Go to Texas Moratorium Network for more information.
Saturday, 5 September 2009
Thursday, 27 August 2009
'...before I die here'
Yes, it is true that I have never visited
any part of their beautiful land
There is an ineffable thing inside of me,
of it, they helped me to take command
They are refreshingly intuitive people
at once countrified and urbane
Humane, genuine and unpretentious, free
of jaded little socialized games
Bestowing their welcomed presence upon
me without self-righteous disdain
All helped me win the bloody war against
my bad past criminalities' stains
Make no mistake, with mounting flaws
and all, I still love America
However, the people I describe in the
lines above live in Australia
This less than brilliant poem is my way of saying thank you to Australians who have kindly entered my life. They cause me to want to expand my number of Australian friends.
To those readers who are interested, I herewith extend the offer of friendly exchanges via correspondence. I will answer all letters.
I genuinely want to know how you see, think, and feel about this world we are privileged to share. Please feel free to broach any subject with candor. There will be no taboos.
Let me be clear. I do not care what your ethnic background is, nor do I care how old, young, rich or poor you are. I will make no judgements about your political or lifestyle choices. The only criterion I now restrict is gender: I ask for only female correspondents, as I have a big imbalance between men and women in the people who write to me.
I am an African American man who has spent the last 31 of my 66 years on death row in America. I hope that you and I will take advantage of every opportunity that our correspondence will afford us to learn and grow communicatively in ways that enhance – rather than reject – our shared humanity before I die here.
Mr Brandon Astor Jones, G3-83
UNO #400574; (Group #1)
Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison
P. O. Box 3877
Jackson, Georgia 30233
USA
any part of their beautiful land
There is an ineffable thing inside of me,
of it, they helped me to take command
They are refreshingly intuitive people
at once countrified and urbane
Humane, genuine and unpretentious, free
of jaded little socialized games
Bestowing their welcomed presence upon
me without self-righteous disdain
All helped me win the bloody war against
my bad past criminalities' stains
Make no mistake, with mounting flaws
and all, I still love America
However, the people I describe in the
lines above live in Australia
This less than brilliant poem is my way of saying thank you to Australians who have kindly entered my life. They cause me to want to expand my number of Australian friends.
To those readers who are interested, I herewith extend the offer of friendly exchanges via correspondence. I will answer all letters.
I genuinely want to know how you see, think, and feel about this world we are privileged to share. Please feel free to broach any subject with candor. There will be no taboos.
Let me be clear. I do not care what your ethnic background is, nor do I care how old, young, rich or poor you are. I will make no judgements about your political or lifestyle choices. The only criterion I now restrict is gender: I ask for only female correspondents, as I have a big imbalance between men and women in the people who write to me.
I am an African American man who has spent the last 31 of my 66 years on death row in America. I hope that you and I will take advantage of every opportunity that our correspondence will afford us to learn and grow communicatively in ways that enhance – rather than reject – our shared humanity before I die here.
Mr Brandon Astor Jones, G3-83
UNO #400574; (Group #1)
Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison
P. O. Box 3877
Jackson, Georgia 30233
USA
Sunday, 3 May 2009
A Letter from 1995
The following was written on official state stationery bearing the departmental seal of the 'City and County of San Francisco's Office of the Sheriff'.
Before retiring, Michael Marcum was promoted to the rank of Sheriff amid much controversy. It is Brandon's opinion that he should be the poster person for prisoners' rehabilitation in America. Write to Brandon and ask him why.
Michael Mears
Multicounty Public Defender
Georgia Indigent Defense Council
985 Ponce de Leon Avenue
Atlanta Georgia 30306
May 29, 1995
Dear Mr Mears,
I am the Assistant Sheriff for the City and County of San Francisco. Since 1973 I have served as a jail Commander and Warden, a member of the Parole Commission, and the administrator of mandatory inmate work and education programs combining security and treatment in our six county jails.
In over thirty years in corrections I have struggled with the issues of crime, violence, incarceration, retribution, and even redemption. This work breeds cynicism: resignation to the seemingly endless supply of offenders, and despair for the plight of innocent victims. Every so often someone, or an idea, a vision, a new program, or, more rarely, a new law, reawakens my passion and reminds me why I am in this business in the first place: to discard the cynicism and to make a difference in the community that pays my salary. One such event occurred in 1993 – and so this on behalf of Brandon Astor Jones.
Almost three years ago I stumbled upon a newspaper article written by Mr Jones. A short byline identified him as a prisoner on death row in Georgia. The article astonished me. I wrote Mr Jones and asked his permission to reprint the piece in our jail's newsletter. I offered him no remuneration, only the promise that his writing would be used with dignity in the training of my staff and in class and group situations with prisoners in my charge. Mr Jones agreed, and we have corresponded fairly often ever since. I subsequently collected his articles from American, Canadian and Australian newspapers and magazines, and with his permission used them in various inmate programs and staff trainings.
There is value in Brandon's life and in his writing for all of us – jailers, prisoners, potential victims. I have seen his writings sober and inspire young offenders who are still at risk of committing violence upon release from our jails into our community. He conveys, convincingly, a belief that they can retake control of their lives before they further harm others and themselves, and they can make a lawful place in our society.
There is no excuse for the offense of which he has been convicted. Yet, his work offers hope to those on both ends who are overwhelmed with violence. And in that there is a seed of redemption. This man has value to us all, to a community unable to make sense of violence, victimization and hopelessness that eats away at our best attempts at criminal justice.
That is all I have to say. It is a serious matter. I am not in the shoes of the [C]ourt or the jury. My commitment to criminal justice is absolute. It is my duty to affirm the value of this man's life.
Sincerely,
Michael Marcum
Assistant Sheriff
San Francisco, California
Before retiring, Michael Marcum was promoted to the rank of Sheriff amid much controversy. It is Brandon's opinion that he should be the poster person for prisoners' rehabilitation in America. Write to Brandon and ask him why.
Thursday, 22 January 2009
Giving and receiving
Brandon is working on his manuscript 'growing down', which is the story of his early years from childhood to young adult.
He started writing it in 1989, and is now having the current draft typed up. Once that is done, he will begin rewriting and contextualising his early lifestory, adding perspectives from three different viewpoints: the 1940s when he was living it; the 1990s when he was writing; and with respect to race, including the election of the first African American President.
This is very important to Brandon, and he feels he does not have much time remaining to complete his project.
What we are calling for are donations to help him pay his typing fees, which will amount to about $400. All donations will be gratefully received, and you will be helping Brandon to tell his story, a piece of African American history as well as a personal document.
Please send your donation to Brandon's agent:
Mr Del Cassidy
142 Wilmer Street
Glassboro
New Jersey 08028
USA
and be sure to provide your name and address so Brandon can personally thank you. He advises you to send US dollars if possible.
Thank you in advance!
He started writing it in 1989, and is now having the current draft typed up. Once that is done, he will begin rewriting and contextualising his early lifestory, adding perspectives from three different viewpoints: the 1940s when he was living it; the 1990s when he was writing; and with respect to race, including the election of the first African American President.
This is very important to Brandon, and he feels he does not have much time remaining to complete his project.
What we are calling for are donations to help him pay his typing fees, which will amount to about $400. All donations will be gratefully received, and you will be helping Brandon to tell his story, a piece of African American history as well as a personal document.
Please send your donation to Brandon's agent:
Mr Del Cassidy
142 Wilmer Street
Glassboro
New Jersey 08028
USA
and be sure to provide your name and address so Brandon can personally thank you. He advises you to send US dollars if possible.
Thank you in advance!
Monday, 3 November 2008
'...one page per day on air' by Brandon Astor Jones
For sixteen years, the judge advocate had impassively presided over incidents of murder and child rape, yet nothing of this kind could be attributed to Caesar, whose crime had been to steal food. [The judge] was unperturbed by venality in convicts; he expected it. What so disturbed him about this refractory convict was the persistent refusal to be reduced to the condition of a slave.
Professor Cassandra Pybus
Research Chair of History at the University of Tasmania
Review of Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and their Global Quest for Liberty. Beacon Press, 2006. ISBN 080705514X. $US 26.95.
This is the first time I have started a review with a quote taken from a book's epilogue. However, since I am an African American being held in one of America's Southern prisons, it seems appropriate for me to do so out of a genuine respect for those who have gone before me.
I had a visceral reaction to Professor Pybus' words. For I know that I share a historical kinship with the man who was known as 'Black Caesar' in eighteenth century Australia. A bounty was placed on his head: 'dead or alive'. He was hunted down and killed. The reward for killing him according to Professor Pybus was a 'lavish' one: five gallons of rum.
On February 15, 1796, the New South Wales Judge Advocate David Collins wrote a brief obituary which in part read: 'Thus ended a man who certainly, during his life, could never have been estimated at more than one remove above a brute'. The judge went on to later declare Caesar an 'incorrigibly stubborn [B]lack'.
Interesting words to be sure, especially when you consider that they were chosen and written by a White man who obviously condoned the State paying other men to go murder a man for the liquid coin of rum.
Professor Pybus has produced an informative and scholarly work full of little known African American history. In many ways her book salutes those men, women and children who were able to cast off the chains of their bondage in the American colonies before, during and after the American Revolutionary War.
When American colonists began to rebel in earnest against British rule, England's on-the-scene representative, Lord Dunmore, felt sufficiently threatened that he prudently sent his wife back to England.
While the British warship HMS Fowey rode at anchor on Virginia's James River, Dunmore used the vessel as his headquarters. In her wardroom he set about the task of 'assembl[ing] a squadron to strike back at rebellious Virginians', who greatly outnumbered British loyalists in the vicinity. Moreover, he had been told that in 1775, there were no less than 180 000 Black people enslaved in Virginia.
One of Dunmore's war stategies was the offer of 'freedom' to any slave who would swear an oath of allegiance to England. Consequently, slaves ran to Dunmore in droves. One among them was Harry Washington who was once the servant of then Colonel George Washington, the same George Washington who would become America's first president. Harry became a member of England's Royal Artillery Unit. Of course, no one thought that the rebellious colonists would actually win the war.
In defeat large numbers of Dunmore's troops, and those runaway slaves who supported them, succumbed to various diseases along with the standard horrors of mortal combat. Those who survived the colonists' fury were grudgingly allowed to leave America after a victory and ceasefire had been declared.
In due course, the British sailed first for Nova Scotia and after making landfall they deposited a substantial number of Blacks there. However, the bulk of the British fleet sailed for England, taking even more freed Black people with them.
From that point on, the African American struggle for freedom became a global diaspora. A growing number of destinations far beyond the shores of Nova Scotia and England (here read the West Indies, West Africa's Sierra Leone and Australia, for example) became both havens and/or earthly hells for those intrepid Black men, women and children.
