Criminal Justice Reform
[Music]
imagine you’re a 12 year old child
being awakened before dawn by the
screens of gunshots
and premature death
leaving for school in the morning
greeted by
yellow tape white chalk
and the smell of gunpowder while
fighting to maintain your balance
slipping on shells of ammunition
and empty crack cocaine vials
on your journey to school you see blood
caked into the concrete from someone’s
soul having bled
from their corpse just a few hours
earlier
you look in every direction of your
village
and see nothing but the reality
of death despair
and the curse of intergenerational
illiteracy
and poverty all denying you
the audacity to hope for anything better
you’re mere blocks away from the u.s
capitol
u.s supreme court and the white house
this was my village the village that
raised me in the nation’s capital
in the 1980s and 90s
a time when first lady hillary clinton
published a book titled it takes a
village
after the african proverb it takes a
village to raise a child
and first lady nancy reagan
was telling children to just say no
but my village it never afforded me a
choice
my village didn’t teach me no
my village it only showed me
yes
in the early 1990s a professor
at princeton university wrote a report
that labeled me and other teenage black
boys
as super predators
godless fatherless and jobless
his assertion was supported by lawmakers
who changed policy to make it easier
to try children as adults in the
criminal injustice system
and to sentence them in prison for the
remainder
of their lives
on january 21st
1997 one of those
cold gun powder mornings
i was charged with being accomplished to
a murder
at trial the alleged shooter
had all the charges dismissed against
him
but yet i was convicted a super predator
in the flesh and sentenced
under the accomplice liability doctrine
to two indeterminate life sentences
we were just kids yet the village
fell to raise us instead of pouring love
into us they just threw us into cages
we see greatness was always within us
even before the life sentence
we were just under 18. yet everyone
forgot
that we were just human beings
super predators became our label
that we were children became a fable
converted us into juvenile lifers
but look at what just three years did
the khalif router on rikers
yet we served decades and still
remain whole with the power
of love igniting our soul
we just wanted society to accept us with
open arms
give us a second chance to bring
love and not harm
from lockdown to georgetown
we just needed someone to believe
that justice also encompasses mercy
and redemption is possible for all
to achieve
at 16 i’d become a character
in the dehumanizing narrative
labeling children whose village never
gave them a chance
whose leaders punished the children
instead of the village
a contrived and misguided story
told over and over
again that led to me
being convicted of a murder
that i did not commit
but that story there see that will end
with me
my teenage years in confinement begged a
new question
if it takes a village to raise a child
what happens when the village fails
are we to punish the innocent child for
actualizing
the intergenerational realities of
poverty
illiteracy drug and alcohol abuse
and gun violence or will we
also hold accountable the caretakers of
the village
fulfilling to create and sustain a more
loving
and healthy environment for its children
i will cry for the little boy
in shackles and away from home
i will cry for the little boy
trapped in a cell all alone
i will cry for the little boy whose
heart
is too cold to weep
see i will cry for that little boy whose
pain
never lets him sleep
i will cry for the little boy he was
buried alive
in the burning sand i will cry for the
little boy
sentenced to life like a man
i will cry for the little boy who knows
that his soul is in chains
i will cry for that little boy his
spirit died
again and again
i will cry for the little boy a good boy
he tried
to be i will cry for that little boy
that died inside of me
i published 11 books
during my 22 years of incarceration
words were my only freedom
inside of my cage i discovered
that children are merely a reflection of
the adults
that they see if they are loving human
beings
then it’s because of a nurturing village
that invested love
and care into their development
if children are the monsters super
predators
and menaces society label them to be
then they can only be a reflection of
the village that failed to create a
healthy and humane
environment for them to develop
into productive members of our
collective society
i am a super predator the child
that we cast away
flushed down the school the prison
pipeline
for decades in a cage too late
see my soul strolls the confederacy
river
well i cannot call massa mister
strange fruit vulture pig from the
linton tree
what so would dare compose a song for me
see i am nothing but a menace to society
with no big will for god’s grace to
carry me
to a place where my foot won’t slip
beneath
the sand to drown
as a man child in this promised land
so my soul would decompose in a cage for
22 years
made in the veneer of america’s fears
who will fight for the child that the
village failed to raise
with no audacity to hope for better days
is it possible for a child to transcend
the confines
of their environment of course
but it is not the child’s responsibility
to create a loving village to nurture
them
into healthy adults if children are not
responsible enough to vote
to serve on a jury or to hold political
office
then it is not fair to expect them to
exercise the maturity to overcome the
inter
intergenerational barriers within their
homes
communities and our society see i
believe in the transformative power of
love
radical love for self for those who love
you
and even those who may hate you
in my decades of confinement it was the
transformative powers
of literature and the arts along with
revolutionary love that gifted me
the audacity to hope that i can be more
than a super predator that my village
labeled me to be
i’m not going to write poems about
people judging people
see i’ma write poems and speak about
people loving people
because the problem is much bigger than
just class
and race see it’s not a political war
but a spiritual battle between love
and hate if it’s going to take a village
then our villages are going to need love
so when they see us they don’t see us as
killers
and thugs so when they see us
they see us and don’t judge so when they
see
us they see us with us
full of love
it’s not about conservatives and
liberals reaching across the aisle
it’s about reaching into our hearts to
extend a loving smile
see these labels are fables that
separate us from our truths
we all need to weed the weeds to see the
love
in our roots
love is the revolution
and compassion be our bullets
empathy is the trigger for forgiveness
to pull it freedom
is our target and unconditional love
be our goal with civic engagement
starting at the seat of our soul
grace plays the symphony as just mercy
leads the band
for the lady of liberty to love
and accept all in this land
the coronavirus pandemic taught us all
how it feels to be isolated
in a way from the people places
and things that we love the most
we’ve learned what it feels like to live
in fear of the shadow of death
waiting for us on our doorsteps
and we’ve experienced how deeply
interconnected
we all really are
regardless of the superficial barriers
of race gender
and class
and perhaps in being denied
the physical touch we became
aware of just how critical
to our joy and happiness and our
survival
that it is to be able to just have the
opportunity
to reach out to another with love
what does the revitalization of love
look like in our state of the union
today
lady liberty puts out a call
to the world give me your tired
your poor your huddle mass is yearning
to breathe free
why do we stifle living breath
when she promises hope
why do we choke the call for justice
when she promises all equality
why do we end the life when all
any of us want to do is breathe
the village fails when it does not love
we fail when we do not love ourselves
when we fail to love ourselves
it is impossible for us to love others
when we fail to love our children
we forsake our own future i believe
in the transformative power of love
thank you
you