One evening while I sat in the day space reading how to play the guitar, my focus was broken. There were several fellow inmates having a heated conversation about getting $5,000 after Trump becomes president. Word spread like wildfire; it became the talk throughout the whole prison—damn near drove me crazy, listening to these dudes making plans on what they were going to do when they got their share. Truth is, they are still waiting! And what the hell, can anyone tell me what the fuck is crypto coin? SHOW ME THE MONEY!
The madness continued to manifest itself. One late night about 2 am, I became a witness to the birth of alternative facts. For some odd reason or another I couldn’t sleep. I turned on my 15-inch TV to pass the time, hoping that it would cause me to fall asleep as usual. I kept switching until I stumbled upon MSNBC, late night news. There sat former mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, just a smiling away. I forget who the anchor person was, but when they asked why he and his associates use the term “alternative facts” during interviews, Rudy responded, “What is truth?”
What the fuck, that blew my mind! That sent freezing cold shivers up and down my spine. I jumped out of my steel gray slant of a bed, rushed over to the toilet and took a whiz, because that’s what I do when something scares the hell out of me!
Afterwards, I sat wide awake in my steel gray bed and watched the shadows dance off the walls from the light reflecting off my 15-inch TV set. For the rest of the night I thought, damn, if truth doesn’t matter for the sake of truth, we’re all doomed.
Truth is, America loves money and intelligent people too! Be careful not to be too smart looking into America’s true past, they will tear you a new perspective. For us to stay safe when questioned by authority figures, we see but don’t see. America seems only to recognize and boast about 250 years of its past and leave out the other 150-plus years and the birth of slavery. I guess those years don’t matter.
In my quest to look into America’s past, I discovered that once slaves in America were supposed to be freed, but for Lincoln’s war effort, truth be told! A new problem arose: what to do with the newly emancipated who survived the war and began to flood the American communities.
Fear has a way of creating new monsters.
New laws were made to create criminals to create prisons and the judicial system that controls them all. This judicial system is like jaws, they will chew you up and spit you out. The judges started handing out convictions and plea bargains like handing out candy on Halloween! Problem solved, off to prison and back to free labor. And not for the south, but the whole damn country!
When I think about history, true history, it takes me back to a time when the wrong word could cause a black person or persons to become a hanging—strange fruit from the dogwood trees.
But from where I sit, I got nothing to lose. They gave me 50 convictions. There was a time that this false information made me crumble and caused me to weep! Naw, not today baby, y’all got it all wrong, being locked up within your prison walls only made me strong!
And although you’ve given me such a small space to exist, I’ve become the creator of my own existence. I know the truth even though you won’t acknowledge truth for what it is.
You would like to think that you had silenced me; no, you have only caused me to open up the doors you thought you had closed so tightly.
Talk about convictions, how does one overcome 30-plus convictions and still become the president? It’s not what you know but who you know! Let’s ask Jeffrey—oh, too late—let’s move on. When I tried to get a pardon or sentence computation from the board of pardons, they sent me a letter. I was denied!
What the fuck, that blew my mind! That sent freezing cold shivers up and down my spine. I jumped out of my steel gray slant of a bed, rushed over to the toilet and took a whiz, because that’s what I do when something scares the hell out of me!
I later appealed the decision; their response was, he’s getting out in a couple of years, so, what’s it matter, have a good day. I could hear their laughter within the message.
I know the truth even if you don’t, your fabrications and alternative facts will someday fade away. I will rise above the falsehoods and misdirection of the laws used to create mass incarceration to so many unfortunates. When I told a friend of mines about the 50 false convictions, he smiled and said, Ron, you are not the first, nor will you be the last, it’s just business. What’s the words they so often use: NEXT CASE!
Truth be told, if I had real money, I wouldn’t be writing from a prison cell. O.J. can attest to this fact.
My friend continued to traumatize me. “Be thankful that you were not in the past when we were made for consumption in more ways than one. Back in the day, the possibility of a man being eaten was true! They say black meat was sweet back then!” Who would do such a thing? “Ask Massa, bet he knows!”
What the fuck, that blew my mind! That sent freezing cold shivers up and down my spine. I jumped out of my steel gray slant of a bed, rushed over to the toilet and took a whiz, because that’s what I do when something scares the hell out of me!
Today, consumption has new meaning, it means to drain the life force from the less fortunate. They like cattle gathered up and kept silent behind prison walls while the lawmakers continue to create new laws to drain the people of their energy and resources to line their pockets; even the stock markets are in on it!
Any money earned or comes through prison doors you best believe they get a piece of it. That alone should be criminal in itself, unfortunately we cannot hold them accountable for playing with the house’s money. They are immune from the laws that they have created.
Most of us that have jobs here start out at 50 cents an hour. We have to choose between coffee or hygiene. We get clothes once a year: imagine wearing six pairs of socks and underwear for a year. The shoes are so cheap they have holes on the bottoms: they remind me of the Flintstones.
Truth is, concept is something conceived in the mind, a thought of an idea. That doesn’t make it true. If I told you to open a box of crayons, they would tell you what you are not. I wonder, would you believe what you actually see? There are no white or black people, just the concept that divides society.
Truth is, a history forgotten will someday repeat itself. During the years 1913–1921, President Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated into the Ku Klux Klan in the Oval Office. He promoted the movie Birth of a Nation, where African-American men were depicted as monkeys chasing white women around the streets. The Ku Klux Klan dressed as knights in shining armor, riding on horses to chase down these evil African-American men and end their threat. Today, President Trump touts the white supremacist group Proud Boys, while creating fear among non-white communities with his ICE agents that pushed their authority beyond the boundaries of the law.
Now that caused me to ponder the thought about me being released in about two years from now. What dangers will I face being a newly released incarcerated non-white man? This caused me to go over to my toilet to take a whiz, because that’s what I do when something scares the hell out of me.
Truth is, there will come a time when the universe will correct itself. And to all those who had chosen to believe or use alternative facts; the truth will one day come knocking at your doors. You will probably try to run, but you will have nowhere to hide.
