Bill O’Reilly, Ray Kelly, and Frederick Douglas got me to wondering.

Bill O’Reilly, Ray Kelly, and Frederick Douglas got me to wondering.

“There is a reason why more young black men are in prison. There is a reason why police are more cautious while approaching a Black man in a car. And the reason is overwhelmingly violent crime in this country is generated by young Black men.  Am I wrong?”

                                                                                            -Bill O’Reilly, FOX News

"Last year 97percent of all shooting victims were Black or Hispanic and reside in low-income neighborhoods. Public housing where five percent of the city's population resides experiences 20 percent of the shootings. There were more stops with suspicious activity in neighborhoods with higher crime because that's where the crime is."

                                                                                          -Raymond Kelly, NYC Police  Commissioner

“A person who had passed fifteen years [old] in Alabama said to me recently, ‘Why, everybody knows! Colored people are sent to the convict camps for almost nothing. A parcel of little boys may be playing crap [and] they are seized by the police and sent to the convict camp for life’.

Is it with wonder that a feeling of unrest pervades a people subjected to such inhuman treatment?’”

                                                                                             -Frederick Douglas, page 36

            The statistics articulating the large number of Blacks with criminal justice involvement are staggering.  According to the Cradle to Prison Campaign of the Children’s Defense Fund, nationally, 1 in 3 Black boys born in 2001 are at risk for imprisonment during their lifetime.  In even simpler terms, if you have three black boys  born in the same household, likely one of them will go to jail or prison at some point during their lives.  And if you side with the reasoning of O’Reilly  you will conclude that they their blackness alone is enough reason to substantiate the inevitable destiny of at least one of those Black boys.  You will also agree with Kelly’s assertion that stop-question-and frisks occur more in high crime neighborhoods, where Blacks happen to live because, of course,  Blacks’ natural inclination is to move to neighborhoods where crime is at its highest. Yes, Blacks move to high crime neighborhoods because it’s a redefinition of gentrification. Blacks appreciate high crime areas more so than Whites…right? Further, the reason for the high crime and high likelihood of imprisonment has nothing to do with anything form the past. In fact, just like Jews, Blacks should just get past the past injustices and atrocities, and inhumanities, and tortures, and pillaging, and genocides, and enslavements, and systemic discriminations. The American dream is about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, if  you never had boots, or straps in the first place. The ghettoes that Jews were forced into 65+ years ago had nothing to do with racism and injustice, but everything to do with a group of people not wanting to better their own lots in life. Thus, any trauma they experienced during those years in concentration camps should be a thing of the past, especially generations after those atrocities occurred. Jewish people today have no reason to still chant “never forget.”

Blacks have it much easier than the Jews. The kidnapping of about 12 million Africans during the transatlantic slave trade for over 400 years was so long ago. Blacks have had emancipation, voting rights, the end of segregation, and now a Black president. All of those accomplishments give them every opportunity that any other person living in the US has. The fact that many Blacks were subjected to convict lease gangs for crimes like vagrancy and larceny has no impact on their being incarcerated at such high rates today.  It was their fault that they did not have jobs and places to live after generations of slavery. Further, just because convict lease gangs appeared right after the Civil War when slavery ended, and over 80% of those in these convict lease gangs were Black, and that Blacks also typically received sentences of 10 years or more, much more than Whites were usually given, has no bearing on today’s disproportionate representation of Blacks incarcerated.  None whatsoever!

Blacks, we need to ignore the research by the US Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) regarding plea and charge bargaining, that references that Blacks are “less likely to receive a reduced charge compared with Whites.  We need to get past the policies of just 40 years ago, that is, the FBI and its COINTELPRO policies that insidiously destroyed any cultural upliftment initiatives of poor Black people with the intentional and widespread distribution of drugs.

To echo, O’Reily, “there is a reason why more young Black men are in prison.” O’Reilly is correct to that point. However, his reasoning stops short of really addressing the problem of Blacks in prison and as homicide victims. He diagnoses the problem without deeply considering the traumatic impact of American history on Black people, and other peoples of color. When a young Black man  in the mid-to-late 1800’s can tell Frederick Douglas that,  “Why, everybody knows! Colored people are sent to the convict camps for almost nothing,” we should consider the effects of that reality on future generations. What do we think that 15-year old boy told his children and grandchildren about being Black in America? What do we think that 15-year old boy told his children and grandchildren about the criminal justice system in America? What do we think  that the survivors of lynchings, beatings, and rape told their offspring about life in America? What do we think the survivors and witnesses to the infiltration of drugs in the ghettoes of New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles told their children about being Black in America? And when I say “told” I ask you to think about the  non-verbal communications that were transmitted.  The feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness, helplessness, low and vacant self-esteem,  and the devaluated feelings and thoughts about Black life.  Would we think descendants of the atrocities of the centuries of Jewish persecutions to simple “forget” about what happened to their fore parents? Why, the first ten amendments to the US Constitution are declarations to not replicate the tyranny of the British Empire. The founding father vowed never to forget the pangs of British rule by creating Union. Thus, why and how can we expect that Black people and other peoples of color in this country should easily “forget” and “get over” and simply “move beyond” the atrocities that many of them see not only in times of the past, but everyday?

