A Time to Fight

They must think me radical, a militant bent on mayhem. They could not be further from the truth. They think I am eager for a fight when I am only eager to confront injustice.  They say I would be better served by prayer. I wish they were right.

There is a time for prayer. When my oldest son deployed to Afghanistan in June 2013, I prayed with both hands. Fear permeated each and every one of my days – fear for his wife who waited for him, fear for his mother, Jane, for his brother and sisters and me. I prayed for his safe return. In December 2103, just days before Christmas, my prayers were answered. Prayer was all I had. It brought my precious son home.

I know of prayer. I was raised in the First Baptist Church of Woodland Park, under the ministry of Rev. James Gibson. I have been praying since I was able to talk.

There is a time for prayer. There is also a time to fight. On May 18, 2013, I launched a hunger strike to protest Michigan’s treatment of its prisoner population. I did not stop praying. I simply thought it was time to pus some skin in the game, besides. That strike lasted for 88 days; during which time I refused every one of the 264 meals offered to me. Letters poured in from around the country, many imploring me to “Let God handle it.”

I did not stop there. I wrote articles and circulated them to media outlets, seeking to publicize the grievances of prisoners around Michigan, and across the country. After publishing one such piece, “Granddaddy, Come Home,” which decried destructive Michigan Department of Corrections policies, people said to me, “That will make them madder…you should have prayed.  I wrote, “Ma Parole” and “Take These Truths…,” exposing improprieties in Michigan Parole Board practices. My people were dismayed, thinking such language might diminish my chances of getting a parole five years from now. Why should it, unless we have fallen into an alternative universe where truth confines, and falsity “sets us free”?

My people want me to come home from prison, but they seem to think that I will happen through prayer. For our children in Afghanistan, prayer is all we have. Wanting freedom for eligible prisoners in Michigan takes more; their incarceration has that endless quality about it…like slavery. Back in the day, the slaves were told to “pray for freedom.”  They prayed for 250 years, and the grip of slavery only tightened. Then, along came Abraham Lincoln. He prayed, too. He also armed a million Union soldiers and sent them south. Prayer did not end slavery; the Union soldiers did. (The other side prayed as hard as Lincoln, but they ran out of men.)

The people who tell me, “Just pray,” do not feel the multitude of live being sucked dry by the greatest prison system on Earth. They do not know of the desecrating of lives being committed beneath the nose of our Constitution – a desecration sanctioned by laws that have been corrupted to conform to a punishment regime; not for the public good, except that public is infected with the same mean-spiritedness that has led this nation to endlessly hound and persecute poor and minority peoples since its inception. 

I fight against this insidious example of a government’s trampling of a besieged minority to satisfy the bloodlust of a discordant American majority. And they say to me, “Just pray.” We have hundreds of thousands of people in U.S. prisons being held beyond their out-dates – people desperate for a second chance at life; a chance at redemption – that are being held in bondage for no other reason than it is politically expedient to keep them there. And impassive Americans think prayer will end this human rights abuse. Do they prefer prayer because prayer leaves all of the heavy lifting to God? If people back in the 1860’s felt the way Americans feel today, slavery might have lasted another 100 years. 

Face it:  Even Abraham, patriarch of the Jews, and icon of the Christian faith, knew that there was a time to pray and a time to fight. “Time” does not presume the correct day, or hour, but rather the moment when all signs point to a “moment of truth.” I have been in fights before. There is something priceless about going into a fight armed with the feeling that you are right. 

Once, I tore a large bronze penis off of the walls of a local tavern. It caused quite a stir. The owner of the establishment, four hundred pound behemoth named Woody Shack, was white. The community that tavern served – my community – was African-American. The penis – fully three feet long with testicles the size of ostrich eggs, protruded out over the bar. They were a caricature of Woody’s own body parts. When I ripped it down, his bouncer friend came at me in a fury:

“What the hell you doin’ tearin’ down Woody’s bar!” he screamed. (I was the only black man in the place. I carried no weapon; I have never carried a weapon.) That I did not take a step back must have startled the bouncer, and the other whites, besides. They stopped in their tracks. I simply looked them in the eye.

“Woody can hang anything in this bar he wants!” the bouncer declared, leaning forward once more. 

No, he can’t,” I said.

Later, I imagined the big bouncer thinking, “Maybe Carter was right.” Of course, I was right. What would possess someone to hang such an abomination on the walls of any respectable community? That I ripped it out of the wall (as splinters flew) and threw it over the bar was fitting. That happened in Newaygo County during the summer of ’87. I feel just as right about my fight today. 

