Eddie Griffin Endorses Roy Charles Brooks, County Commission, Pct. 1

Laverne Brooks Dismally Short of Truth and Character

Eddie G. Griffin (BASG) wholeheartedly endorses incumbent Commissioner Roy C. Brooks for reelection to Precinct One, Tarrant County. Commissioner Brooks is a proven leader with many great works to show.

Roy Charles Brooks: An advocate for Children, Healthcare, and Education

In the area of prenatal care, Commission Brooks has championed the cause of reducing the high infant mortality rate in the county, by supporting health networks and expanding medical service providers to high risk Tarrant communities. One such healthcare center is named in honor of his father, the legendary Dr. Marion J. Brooks, a civil rights leader in the field of accessible medical care. Roy Charles shows the same level of compassion. 

He is a visionary in education, who recognizes that through education, youth can be afforded better opportunities in life. His creation of the Generation Hope Laptop Program shows innovative thinking in designing education support systems that helps bridge the digital divide, by putting laptops with internet access into the hands of some 400 students so far. These students are currently excelling in S.T.E.M. subjects and taking honors in national academic competitions. The program is wholly self-supported by public donations, with no cost to the county, city, state, and national government. 

Roy Charles Brooks also foresaw the merit of a reentry recovery and redemptive program that could salvage young lives and reduce the rate of recidivism among ex-offenders. Just as Generation Hope is a self-empowering youth development program that works as part of a system of preventative strategies to the School-to-Prison Pipeline, a successful Reentry Program for ex-offenders would help halt the revolving door in and out of prison. And, Reentry Employment assistance and job readiness training can them previously incarcerated persons become productive citizens. 

Eddie G. Griffin (BASG) was an original proponent of what has become the Tarrant County Reentry Initiative.

Laverne Brooks Disqualified by Character and Truth

At the African-American Democratic forum, challenger for Precinct One, Roy Laverne Brooks derided the Tarrant County Reentry program for not accomplishing what is supposed to accomplish. And, she further characterized the Commissioner’s Generation Hope Laptop Program, with its distribution of 400 laptops to disadvantaged students as “a drop in the bucket”.

After the forum, Eddie Griffin’s dialog with Ms. Laverne Brooks was as brisk as a forest fire on a windy day. She failed the trial by fire in character and in truth. She lied about non-extisting stagnate statistics on the county's reentry initiative.

The proof is engraved in history and speaks for itself below.

From the Eddie G. Griffin (BASG) files:

Letter to Commission Roy C. Brooks from Eddie Griffin:

On the Subject of Ex-Offender Reentry,

February 07, 2006

[Excerpted]

Dear Roy… since taking office, you have done a marvelous job… I get good field reports about your work and a few Roy Brooks’ quotable quotes from your constituency. You are highly prized as a man among men, and I am proud to be a servant under your leadership in our precinct… I saw firsthand your rapid response to the Katrina evacuation. Setting up the Katrina Store was a mark of genius. From that experience alone, I can see that you have gained tremendous insight into how to handle the issues of the poor. Your work on the homelessness situation is greatly appreciated and much needed. And, the ex-offender re-entry problem is an issue near and dear to me. 

[T]he National Alliance of Faith and Justice Re-Entry Roundtable was the most inspirational forum I’ve attended... we were given a wealth of information and a free CD to use in our fieldwork.

Successful re-entry is an attainable goal. It is something I talk to [Police] Chief Mendoza about, all the time. Of course, I have other issues, such as the overuse of incarceration for control of the crime problem, lack of good preventative strategies, criminalization of the mentally ill and retarded, over-prosecution of drug victims, continuing expanse of detention facilities and prisons, not to mention race relations. If we can stop the revolving door of recidivism, then we can reduce this mad mass exodus of millions of young people going into the prison system.

This makes me all the more interested in the Second Chance Bill, proposed in last session of the US Congress. I would like more information about it, who supported it, what provisions it contained, and why it failed.

