”

“As-Salaam Alaykum,” she said.

“Wa Alaykum Salaam, what’s up?”

“This is hard for me to tell you this…but…shortly after I got off the phone with you this morning…your mom passed away in the hospital…I’m sorry I…”

“Nia”

“Uh huh”

“I’m gonna call you back in a second when I get back over to my unit, alright?”

“Alright. I love you.”

“Love you too.”

When C.P.O. Tiffany hung the phone up, I swear I had every intention the second the phone call disconnected to sprang right up and rush out the door back to my unit to call my wife but I could not move. I just sat and stared blankly across the small office at the window I could not see out of because there was an AC in it. Out of my peripheral I could not help but notice C.P.O. Tiffany was now looking at me. Suddenly at that moment in time I became visible to her.

“Would you like to see mental health?”

“No, I’m good.”

I broke my blank stare as I felt tears flooding my eyes. I grabbed my folder off her desk and I held it in my lap, staring down at it. The first tear rolled halfway down my cheek and fell off my face onto the tan-colored folder. I stared down at the deformed circle it made. Drip, drip. Two more tears fell straight of my eyelashes and splashed against the soft surface of the folder.

“You want a tissue?”

“No, I’m good.”

I wanted to leave but I could not move. C.P.O. Tiffany ignored my refusal and handed me tissue anyway. I accepted it from her but I did not use it. I could feel her faze weighing heavily upon me. Does she really care that mommy is gone? Or are my tears a source of state prison plantation drama that she can take home and entertain her friends with. If she really cared why would she hand me a piece of tissue when it could never be enough to wipe away the life time of tears I will cry for my mother? C.P.O. Tiffany’s brown skin does not fool me. She’s not earning a wage to care. She earns a wage to give me absolutely no privacy on the phone with my wife as she struggles to find the words to tell me that my mommy is gone…gone forever. She gets paid to protect the state prison plantation from legal liability by asking if I would like to see mental health. She gets paid to pretend that the state prison plantation will actually transport a neoslave to see his only mother one more time before she is laid in the ground. All these thoughts I had at that moment in time became a source of strength for me as I grieved for mommy and battled with the anger I had due to feeling helpless to be there for her and my family. I picked my head up and the tears begin to flow down into my beard. I did not try to wipe them; there was no need to. I looked at C.P.O. Tiffany so deep into her eyes I could see the long line of Uncle Toms she emerged from.

“I hate this place. The hate that I have for it, is so visceral, it communicates with the neurons in my heart. I hate what this place does to people; including you; and definitely what it has done to me. If I was not strong this place would destroy me as it destroys the family with spatial hostility. And I know destruction because I destroyed in my days of ignorance. I hate its physical infrastructure. I hate the filthy magnesium saturated water that I am forced to consume and bathe in. I hate that this state prison plantation is allowed to be called a ‘correctional’ institution. Soon I will return to society teeming with this hate. I will return to society remembering this day. I have realized my purpose now and you have helped to liberate me.”

Mobile now, I stood up and walked out of her office and went back to my unit to call my wife as I told her I would. C.P.O. Tiffany maintained her focus on me even as I turned my back to her and walked out the door. She will see me for the rest of her life now.