What is happening to prisoners and their families in Michigan is an abomination. It has become a bronze penis sticking out of the wall. And no one does anything about it. The public is oblivious to any that doesn’t affect them personally. Well-intentioned politicians fear anything that might get them a “soft-on-crime” label. Even prisoners are afraid of losing “small comforts”, similar to how the slave feared being sold to the master in the “next county” if he complained. 

I do not break their rules; neither do I fear these people – not the warden, the parole board, the governor, nor the president. My only fear is that I would fear standing up for what is right out of fear that I might cross those who are wrong. My hope is that I will always stand up for myself, my family, and my community – regardless of the odds against me – whenever it is time.  

You, America, You Have Political Prisoners, Too

Dennis Rodman, a Hall of Fame basketball payer, appears genuine in his affections for Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea. For that, he is assailed, especially by those in the American media. 

It does not help that Un is holding an American, Kenneth Bae, in one of his prisons. Because of the tensions between our two countries, Bae has become a cause célèbre, having been labeled a “political prisoner” by the Obama administration. Now, supposed “high-minded” Americans want to know why Rodman, who is the only American on Earth with access to the reclusive Un, is not pressing his friend for Bae’s release. 

Meanwhile, these high-minded Americans ignore thousands of political prisoners in their own land – Americans who have served their time, but still languish in prison because it is politically expedient to keep them there. 

Freed prisoners are of no use to the powers that be in America. (They only matter to their families – a small segment of predominantly low-income Americans who, apparently, do not matter to the powers that be, either.).  But, a held prisoner is evidence of tough-on-crime politics. Besides, held prisoners are invaluable to local economies. They help inflate employment statistics; without them, many prison staff would be out of a job. 

The holding of a prisoner beyond his out-date insures prison-related jobs remain in the community. It is politics at its worse – a human rights abuse – when the lives of men and women are stacked like so much inventory on a store’s shelf - literal fodder to help sustain America’s middle class.

Prior to the exhibition game between the Korean national team and a team of ex-NBA stars from America, Rodman appeared, via satellite, on the Chris Cuomo Show. During the interview, Rodman “went ballistic” when Cuomo chided him for not speaking up for fellow American, Kenneth Bae. The following morning, Rodman apologized, explaining that he had been drinking, was “stressed out”, and had said some things he should not have said. It was a refreshing admission. 

Could it be that that same child-like honesty in Rodman is what attracted him in Un in the first place? In a land where the emperor cannot trust his own family – Un had his uncle executed for treason – Rodman may be one of the few people on Earth whom Un truly trusts. 

Nonetheless, the American press was brutal in its portrayal of Rodman, calling him “Idiot…clown…traitor.” 

Jesse Jackson, on the other hand, applauds Rodman for “…shedding light on a dark place.”  He compares Rodman’s efforts to the “ping-pong diplomacy” that preceded Nixon’s trip to Red China. He also points to the Harlem Globetrotters who went to Moscow and sang, “Sweet Georgia Brown” to Khrushchev’s communists as a similar instance of non-diplomat Americans shedding light on a “dark place.” Rodman simply had less help and more detractors.

Instead of deriding Rodman for not speaking up for one fellow American in a North Korean prison, Cuomo and Blitzer and Lemon should “speak up”, themselves, for the thousands of political prisoners being held in America’s prison. Or, don’t “fellow Americans” on American soil count?

Time for Justice

There is an inevitability to life that shrinks us to our rightful size. Nations, too, are bound by this principle.

Today we enter this new year as a nation, grappling with a fundamental flaw in our character:  Nothing crystallizes our fake love of liberty like our actual practice of it. Witness our 80-billion dollar prison industry, more than the next ten countries combined. Here, punishment has become gratuitous – meted out on a par with some of the most despotic regimes on Earth. America proclaims “Justice for all” with its mouth, while wreaking it with its hands.

We have lost sight of what justice is, so long have we gotten away with injustice. A supposed-Christian society that championed slavery for 250 years – that sought the eradication of its own native populations; that replaced slavery with Jim Crow, and now with mass incarcerations; that de-emphasizes the humanity of its captive population – cannot be a fair arbiter of justice at home, or abroad. That nation is awash in its own crimes. And when it shows no acknowledgement of those crimes – no remorse – as Shakespeare would say, “What honey is expected?’

This nation will not repent. On the contrary, with the largest prison system on Earth, America seems emboldened, so much so that it adds families of prisoners to it multitude of minions, as though they, too, are captives; which, of course, they are. With the cruel touch, America wreaks havoc upon elderly parents and babies, alike. Who will check this draconian giant? 