Epic Journeys of Freedom is an engrossing read. For me it has had the effect of connecting those dots left dangling by several other historical narratives on the African American experience.
This book also exposes a demoralizing feature on the part of the well intentioned British effort to enhance the growth of freedom's seed for those Blacks who left America: a kind of undeclared Holy War between the Anglican Church and a number of seemingly adversarial Methodists. The consequence of which more often than not rendered Black refugees casualties of the very freedom they had been offered by the British.
Added to the long list of instructive history this book provides is its 26 succinct biographies of Black refugees, a feature which is easy to access while absorbing the depth of the main text.
On November 3, 2006, I listened to the 'Frank and Wanda Show' on V-103 radio, in Atlanta Georgia. The host, Frank Ski, offered a prize to the caller who could give the name of the first President of the United States. Several people called, none with the right answer. Eventually someone said John Adams and Frank Ski agreed and awarded them the prize!
If ever there was an example of how badly some African Americans needed to study history, this is it. Of course George Washington was America's first president, and John Adams the second (from 1797 to 1801).
Sadly that error was neither noted nor corrected.
While both Mr Ski and the caller were wrong, I do not mean to assail them. My deeper concern is for those many poor African American children listening to that show five days a week who are learning degrading rap lyrics and this kind of historical misinformation.
I wish that Frank Ski and the caller would read this book aloud - one page per day on air.
Brandon encourages your response to this or any other essay, poem, book review or short story. He does not care if your response is positive or negative - he answers all letters.
If you are interested in reading more about African American history I urge you to read 'while the Mississippi and Hudson merge' a roman à clef. It can be purchased from iUniverse.
Professor Cassandra Pybus
Research Chair of History at the University of Tasmania
Review of Epic Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and their Global Quest for Liberty. Beacon Press, 2006. ISBN 080705514X. $US 26.95.
This is the first time I have started a review with a quote taken from a book's epilogue. However, since I am an African American being held in one of America's Southern prisons, it seems appropriate for me to do so out of a genuine respect for those who have gone before me.
I had a visceral reaction to Professor Pybus' words. For I know that I share a historical kinship with the man who was known as 'Black Caesar' in eighteenth century Australia. A bounty was placed on his head: 'dead or alive'. He was hunted down and killed. The reward for killing him according to Professor Pybus was a 'lavish' one: five gallons of rum.
On February 15, 1796, the New South Wales Judge Advocate David Collins wrote a brief obituary which in part read: 'Thus ended a man who certainly, during his life, could never have been estimated at more than one remove above a brute'. The judge went on to later declare Caesar an 'incorrigibly stubborn [B]lack'.
Interesting words to be sure, especially when you consider that they were chosen and written by a White man who obviously condoned the State paying other men to go murder a man for the liquid coin of rum.
Professor Pybus has produced an informative and scholarly work full of little known African American history. In many ways her book salutes those men, women and children who were able to cast off the chains of their bondage in the American colonies before, during and after the American Revolutionary War.
When American colonists began to rebel in earnest against British rule, England's on-the-scene representative, Lord Dunmore, felt sufficiently threatened that he prudently sent his wife back to England.
While the British warship HMS Fowey rode at anchor on Virginia's James River, Dunmore used the vessel as his headquarters. In her wardroom he set about the task of 'assembl[ing] a squadron to strike back at rebellious Virginians', who greatly outnumbered British loyalists in the vicinity. Moreover, he had been told that in 1775, there were no less than 180 000 Black people enslaved in Virginia.
One of Dunmore's war stategies was the offer of 'freedom' to any slave who would swear an oath of allegiance to England. Consequently, slaves ran to Dunmore in droves. One among them was Harry Washington who was once the servant of then Colonel George Washington, the same George Washington who would become America's first president. Harry became a member of England's Royal Artillery Unit. Of course, no one thought that the rebellious colonists would actually win the war.
In defeat large numbers of Dunmore's troops, and those runaway slaves who supported them, succumbed to various diseases along with the standard horrors of mortal combat. Those who survived the colonists' fury were grudgingly allowed to leave America after a victory and ceasefire had been declared.
In due course, the British sailed first for Nova Scotia and after making landfall they deposited a substantial number of Blacks there. However, the bulk of the British fleet sailed for England, taking even more freed Black people with them.
From that point on, the African American struggle for freedom became a global diaspora. A growing number of destinations far beyond the shores of Nova Scotia and England (here read the West Indies, West Africa's Sierra Leone and Australia, for example) became both havens and/or earthly hells for those intrepid Black men, women and children.
Epic Journeys of Freedom is an engrossing read. For me it has had the effect of connecting those dots left dangling by several other historical narratives on the African American experience.
This book also exposes a demoralizing feature on the part of the well intentioned British effort to enhance the growth of freedom's seed for those Blacks who left America: a kind of undeclared Holy War between the Anglican Church and a number of seemingly adversarial Methodists. The consequence of which more often than not rendered Black refugees casualties of the very freedom they had been offered by the British.
Added to the long list of instructive history this book provides is its 26 succinct biographies of Black refugees, a feature which is easy to access while absorbing the depth of the main text.
On November 3, 2006, I listened to the 'Frank and Wanda Show' on V-103 radio, in Atlanta Georgia. The host, Frank Ski, offered a prize to the caller who could give the name of the first President of the United States. Several people called, none with the right answer. Eventually someone said John Adams and Frank Ski agreed and awarded them the prize!
If ever there was an example of how badly some African Americans needed to study history, this is it. Of course George Washington was America's first president, and John Adams the second (from 1797 to 1801).
Sadly that error was neither noted nor corrected.
While both Mr Ski and the caller were wrong, I do not mean to assail them. My deeper concern is for those many poor African American children listening to that show five days a week who are learning degrading rap lyrics and this kind of historical misinformation.
I wish that Frank Ski and the caller would read this book aloud - one page per day on air.
Brandon encourages your response to this or any other essay, poem, book review or short story. He does not care if your response is positive or negative - he answers all letters.
If you are interested in reading more about African American history I urge you to read 'while the Mississippi and Hudson merge' a roman à clef. It can be purchased from iUniverse.
Stamps
To: Major Scott (Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison)
From Prisoner Brandon Astor Jones, UNO#400574; G3-83
Date: September 12, 2008, 17.01 hours
Subject: Our encounter yesterday regarding 'Stamps'
It is ironic amid all of the Department of Corrections' talk of the need to save money that frequently when there is an opportunity to make money this prison's store passes it up.
It costs 94c to send a letter to Australia and the United Kingdom. Yet the highest denomination of United States postage stamps a prisoner can purchase at the GD&CPs store is an 84c stamp. A letter must therefore have one 84c, three 3c and one 1c stamp on it. As you know we are limited to 20 stamps per store purchase (which causes us to use one quarter of the purchase for one letter). This is absurd when a 94c stamp is all that is needed.
Moreover, the GD&CP store VERY OFTEN does not have 84c stamps, and it strangely has never sold 94c ones. I have the nature of this long-standing problem known to Counselor Clark, Unit Manager Goen, Lieutenant McCormick and many others here among staff administrators, both verbally and in writing. I even wrote an Informal Grievance Form about it last year and I have not had that Informal Grievance returned to me yet (I put it in then Counselor Murphy's hand personally).
I have mail I have been trying to send out for weeks, due to lack of postage. In effect, I am being denied timely access to US Courts, lawyers, family and friends needlessly despite being under a sentence of death (I could have a fourteen day death warrant read to me at any time).
I respectfully request that you fix this problem.
From Prisoner Brandon Astor Jones, UNO#400574; G3-83
Date: September 12, 2008, 17.01 hours
Subject: Our encounter yesterday regarding 'Stamps'
It is ironic amid all of the Department of Corrections' talk of the need to save money that frequently when there is an opportunity to make money this prison's store passes it up.
It costs 94c to send a letter to Australia and the United Kingdom. Yet the highest denomination of United States postage stamps a prisoner can purchase at the GD&CPs store is an 84c stamp. A letter must therefore have one 84c, three 3c and one 1c stamp on it. As you know we are limited to 20 stamps per store purchase (which causes us to use one quarter of the purchase for one letter). This is absurd when a 94c stamp is all that is needed.
Moreover, the GD&CP store VERY OFTEN does not have 84c stamps, and it strangely has never sold 94c ones. I have the nature of this long-standing problem known to Counselor Clark, Unit Manager Goen, Lieutenant McCormick and many others here among staff administrators, both verbally and in writing. I even wrote an Informal Grievance Form about it last year and I have not had that Informal Grievance returned to me yet (I put it in then Counselor Murphy's hand personally).
I have mail I have been trying to send out for weeks, due to lack of postage. In effect, I am being denied timely access to US Courts, lawyers, family and friends needlessly despite being under a sentence of death (I could have a fourteen day death warrant read to me at any time).
I respectfully request that you fix this problem.
Saturday, 1 November 2008
'...death row prison cell' by Brandon Astor Jones
CHOICES
if i can't do
what I want to do
then my job is to not
do what I don't want
to do
it's not the same thing
but it's the best I can
do
if I can't have
what I want...then
my job is to want
what I've got
and be satisfied
that at least there
is something more to want
since I can't go
where I need
to go...then I must...go
where the signs point
through always understanding
parallel movement
isn't lateral
when I can't express
what I really feel
and none of it is equal
i know
but that's why mankind
alone among the animals
learns to cry
Professor Nikki Giovanni
My good friend Dr Jill Segger recently shared this poem with me in her latest communication. I had previously written a letter to her in which I included a copy of the letter I wrote to Professor Giovanni on April 17 2007, after she had been featured on the Public Television program The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. The professor spoke at some length after an angry student had shot and killed 33 people (including himself) on campus.
In my letter to the professor, amongst other things I wrote that I felt she had given "eloquence and hope to the aftermath of utter violence and devastation", as I offered my heartfelt condolences. More on Professor Giovanni's poem and my letter to her later.
As usual, I plan to rely on the reader's intelligence to grasp the full meaning of my words on these pages and those unseen messages conveyed between the lines that I dare not write, but you know that I am thinking.
The main thrust of my letter to Professor Giovanni follows here:
I also believe that violence in America is taught in both overt and subtle ways. Few will admit it, but the majority of Americans consciously and unconsciously give tacit approval to (and encourage) violence from the cradle to the grave.
For example, more than 57 years ago, when I was one of less than a handful of Blacks among as many as 354 White students at Lowell Longfellow School in Harvey, Illnois, I became both victim and, as a sad but necessary consequence, a perpetrator of violence. In classrooms, hallways and especially out on the playgrounds, groups of White boys would attack me repeatedly. During one of those attacks, Mr Fry, the school principal, pulled no less than five bullies off me. He had seen me being pummeled and kicked to a bloody pulp. I was clearly the victim.