The criminal justice system in America is one of the starkest remaining examples of the oppression of Black people in the United States. We disproportionately overpopulate prisons, and parole and probation caseloads not only because of the offense committed, but also because of the instant and historically consistent offenses committed towards us. So, O’Reilly and Kelly, yes, if you are coming from the lenses explained here in this essay, then, yes, “there is a reason why more young black men are in prison. There is a reason why police are more cautious while approaching a Black man in a car.”  

Gun Violence is Wack!

“Crack is wack!” 

Not sure if that enlightening epiphany by the illustrious Whitney Houston was meant to have an exclamation point or just a period at the end. Whatever the intention, that moment of clarity that crack cocaine had lost its cool effect…no longer an accepted method of normative social interaction… it made you look twisted, lose your teeth, and made you look like the evil-er twin of Skeletor from Thundercats echoed what the hood already recognized as the end of the crack era.  Contrary to unpopular belief, it wasn’t Nancy Reagan’s “just say no” slogans, or Bush #1 and Clinton part 1 and their lock up the drug dealers and drug users for double digit years that initiated the decline of cracks popularity.  Analogously, why is the media telling us that we can solely legislate our way out of this pandemic of gun violence? How can we get to a place where we can say, reminiscent of Whitney, “gun violence is wack,” instead of thinking that we simply “say no” to gun violence through gun legislation.

            Don’t misunderstand me, I agree that limiting access to weapons helps, and is necessary. However, popular media would have you believe that gun control legislation is the panacea to our killing and wounding problem, and that the NRA are only folks out there that are benefitting from the wanton usage of guns and munitions. Joe Scarborough, from MSNBC’s Morning Joe, although I feel his energy, would have you thinking that the only cowards in this country in this gun violence debate are the US Senators that voted against the recent proposed gun legislation. Come on, people (in the words of the ever controversial Bill Cosby), we know better than that.

            We have a killing culture in this society that is exacerbated and normalized in inner cities by generational poverty, generational marginalization, generational racism, generation discrimination, and general fuckedupness (excuse the neologism) that adds up to normalized trauma.

            Here’s the math: generational poverty

                                        + generational marginalization

                                        +generational discrimination

                                        + generational fuckupness

                                           normalized trauma

Allow me to work out my math. So imagine we had family anywhere in Ghetto, USA. Let’s focus on the son. At four-years old he hears gun shots outside of his window; he gets scared and cries.  At five, six, seven, eight, nine… (you get the point) he hears the same cacophony of gun shots on regular basis, most notably on New Year’s. His mother is barely upper poor class, and his father is undereducated with a prison record, so they can’t afford to move to a better place…the ghetto and all of its abnormalities is home sweet home. By the age of prepubescence, this boy has heard gun shots almost daily; he has heard from media, the streets, and school (where his teachers are under-resourced) that violence is the way to handle problems, especially if you are a male. So when this boy reaches about 16-years old he has been conditioned to believe that having a gun to: (1) ensure masculinity; (2) secure protection; (3) celebrate a new year; (4) attain peer social acceptance; and to (5) hide insecurities is normal. In essence, a culture of violence, particularly gun violence, is normalized by the conditions of which this boy has been exposed to from early childhood. The conditions are inclusive of societal ills that are accentuated in urban spaces that are neglected, under-resourced, law-enforcement heavy. Being in a fucked up state is normalized. So what do we do?

            One approach is propagating that what seems normal really isn’t normal. Another method is engaging those most deeply affected by the normalized violence—those that shoot and have been shot. Working with them to understand that their behavior is not cool and not the only way to live. Working with them to figure out what they would like to do with their lives and then helping them reach those goals. Included in this measure is creating safe spaces within these plagued communities with activities, conversations, and events. Lastly, and most importantly, educating the mass within these communities that gun violence is not normal and unacceptable with inspiring messaging, with clear intention not to criminalize anyone.

