Coming from the Southwest side of Detroit, opportunities were very poor, the bad ones outnumbering the good ones almost ten to one, with little likelihood of being successful or legit. I lost three relatives to gun-violence in one summer alone. Most of the friends I grew up with are either dead, on drugs, or in jail.
I’m older now. I spend most of my time studying and manifesting connections that support self-help and development. My agenda now is to make a difference. I understand what happened to us, and where we went wrong and what it takes to avoid a place like ‘this’, where the system is broken and built to further break you. Contrary to rehabilitating, it encourages criminality.
I once heard, “If you want to hide something from a negro, put it in a book…” Is there truth to this? I had to pick up a book or two to see what I had been missing all those years, things I didn’t understand that I let slide by without answers. One thing I learned is that the things a child sees, hears, and experiences throughout childhood, will most likely have a profound effect on that kid once they reach adulthood. The first traumatic memory I have is of me as a five year old standing in the middle of a stairwell watching my dad as he lay on our living room floor in a pool of his own blood due to gun violence. Later, at the age of ten I watched a young man shoot and kill his uncle in broad daylight.
Whether it was gun-violence I saw, domestic violence, sexual abuse or the drug infestation that overwhelmed my environment, it neither begins nor ends with ‘me’. This is an environmental disease that infects the minds and spirits of children in general – not just mine. Negative influence is a highly contagious virus and is able to transmute anything pure into poison.
Knowing the things I know today, makes it my responsibility to help the kids, the most vulnerable to the negativity and the ones who will grow to pass the illness from one individual to the next. It is my responsibility to help them make better decisions and provide them with solutions that discourage violence and trauma, and encourage love and longevity.
My son just turned thirteen years old. After being absent in his life for ten years, one of the first things he spoke to me about was needing help surviving his future. I needed guidance and help as a kid and now – they need me. They need us.
ABOUT THE WRITER. Mr. Johnson is a welcome new member of our writing family. His piece reflects a reality that we hear about all too often, but one he hopes to impact through his writing. Mr. Johnson can be contacted at:
John Johnson #631054 Baraga Correctional Facility 13924 Wadaga Road Baraga, MI 49908
People tell me to have faith, and I get it, I really do. I always want to have faith, but sometimes my mind is cluttered with so much doubt. They’ll try to encourage me and say things like, “You are so strong, Chucky,” meaning mentally. If only I had a penny for every time somebody told me that.
The truth is, they don’t see it, but sometimes things hit me out of the blue, and I cry for reasons I’m not totally sure of. I stress about everything, from small to big issues. I recently became a grandfather. I can’t tell you how it feels not being there for him. I failed as a parent to my own children. I see my grandson as my parental redemption ticket – however, I’m still locked up. And my stress continues.
Psychologically, there is nothing like being on Texas death row. Every day is a struggle within a struggle. You have to fight. You have to fight for toilet paper. You have to fight for commissary, a phone call, mail or Jpays, decent and edible food. And you have to keep on fighting just to be treated like a person and not some animal. What is even more insane is, just when you think you have resolved an issue, the next day you have to resolve it all over again. I think I’ve heard it said, “Hell is a repetitious place.”
I rarely talk about the things that go on here. I don’t talk about it to my loved ones, ‘cause I don’t want to worry them. If I knew they were worried, it would cause me more stress. So, I deal with it alone, as I have always done. Self-absorbed to self-abuse… self. I wouldn’t recommend that mind-set to anyone. It’s not ideal or healthy. But, in here, I know there is nothing any other human being can do to alleviate the inner loneliness.
Nehemiah once prayed to God, “Now strengthen my hands.” He had to fight every day and when he grew weary, and it seemed he could not go on, he prayed to God for the strength to endure. So do I. That’s how I get by. With God, I am able to get through this. Without God, I don’t believe I’d be alive to be able to write these words with the hands that God has made stronger.
There is also a facebook page dedicated to sharing Charles Mamou’s troubling case.