I must make known my opposition to the new county jail. Frankly, I believe if you build it, they will come, which is bad. We build for a future based upon such a dismal expectation. We build for the unborn, who have done no sin and guilty of no crime. Yet, there is bed space for him before he reaches the age of 18, waiting for him ahead of time… The only benefactors of a new jail in Tarrant County would be the architects, engineers, and construction people that design and build it. It becomes redundant, to build more and more prisons and jails, to keep the construction industry going, and keep our kids longer and longer to fill them up, so they can build more jails and prisons. 

Building new jails and prisons make us weaker as a society. People will think that the only solution to every problem would be lock ‘em up and throw away the key.

March 22, 2006

“What we need in Tarrant County is people who are willing to state their point of view and face it. Eddie Griffin is doing that.” – Commission Roy C. Brooks, quoted in Fort Worth Weekly, Mean Streets to Peace 

Brooks has tapped Griffin to work on a proposed county program that will help inmates who get out of jail to integrate themselves better into the community.

“We need to craft a strategic plan for people coming back to our community from the criminal justice system,” Brooks said of the proposed Tarrant County Re-entry Council. “We need to identify gaps in the services. Eddie can help because his contacts across the country are quite vast. He is also so well read. But more than anyone else, he understands the folly of blaming things on people you have no control over. (ibid)

December 18, 2009

From:Eddie Griffin

Dear Commissioner Roy C. Brooks:

Let me express my sincere appreciation for your work on behalf of Tarrant County. I have had the pleasure of working on the ex-offender re-entry program since 2005… It appears that the Parolee Recidivism in Tarrant County is beginning to show a downward trend.

In Re-Arrest, there were 51.4% in 2005, the initial year of our Reentry Summit, and 41.3% in 2006. Likewise, Re-Conviction rate dropped from 36.4% in 2005 to 28.3% in 2006. And, Re-Incarceration fell from 34.7% in 2005 to 27.2% in 2006. 

[Source: http://www.tarrantcounty.com/etcri/lib/etcri/Appendix3.pdf]

NOTE: The Tarrant County Reentry Initiative became a model for other reentry programs around the state and across the nation, with many states now looking to Texas as an example of how to reduce the costliness of increasing prison populations, without incurring an increase risk factor in crime elevation.

Eddie G. Griffin and House Committee on Corrections State Rep. Jerry Madden

From: Eddie Griffin
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 5:01 PM
Subject: Proposed Legislation to Reform Texas Prison System

Dear Jerry,

Thank you for your continuing interest in the prison situation and for consideration of the young lives wasted through the cycle of crime and punishment.

The Tarrant County Re-entry Council is currently studying and working on these issues. Other organizations, such as the FWISD is playing a collaborative part in their dropout prevention initiatives. The FWPD is also playing a role in crime prevent among youth and gangs. In fact, our entire community is focused on solving these problems. We are also active in solving the problem of youth in the education system, why they are not making the grades, and why so many give up before graduation. As I have written before, we need a new education delivery system and more constructive ways to engage our youth. Technology education will help keep our kids engaged in the learning and discovery process, and maybe divert them away from illegal activity, or maybe attract them into a high tech field of interest.

Thanks again,
Eddie Griffin

Subject: Proposed Legislation to Reform Texas Prison System
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2007 08:53:17 -0600
From: "District67 Madden", State Rep. Jerry Madden
To: "Eddie Griffin"

Eddie

We hope committees will be announced this week and we can get to work. We are working hard on rewriting chapter 37 of the Education code dealing with Alternative Education Programs. We are also advocating a wonderful program called CARY in the schools and are working on putting it in the Appropriations so TEA can implement it. It will provide counseling for up to a year for kids sent to In School Suspension or the District Alternative Education programs. It is aimed at middle school and should be available to the FWISD when implemented. We are looking at a complete review of TDCJ and the TYC as part of our session. I also have HB277 which is the virtual school bill which would be a great assist for alternative education programs. That is part of our new and innovative delivery systems.

From Texas Youth Commission Reform Passes by Eddie G. Griffin (BASG)

In a May 26, 2007 email from Jerry Madden, House Corrections Committee Chairman, He writes:

There is nothing in the TYC Bill that builds any prisons. We do have in the Appropriations act that 2 facilities, Marlin and San Saba will be turned over to TDCJ and so will not be used for incarcerating youth. We also expect that there will be added closings of facilities by TYC probably 2 or 3 units. We do have in Appropriations money to build one new unit close to a metropolitan area so that we can keep youth closer to home. I think that is a good idea and we would not have to house them in old worn out facilities that in some cases may not be safe; We have a lot more money for integration and juvenile probation to try to keep youth from being sent to TYC...We also have all the funding we requested for our diversion beds which will have a major positive effect on our communities. While there is still more to do we have come a long way in a short time this session.