Looking back I realize that it was silly of me to have thought that Mr Fry was saving me when he pulled those guys off me. You see, when he took me to his third floor office, he produced a wooden paddle that was about three feet long. He then explained that because I started the fight, I would be given 'four licks', despite my protests that I had not started anything at all. He gave me those four licks, immediately.
It goes without saying that you can rationally conclude that Mr Fry was both wrong and racist in his response to the situation, and I agree. However, I want this writing to be more about the instrinsic and varied nature of adolescent violence in America, than the racism that can so often support and perpetuate it.
The violence on the playground that day at Lowell Longfellow School was an integral part of Mr Fry's school administration program. That is to say that from the attack on the playground all the way up to the third floor paddling, violence permeated Mr Fry's school administration. His response to group violence was to administer more violence to the individual victim of said violence.
Most (we can be grateful not all) White people in America like to think of themselves as not being racist. Consequently they see no need to instruct their children in the art of accepting people who look and act in ways that are different.
Of course, by the time those children are started in school, they are not prepared to understand, let alone accept, people who do not look and act like them.
American society, by and large, teaches its members to not only reject but to also assail difference. In this fashion Mr Fry, and millions of parents in America, promote a kind of semi-subtle-violence, a nefarious violence that such parents can routinely pretend to be unaware of.
IMPORTANT NOTE TO ALL:
If you do not consciously teach
ACCEPTANCE OF OTHERS to
your children, long before they start
school, YOU CONSCIOUSLY
TEACH VIOLENCE BY
DEFAULT.
Likewise, if we as a nation do not start teaching small children conflict resolution and self-control, we are encouraging the kind of violent loss of control that visits America so frequently.
Unfortunately when someone actually suggests that we pursue such thinking and teaching methods for Americans, that someone is usually met with the vociferous protests of angry parents/taxpayers who declare that a) the State has no business teaching their children what or how to think and/or b) even if they wanted to try it, there is no money for such liberal teaching concepts in the State or Federal budget.
Those vociferous and angry voices more often than not belong to the same people who support sending thousands of young men and women to war in Iraq, and elsewhere, along with billions and billions of tax dollars.
Last week I was reminded of Mr Fry's paddle as the use of corporal punishment occupied a slot in most evening news programs for two days. Those news programs inspired me to conduct my own survey here in G3 Cellblock, where 20 of the 23 men answered yes when I asked if they had been subjected to corporal punishment while they were in early primary school. One of the men recalled getting paddled, the first time while he was still in kindergarten.
Yes, I know that some readers will say corporal punishment was good for some. To those readers I must admit that is true, but only a minority.
As my fellow prisoner gave me details of the paddling he experienced in kindergarten, I wondered if the woman who paddled him had been at the core of his adult life's anger. I wondered if it was she he was trying to kill, instead of his late wife? I wonder, even now, how many of those 20 men in my Cellblock would be here if they had been given anger management instruction as frequently as they were given corporal punishment, in one form or another?
I am aware as I write this line that most, if not all, of the self-righteously 'vociferous' among us will discount and resent everything that is said on these pages because of who and where I am. That is a sad fact of American life, that few people listen to what prisoners have to say. I am very fortunate to have a friend like Dr Segger, who wrote the encouraging words below:
Thank you Dr Segger. Your words move me deeply. As you might have guessed Professor Giovanni did not answer the letter I wrote to her on April 17 2007. At least, she did not answer it in the direct traditional way. In an indirect way via her poem 'Choices' that you have shared with me in your letter, I choose to consider it in general, and one portion of it in particular, an answer that speaks to me on many personal levels.
If the reader is a person who is of the opinion that all human beings should be heard, no matter their situation or location, feel free to drop me a line. Know that you are in good company with the likes of Professor Giovanni and Dr Segger. I hope to be able to share some things with all of you that are sure to surprise you. Things that come from the Heaven and Hell sides of this death row prison cell.
WRITE TO:
Brandon Astor Jones, G3-83
UNO#400574
Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison
P.O. Box 3877
Jackson, Georgia 30233
USA
if i can't do
what I want to do
then my job is to not
do what I don't want
to do
it's not the same thing
but it's the best I can
do
if I can't have
what I want...then
my job is to want
what I've got
and be satisfied
that at least there
is something more to want
since I can't go
where I need
to go...then I must...go
where the signs point
through always understanding
parallel movement
isn't lateral
when I can't express
what I really feel
and none of it is equal
i know
but that's why mankind
alone among the animals
learns to cry
Professor Nikki Giovanni
My good friend Dr Jill Segger recently shared this poem with me in her latest communication. I had previously written a letter to her in which I included a copy of the letter I wrote to Professor Giovanni on April 17 2007, after she had been featured on the Public Television program The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. The professor spoke at some length after an angry student had shot and killed 33 people (including himself) on campus.
In my letter to the professor, amongst other things I wrote that I felt she had given "eloquence and hope to the aftermath of utter violence and devastation", as I offered my heartfelt condolences. More on Professor Giovanni's poem and my letter to her later.
As usual, I plan to rely on the reader's intelligence to grasp the full meaning of my words on these pages and those unseen messages conveyed between the lines that I dare not write, but you know that I am thinking.
The main thrust of my letter to Professor Giovanni follows here:
Viewing American society for 28 years from a death row prison cell often allows me unusual clarity. I would like to share this thought.
As violence continues to rise on campuses, I have come to the conclusion that one of the best ways to reduce future violence (not just on campuses but in general in American society) is to start teaching children anger management. I mean that it should be taught in much the same way they are taught their ABCs in kindergarten.
Teachers need to teach anger management and how to constructively respond to each days', indeed life's, disappointments, betrayals, etc. The tragedy at Virginia Tech* and countless other places have made me certain that early and sustained instruction in anger management is, at the very least, as important as learning one's ABCs.
I also believe that violence in America is taught in both overt and subtle ways. Few will admit it, but the majority of Americans consciously and unconsciously give tacit approval to (and encourage) violence from the cradle to the grave.
For example, more than 57 years ago, when I was one of less than a handful of Blacks among as many as 354 White students at Lowell Longfellow School in Harvey, Illnois, I became both victim and, as a sad but necessary consequence, a perpetrator of violence. In classrooms, hallways and especially out on the playgrounds, groups of White boys would attack me repeatedly. During one of those attacks, Mr Fry, the school principal, pulled no less than five bullies off me. He had seen me being pummeled and kicked to a bloody pulp. I was clearly the victim.
Looking back I realize that it was silly of me to have thought that Mr Fry was saving me when he pulled those guys off me. You see, when he took me to his third floor office, he produced a wooden paddle that was about three feet long. He then explained that because I started the fight, I would be given 'four licks', despite my protests that I had not started anything at all. He gave me those four licks, immediately.
It goes without saying that you can rationally conclude that Mr Fry was both wrong and racist in his response to the situation, and I agree. However, I want this writing to be more about the instrinsic and varied nature of adolescent violence in America, than the racism that can so often support and perpetuate it.
The violence on the playground that day at Lowell Longfellow School was an integral part of Mr Fry's school administration program. That is to say that from the attack on the playground all the way up to the third floor paddling, violence permeated Mr Fry's school administration. His response to group violence was to administer more violence to the individual victim of said violence.
Most (we can be grateful not all) White people in America like to think of themselves as not being racist. Consequently they see no need to instruct their children in the art of accepting people who look and act in ways that are different.
Of course, by the time those children are started in school, they are not prepared to understand, let alone accept, people who do not look and act like them.
American society, by and large, teaches its members to not only reject but to also assail difference. In this fashion Mr Fry, and millions of parents in America, promote a kind of semi-subtle-violence, a nefarious violence that such parents can routinely pretend to be unaware of.
IMPORTANT NOTE TO ALL:
If you do not consciously teach
ACCEPTANCE OF OTHERS to
your children, long before they start
school, YOU CONSCIOUSLY
TEACH VIOLENCE BY
DEFAULT.
Likewise, if we as a nation do not start teaching small children conflict resolution and self-control, we are encouraging the kind of violent loss of control that visits America so frequently.
Unfortunately when someone actually suggests that we pursue such thinking and teaching methods for Americans, that someone is usually met with the vociferous protests of angry parents/taxpayers who declare that a) the State has no business teaching their children what or how to think and/or b) even if they wanted to try it, there is no money for such liberal teaching concepts in the State or Federal budget.
Those vociferous and angry voices more often than not belong to the same people who support sending thousands of young men and women to war in Iraq, and elsewhere, along with billions and billions of tax dollars.
Last week I was reminded of Mr Fry's paddle as the use of corporal punishment occupied a slot in most evening news programs for two days. Those news programs inspired me to conduct my own survey here in G3 Cellblock, where 20 of the 23 men answered yes when I asked if they had been subjected to corporal punishment while they were in early primary school. One of the men recalled getting paddled, the first time while he was still in kindergarten.
Yes, I know that some readers will say corporal punishment was good for some. To those readers I must admit that is true, but only a minority.
As my fellow prisoner gave me details of the paddling he experienced in kindergarten, I wondered if the woman who paddled him had been at the core of his adult life's anger. I wondered if it was she he was trying to kill, instead of his late wife? I wonder, even now, how many of those 20 men in my Cellblock would be here if they had been given anger management instruction as frequently as they were given corporal punishment, in one form or another?
I am aware as I write this line that most, if not all, of the self-righteously 'vociferous' among us will discount and resent everything that is said on these pages because of who and where I am. That is a sad fact of American life, that few people listen to what prisoners have to say. I am very fortunate to have a friend like Dr Segger, who wrote the encouraging words below:
Dear Brandon,
I was very moved by your thoughts on anger management and how to prepare children for rejection and frustration and how this is essential to reducing violence. You are absolutely right and your life experience gives you a particular authority [in] speaking thus...
Thank you Dr Segger. Your words move me deeply. As you might have guessed Professor Giovanni did not answer the letter I wrote to her on April 17 2007. At least, she did not answer it in the direct traditional way. In an indirect way via her poem 'Choices' that you have shared with me in your letter, I choose to consider it in general, and one portion of it in particular, an answer that speaks to me on many personal levels.
...when I can't express
what I really feel
i practice feeling
what I can express
and none of it is equal
i know
but that's why mankind
alone among the animals
learns to cry.
If the reader is a person who is of the opinion that all human beings should be heard, no matter their situation or location, feel free to drop me a line. Know that you are in good company with the likes of Professor Giovanni and Dr Segger. I hope to be able to share some things with all of you that are sure to surprise you. Things that come from the Heaven and Hell sides of this death row prison cell.