TO CONTACT CHARLES MAMOU: Charles Mamou #999333 Polunsky Unit 12-CD-53 3872 South FM 350 Livingston, TX 77351
You can also reach him through jpay.com.
SIGN HIS PETITION – LEARN ABOUT HIS CASE. Charles Mamou is a long time WITS writer. He is part of our writing family and his case has been studied and shared here for a couple years. Please sign a petition requesting that his case be truly investigated – for the first time. If you learn enough about his case, you will likely agree, there was not much done in the way of investigation. What we have been able to learn, supports that. Please sign.
I had been thinking of the next theme for a contest. It came to me as I was thinking about one of our writers. He was sentenced to death over twenty years ago in a case that would be laughable if it hadn’t started with a death and resulted in a death sentence. Any reasonable person can look at the evidence and wonder – how did he get there, and why is he still there?
As an observer of his and many other cases, the biggest challenge has been the resistance from within the very system to acknowledge flaws or mistakes made within that community. As I reflect on that, I think – it would take one person with a lot of grit to take the case on, buck the system and do the right thing, rather than follow the norm – just one person. They do exist.
The Oxford dictionary defines grit as ‘courage and resolve, strength of character’. Tell me a story, describe a person you know or have witnessed – display true grit. Resolve in the face of repercussions, ignoring what people are comfortable with and doing the right thing, over and over again if necessary. Courage to take the path of most resistance for a just cause.
Inspire us. Give us an example we can look up to. It could be a family member, friend, or someone you witnessed from afar. It could be in prison or out of prison, an action taken by a fellow inmate or an officer.
That’s the theme of this contest: Describe a display of ‘inspirational grit’ you have seen or been touched by or heard about.
Only those who are incarcerated are eligible to participate.
We can’t accept anything that has been previously published.
Submission is free – BUT, even if an entry doesn’t win, we consider entry permission to publish and edit. Sometimes we get so many excellent entries, they can’t all win, but they need to be shared.
Entries should be 1,000 words or less.
Submissions can be handwritten.
As done in our previous contests, I will narrow down the entries to the top ten, and then hand them off to individuals to rate the writing with a point system to determine winners.
PRIZES:
First Place: $75 Second Place: $50 Third Place: $25
DEADLINE: August 31, 2021. Decisions will be posted on or before September 30, 2021.
MAILING ADDRESS:
Walk In Those Shoes Writing Contest Entry P.O. Box 70092 Henrico, Virginia 23255
I’m truly anxious to hear the stories of people to inspire us, people who remind us that grit does exist.
As a reminder, WITS gives away a book each month to one ‘Writer Of The Month’. All it takes to be considered is to have an essay posted on the site that month. The last book was Ordinary Grace, and the titles are often books we use in our book clubs.
I used to extort people in prison for money. Not the soft or the weak, I was more of a bully’s bully. Prison can be like the N.B.A. – the guy who sits on the end of the bench is better at this than anyone you’ve ever known. He’s earned his spot on the team.
I’d see a look in my victim’s eyes, the silent conversation most people turn their heads to avoid having with those less fortunate than they are. They saw me as the proverbial thug. A brute. Simple minded. Someone peaking at the bottom of life, much the way boxers and MMA fighters are viewed – violent because life after high school couldn’t be hash-tagged and the words needed to file articles of incorporation were too big to sound out.
I was someone society needed bars to separate itself from. I was one of those who’d never get it, who had chosen a pistol over a pen as the problem solving tool of choice. Though it hurts to admit – it was true. That was me.
For the longest time, I could only be seen through my writing, and until I began to push this pen into the light, I spent my life dodging everyone’s gaze. Caught without my pen and out in the open, I’d regurgitate snatches of things I’d heard, cutting and pasting quips into the proper spaces in conversations, twisting my face into the appropriate expressions, only to then slowly recoil from sight in the safety of silently vulturizing the words, thoughts, and comprehension of others. No one would know I was stupid, that I had serious issues simply reading the English language, that I was a fake and a thief of other people’s skills and experiences. Why would I ever allow anyone to see that in me? So, like a child, I’d flash, I’d rage, I’d lash out to draw eyes elsewhere. Savage Illusion.