April 07, 2012

Reducing Mass Incarceration & Breaking the School-to-Prison Pipeline

…declining crime rates, government budget cuts and increased use of treatment programs… have deflated a 20-year boom in building jails and prisons… writes Mike Ward of the American-Statesman, “having fewer people locked up should be good news for Texas taxpayers, as the associated costs of Lone Star justice go down”

But, he writes: The trend is drawing few cheers in Jones County and other places where taxes are going up to pay for the empty lockups.  

(Source: “County, private lockups sit empty, drain money as Texas prisoners dwindle)

COMMENTARY by Eddie Griffin

Beginning in 2005, Tarrant County Commissioner Roy C. Brooks helped develop such a strategy with the help of about 300 community volunteers. The result was the creation of the county’s Reentry Initiative. Our success is reflected in these statistics for the state of Texas, as reflected in the above article:

More than 30,000 of the state's 93,000 county beds currently sit empty...

The counties and small Texas rural communities who anticipated an economic boon, and who invested heavily in new prison constructions, are now shedding tears over the lack in the number of new prisoners.  

In Littlefield, northwest of Lubbock, a $10 million, 373-bed prison has sat empty for two years — costing local taxpayers $65,000 a month to pay the outstanding loan.

More than 1,400 jail beds in Angelina, Newton and Dickens counties in East Texas stand vacant as well, and one in Jefferson County reopened only recently — at just a fraction of its former population.

In Falls County, about an hour's drive northeast of Austin, officials are scrambling to fill beds in a county-built private prison after the private company announced it was pulling out.

Outside Waco, an 833-bed, $49 million prison sits less than half full — the same problem faced by most of the privately operated county jail beds in the rest of the state, according to statistics from the Jail Standards Commission.

And, the dusty West Texas ranch town of Anson has a dubious new claim to fame for its Jail to Nowhere. Completed almost two years ago to house 1,100 state convicts who never arrived, the $35 million lockup sits empty at the edge of the town of about 2,300 people. Its promise of creating 195 jobs and a $5 million annual boost to the local economy is just a distant, and bitter, memory for most folks.

"The problem is, there just aren't enough prisoners to go around anymore," said House Corrections Committee Chairman Jerry Madden, R-Richardson.

“Idaho, Montana, many other states are facing this same issue,” Madden said. “They have empty jail beds they can't fill because there just aren't enough inmates out there… The state is not in a position to bail them out," he said. “Sad to say, but they made a business choice, and they're going to have to live with it at some point.”

CONCLUSION

The office of Commissioner Court is far above the realms of Ms. Laverne Brooks, a phony whose run depends solely upon name confusion, for no other qualification exists. Her combative and loose pontification on stage was a glaring disguise of her ignorance of facts and knowledge about the very programs she criticized, having no involvement and participation in their creation.

While we, in the community, put in thousands of hours of hard work, Ms. Laverne seems to be scrounging around in search of another seat in public office like a career politician. She cannot, however, represent Eddie G. Griffin (BASG).

The only honorable for her to do would be to withdraw from the race. But then that would require a dose of integrity, which I believe would be a little bit too much medicine for Ms. Roy Laverne to take.

VOTE FOR ROY CHARLES BROOKS for County Commissioner, Pct. 1

The Hood Rat Race in U. S. Congressional District 33

Upon whom we contend for the seat of this office and the seat of this power of the people, we are come from the grassroots up.

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LOOK FOR OUR VOICE in the person of pastor Kyev Tatum, candidate for the newly created U.S. District 33.

What is Running in the Race?

Stop Racism Now? Too Late

By Eddie Griffin

Saturday, April 07, 2012

I saw a sign that irked me. It reads: Stop Racism Now. Not that I don’t agree, I just hate sloganizing. There are two sides to the issue of Racism: Whites see it one way; Blacks see it another. And, the two can never see eye to eye.