WRITE TO:
Brandon Astor Jones, G3-83
UNO#400574
Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison
P.O. Box 3877
Jackson, Georgia 30233
USA
'...the reader as well' by Brandon Astor Jones
I think the whole glory of writing lies in the fact that it forces us out of ourselves into the lives of others.
Sherwood Anderson
Unfortunately, prisons in America provide little in the way of a means for positive daily individual accomplishment for prisoners. A man like myself, in order to keep insanity and boredom at bay, needs to accomplish something worthwhile every day.
In 1962, when I joined the US Army, I lied when I indicated on the induction form that I had completed '9 years' of schooling. In reality I did not even graduate from elementary school.
It was only after I came to this prison did I manage to - by hook and by crook - obtain a General Education Development Certificate. I am sharing this bit of information because I want the reader to know that I could barely write a letter, let alone a book, when I entered prison.
With the progression of time I began writing poems, essays and short autobiographical snippets. It did not take long for the daily routine of accomplishment - with the frequent discoveries of myself, and others, past and present - to become addictive. I began reading everything I could get my hands on, from cover to cover, even old newspapers and magazines. In time I decided to get myself published.
I began a brief correspondence with Mr Creed W Pannell, the publisher of the Atlanta News Weekly. He offered me a 250 word weekly column with the freedom to write about any subject I chose. That freedom lasted for nearly a year until I wrote about Clarence Thomas, who was then an unconfirmed United States Supreme Court nominee.
Before writing that essay I had read (in detail) the nominee's paper trail in the prison's law library, which led me to conclude that he was unfit as a replacement for the highly esteemed United States Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
I got no reader response to any of my columns prior to that article, but that following week ten letters arrived. All were written by African American men and women who expressed outrage that I dared "to write [such] disparaging things about a wonderful Black man from Pin Point, Georgia"!
My column, 'An Inside Look with Brandon Astor Jones', was discontinued immediately. Of course, I take a degree of comfort in knowing that these days most of those letter writers share my opinion of Justice Thomas.
I quickly had begun to enjoy writing a column each week. After not being able to find another column in America, I began perusing foreign publications with a view to finding a new space. All that eventuated was occasional publication in the United Kingdom.
I switched my geographical focus to Australia. Eventually I made contact with a fellow American, who had recently relocated from Wisconsin to Sydney. Mr Allen Myers had just started the Green Left Weekly newspaper, and he offered me a 550 word space each week, which I accepted. Green Left Weekly grew quickly from a fledgling local publication in Sydney to one of the most widely read alternative newspapers in the entire country. It is distributed in each of Australia's states.
For more than eleven years, 47 weeks in the year, my column titled 'looking out' was published. I covered many topics such as racism, sexism, classism, intracultural prejudice, prison, prisoners, crime, capital punishment, spousal abuse, music, history, slavery, local and global politics. Then a new editor came who found me to be too pro-America for his taste. Shortly thereafter 'looking out' was discontinued.
By then my interest in American history had narrowed. The Civil War and those African Americans who had fought and died for the Union (Federal) Navy, long before the Union Army began accepting Black men as soldiers, became my obsession. Sadly, the Civil War as it was fought on America's inland waterways and experienced by Black men and women has rarely been written about. I decided that I would start writing some of this history.
From newspapers I learned of Joseph P Reidy, then the Associate Dean of the Graduate School at Howard University. He and his students had spent a decade researching Blacks' involvement in the fighting of America's greatest internal conflict. I wrote to him seeking the specifics on Black sailors in the Union Navy.
Dean Reidy introduced me to several little known Black heroes who fought in the war, but the one who interests me most is a man named Wilson Brown. He was once a slave on a cotton plantation. He was the only man, Black or White, from the State of Mississippi to be awarded the US Navy's Medal of Honor for his heroic service while under heavy enemy fire during the civil war.
I became so taken with Wilson Brown's life I was inspired to write a lengthy essay about him. Two years later that essay had grown into a book written in the form of a roman à clef entitled 'without war'.
The story begins in Wilson Brown's early years on the Miller Plantation as a slave. In that particular 39 chapter draft, the story ended with Brown's heroics during several of the ship-to-ship engagements of the Battle of Mobile Bay.
While reading another newspaper I came across an article about a Quaker professor at the University of Alabama's Tuscaloosa Campus. He had been the driving force behind the movement to encourage Alabama to apologize for the role it played in the perpetuation of slavery. When I read that, I thought to myself that he would be the perfect person to give me his opinion on my book.
I wrote to him and asked if he would read it. He promptly responded indicating that he would be happy to read it and give his opinion. I sent 'without war' to him immediately.
Three weeks later he wrote again saying that the manuscript was good and, because of its educational value, should be put up on the internet. He added that he would be happy to do that for me. I explained to him that the manuscript was incomplete and that I did not want it up on the internet even in the incomplete form because it could be stolen in part or whole. I asked him to return it.
He wrote again and said he would return it but first he wanted to write an essay on its theme: how the violence of war, love and law can produce redemption. Before I answered that letter, another arrived dated June 25 2004. The professor commented that 'without war' reminded him of 'a short story [by Harriet Beecher Stow] called 'Love versus Law'".
He never returned my manuscript despite my repeated letters asking him to do so. Then he stopped communicating completely.
The manuscript now has 50 chapters. As all my writing is given the title of the final words in the last sentence, the new title of 'without war' became 'while the Mississippi and Hudson merge'.
My purpose for having written this essay is two-fold. First, I hope that many readers of these words will write, call or email the professor and ask him to kindly return my work. I choose not to speculate as to why he has not done so. I just want my work back. He can be contacted at the following work email address at the University of Cambridge, UK: abrophy@email.unc.edu.
Second, I trust that after reading this all writers who are in prison will exercise due caution when sending your manuscripts out. No matter how official their titles appear to be, some people on the outside (but not all) will take advantage of you because you are in prison. If you must send your manuscript out try to send it to an organization you can trust, like the PEN American Center's Prison Writing Mentorship Program in New York.
The words that head this essay are true: 'writing... forces us out of ourselves into the lives of others.' In fact, it is clear that those words also apply to the reader.
while the Mississippi and the Hudson merge can be purchased from the publisher iUniverse.
Sherwood Anderson
Unfortunately, prisons in America provide little in the way of a means for positive daily individual accomplishment for prisoners. A man like myself, in order to keep insanity and boredom at bay, needs to accomplish something worthwhile every day.
In 1962, when I joined the US Army, I lied when I indicated on the induction form that I had completed '9 years' of schooling. In reality I did not even graduate from elementary school.
It was only after I came to this prison did I manage to - by hook and by crook - obtain a General Education Development Certificate. I am sharing this bit of information because I want the reader to know that I could barely write a letter, let alone a book, when I entered prison.
With the progression of time I began writing poems, essays and short autobiographical snippets. It did not take long for the daily routine of accomplishment - with the frequent discoveries of myself, and others, past and present - to become addictive. I began reading everything I could get my hands on, from cover to cover, even old newspapers and magazines. In time I decided to get myself published.
I began a brief correspondence with Mr Creed W Pannell, the publisher of the Atlanta News Weekly. He offered me a 250 word weekly column with the freedom to write about any subject I chose. That freedom lasted for nearly a year until I wrote about Clarence Thomas, who was then an unconfirmed United States Supreme Court nominee.
Before writing that essay I had read (in detail) the nominee's paper trail in the prison's law library, which led me to conclude that he was unfit as a replacement for the highly esteemed United States Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
I got no reader response to any of my columns prior to that article, but that following week ten letters arrived. All were written by African American men and women who expressed outrage that I dared "to write [such] disparaging things about a wonderful Black man from Pin Point, Georgia"!
My column, 'An Inside Look with Brandon Astor Jones', was discontinued immediately. Of course, I take a degree of comfort in knowing that these days most of those letter writers share my opinion of Justice Thomas.
I quickly had begun to enjoy writing a column each week. After not being able to find another column in America, I began perusing foreign publications with a view to finding a new space. All that eventuated was occasional publication in the United Kingdom.
I switched my geographical focus to Australia. Eventually I made contact with a fellow American, who had recently relocated from Wisconsin to Sydney. Mr Allen Myers had just started the Green Left Weekly newspaper, and he offered me a 550 word space each week, which I accepted. Green Left Weekly grew quickly from a fledgling local publication in Sydney to one of the most widely read alternative newspapers in the entire country. It is distributed in each of Australia's states.
For more than eleven years, 47 weeks in the year, my column titled 'looking out' was published. I covered many topics such as racism, sexism, classism, intracultural prejudice, prison, prisoners, crime, capital punishment, spousal abuse, music, history, slavery, local and global politics. Then a new editor came who found me to be too pro-America for his taste. Shortly thereafter 'looking out' was discontinued.
By then my interest in American history had narrowed. The Civil War and those African Americans who had fought and died for the Union (Federal) Navy, long before the Union Army began accepting Black men as soldiers, became my obsession. Sadly, the Civil War as it was fought on America's inland waterways and experienced by Black men and women has rarely been written about. I decided that I would start writing some of this history.
From newspapers I learned of Joseph P Reidy, then the Associate Dean of the Graduate School at Howard University. He and his students had spent a decade researching Blacks' involvement in the fighting of America's greatest internal conflict. I wrote to him seeking the specifics on Black sailors in the Union Navy.
Dean Reidy introduced me to several little known Black heroes who fought in the war, but the one who interests me most is a man named Wilson Brown. He was once a slave on a cotton plantation. He was the only man, Black or White, from the State of Mississippi to be awarded the US Navy's Medal of Honor for his heroic service while under heavy enemy fire during the civil war.
I became so taken with Wilson Brown's life I was inspired to write a lengthy essay about him. Two years later that essay had grown into a book written in the form of a roman à clef entitled 'without war'.
The story begins in Wilson Brown's early years on the Miller Plantation as a slave. In that particular 39 chapter draft, the story ended with Brown's heroics during several of the ship-to-ship engagements of the Battle of Mobile Bay.
While reading another newspaper I came across an article about a Quaker professor at the University of Alabama's Tuscaloosa Campus. He had been the driving force behind the movement to encourage Alabama to apologize for the role it played in the perpetuation of slavery. When I read that, I thought to myself that he would be the perfect person to give me his opinion on my book.
I wrote to him and asked if he would read it. He promptly responded indicating that he would be happy to read it and give his opinion. I sent 'without war' to him immediately.
Three weeks later he wrote again saying that the manuscript was good and, because of its educational value, should be put up on the internet. He added that he would be happy to do that for me. I explained to him that the manuscript was incomplete and that I did not want it up on the internet even in the incomplete form because it could be stolen in part or whole. I asked him to return it.
