“Hands up! Don’t shoot!”
Words that have become synonymous with the life and death of Michael Brown. Words I fear are becoming overtly sensationalized and invalid as a new era of civil rights is picking up steam.**
This is a matter of real life not a video game.**
You see, you can push reset in video games but in life, real life, there are no reset buttons. There are no re-do’s. When you take a life there is no going back, when you lose your life there are no do overs.**
I was literally just getting off the phone discussing plans for Thanksgiving when one of my friends came up to me shaking his head in disgust.**
“Bro, they did it to us again…another one of ours laid down without receiving TRUE JUSTICE!” He commented begrudingly. Internally I pondered if it truly mattered if “they” did it to us or another? Wrong is wrong. **
Immediately I knew that he was referring to the Grand Jury decision in Ferguson, Missouri. What I did not know for sure was what he meant by “TRUE JUSTICE” as this term is filled with ambiguity and bias depending on your vantage point.**
I hurried off to my room to watch the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney, Bob McCulloch, deliver to the world the Ferguson, Missouri Grand Jury decision on the Michael Brown slaying.**
This heartbreaking decision informed the world that the officer that fatally shot this teenage African-American male not 1, not 2, but 7 times cutting his college bound life short, will NOT be indicted.**
And this decision affirmed to me that here in America some lives are valued more or less due to the color of ones skin and their socio-economic status.**
As far a my gravely mistaken friend is concerned, he saw “TRUE JUSTICE” through the eyes of retributive justice. While I shared with him my thoughts and perspective and my belief in restorative justice. **
Where he felt that the injustice began and therefore ended with the decision not to indict the officer. I took the time to express to him that this gross injustice came long before this decision by way of our culture of passivity that is running rampant throughout America. This just put a magnifying glass to it.**
As a result of this magnifying glass, the flames of injustice were fanned all the more as the following week another police officer was NOT indicted for choking a black man to death in the streets of New York City.**
Were these two lives, innocent lives that were lost? Depends on who you ask. One just stole a pack of Swishers when he encountered the police and the other was selling single cigarettes. Neither offense warranted a death sentence, especially, as neither man was armed.**
This hot button topic has been the a divisive one in America.**
The divided States of America!**
If the saying is true that united we stand and divided we fall, are we witnessing the fall of our great nation due in part to the disparities in truth and justice?**
Living in this culture of passivity, we are told that things will get done without us. This culture of passivity tells us that our voices, as well as our votes, really don’t matter. This culture of passivity tells us that there is nothing, absolutely nothing we can do to affect change.**
So what do we do? We blindly accept our conditions and our place within this culture!**
We blindly accept the false promises of politicians and our elected officials and excuse their actions by saying “that is what politicians do”, never holding them accountable.**
We blindly accept the cruel mishandling and gross abuse of power by our law enforcement and excuse their actions by saying “they are just doing their job”, never holding them accountable.**
We blindly accept the lies that people tell us that we don’t matter and that we can’t make a difference and excuse our inactivity by saying “thats how its always been”, never holding ourselves accountable.