As an elder black man, I have given up on talking about racism. I let racism speak for itself, and continue living like a fugitive Jew in Nazi Germany; except here in the United States, it is the Nazi mentality that lives.

There is no loss of love for country or patriotism, I just take issue with the rest of the Germans take notice of what the Nazis are doing in undermining a Jewish people in their midst. The things that the Nazis get away with in public discourse and intercourse should be a national outrage. But the rest of the Germans look on and call it “politics as usual”.

African-American youth must learn how to live strategically around those who do not take their best interest at heart. They must also outwit the Nazis, like the Jews did, in order to survive, thrive, and flourish. And, there is no loss of the American Dream, but reaching and realizing it means taking a strategic path, and using all the intelligence that they can muster.

The slogan, Stop Racism Now, is like saying Stop Air Now. America breathes it like a toxic element is the atmosphere, and don’t even know its contamination.

[See Video “I Am Not Trayvon”]

The Mystery of Racism behind the Trayvon Martin Case

RE: “Wheels of justice moving in Trayvon Martin's case” by Bob Ray Sanders

The Trayvon Martin case boils down to this, says Star-Telegram editorialist Bob Ray Sanders.

“The wheels of justice are in motion. Let them move deliberately and fairly toward the truth. The outcome is still likely to leave the country divided over another tragic incident… As for that discussion on race? How many more do we need until we expect a different result from all the others? Maybe we leave it to the newly energized young folks to talk about it. They can do it on their social media -- without ever coming face-to-face.”

My old friend and colleague sound exasperated and burnt out over the issue of race, racism, and race relations, especially in light of the recent Trayvon Martin shooting death. This I can understand, because I am sick of talking about it too.

The mainstream media has gone to great lengths to identity George Zimmerman as Anglo-Hispanic just for the purpose of denying “racism” as a factor in the shooting case. But, as I have always said, the faulty premise of race cannot help but lead to a false conclusion on racism. And the suggestion of leaving the discussion on race relations “to the newly energized young folks”, on the basis that more discussion would be fruitless, does not remove the mystery that baffles the minds of young people. Why Trayvon Martin was shot and why George Zimmerman was not arrested?

Some good, honest, and intelligent people have weighed in on this controversy, only to go off on a tangent, with a pied piper following in tow, not to mention all the buzz and chatter of after-the-fact tales adding fuel to the firestorm. People are no closer to understanding motives other than to accuse the shooter of being a racial bigot, to which there are many counter-claims.

Even a race-hating bigot is only a bigot, whether brown, white, or black. A racist, on the other hand, has the power and backing of the state to make a judgment call that, in this instance, absolves the shooter of criminal liability for the death of a young black man. Therefore, the Sanford Police Department, in its judgment, denied Trayvon Martin the legal protection for his right to life, not by killing the teen itself, but by not fairly weighing the evidence of probable cause to his murder. That judgment, that decision, is what we are protesting as racist. The rest is all about bigotry.

The implication of the Stand Your Ground law, and no arrest for the shooting, and the proliferation of gun permits, endangers all potential “suspects” where suspicion is in the eye of the beholder alone. It gives legal consent and acquiescence to shoot and kill, anyone in shady circumstances and under murky laws, where the dead cannot testify in their own defense. The most vulnerable to be gunned down is, of course, young black men.

These are our children. And, as the editorialist writes, we “have a right to be sad -- even angry -- about what they feel has been an injustice.” But as for being heard, I don’t think so. The shooting of Trayvon Martin is only one grievance in a whole string of grievances as to what is happening to our black male youth. And, until that is rectified, Bob Ray will continue to have recurring nightmares about Emmett Till.

The Ghost of Emmett Till & Rise of Trayvon Martin

Is there ever a time when it’s too late? When the time is past, and the guilty has not even said “I’m sorry”.

Yes, I am looking. But I am not seeing what I hope and expect of all decent humanity; and that is, the empathy we should have one for another, as human beings, in the midst of a tragic situation such as this.

Did not George Zimmerman shoot 17-year old Trayvon Martin to death? Why am I not hearing or seeing what I’m supposed to see and hear?