He wrote again and said he would return it but first he wanted to write an essay on its theme: how the violence of war, love and law can produce redemption. Before I answered that letter, another arrived dated June 25 2004. The professor commented that 'without war' reminded him of 'a short story [by Harriet Beecher Stow] called 'Love versus Law'".
He never returned my manuscript despite my repeated letters asking him to do so. Then he stopped communicating completely.
The manuscript now has 50 chapters. As all my writing is given the title of the final words in the last sentence, the new title of 'without war' became 'while the Mississippi and Hudson merge'.
My purpose for having written this essay is two-fold. First, I hope that many readers of these words will write, call or email the professor and ask him to kindly return my work. I choose not to speculate as to why he has not done so. I just want my work back. He can be contacted at the following work email address at the University of Cambridge, UK: abrophy@email.unc.edu.
Second, I trust that after reading this all writers who are in prison will exercise due caution when sending your manuscripts out. No matter how official their titles appear to be, some people on the outside (but not all) will take advantage of you because you are in prison. If you must send your manuscript out try to send it to an organization you can trust, like the PEN American Center's Prison Writing Mentorship Program in New York.
The words that head this essay are true: 'writing... forces us out of ourselves into the lives of others.' In fact, it is clear that those words also apply to the reader.
while the Mississippi and the Hudson merge can be purchased from the publisher iUniverse.
Tuesday, 9 September 2008
"... dying in poverty" by Brandon Astor Jones
America's failure to make progress in reducing poverty, especially among children, should provoke a lot of soul-searching. Unfortunately, what it often seems to provoke instead is great creativity in making excuses. - Paul Krugman
On February 24, 2008, I wrote a letter to a correspondent in England, and with that correspondent's consent I am sharing a portion of that letter here for those readers who have asked me questions about my childhood.
Under the title 'Rio Grande Valley Journal: In Remote Valley, A Grim Redefinition of Fishing' there is a photograph of two boys bent over a river's rock-strewn pool in The New York Times' February 15 2008 issue. They are looking for fresh water shrimp.
The photograph conjured up memories of being a nine year old, more than fifty-five years ago, in the exurb of Markham, Illinois. A farming community twenty-five minutes from downtown Chicago.
I can remember getting up long before sunrise, right after my guardians (here read my maternal Great Aunt Lois McKinley-McGee and her husband James Edward McGee) left for work. I only saw them on Sundays, because Monday through Saturday they left in the early darkness of the morning and did not return until late at night.
On the morning in question I quickly dressed, then went outside to pump a bucket of water. I sat the bucket down so all of the rust particles could settle in the bottom. I got my short-axe, and began cutting a supply of wood beneath the naked light bulb that shone brightly above our little shack's front door. I took the wood inside and built a fire in the pot-bellied stove that stood in the middle of the room's dirt floor. Then I poured the sediment-free top of the water into a large pot and put it on top of the stove.
Twenty minutes later the pot of water was hot. I washed up, and brushed my teeth as dawn quietly began to illuminate my late autumn garden. I went to the garden and pulled up two large carrots. I used the water that was left in the bucket to wash them. I started eating one and wrapped the other in my handkerchief - it would be my lunch at school.
Mine was a love/hate relationship with Lowell Longfellow School, in Harvey, Illnois. The school was just short of being five miles away. It usually took me about thirty minutes to walk to school, where for a time I was the only person of color in attendance. I loved school, but unfortunately, I learned very little in the way of reading, writing and arithmetic, but became an expert at fighting extremely racist White boys.
I am sorry. I did not mean to go on so, but for a few minutes I was transported back to the schoolyard during recess - the fights, and the words uttered in them, did not bring back pleasant memories. I am finding this difficult to write. Let me get back to wrapping my carrot.
We lived in the center of a floodplain. The kind of flooding that Katrina gave New Orleans was a yearly occurrence in Markham. Consequently there was a huge drainage canal less than seventy-five yards south of our shack. After I put my carrot in my back pocket I started thinking of dinner. There was nothing to eat in the shack.
I found a five gallon can. I got a hammer and large screwdriver and then punched at least fifty holes into the can's bottom. I cut off the end of our clothes line that was not in use and tied it to the handle of the can. I left for school, but I took the eastern canal route.
A mile or so later, when I walked up from the canal bank onto the Dixie Highway Bridge, I tied the other end of the clothes line to the bridge and lowered the can into the fast flowing Westward current. I made sure that the can's open end faced east. I then continued my walk to school. I walked into Mrs Summers' classroom at three minutes after nine. Needless to say, Mrs Summers was angry. As I hurried to the back of the classroom she said, "McGee, you are three minutes late. You need not come out of the coatroom for thirty minutes!"
I did as I was told. Mrs Summers was a good teacher, but she could not abide a student's tardiness, not even three minutes.
Getting back to the New York Times article, the boys in the photograph reside in the Rio Grande Valley of Jamaica. In bold type are the words "Spearing the giant shrimp is like work. Poisoning them is quicker". As I read those words I wondered if the reporter intended to suggest that the boys are lazy? Maybe, maybe not.
In Portland, Jamaica, a little hamlet that is near the Rio Grande, many of the residents eat the shrimp and crayfish that can be found in the river's rock pools to keep from starving to death.
The people there are as poor and destitute today as we were more than five decades ago in Markham Illnois. While I used a five gallon bucket to catch my after school meal of crayfish, the poor people of Portland, out of necessity due to poverty, have started to use poison.
Marc Lacy writes: '...any toxin will do. Some favor the pesticide used to keep insects off the coffee plants. Others use the potent solution used to rid cows of ticks. When subjected to the poison, the shrimp [and crayfish the size of lobsters] large and small float right to the top. So do the fish. Catching them is as easy as scooping them up before the river washes them and the poison away.'
Speaking of the poison, a fisherperson named Kimberly John, who works with the Nature Conservancy, is quoted as saying: 'You have to put all morals and conscience aside, and then you throw a toxic pesticide in the river... It's [a] very cold, hard reality to put poison in the river, and what ever jumps out, you catch.'
It goes without saying that no one should be poisoning the river. What humans are doing to the environment all over the world is wrong. I think that only a handful of people like George Bush would disagree. We all need to be doing more to help than hurt the environment.
Yet in my sixty-five years on this earth I have come to question whether some of those who profess a desire to save the environment have taken the time to notice that their fellow human beings are an integral part of the environment as much as a river, valley, mountain or frog.
People like Kimberly John worry - and rightly so, I think - about the river being poisoned, but not nearly enough about how POVERTY POISONS the lives of the world's poorest peoples.
I plan to come back to the Rio Grande Valley Journal article later. Bear with me while I fast forward to another New York Times article dated February 18, 2008, appropriately titled 'Poverty is Poison'. It was written by Paul Krugman. The first paragraph reads:
I am always just a little angry when I read of a recent million dollar research body coming up with a finding like this one. I mean hey, I have been Black and poor in America all of my life! I have never attended a high school and yet, had I been asked I could have saved those researchers a lot of time and money: All poor people know what those researchers found out.
Mr Krugman goes on to remind us that the former President Lyndon Bains Johnson 'declared his War on Poverty 44 years ago. Contrary to cynical legend, there actually was a large reduction in poverty over the next few years, especially among children, who saw their poverty rate fall from 23 percent in 1963 to 14 percent in 1969.'
Then one day a few people saw a handful of so-called 'welfare queens driving Cadillacs' and tax payers got angry and ended the War on Poverty. The majority of people who were and are on welfare actually need the help welfare provides. Alas, because of a few cheats, millions of children were taken off America's welfare rolls - by and large for political expediency. Former President Bill Clinton was instrumental in that removal process.
If people could muster the courage and compassion to care for each other as much as they do for the rivers, I doubt that poor people would be poisoning the river.
Mr Krugman goes on to report that 'to be poor in America today, even more than in the past, is to be an outcast in your own country. And that, the neuroscientists tell us, is what poisons a child's brain' [emphasis added].
People like Kimberly John have a myopic view of how that river gets poisoned. It is not the boys pictured in the rock pool. Poverty is what poisons the river in Portland, Jamaica.
A member of the Portland Conservation group is quoted as having said 'my fear is that the food that we depend on, that is part of our cultural tradition, will die'.
Where is the concern for the two boys in the rock pool?
As I sit in this prison cell I am reminded that on more than a few afternoons when I went back to the Dixie Highway Bridge after school, the five gallon can did not have one crayfish in it. Those were the times when I would go and steal something to eat from the local grocer.
Yes, there are a number of people who survive poverty, some rise high above it. I am happy for them. Nevertheless, at least half of the children who live in poverty never get out of poverty, even as adults.
Americans, as well as people of other nations, are in desperate need of asking our so-called leaders why poverty is not nearly as important as the environment?
I am a sixty-five year old child - locked away in a multi-million dollar prison - still living and dying in poverty.
On February 24, 2008, I wrote a letter to a correspondent in England, and with that correspondent's consent I am sharing a portion of that letter here for those readers who have asked me questions about my childhood.
Under the title 'Rio Grande Valley Journal: In Remote Valley, A Grim Redefinition of Fishing' there is a photograph of two boys bent over a river's rock-strewn pool in The New York Times' February 15 2008 issue. They are looking for fresh water shrimp.
The photograph conjured up memories of being a nine year old, more than fifty-five years ago, in the exurb of Markham, Illinois. A farming community twenty-five minutes from downtown Chicago.
I can remember getting up long before sunrise, right after my guardians (here read my maternal Great Aunt Lois McKinley-McGee and her husband James Edward McGee) left for work. I only saw them on Sundays, because Monday through Saturday they left in the early darkness of the morning and did not return until late at night.
On the morning in question I quickly dressed, then went outside to pump a bucket of water. I sat the bucket down so all of the rust particles could settle in the bottom. I got my short-axe, and began cutting a supply of wood beneath the naked light bulb that shone brightly above our little shack's front door. I took the wood inside and built a fire in the pot-bellied stove that stood in the middle of the room's dirt floor. Then I poured the sediment-free top of the water into a large pot and put it on top of the stove.
Twenty minutes later the pot of water was hot. I washed up, and brushed my teeth as dawn quietly began to illuminate my late autumn garden. I went to the garden and pulled up two large carrots. I used the water that was left in the bucket to wash them. I started eating one and wrapped the other in my handkerchief - it would be my lunch at school.
Mine was a love/hate relationship with Lowell Longfellow School, in Harvey, Illnois. The school was just short of being five miles away. It usually took me about thirty minutes to walk to school, where for a time I was the only person of color in attendance. I loved school, but unfortunately, I learned very little in the way of reading, writing and arithmetic, but became an expert at fighting extremely racist White boys.