            This approach to addressing gun violence that can be done on a community level is being done in many places throughout the country courtesy of the Cure Violence model founded in Chicago and replicated in many places throughout the US. Right here in Brooklyn, Save Our Streets (S.O.S.) Crown Heights is working every day to get people to think and say that gun violence is wack.  But beyond highlighting any one organization, we need to conscious of what legislation has done for us  (…or to us) in the past. When we just said no to drugs in the late 80’s to early 90’s our incarceration numbers jumped out of the window and black and brown people were disproportionately subjected to draconian Rockefeller drug laws. So before we get on the gun control bandwagon, let’s make sure we are fully informed and not moved by episodic initiatives that are siloed and not considerate of its long term impact on marginalized communities.

            Kudos to those working to limit accessibility guns and munitions. In that same vein, do the harder job of working with the people within these plagued communities to change the mindset that gun violence is not normal.

           Gun violence is wack!

Just some ish I wrote about gun violence...gentrification, and stop and frisk, and prison, and being from Crown Heights.

                                                     

But, when my parents would come visit me “up north, ” the directional colloquialism for spending time in the various slave holding facilities  known as penitentiaries, otherwise euphemistically known as correctional facilities, they would rant about how the neighborhood looks so much different. “Marlo, all de white people living in de building. They all up on Nostrand Avenue too. Dem fellas and dem caan’t hang on the corners no more because ah dem cops and dem white people.” Disclaimer: My family is Trinidadian, and I love it!

            But, closed inside of those walls, and knowing my parent’s reputation for exaggeration I would brush off their stories of the white invasion of Crown Heights. I just liked to see the face my mommy, who looks like my twin, and my daddy who usually just dozed off during our visits because of the usually long and uncomfortable bus ride from Brooklyn to Dutchess County, Orange County, Oneida County, Ulster County…you know, up north.

            But, then I was released 10 years, two months, and seven days later. My ride home was nothing like I never imagined. Somehow I never thought about the first day, the ride home. I just thought about leaving prison, never about entering Brooklyn again. Does that make sense? As I rode down Nostrand Avenue in the passenger seat of my sister’s then boyfriend’s car driven by my older brother, I saw much of what I left. I saw the same guys that hung on the corners when I was home 10 years two months and seven days ago still on the corners, just a little aged, pot-bellies, baggier bags under their eyes, not so new Jordan’s, and  I noticed a few stores that had signs with the words “organic” plastered on their awnings. What the hell was an organic?

            But, then when the car parked in front of my building on St. Marks Avenue, coincidentally where police once stop and questioned me for standing when I was 15 or 16 with a friend and her young baby in a stroller. This is what I remember:

“Excuse me,” ever so politely the cop said as he approached me.

Continuing, “Do you have any weapons or drugs on you?”

“No,” I replied with every bit of pubescence sarcasm.

“Why are you standing here,” the cop asked. “Where’s your ID?”

“I live in this building. Why do I need ID? My window is right there,” I pointed up towards my sixth floor window. “I’m just getting some air with my friend and her baby.”

“Well, if you live in this building, let me see you go inside,” this 25ish white cop ordered me while his partner focused every part of his two eyeballs on me in my jeans shorts and t-shirt. Jeans shorts were in style back then.

But, it was to this memory that I returned to my building where I saw a white woman in her early 20’s walking out of my building. My big sis, who was in the car along with me, echoed what my mommy and daddy would say to me up north. “You see, we got white people all over our building.”

            But, that would not bother me—would it? I met all of these wonderful, mainly white students from Vassar College when I was up north. I ran a program called Otisville & Vassar—Two Communities Bridging the Gap during the last five years of my time at Otisville slave…correctional facility. Every Friday a bunch of students from Vassar College would trek into my penitentiary to co-learn and discuss social justice issues along with 12 incarcerated men. That program changed my life, man. That program was my first real interaction with white folk that weren’t teachers, cops, lawyers, members of the Kingdom Hall, or random strangers in Manhattan.  Marlon loved the equity that was possible when white and black folks could bridge the gap between racial and socioeconomic chasms. Those students were my friends.

            But, when I walked up Franklin Avenue months later I thought I was lost…I meant, literally. It looked like a SoHo. White people everywhere. On the corners. In the organic stores. On the benches. In the bars. In the bars. In the bars. On the stoops of buildings. In the Korean grocery stores. In the new burger joints. My mommy and daddy weren’t exaggerating!

            But, sprinkled about, but less in number, were young black boys on one or two corners, and sitting on a few stoops. Still in one or two barber shops. All of this happened in 10 years, two months, and seven days?

            But, I also would also hear the same gunshots at night. Perplexed.