In high school I could dunk a basketball, but I couldn’t read. I had to sound out words as I’d learned to do from Sesame Street as a kid. Never having owned a dictionary or even seen one in my family, I was able to understand a few words and reason out the jist of what was being said. It was like trying to decode a message written in a long dead Russian language. It made me feel small and hopeless. I felt that the world had somehow regressed into an antebellum-ish landscape, I an escaped slave, yearning for the freedom the secret of which was hidden in a language everyone else could speak, one I wasn’t smart enough to master. I’d gaze wistfully at TV shows where parents played music for their unborn, read their babies bedtime stories or used hooked on phonics to teach their two-year-olds to read at a level higher than my own.
I imagine my teachers must’ve known, they must have noticed the string of clichés, quotes and song lyrics I would line together to answer questions and escape conversations, to appear what I thought to be ‘smart’ and not be rejected. Surely, teachers noticed the chair that I threw through a glass door in 7th grade. The teacher was demanding I read aloud in class. Look at the violence – not me! It cost my g-mom $100 we didn’t have and me a week of school and a beating with an extension cord, a price I gladly paid.
Maybe it was because I was a multi-sport star athlete in a results-driven society that the lack of substance to my shine was deemed ‘good enough’. After all, according to one history teacher, I’d be ‘dead within five years of this conversation’. I was advanced to the 10th grade, and it became someone else’s turn to fear-teach me history.
Yes, I was that kid. The one who’d fight you for joking that I was stupid, going from zero to sixty in a snap. Hearing what a friend never said. Being embarrassed by laughter that rattled like a tommy gun’s 45’s into my soul. Laughter only I could hear. Can a gangster doubt, feel alone?
It was my father, the preacher, who noticed during my weekly phone call from prison. Ever the pragmatic intellect who too often believes love isn’t real unless it bruises, he said to me, “You’re speaking in clichés, and you’re spitting back the thoughts of others, DeLaine. You have your own mind! Stop being so damn lazy and use it!”
It was in segregation – 23 hours a day lockdown and isolation – I taught myself to read. With my spirit feeding on itself in a soup of depression, I learned to escape. It took all of thirty-two years for me to submit my first piece for publication though. Something I was forced to do, really. You see, when I’d tell people I was a writer, they’d ask if I was published. Can’t be a writer unless someone else says you’re worthy.
Dismiss, change the subject. Move along, little wannabe… man? Worthy? Extorting the extortionist?
When I received the first response from Walk In Those Shoes with a copy of the piece they’d published, I lost it! I danced like a fool, and cried like a snitch in a gangster’s convention. It was as if Beyonce and Cardi B had taken my virginity at the same time!
Every person is responsible for their own self worth, but to have the validation of others for something that has meant so much to me? All I can say is – can you see me now?!
ABOUT THE WRITER. I do not judge our contests, but I read the entries before they go to the judges. Regardless of what the judges decided, I knew this piece was going to be used at our annual board meeting the moment I pulled it from the envelope.
Mr. Jones has validated what we do with his words, and – we DO believe in him and all our writers. I was thrilled the judges saw what I did, and he is also our first place winner. Mr. Jones can be contacted at: DeLaine Jones #7623482 82911 Beach Access Road Umatilla, OR 97882
My sister, three years older than me, was always my best friend and biggest fan. When I was twelve she moved out of state to live with her father for two years. When she returned, she found I had transformed into someone she didn’t know. I had fallen in with the bad boys and gone far astray. I was using drugs, running with a gang, and committing crimes regularly.
After my first arrest I spent several months in a juvenile detention center, thrown in an overcrowded dormitory with kids that made me and my buddies look like saints. It was a concentration of the worst kids in the county, delinquents much further along in their state of corruption than I. It was the worst time of my life.