I am sorry. I did not mean to go on so, but for a few minutes I was transported back to the schoolyard during recess - the fights, and the words uttered in them, did not bring back pleasant memories. I am finding this difficult to write. Let me get back to wrapping my carrot.
We lived in the center of a floodplain. The kind of flooding that Katrina gave New Orleans was a yearly occurrence in Markham. Consequently there was a huge drainage canal less than seventy-five yards south of our shack. After I put my carrot in my back pocket I started thinking of dinner. There was nothing to eat in the shack.
I found a five gallon can. I got a hammer and large screwdriver and then punched at least fifty holes into the can's bottom. I cut off the end of our clothes line that was not in use and tied it to the handle of the can. I left for school, but I took the eastern canal route.
A mile or so later, when I walked up from the canal bank onto the Dixie Highway Bridge, I tied the other end of the clothes line to the bridge and lowered the can into the fast flowing Westward current. I made sure that the can's open end faced east. I then continued my walk to school. I walked into Mrs Summers' classroom at three minutes after nine. Needless to say, Mrs Summers was angry. As I hurried to the back of the classroom she said, "McGee, you are three minutes late. You need not come out of the coatroom for thirty minutes!"
I did as I was told. Mrs Summers was a good teacher, but she could not abide a student's tardiness, not even three minutes.
Getting back to the New York Times article, the boys in the photograph reside in the Rio Grande Valley of Jamaica. In bold type are the words "Spearing the giant shrimp is like work. Poisoning them is quicker". As I read those words I wondered if the reporter intended to suggest that the boys are lazy? Maybe, maybe not.
In Portland, Jamaica, a little hamlet that is near the Rio Grande, many of the residents eat the shrimp and crayfish that can be found in the river's rock pools to keep from starving to death.
The people there are as poor and destitute today as we were more than five decades ago in Markham Illnois. While I used a five gallon bucket to catch my after school meal of crayfish, the poor people of Portland, out of necessity due to poverty, have started to use poison.
Marc Lacy writes: '...any toxin will do. Some favor the pesticide used to keep insects off the coffee plants. Others use the potent solution used to rid cows of ticks. When subjected to the poison, the shrimp [and crayfish the size of lobsters] large and small float right to the top. So do the fish. Catching them is as easy as scooping them up before the river washes them and the poison away.'
Speaking of the poison, a fisherperson named Kimberly John, who works with the Nature Conservancy, is quoted as saying: 'You have to put all morals and conscience aside, and then you throw a toxic pesticide in the river... It's [a] very cold, hard reality to put poison in the river, and what ever jumps out, you catch.'
It goes without saying that no one should be poisoning the river. What humans are doing to the environment all over the world is wrong. I think that only a handful of people like George Bush would disagree. We all need to be doing more to help than hurt the environment.
Yet in my sixty-five years on this earth I have come to question whether some of those who profess a desire to save the environment have taken the time to notice that their fellow human beings are an integral part of the environment as much as a river, valley, mountain or frog.
People like Kimberly John worry - and rightly so, I think - about the river being poisoned, but not nearly enough about how POVERTY POISONS the lives of the world's poorest peoples.
I plan to come back to the Rio Grande Valley Journal article later. Bear with me while I fast forward to another New York Times article dated February 18, 2008, appropriately titled 'Poverty is Poison'. It was written by Paul Krugman. The first paragraph reads:
'Poverty in early childhood poisons the brain'. That was the opening of an article in Saturday's Financial Times, summarizing research presented last week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
...neuroscientists have found that 'many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones which impair neural development'. The effect is to impair language development and memory - and hence the ability to escape poverty - for the rest of the child's life.
So we have another, even more compelling reason to be ashamed about America's record of failing to fight poverty.
I am always just a little angry when I read of a recent million dollar research body coming up with a finding like this one. I mean hey, I have been Black and poor in America all of my life! I have never attended a high school and yet, had I been asked I could have saved those researchers a lot of time and money: All poor people know what those researchers found out.
Mr Krugman goes on to remind us that the former President Lyndon Bains Johnson 'declared his War on Poverty 44 years ago. Contrary to cynical legend, there actually was a large reduction in poverty over the next few years, especially among children, who saw their poverty rate fall from 23 percent in 1963 to 14 percent in 1969.'
Then one day a few people saw a handful of so-called 'welfare queens driving Cadillacs' and tax payers got angry and ended the War on Poverty. The majority of people who were and are on welfare actually need the help welfare provides. Alas, because of a few cheats, millions of children were taken off America's welfare rolls - by and large for political expediency. Former President Bill Clinton was instrumental in that removal process.
If people could muster the courage and compassion to care for each other as much as they do for the rivers, I doubt that poor people would be poisoning the river.
Mr Krugman goes on to report that 'to be poor in America today, even more than in the past, is to be an outcast in your own country. And that, the neuroscientists tell us, is what poisons a child's brain' [emphasis added].
People like Kimberly John have a myopic view of how that river gets poisoned. It is not the boys pictured in the rock pool. Poverty is what poisons the river in Portland, Jamaica.
A member of the Portland Conservation group is quoted as having said 'my fear is that the food that we depend on, that is part of our cultural tradition, will die'.
Where is the concern for the two boys in the rock pool?
As I sit in this prison cell I am reminded that on more than a few afternoons when I went back to the Dixie Highway Bridge after school, the five gallon can did not have one crayfish in it. Those were the times when I would go and steal something to eat from the local grocer.
Yes, there are a number of people who survive poverty, some rise high above it. I am happy for them. Nevertheless, at least half of the children who live in poverty never get out of poverty, even as adults.
Americans, as well as people of other nations, are in desperate need of asking our so-called leaders why poverty is not nearly as important as the environment?
I am a sixty-five year old child - locked away in a multi-million dollar prison - still living and dying in poverty.
Friday, 15 August 2008
From Slave to Naval Hero: review by James Gordon
While the Mississippi and Hudson Merge by Brandon Astor Jones
(ISBN 0595484131)
A look at the map will tell you (if you need to know) that the Mississippi and the Hudson never merge, so the title is a puzzle – until its very last line, which turns out to sum up the book in a rather special way.
Three slaves escape from a Mississippi plantation after killing a white overseer. They make their way perilously through Confederate lines, and fall in with Unionists, who take them to New Orleans. Here they are taken in by a black brothel owner, who turns out to be a Unionist agent. As a result one of the slaves (who has changed his name to Wilson Brown) joins the Unionist navy, where he soon distinguishes himself in action at the battle of Mobile Bay, and after further promotion and service is subsequently able to set up house in the state of New York.
Such a basic story, but there is much more in the detail. As for plot, While the Mississippi and Hudson Merge has got everything. Social comment (it starts out with a graphic and realistic portrayal of slaves' lives in the Deep South at the time of the American Civil War); historical accuracy (the author has done his homework and I suspect there are real-life family recollections in here as well); perhaps more surprisingly in someone who has spent most of his life in prison (on death row), naval accuracy (the sea battles, especially the key on of the Battle of Mobile Bay, are rivetingly accurate and exciting); while for sheer horror the opening scene of the runaway Ben being 'bobbed' is hard to beat.
Jones has a real and unusual talent for description. He makes much use of the present tense for immediacy. The dialogue is lively and natural. It is light, readable, even when the subject matter should be heavy. The book would translate well into a script, as I believe the author has conceived it much as a film maker would, though it is well-written by prose standards as well.
It is far from being a mere sociological or military history. The characters, from the least of the slaves, come alive on the page. The story has heroes and heroines (mostly but not only African Americans); villains (mostly but not only white!); romance (there are three love stories, all compelling and finally heart-warming); quite a bit of sex, some of it lurid (hard to avoid in the circumstances of exploitation at the time.)
The author himself points out (in a thought-provoking and informative prologue) that the history of the American Civil War is mostly that of land battles. Yet the naval battles played an important part too, and it is not widely known that African Americans were involved, or, in the case of the novel's main hero Wilson Brown, distinguished in it. This is a man who deserves to be better known to history, a real life hero who would do honor to any community.
A highly interesting picture is provided of New York at the time, where the sailors go on leave, and where recently arrived Irish are seeking out negroes to murder them, seeing them as responsible for the war which is making Irish lives a misery. The description of how the outnumbered black men in a New York alley manage to outwit the would-be lynchers, is a masterpiece of adventure writing. The author shows great skill in setting up the suspense of the black servicemen's hopeless situation, yet freeing them from it by a device that is almost comic in its lightness, yet utterly convincing.
This is a well-paced and beautifully written adventure story. It is also a true record of a proud moment in the struggle of African Americans to be free, and their involvement on the Unionist side which crucially tipped the balance against the South in the final years of that conflict. A quite fascinating, exciting and satisfying read.
James Gordon lives in London and he keeps a probing eye on writers in the United States. j.gordon33@ntlworld.com
While the Mississippi and the Hudson Merge is available through the iUniverse Book Sales Representative Kyle Burkett (toll free) at (800) 288 4677 extension 5423. Or by writing to the publisher direct at
iUniverse Inc.
1663 Liberty Drive
Suite 300
Bloomington
Indiana 47403
And also through their website.
(ISBN 0595484131)
A look at the map will tell you (if you need to know) that the Mississippi and the Hudson never merge, so the title is a puzzle – until its very last line, which turns out to sum up the book in a rather special way.
Three slaves escape from a Mississippi plantation after killing a white overseer. They make their way perilously through Confederate lines, and fall in with Unionists, who take them to New Orleans. Here they are taken in by a black brothel owner, who turns out to be a Unionist agent. As a result one of the slaves (who has changed his name to Wilson Brown) joins the Unionist navy, where he soon distinguishes himself in action at the battle of Mobile Bay, and after further promotion and service is subsequently able to set up house in the state of New York.
Such a basic story, but there is much more in the detail. As for plot, While the Mississippi and Hudson Merge has got everything. Social comment (it starts out with a graphic and realistic portrayal of slaves' lives in the Deep South at the time of the American Civil War); historical accuracy (the author has done his homework and I suspect there are real-life family recollections in here as well); perhaps more surprisingly in someone who has spent most of his life in prison (on death row), naval accuracy (the sea battles, especially the key on of the Battle of Mobile Bay, are rivetingly accurate and exciting); while for sheer horror the opening scene of the runaway Ben being 'bobbed' is hard to beat.
Jones has a real and unusual talent for description. He makes much use of the present tense for immediacy. The dialogue is lively and natural. It is light, readable, even when the subject matter should be heavy. The book would translate well into a script, as I believe the author has conceived it much as a film maker would, though it is well-written by prose standards as well.