            But, inner city gun violence is usually the evident display of the underpinnings of trauma. Generational poverty is traumatic. Mass incarceration is traumatic. Despotic policing is traumatic. Selective policing based on race is traumatic. Terrible teachers are traumatic. Bad sanitation is traumatic. Demonizing immigrants is traumatic. Demonizing those who access welfare is traumatic.  Lack of decent affordable housing is traumatic. Gentrification is traumatic.

            But, it would be some time before I was traumatized. Then there was one experience that opened my eyes to my own trauma.

            Ten months after my 10 years, two months, and seven days, I was hired part-time to do some noble works. I got a gig as violence interrupter for this local organization called Save Our Streets that was five minutes walking distance from my building in St. Mars. My job was simple, interrupt violence, particularly gun violence before it happened. I was gonna be a ghetto super hero, while on parole. It was time for my first day and I was excited.

            But, my first day ended up with this journal entry:

11/21/10

Dear Journal,

So, on my first 1^st official night of work as a VI [violence interrupter] I was summoned by the police for walking in the park after dusk, They wrote me up, BUT let a white lady go. Officer Lorens (a Latino)and a Carl Winslow type guy gave me the ticket.

But, that wasn’t it. While Carl Winslow was in the car checking my name in the system (having an officer run your name through the system while being out of prison for only 10 months and on parole gave me the bubble gut) Officer Lorens was giving the speech about how its hard being a Latino cop and how his childhood friends look at him differently when he goes around his old Bushwick neighborhood. He was telling me that he had orders from his bosses that they had to stop and ticket anybody walking through the park after dark because there was a recent shooting in the park.

“Officer, my job is to stop the shootings. I am going to work now. Just call the office.”

Brushing me off as if I was kid trying to make up a lie to get out of some sort of trouble by apparent, he said, “it’s out of my hands.”

But, that wasn’t it. While Carl Winslow is running my name through the system in the police car, and Officer Lorens is filling my ear with basura a white blonde walks with her little dog about 15 feet away from where I am being held over by these cops. Officer Lorens hollers over to blondie, don’t come in here, the park is closed after dark.”

“Ok, thanks officer,” blondie replies as she turns around with her dog and begins to walk away from us and begins her exit out of the park which is about 100 feet away!

But, what was I to say? I was in the middle of a park after dark, on parole for serving over a decade in prison—only 10 months out. If I wasn’t walking with all of that baggage of disenfranchisement I probably would have questioned the officer about following his orders to stop everyone coming through the park after dark that night. But, I was too traumatized by those years up north to risk anything that would give those po-lice officers a reason to put silver steel bracelets on my wrists again. I was too traumatized to have to explain this situation to my parole officer. So, I took my summons and continued on to my job to stop gun violence.

But, this is the problem of gentrification… It only adds to the list of traumatization that is as American as apple pie for inner city black and brown folk.  Social disorganization and more and more means to move us to the depths of marginalization whether intentional or unintentional will continue display its ugly face as gun violence, and all of the “thuggery” that is synonymous with inner city youth. Whether it be dem white people moving in to our buildings or cops stopping us on corners (or in front of my building, in my case), the trauma is where the real problem lays.  Some smart person somewhere said “hurt people, hurt people.” Well, let me add my two cents to that: traumatized people, traumatize people.

Click here for my thoughts about Gentrification in Brooklyn

Photo Essay

Crown Heights

Blacks vs. Jews.

My thoughts are that we only "tolerate each other" but we don't really co-exist.

Otisville's Resource/Re-entry Fair & The Direct Relationship Flow in 2009

In August 2008 Otisville Correctional Facility held its first Resource/Re-entry Fair. The Resource Fair Planning Committee was a mixture of incarcerated professionals: Curtis Holder (deported to Trinidad in March 2009), Andrew Imani Ward (released in January 2009), and myself, Marlon Peterson, teamed with facility staff: Micahel Kaplan, Supervisor of Corrections Counselors; Dennis De Rose, Counselor; Christiana Bracy, Counselor, and Janet Murphy, Supervisor of Volunteer Services. The first fair was a success, with 15 different re-entry service providers coming into the facility to expose and offer their services to the incarcerated men. This year's Resource Committee, consisting of three new members, Moses El-Sun White, Charzell McGill, and Henry Ramirez, that replaced that two that were released, built upon the success of the 2008 Resource/Re-entry fair.

This year's fair was held on August 27, 2009. For the power lunch period with DOCS administrators, inmate organization representatives, and the service providers that included: The Osbourne Association, Fortune Society, Families for Freedom, Bowery Residents' Committee Inc., ComALERT, Family Unification and Resettlement Initiative, Exodus Transitional Community, Housing Works, Legal Action Center, Network in the Community, Orange County Re-entry, Orange Works, Palladia Inc., RECAP, and 820 River Street Inc., the incarcerated committee members presented the Direct Relationship Flow in 2009 to the service providers.