I left the detention center with a new attitude and outlook on life. I decided the criminal life was not for me. The problem was, I was stuck. I was in debt to my gang. Not a monetary debt that could be paid with a certain amount of cash, but a circumstantial debt with no exact figure attached to it. Not only had they shared their knowledge and secrets with me, but I had accepted their terms of life-long service upon my initiation. I was in, and there was no easy way out.
I accepted the fact that I was stuck and sought to simply meet the bare minimum of my obligations, hopefully avoiding jail or death. Then our gang’s leadership decided we were to enter the illegal drug trade. My obligations mounted along with the list of expectations. My days became more demanding and dangerous.
Just as I was honest with my sister about my new lifestyle, I was also honest with her about my desire to get out of the gang after my stint in detention. I once again opened up to her about our leap into narcotics sales.
My sister was seventeen and not all that experienced in the ways of the world, even less when it came to matters of the underworld. Her advice was severely limited, but she did have some interesting things to share with me about myself; a subject that she was very knowledgeable about.
I came home one night and my sister sat me down for a talk. She’d heard that some members of my gang were involved in a shooting and a rival gang was expected to retaliate. I didn’t know anything about it, but I admitted it didn’t matter. I didn’t see any way to avoid being at risk. The only ways I knew of how to get out of the gang were to move away and never return, which was not a possibility for me, or to be kicked out for violation of a major gang rule. The latter would result in me being beaten badly and likely injured or even killed.
Tearfully, she recounted memories of me overcoming major challenges in the past. She reminded me of the trouble I had walking when I was a toddler and the braces I wore on my legs. Even at that age I was so stubborn I refused help from anyone because I wanted to master walking on my own. I used the family dog as a walker and did just that.
She reminded me of how close I came to repeating second grade because of my struggles with reading and writing. Nothing that anyone did to help worked. Eventually, I came up with my own solution, which was to divide words according to my unique way of sounding them out. I didn’t repeat the second grade, and I became one of the best readers and writers in my class.
She stressed that I was a natural problem solver and assured me I would figure out a reasonable and safe way out of the gang. I wasn’t so sure, but her words stuck with me.
The next day my sister gave me a bag of new clothes that she had bought with the last of her money. At that time, I wore only colors that were associated with my gang, which was not many. The clothes she bought were of an assortment of colors she purchased with faith that I would be wearing them soon. At that moment I realized what was meant by the term ‘act of faith’. Her look of love and confidence was seared into my brain. Her belief ignited my creativity like nothing I’d ever imagined.
That night I awoke from my sleep with an idea, an idea that would help me be shunned by the gang without becoming their enemy. I needed to be rejected without being harmed, and the only group of people I ever saw the gang distance themselves from without any aggression were mentally impaired individuals.
The following day I instructed my sister to tell anyone who called on me that I was bedridden and in bad shape. The story was that I had smoked some marijuana that was apparently laced with something far more dangerous and I’d seemingly lost my mind. I waited until the next day during a time when I knew most people would be out and about and emerged from the house in nothing but my underwear and stumbled in zig zags, my arms waving wildly. For days, when anyone spoke to me I drooled and simply stared off in a daze as if I didn’t understand or recognize anyone. It was about two weeks into this act when my so-called friends wanted nothing to do with me.
I kept a low profile around my neighborhood and made sure to dumb myself down when any one of the gang’s members were around. When summer ended and school resumed I was living my life with no worries for my safety. I wore a wide range of colors and stayed out of trouble. Even now, when I see a rainbow or a colorful arrangement it reminds me of my sister’s love and her faith in my ability.
ABOUT THE WRITER. I’m always excited about new writers, and Mr. Gillum is just that. This is such a charming story, and he captured exactly what he was trying to express. Dushaan Gillum was chosen by the judges for second place in the recent writing contest, and I couldn’t be happier with their choice. Mr. Gillum can be reached at:
Dushaan Gillum #01256533 Wynne Unit 810 FM 2821 Huntsville, TX 77349