Do you believe the enslaver will be enslaved? That he who bombs shall be bombed? Americans, individually and collectively, must begin to ask these questions – to take responsibility for this nation’s bad acts and, by consequence, brace for the moment when this nation is laid on the rack.

We profess to believe in the Bible, but appear to rarely believe that it actually applies to us. “Eye for an eye,” though archaic, makes sense to us as long was it remains relegated to a time capsule – where, if it leaks, it does so only where extremist Islamic cultures persist.

Perhaps because we live in the moment, we feel insulated from our crimes – as though by the time time gets around to us, we will have long been gone. Certainly, generations can pass before retribution calls, but it pays its calls, nonetheless, and generations are left wondering, “What did we do to deserve this?” (see 9/11).  Soon, a victim’s culture is spawned wherein no one living accepts responsibility for crimes committed in their names, and often on their behalf.

Amid the onslaught on one shooting after another – out of the shadow of the disintegrating American family – we, as a nation, look into the mirror and wonder, “What is to become of us?” Suffice it to say, nothing good will come of a nation in denial, especially when it denies past inequities, the likes of which it continues to commit to this day. What shall become of us? We shall reap what we sow. There will be harvests aplenty.

These horrific school shootings are not committed in a vacuum. From this nation’s violent beginnings, we have killed Native American children in village schools from Maine to Florida, from the Carolinas to California. We have continued these killings in the Philippines and Vietnam and Iraq.

What about the nine Afghan boys killed while gathering firewood for their mothers? They were attending a school – one that modeled boyhood responsibility. Then, in an instant, they were obliterated by a US drone strike. Do we think that crime will go unpunished? President Obama said, “Oops.” Do we think that is contrition enough for time?

A wise man once said, “Justice is balance.” Well, America has lost its balance. Yet, it continues to wreak its twisted justice. The result fills families with despair. 

This despair will not go unremembered by the children. They will be the next arbiters of justice – not just America’s children, but Afghanistan’s children, and Zimbabwe’s children, and children the world over. They are time’s children. Inevitably, America, it will be time.  

Teachings & Typhoons

She looked to be about 15 - the Filipino girl who sat in the rubble of super typhoon Haiyan and grieved for her family.

Her mother had been a doctor; her father an accountant. Both were dead, along with the rest of her family. All that remained of them was she and her little brother. Between sobs, she said to the American news correspondent covering the disaster, "I only want to be like my mother." He said, "Be a doctor?" She shook her head: "Be a great mother."

We don't get it. We think it is about us (adults) and our fancy careers - about fun and fame and fortune; we think it is about sex, and money. It is not. It is about the children. (They do not know this.) It is up to us to know - and more importantly, act like we know. We do that by raising them well; by joining in their lives.

Again:  It is about the children. Teach them discipline and respect, and - whether rich or poor - your family will prosper. And the future of this nation will be in good hands.  

Running Scared, Into the Night

Bill Russell, basketball legend and icon of the Civil Rights era, was arrested the other day for carrying a loaded gun at an airport. How disappointing.  (What is he afraid of?)

When a man is afraid to leave his home without a gun, he sends a chilling message to his family. His son must think:  If my father is afraid to leave the house without a gun, then I should be afraid - my mother should be afraid; my sister should be afraid - to leave the house without a gun.

So, what do we do now? Give everyone a gun and say, "Have a nice day?"

Fear shrinks our society by the minute. Soon, all that will be left of us is our trembling. What is left of our courage will be jammed between the pages of a history book.

One Child, One Book...

With his recent initiative to disarm the Syrian regime of its chemical weapons, and by his outreach to the new president of Iran, could Obama be on the verge of earning that Nobel Peace Prize he won four years ago? Then, many of his detractors said he had "not earned" it, but had only been awarded the prize out of promise. They may be right.

Once Obama began to flex his presidential muscles, drone strikes, war, and surveillance has been his legacy. That does not mean Obama did not want peace. it may mean that he simply inherited the mantle of leader of a warrior nation, and felt compelled to prove his bonafides.

In America, our position is this: "We do not seek peace with you; you seek peace with us." The terms of peace with America is surrender. Even now, in his overtures, Obama is more warrior than peacemaker. To both Syria's Assad and Iran's Rouhani, the terms are: "Surrender your weapons (WMD)." Americans call that "peace."

As far as Nobel Peace Prizes go, I look to the Pakistani child whom the Taliban shot in the head because sh dared go to school. After surviving the wicked wound, she stood on the floor of the United Nations and declared, "One child, One book…"

That young lady knows more about peace than all of the American presidents. She gets my vote.  