It is far from being a mere sociological or military history. The characters, from the least of the slaves, come alive on the page. The story has heroes and heroines (mostly but not only African Americans); villains (mostly but not only white!); romance (there are three love stories, all compelling and finally heart-warming); quite a bit of sex, some of it lurid (hard to avoid in the circumstances of exploitation at the time.)
The author himself points out (in a thought-provoking and informative prologue) that the history of the American Civil War is mostly that of land battles. Yet the naval battles played an important part too, and it is not widely known that African Americans were involved, or, in the case of the novel's main hero Wilson Brown, distinguished in it. This is a man who deserves to be better known to history, a real life hero who would do honor to any community.
A highly interesting picture is provided of New York at the time, where the sailors go on leave, and where recently arrived Irish are seeking out negroes to murder them, seeing them as responsible for the war which is making Irish lives a misery. The description of how the outnumbered black men in a New York alley manage to outwit the would-be lynchers, is a masterpiece of adventure writing. The author shows great skill in setting up the suspense of the black servicemen's hopeless situation, yet freeing them from it by a device that is almost comic in its lightness, yet utterly convincing.
This is a well-paced and beautifully written adventure story. It is also a true record of a proud moment in the struggle of African Americans to be free, and their involvement on the Unionist side which crucially tipped the balance against the South in the final years of that conflict. A quite fascinating, exciting and satisfying read.
James Gordon lives in London and he keeps a probing eye on writers in the United States. j.gordon33@ntlworld.com
While the Mississippi and the Hudson Merge is available through the iUniverse Book Sales Representative Kyle Burkett (toll free) at (800) 288 4677 extension 5423. Or by writing to the publisher direct at
iUniverse Inc.
1663 Liberty Drive
Suite 300
Bloomington
Indiana 47403
And also through their website.
Thursday, 17 July 2008
"...know what the truth is" by Brandon Astor Jones
People need good lies. There are too many bad ones.
- Kurt Vonnegut Jr
Conservative (here read extreme right wing Republican) politicians and their constituents have a propensity for lying with relative ease. I do not mean to suggest that liberal Democrats and their constituents do not lie. More than a few do.
However, good and bad lies are woven into the very fabric of American politics, be they uttered in the White House or the house next door.
What sets so many extreme right wing conservatives apart from their more liberal counterparts is the former's willingness to craft their lies to fit certain situations in the laws of the land. It should come as no surprise that some aspects of America's Laws are set up to favor those who can lie convincingly.
Casual observers of court room procedure would be hard pressed to find a more instructive example of what I mean than the process now in use to select potential jurors to serve on death penalty cases. All potential jurors are questioned by the lawyers of the prosecution and defense.
Long before the actual trial takes place an attorney for the prosecution will ask each potential juror if he/she can listen to and take in the intricate nature of the presented evidence, then objectively weigh all of it before voting a a 'life' or 'death' sentence for the defendant.
In response to such a question most potential jurors who are liberal in both thought and deed will quickly admit that they would not vote to put a defendant to death under any circumstances, no matter what the evidence might reveal.
At that point the attorney for the prosecution will ask the judge to 'strike' that potential juror for the bias the question will have exposed. Driven by the law the judge must honor that request.
Had the potential juror told a good lie and said 'I am not for or against capital punishment: I would have to know and weigh all of the facts in evidence before I could make a decision to spare or take someone's life', the judge would be far more inclined not to strike that person.
Conversely, when the defense attorney asks a potential juror who is a right wing hard line conservative whether they can vote for a 'life' sentence they will lie and say yes, knowing that they are much more inclined to vote for the 'death' sentence.
Unfortunately, because they answered the question the way they did, the judge will of course not be able to strike them off.
Eventually when enough conservative potential jurors have been questioned, because of their willingness to lie, the resulting makeup of the jury is often decidely pro death penalty. Such a jury all but guarantees that the defendant will be sentenced to death.
So, potential jurors who are liberal and progressive in their thinking must learn to 'lie for life' in order to change the culture of the jury.
There are a lot of things I chose not to say in this essay because I trust the now better informed reader's intelligence. If the reader would like to know more please feel free to write me a letter and send it to me direct via the address below. Alas, it is too late for me, but what I have shared has the potential to save a number of lives in upcoming death penalty trials.
I hope that, for my having shared these truths about America's death penalty laws and schemes, the reader will see 'life' and 'death' in the court room more clearly. I leave you with the well chosen words of Friedrich Nietzsche: 'he who cannot lie does not know what the truth is'.
Brandon Astor Jone, G3-83
UNO#400574; EF-122216
Georgia Diagnostic Classification Prison
P.O. Box 3877
Jackson, Georgia 30233
USA
Buy Brandon's book, While the Mississippi and Hudson merge, from iUniverse
- Kurt Vonnegut Jr
Conservative (here read extreme right wing Republican) politicians and their constituents have a propensity for lying with relative ease. I do not mean to suggest that liberal Democrats and their constituents do not lie. More than a few do.
However, good and bad lies are woven into the very fabric of American politics, be they uttered in the White House or the house next door.
What sets so many extreme right wing conservatives apart from their more liberal counterparts is the former's willingness to craft their lies to fit certain situations in the laws of the land. It should come as no surprise that some aspects of America's Laws are set up to favor those who can lie convincingly.
Casual observers of court room procedure would be hard pressed to find a more instructive example of what I mean than the process now in use to select potential jurors to serve on death penalty cases. All potential jurors are questioned by the lawyers of the prosecution and defense.
Long before the actual trial takes place an attorney for the prosecution will ask each potential juror if he/she can listen to and take in the intricate nature of the presented evidence, then objectively weigh all of it before voting a a 'life' or 'death' sentence for the defendant.
In response to such a question most potential jurors who are liberal in both thought and deed will quickly admit that they would not vote to put a defendant to death under any circumstances, no matter what the evidence might reveal.
At that point the attorney for the prosecution will ask the judge to 'strike' that potential juror for the bias the question will have exposed. Driven by the law the judge must honor that request.
Had the potential juror told a good lie and said 'I am not for or against capital punishment: I would have to know and weigh all of the facts in evidence before I could make a decision to spare or take someone's life', the judge would be far more inclined not to strike that person.
Conversely, when the defense attorney asks a potential juror who is a right wing hard line conservative whether they can vote for a 'life' sentence they will lie and say yes, knowing that they are much more inclined to vote for the 'death' sentence.
Unfortunately, because they answered the question the way they did, the judge will of course not be able to strike them off.
Eventually when enough conservative potential jurors have been questioned, because of their willingness to lie, the resulting makeup of the jury is often decidely pro death penalty. Such a jury all but guarantees that the defendant will be sentenced to death.
So, potential jurors who are liberal and progressive in their thinking must learn to 'lie for life' in order to change the culture of the jury.
There are a lot of things I chose not to say in this essay because I trust the now better informed reader's intelligence. If the reader would like to know more please feel free to write me a letter and send it to me direct via the address below. Alas, it is too late for me, but what I have shared has the potential to save a number of lives in upcoming death penalty trials.
I hope that, for my having shared these truths about America's death penalty laws and schemes, the reader will see 'life' and 'death' in the court room more clearly. I leave you with the well chosen words of Friedrich Nietzsche: 'he who cannot lie does not know what the truth is'.
Brandon Astor Jone, G3-83
UNO#400574; EF-122216
Georgia Diagnostic Classification Prison
P.O. Box 3877
Jackson, Georgia 30233
USA
Buy Brandon's book, While the Mississippi and Hudson merge, from iUniverse
Thursday, 19 June 2008
Brandon's book available to purchase
While the Mississippi and Hudson Merge is now available to buy from iUniverse.
This 'roman a clef' is about suffering and survival. It brings vividly to life the heroic role of African-Americans within the Civil War Navy.
Friday, 16 May 2008
"... speechless." by Brandon Astor Jones and David Astor Jones
Having spent half of my sixty-five years in prison, the lyrics of D J Khaled's "I'm So Hood" caught my attention immediately:
For the reader who might find the language above a little difficult, let me clarify:
Those words conjure up an image of a person who is headed back to prison as fast as the ignorance of the culture he worships will carry him. History tells us that people in or out of prison tend to do what they know; but, if he really knew how bad long-term imprisonment is he would not be so cavalier about the very real possibility of going back.
However, in defence of both logic and truth, I feel obliged to add that it is equally cavalier on the part of the government to have had the man in prison for a number of years, with ample opportunity to teach him a socially constructive vocation, but choose not to do so. Indeed, all that he learned from prison administrators and his fellow prisoners were more proficient ways to carry out and expand his future criminal activities. I plan to write in depth on that subject in future instalments of this series, but now let me get back to D J Khaled's lyrics...
Pants hangin' off me now
'Cause my pistol heavy (hood)
I ain't spoke to you yet dawg
'Cause I ain't friendly...
They say I'm fed bound
They call me high risk
Full blooded goon
Lames make me sick
You get 3 or 4 Birds where I come from
We call you rich
I'd like to thank the hood homie is all behind me
(I'm So Hood).
The image created in the words above is of a man who wears his pants so low that you can see almost all of his underwear. One of the many reasons the so-called 'baggy style' became so trendy for the group in question, is because the adherents can easily hide large calibre firearms beneath such loose fitting clothes.
Projection of the tough persona requires genuine rappers (and even wanna-be rappers) to always present a demeanour of meanness. Hence, the reason he rarely engages in traditional greetings, and/or small talk with strangers. Keep in mind that one of his heroes is the likes of Alphonse ('Al') Capone, the late Prohibition era gangster. Therefore, it is likely that this person is headed to a federal prison for a host of reasons, not least of which is the fact that more often than not he is illegally armed. To say he is 'high risk' understates his deameanour – especially when and if he is using some of the various drugs he sells. Alas, he likes being feared as a 'full blooded goon'.
Moreover, men who respect women as well as themselves make rappers who embrace the 'goon' lifestyle 'sick'. You see, the former tend to think for themselves and they do not buy into any part of the ridiculously popular gangster rap culture. That is why so many rappers consider them to be 'lames'.
Unfortunately, for the most part, drug dealing (here read '...3 or 4 Birds' as a reference to kilograms of whatever the local drug of choice happens to be) is just about all there is left for a 'goon' who has recently been released from prison.
The language used in D J Khaled's song speaks volumes about what is wrong with gangster rap as it relates to America in general, and Black Americans in particular.
If what I wrote in the paragraph above seems a bit mysterious, maybe the following will help to make it easier to understand. Before I clarify, I want to remind the reader that Black folk in America, unlike White folk, are still trying hard to recover from the ongoing ravages and sociological residue of slavery.
