Prison journalism: Like Yesterday

If I could have back just a moment of time for each time I did not live up to my potential or abilities, perhaps I would not have been born, yet, today and the world will not have known the pain of so great a loss…

Like yesterday.

I am a 60 year old Black man who now resides inside this space I have placed myself in from not living up to whom society and my parents hoped I would grow up to be.

Disappointingly have yet to see.

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Raised seperately, apart from my family with my grandmother who loved me through a childhood of faults developed in my young age that gave me reason to be someone I was afraid to be….

Myself

How do you hold true to who you could ever become when some say you are nothing but this lowly stinking inmate? Ingrate incapable of the change prison is supposed to make within the environment you sadly must spend the rest of your life now in.

“We want them to have self-worth, so we destroy their worth of self; We want them to be responsible, so we take away all responsibility”

“We want them to be part of our community, so we isolate them from our community; we want them be positive and constructive, we degrade them and make them useless.”

“We want them to be trustworthy, so we put them where there is no trust; we want them to be non-violent, so we put them where there is violence all around them.”

“We want them to be kind and loving people, so we subject them to hatred and cruelty; we want them to quit being the tough guy, so we put them where the tough guy is respected.”

ALSO READ: Prison journalism: A Letter to a Friend

“We want them to quit hanging around with losers, so we put all the losers in the state under one roof; we want them to quit exploiting us, so we put them where they can exploit each other.”

“We want them to take control of their lives and their problems, so we make them totally dependent on us.”

The article was facilitated by Erin Parish from the Human Kindness Foundation (HKF).

The Human Kindness Foundation’s mission is to encourage more kindness in the world beginning with people in our prisons and jails.

HKF has published several books including: We’re All Doing Time, Lineage and Other Stories, Deep and Simple, and Just Another Spiritual Book and provide these books for free to people currently serving time in prisons or jails.

Do you have contact with a prison inmate who would like to write for The South African website?

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