Navigating the long road to freedom and redemption
By Ya’qub Shabazz
With one in three of our men incarcerated or on probation or parole, the prison industrial complex affects all of our families and communities in ways that no others are affected in America. We are faced with a state of emergency when our men are being shipped to far away prison in numbers that rival South Africa’s incarceration rates at the peak of the racist apartheid government. Where do we turn when our men come home socially, economically, and politically disenfranchised? Do we continue to support and promote a system that has effectively eliminated a third of our men’s voting rights and ability to participate in the political process? I move that we begin to dialogue about our political alternatives considering that we (Black men) have been effectively reintroduced to the relationship that our sharecropping forefathers had with the U.S. Government. We return from prison seeking employment, freedom, and opportunities but only find rejection, discrimination, and stereotypes. Black men who are convicted felons (which are not a minority mind you) face a type of stress that would drive the average American insane. The fear and self-esteem issues alone are enough to destroy a person’s ability to succeed in under this system not to mention the trauma associated with his inability to find (and maintain) stable employment or political status has on his relationships in the community whereupon he lives. Upon release the prisoner is set free from one prison and transitioned instantaneously into another by which he is intended to fail and return to the other.
The solution: well the solution is multi tiered and requires the returning prisoner to first begin a process by which his self-esteem is rebuilt and strengthened. This man returning from prison must educate himself in the science of self; meaning that he must build his self esteem and courage by studying examples of other Black men whom overcame tremendous odds to find freedom and success. Imagine a man whom studies and molds himself after the likes of men such as El Hajj Malik Shabazz, W.E.B. Dubois, Huey Newton, and David Walker and the phenomenal potential that this man will possess after such study. We must remember that the society in which we live There exist a void in the spirits of Black men that we can never fill with jobs, money, or Black presidents. This void is what exists after generations of men and women are destroyed and subjugated to the extent that they develop a hatred for their own Black selves. In order to find liberation, justice, and freedom outside of the prison walls we must explore and exploit all political resources including Nationalism, Socialism, and other means that alert the international attention of the conditions under which Black men live here in America. Ultimately “to be free or not to be free” should be the political statement for Black men in 2009. With Barak Obama winning the Presidency and the political scene “appearing” primed for change, it is to be seen whether or not the change that is awaited will affect those who struggle to survive at the bottom a nation that appears to ignore the severity of their situation.
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