I was talking a week ago with a man who had recently been to this prison's visiting room. While he waited for his visitor, he was close enough to see and hear a group of Black visitors who were already with another prisoner. There was a small child with them. She appeared to be four or five years old. As children often do, she became very animated as she clearly sang the words of D J Khaled's "I'm So Hood". Obviously filled with pride as a result of the child's clear articulation of the words in the song, a grandmotherly-looking woman in the group vigorously praised her and gave her a loving hug.
She then asked the child to recite her ABCs. Only then did the little girl become speechless.
Damn my PO
Ya'll can tell her what I said it
Violate me if she want
Goin' to have to come catch me
Piss test me all you want
Ima smoke when I'm ready
For the reader who might find the language above a little difficult, let me clarify:
I do not care what my parole officer thinks; and, I do not care if she sends me back to prison. Before she can test my urine she has to catch me first, because I am going to smoke dope whenever I feel like it.
Those words conjure up an image of a person who is headed back to prison as fast as the ignorance of the culture he worships will carry him. History tells us that people in or out of prison tend to do what they know; but, if he really knew how bad long-term imprisonment is he would not be so cavalier about the very real possibility of going back.
However, in defence of both logic and truth, I feel obliged to add that it is equally cavalier on the part of the government to have had the man in prison for a number of years, with ample opportunity to teach him a socially constructive vocation, but choose not to do so. Indeed, all that he learned from prison administrators and his fellow prisoners were more proficient ways to carry out and expand his future criminal activities. I plan to write in depth on that subject in future instalments of this series, but now let me get back to D J Khaled's lyrics...
Pants hangin' off me now
'Cause my pistol heavy (hood)
I ain't spoke to you yet dawg
'Cause I ain't friendly...
They say I'm fed bound
They call me high risk
Full blooded goon
Lames make me sick
You get 3 or 4 Birds where I come from
We call you rich
I'd like to thank the hood homie is all behind me
(I'm So Hood).
The image created in the words above is of a man who wears his pants so low that you can see almost all of his underwear. One of the many reasons the so-called 'baggy style' became so trendy for the group in question, is because the adherents can easily hide large calibre firearms beneath such loose fitting clothes.
Projection of the tough persona requires genuine rappers (and even wanna-be rappers) to always present a demeanour of meanness. Hence, the reason he rarely engages in traditional greetings, and/or small talk with strangers. Keep in mind that one of his heroes is the likes of Alphonse ('Al') Capone, the late Prohibition era gangster. Therefore, it is likely that this person is headed to a federal prison for a host of reasons, not least of which is the fact that more often than not he is illegally armed. To say he is 'high risk' understates his deameanour – especially when and if he is using some of the various drugs he sells. Alas, he likes being feared as a 'full blooded goon'.
Moreover, men who respect women as well as themselves make rappers who embrace the 'goon' lifestyle 'sick'. You see, the former tend to think for themselves and they do not buy into any part of the ridiculously popular gangster rap culture. That is why so many rappers consider them to be 'lames'.
Unfortunately, for the most part, drug dealing (here read '...3 or 4 Birds' as a reference to kilograms of whatever the local drug of choice happens to be) is just about all there is left for a 'goon' who has recently been released from prison.
The language used in D J Khaled's song speaks volumes about what is wrong with gangster rap as it relates to America in general, and Black Americans in particular.
If what I wrote in the paragraph above seems a bit mysterious, maybe the following will help to make it easier to understand. Before I clarify, I want to remind the reader that Black folk in America, unlike White folk, are still trying hard to recover from the ongoing ravages and sociological residue of slavery.
I was talking a week ago with a man who had recently been to this prison's visiting room. While he waited for his visitor, he was close enough to see and hear a group of Black visitors who were already with another prisoner. There was a small child with them. She appeared to be four or five years old. As children often do, she became very animated as she clearly sang the words of D J Khaled's "I'm So Hood". Obviously filled with pride as a result of the child's clear articulation of the words in the song, a grandmotherly-looking woman in the group vigorously praised her and gave her a loving hug.
She then asked the child to recite her ABCs. Only then did the little girl become speechless.
"...a little 'lame'" by Brandon Astor Jones and David Astor Jones
An adult who ceases after youth to unlearn and relearn his facts and reconsider his opinions... is a menace to... community...
-Edward Lee Thorndike 1874-1949
The late American educational psychologist's words at the head of this essay seem completely appropriate. Contrary to popular belief, many of us in prison are changing the way we think. Here read change for the better. Let me share a recent exchange with you.
I walked into the tiny rectangular room. The barber and I greeted one another. When I sat down he immediately wrapped my neck and shoulders with a white and black pinstriped cape. He then asked, "How do you want it?"
It was only my second visit to his chair, so he was still in need of little guidelines regarding my cut. I explained again how I never want to look as if I just had a haircut. Instead, "I want to look as if I do not need one."
He said, "I've never heard that before." He went on, "What about your line?"
I answered, "Just square it off at the bottom of my sideburns and line up and down behind my ears as you fade it away into my lower neck. No line across the back either, just feather that out."
"You mean no line anywhere in front?"
"No."
Pressing further, he asked. "Why not?"
I replied, "It is my opinion that many Black men in America, as they try to hide their loss of hair, are speeding up the process of their receding hairlines every time they get a line cut across the front of their foreheads."
He cut off his clipper before declaring, "You know man, I never gave that any thought till now but it makes sense."
We exchanged a few more personal observations and opinions. Eventually he revealed that his son is in his early teens, and rarely listens to the advice he tries to give him in his frequent letters. Having heard about my reputation for writing, about things in and out of prison, he suggested that I write something that would be universally instructive for young men.
It was not a bad idea. I agreed to do it. I promised that by the time my next haircut rolled around, I would bring him a copy of whatever I came up with; and, if it met with his approval, he could send it to his son.
As he continued to cut my hair I found myself remembering my own first year as a teen. I was a run-away in Saint Louis, Missouri. Looking back on some of those days and nights I can also remember wishing that someone, anyone, would tell me the kind of things I am thinking of writing.
Later, it occurred to me that I should write a series of essays, not just one. In each essay I could choose a subject and briefly expand on it. I will start here:
I suggest that in such trying moments you look engagingly into her eyes. If you are speechless, speaking to her with your eyes presents her with an open-ended compliment that you, and/or she, can take anywhere the moment allows. She will appreciate your visual engagement, despite the silence, rather than leering.
That is the good news.
The bad news is that most gangsta (gangster) rappers would refer to the woman described above as a 'Bougie b...h' (note that I did not spell out the b- word, for the same reason I never spell out the n- word. It is all about respect and dignity for yourself and others.)
There is another kind of woman who can be equally attractive, in a physical way, and she loves being leered at. The purveyors of gangsta rap have a name for her as well. They call her and her kind 'Bus' it babies'. It does not take much to get a 'Bus' it baby' into your bed, according to the rappers. She is likely to be just as eager to hop into the next man's bed as yours, especially if he has more money than you.
In the next instalment of this series I plan to explore more of the language that is used (beyond 'Bougie b...h' and Bus' it babies) in the gangsta rap lyrics of the song "I'm So Hood".
If you are an adherent to the more rigid tenets of hard core rap, you might want to pass on reading instalment number two. That is to say it will have been written by someone who, according to the lyrics in "I'm So Hood", is more than a little 'lame'.
-Edward Lee Thorndike 1874-1949
The late American educational psychologist's words at the head of this essay seem completely appropriate. Contrary to popular belief, many of us in prison are changing the way we think. Here read change for the better. Let me share a recent exchange with you.
I walked into the tiny rectangular room. The barber and I greeted one another. When I sat down he immediately wrapped my neck and shoulders with a white and black pinstriped cape. He then asked, "How do you want it?"
It was only my second visit to his chair, so he was still in need of little guidelines regarding my cut. I explained again how I never want to look as if I just had a haircut. Instead, "I want to look as if I do not need one."
He said, "I've never heard that before." He went on, "What about your line?"
I answered, "Just square it off at the bottom of my sideburns and line up and down behind my ears as you fade it away into my lower neck. No line across the back either, just feather that out."
"You mean no line anywhere in front?"
"No."
Pressing further, he asked. "Why not?"
I replied, "It is my opinion that many Black men in America, as they try to hide their loss of hair, are speeding up the process of their receding hairlines every time they get a line cut across the front of their foreheads."
He cut off his clipper before declaring, "You know man, I never gave that any thought till now but it makes sense."
We exchanged a few more personal observations and opinions. Eventually he revealed that his son is in his early teens, and rarely listens to the advice he tries to give him in his frequent letters. Having heard about my reputation for writing, about things in and out of prison, he suggested that I write something that would be universally instructive for young men.
It was not a bad idea. I agreed to do it. I promised that by the time my next haircut rolled around, I would bring him a copy of whatever I came up with; and, if it met with his approval, he could send it to his son.
As he continued to cut my hair I found myself remembering my own first year as a teen. I was a run-away in Saint Louis, Missouri. Looking back on some of those days and nights I can also remember wishing that someone, anyone, would tell me the kind of things I am thinking of writing.
Later, it occurred to me that I should write a series of essays, not just one. In each essay I could choose a subject and briefly expand on it. I will start here:
The wise young man, when fortunate enough to be in the presence of an extremely attractive woman who he would like to know better, must never allow himself to be caught leering at her body parts.
I know it is sometimes incredibly difficult not to stare, but appropriate restraint must be exercised. Life is not a rap video.
I suggest that in such trying moments you look engagingly into her eyes. If you are speechless, speaking to her with your eyes presents her with an open-ended compliment that you, and/or she, can take anywhere the moment allows. She will appreciate your visual engagement, despite the silence, rather than leering.
That is the good news.
The bad news is that most gangsta (gangster) rappers would refer to the woman described above as a 'Bougie b...h' (note that I did not spell out the b- word, for the same reason I never spell out the n- word. It is all about respect and dignity for yourself and others.)
There is another kind of woman who can be equally attractive, in a physical way, and she loves being leered at. The purveyors of gangsta rap have a name for her as well. They call her and her kind 'Bus' it babies'. It does not take much to get a 'Bus' it baby' into your bed, according to the rappers. She is likely to be just as eager to hop into the next man's bed as yours, especially if he has more money than you.
In the next instalment of this series I plan to explore more of the language that is used (beyond 'Bougie b...h' and Bus' it babies) in the gangsta rap lyrics of the song "I'm So Hood".
If you are an adherent to the more rigid tenets of hard core rap, you might want to pass on reading instalment number two. That is to say it will have been written by someone who, according to the lyrics in "I'm So Hood", is more than a little 'lame'.
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