The Direct Relationship Flow, a concept taken from the Non-Traditional Approach to Criminal and Social Justice (NTACSJ), designed by Eddie Ellis and Larry White, propagates that "There are no criminal punishment, crime or prison problems per se, only community problems. Once we begin to address the community problems, the crime and prison problems will also be addressed" (Eddie Ellis, "Criminal Justice in New York: Just Us", The State of Black New York City: 2007, p. 173). This approach, which was revised by the Prisoner's Alliance Community at Green Haven Correctional Facility in 1997, is ingenious, particularly because it provided leverage for further revision.

We, the Resource Committee, contend that in 2009 there are contemporary issues that require contemporary solutions. There are more women and adolescents in prison. The prison population is increasingly geriatric. There is a skyrocketing number of people being deported to other countries, particularly to the Caribbean. More than 50,000 people were deported to the Caribbean in the past 10 years. The demographics have changed since 1997; therefore our approach should also evolve.

For instance, there was a key equation that was presented in the 1997 NTACSJ that illustrates the relationship with the entities associated with the criminal justice system:
1) Prisoner vs. Administration (i.e., State vs. Society). Pre-Attica
2) Prisoner and Community vs. Administration. Post-Attica

We contemporized this equation with the following:
1) Prisoner vs. Administration = Pre-Attica
2) Prisoner + Community vs. Administration = Post-Attica
3) Prisoners vs. Community + Administration = 1980 - mid 1990's

Exponential crime and prison increases. What is now necessary:

4) Incarcerated persons + Community + Administration vs. Crime Generative factors and Attitudes = BETTER COMMUNITY CONDITIONS

Also, you will recognize differences when you view the two Direct Relationship Flow charts, the 1997 version and the 2009 version. The 2009 edition corroborates with the 1997 version that prison is an institution that now serves the Black and Latino community, much the same as the church, mosque, and schools. We agree that the direct relationship reveals that each feeds from and is sustained by the other; that there is a socioeconomic, cultural, and political umbilical cord that exists between local communities and the prison system. Considering today's political climate, the increased access to the political establishment and information we also added more links to the chart.

The local communities have entities within its grasp that should be utilized to affect all aspects of the political and criminal justice system. Not only should the local communities vote legislatures into office, but they should utilize their privilege to insert their perspectives into public policy and research. They can form political action committees and lobbies to pursue issues that affect their communities. They can testify at legislative hearings. They can play a role in writing legislature. bottom line, the local committees have the privilege and responsibility to care for itself at the highest levels of local, state, and federal government. All resolutions to local issues must be community specific. We cannot depend on people in rural New York to cater to the epidemic of crime and recidivism in NYC. With 75% of NYS prison population coming from NYC and 85% returning to NYC (40% to Brooklyn alone), the local communities must become empowered to strong-arm their power as major stockholders in their own communities. The late-great Michael Jackson said, "All I really want to say is they don't really care about us." Just food for thought.

Our objectives for the presentation were threefold:

1) Encourage our community by bringing to their attention the avenues in which their voices can be heard, and the mediums available to them. We advocate for inter- and intra- agency collaborations.

2) Educate our communities to be proactive and informed spokespersons of their neighborhoods, not a bystander constituency.

3) Empower our community members to be change agents. We intend to help them understand that they can and should have a preeminent say in how resources are allocated to their areas, what programs are implemented, and what the local, state, and federal agendas should be.

Our propositions stand as follows:
- More collaboration between service providers and the criminal justice system
- More volunteers from servicing agencies to partner with prison programs, incarcerated facilitators, and inmate organizations
- The introduction of civics education/workshops into re-entry programs and curricula.
- Periodic legislative, task force, and community roundtables inside of Otisville to brainstorm, discuss, and evaluate criminal and social justice concerns.
- Resource/Re-entry Fairs in the communities most affected by recidivism as a complement to the one that occurs at Otisville.

While the presentation was well, we await action and support. If you are willing to work with the Resource Committee members to work towards those propositions and objectives, you can contact the following men at Otisville Correctional Facility, P.O. Box 8, Otisville, NY 10963:

Charzeel McGill, DIN: 98A6139
Henry Ramirez, DIN: 99A2556
Moses El-Sun White, DIN: 92A8711
Marlon Peterson will be released in December 2009, so you may contact him at pensfromthepen1.blogspot.com and pensfromthepen@gmail.com