“NEVER DOUBT THAT A SMALL GROUP OF THOUGHTFUL, COMMITTED PEOPLE CAN CHANGE THE WORLD. INDEED, IT IS THE ONLY THING THAT EVER HAS.” -Margaret Mead
If frustration is your motivator, well than let hope and faith be your accelerator.**
That is because hope doesn’t make you ashamed, it doesn’t disappoint, and faith without works is dead.**
So as it advices us in Proverbs, “Get wisdom! Get understanding!” and that “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding.”**
You see unless we as a nation, as a people, as Americans wise up and learn from our past, we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes in our future.**
Unless we learn from history, it won’t be too long before we ourselves are history.**
In my cell, my eyes are fixed on my 13 inch television screen. Dazed and confused. I keep reading and re-reading the caption at the bottom of the screen “OFFICER WILL NOT BE INDICTED”.**
As perplexed as I am at this devastating news I find myself looking into the dayroom wondering to myself is it filled with so many men because they don’t know what is going on in the world or because the don’t care? **
Then again most everyone in the unit is probably just distracted by the monday night football game between the Baltimore Ravens and the New Orleans Saints or are playing card games such as poker or pinochle.**
Typical stuff to pacify and shield us from reality.**
It hurt my heart to see these men so disconnected from society that they can care less about societal issues beyond the upcoming Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.**
Not realizing that the issues of today, great and small, will forever shape our futures and be written in the history books of tomorrow.**
Yet the greater majority of these guys have given up living life and now just sit back and watch life pass them by.**
I had enough! I come out of my cell and walk into the dayroom and feel an atmospheric shift. Conversations are slowly but surely changing. Within moments I am surrounded by a number of the in-house intellectuals and activist.**
Guys are running up to me, “Teach, did you see what happened? Were you watching the news?”, “What do you think about the decision?”, “Sounds like a broken record, huh?”**
Men of varied races, religions, colors (both of gang and pigmentation), and creeds all stating their concerns for our great nation. Many of these men are former and present students of mine from classes I teach within the institution. I just listen intently as they vent their raw emotion.**
“We don’t live in a post racial America, we live in a PRO racial America!”**
“Forget a peaceful protest where has that gotten us, we need to get active! We need to start tearing Stuff up!”**
“If that was a black officer and a white teen, the outcome would have been determined by white privilege and the officer would have been indicted before his shift was over!”**
These comments along with numerous others sparked a very thought provoking dialogue. A dialogue of race that society is afraid of having. Thats why this excitement burns hot in critical times as these but soon fizzles out.**
But this time it is different. Every ounce of me is saying that this time we are aware of that fact that a lot is at stake.**
People are talking both young and old. Side by side, people are standing together for justice.**
It is imperative that we change the narative to move forward.**
We must take action but this must be accomplished in a constructive and unified fashion. Not in a way that contradicts the cause and ultimate goal.**
Setting police cars on fire and burning down neighborhoods, especially your own, will never solve the problem and get to its root cause.**
To this end it is important to note that problems can not be solved at the same level of thinking at which they were created.**
We can not treat this miscarriage of justice or any other with a miscarriage of civility.**
Violence begets more violence. So let us not make the mistake of repaying evil for evil.**
But instead, let us work towards making the existence of justice in this country stretch beyond a nominal value.**
We may not agree on everything but what we can agree on is that this violence needs to stop.**
Michael Brown is a just one of many faceless young people that have been gunned down, until the media pick up the story. But how many more will this need to happen to before we stop talking about change and start committing our lives to the fight for change.**
TRUE JUSTICE is not a system fixed on locking up some, while excusing the transgressions of others.**
TRUE JUSTICE should be blind justice where there is no partiality, no disparities, no inequalities.**
TRUE JUSTICE exists where the exercise of the law is consistent across the board as is the governing promise of protection for all.**
TRUE JUSTICE is nondiscriminatory. Whether you are black or white, rich or poor, Christian or Muslim, straight or gay, white collar or blue collar, a documented worker or an undocument worker.**
TRUE JUSTICE is served when the law is administered with reliability.**
These are my altruistic ideals of TRUE JUSTICE, sadly enough what is the reliable administering of the law for some groups of people here in America very well may differ in comparison to another group.**
Where is the justice in that?
JUSTICE ANYONE?
Cyril Walrond
DOC #309756
Hey FAM I just want to say I being reading your all your stuff you been writing an this stuff is deep I’m glad your doin something positive and I can’t wait until you write something else keep doin a good job fam!!
Hey FAM this is your big bro Bobby I just wanted to say that I been reading all of your stuff man an I can’t wait until you get out an that I’m glad you are doin good I’m looking forward to the next blog you write…
Thank you for your support and interest in my writing as well as future pieces that I will be writing. I will do my best not to keep you or anyone else waiting too long so be on the look out. FYI I am a quality not quantity writer.So each piece I write I pour myself into it so hearing the intrigue of the readers is always awe inspiring. Thank you! C.D. Walrond