"Granddaddy, Come Home"

There is a dichotomy in American that pits our much-ballyhooed “love of freedom” against our disdain for it. In the past, it was people of color – African-American slaves, Native Americans forced onto reservations, Japanese-Americans forced into internment camps – who suffered the indignities of this split personality. Today, it is the families of America’s prisoners.

For 250 years, this American nation imprisoned an entire race of people called them “slaves”, and declared that they had no rights. Then, they proceeded to build a southern economy – the plantation system – upon the backs for these hapless men, women, and children. These southerners spoke of God and of “honor” while inflicting endless abuse upon their captives. They fortified this system of slavery with laws and institutions so that it would last.

When President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, it had a visceral effect on the South. One southerner called Lincoln’s plan “despicable.” It would take the deaths of 600,000 men in America’s Civil War to convince the South to let its captives go.

Today, Americans talk of being a “forgiving people” – a people who believe in “second chances”. These Americans are no more sincere than the men of the antebellum South who spoke of “honor” even as they castrated black men, raped black women, and sold black children.

Slavery was one big prison cell that stretched from Maryland to Texas. After it was dismantled, America revisited its zeal for the imprisoned people with the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. Entire families and communities had their lives ripped away for no other reason than America had the power to do so. There was no guilt in those imprisoned Japanese-Americans. They were loyal, honorable American citizens. The guilt was founded in the DNA of people who feel empowered when they imprison. 

One hundred and fifty years after slavery, America still boasts the most elaborate system of prisons on Earth. And for many Americans – even today – to speak of freeing someone from one of America’s gulags is hateful.

In 2012, Mississippi governor, Haley Barbour, came under fire for pardoning prisoners his last days in office. Incredulous Americans asked, “What’s wrong with him?” Real Americans should be incredulous at those Americans’ incredulity, and ask, “What’s wrong with them?” 

Proponents of victims’ rights were the first to speak out against Barbour. (Their thirst for vengeance is becoming legend.) When they want to accent their fear of released prisoners, they speak of a “chilling effect” – a scare tactic, similar to how slaveholders would stoke this nation’s fear of emancipation by offering up images of freed black men “roaming the countryside.” 

These Americans think nothing of a prisoner who is eligible to go home, spending another five years, another ten years in bondage. If you were to ask: “What about the child who longs for her imprisoned granddad to take her fishing?” many of these “prison zealots” are likely to respond, “What about me?” They know nothing of prison, or of what it does to the families of prisoners.

Be assured: Prison is a kicking. Prisoners are kicked, and kicked, and kicked. It is a figurative kicking, unlike slavery which was a literal kicking. But, it is a “kicking” all the same. And, you’re not just kicking prisoners, America. You’re kicking children and elderly parents. You’re kicking the life out of them.

The parallels between prison and slavery are just. Slavery was about denying a people their rights to a pursuit of happiness. Prison in America has become a matter of denying the families of prisoners those same rights.

Of course, punishment is necessary when people commit crimes. But when that punishment becomes gratuitous; when it drags on and on – when a nation wreaks endless suffering upon one segment of its own people, the soul of that nation despairs. 

The institution of slavery was a sick enterprise. There, the slave master despised his slave so that he heaped endless indignities upon him. Yet, he seemed to love his slave so that he was willing to see the entire house burn down rather than let his slave go. 

Prison is not slavery. But as long as indignities are heaped upon prisoners as though they are hated, yet they are kept endlessly as though they are loved, we must begin to wonder if the State knows the difference.

Five months ago, I stopped wondering. On the 18^th of May, I embarked on a hunger strike to protest the treatment of prisoners and their families in America. In the ensuing 88 days, I refused all of the 264 meals offered to me. I suffered plenty. Such was my resolve to challenge a system that holds me and my family, and thousands of others, far beyond our release dates. 

During my hunger strike – what I call “My days in the wilderness” – I received letters from people around the country, many imploring me to eat, lest I die. Many more assured me, saying “You will be going home one day.” They assume I, and many other prisoners, will be going home without understanding the nature of America’s prison system. Maybe I will be going home one day, but “one day” is not good enough.

America’s slaves would talk about “One day.” They would say to one another, “One day we will be free.” They kept saying that for 250 years. “One day” is not justice. “One day” is what you say when there is no justice.

I ended my hunger strike on the 15^th of August, but my fight goes on. There is justice to be had in America. There are babies out there who want to go fishing. I have great limitations. But if it is the last thing I ever do, I will be trying to help those babies get their granddaddies home.