Maybe the answer is in one-upmanship politics. Who gains what, for what in exchange?

Politics is the art and science of speaking to and speaking for a body of people.

It is not Left or Right, not Liberal or Conservative, not Democratic or Republican. These latter are inventions of Politics.

But the Trayvon Martin case has turned into politics, and the politics of it gets ugly.

On yesterday, I attended a Justice for Trayvon Martin rally at the University of Texas in Arlington, the same school I attended during the Civil Right movement days in the 1960s. On that eve, we attended a community prayer vigil on behalf of the Martin family.

This is groundswell politics, driven by the youth, and supported by black parents and grandparents everywhere. Young people see young Trayvon Martin as themselves- somebody more like them, than the hoodlum they are portraying him out to be. Black Parents, on the other hand, see in Trayvon their own teenage sons, and the dangers they face in a racially aroused society.

Grandparents, like myself, see another generation, with maimed and wounded idealism. Grandparents do not see the pie-in-the-sky Disney World that the children have been accustomed to. Unfortunately, we see the ghost of Emmett Till rising from the grave of racism that we had all hoped to have laid to rest.

Yes, there is a restless spirit creeping across Black America like the ghost of Emmett Till. I see every black community around the country in deep deep mourning, unlike what others can understand. Trayvon Martin was not just any black child. He was our child, our beloved grandchild; and if the youth marching in the street had their say, they would say as the signs read: “I am Trayvon Martin”.

Poor babies, indeed they are. The teenager's death is the cold-water-dash-in-the-face realization of every black parent’s worst nightmare.

The news of Trayvon Martin’s death was devastating, not merely because of his being added to the growing dismal and depressing statistics on the fate of young black male youth, but it was the merciless way he died.

Emmett Till was dragged out of his bed in the middle of the night, out of the arms of a loving uncle who could not protect him from the men who came to get him. They took him to a barn where they meticulously tortured him all night. They castrated him, cut off his ears and fingers and nose; and, if there was still a breath of life in the child’s body, they shot him through the head and dumped in body in the Tallahatchie River.

The memory cannot be undone and the ghost never forgotten. And neither do the lies concocted around his murder ever cease. They portrayed Emmett Till as a sexual menace against the sactity of a married white woman in the South. They claimed the 14-year old boy untoward advances upon the woman, by Dixie standards, warranted his lynching. We, as a Colored community, were forbidden to humanize or defend the teenager without we ourselves becoming contaminated by the curse of his stigma.

All Colored people are alike. They always defend each other, even in the wrong. That's what they said.

Now, we see the same type of vilification of Trayvon Martin. They have gone to great lengths in digging through personal records and pictures just to show that Trayvon was no angel. Why? For the very same reason they vilified 14-year old Emmett Till, so no one would humanize him or want to defend him.

This is why parents and grandparents try to teach their kids to always do the right thing, be in the right places, keep the right company, and stay out of trouble. Nobody has to tell us that our kids are not saints. And, they would hard put to produce saints of their own. But Trayvon was about as good a kid as any child, and most certainly did not deserve to be shot down like a dog in the rain.

It is too late to recast the image of the dead. It won’t wash with black folks, not this time, say black leaders and preachers all over the country. We are not buying whatever the spin doctors are selling. Neither will Black America be silent. This is one ghost that is not going away any time soon. This sin so egregious that we vow to never let the country forget.

Why? Mainly because there are other issues here that forms an unbroken pattern of discrimination, abuse, and murder. There is the issue of what why Zero Tolerance only affects our kids, while other kids are tolerated. Is it because, what we suspect, that teachers are looking at our young men and making judgment in their minds and seeing them as George Zimmerman saw Trayvon, as some kind of a thug? Is this why are young black males more likely suspended, why they are pushed into dropping out and wounding up in prison? Why they are discriminated against in employment and more likely to be pulled over in a traffic cop? Does being black and wearing a hoodie automatically makes them suspect?

When we were young, our parents taught us to never accept candy from strangers. Black parents, living in the South, had to go one step further, and teach their kids to seek safety away from bigoted yahoos who target Coloreds for their "coon hunting" sport. Though we still teach children not to accept candy from a stranger, we should not have to teach them to avoid all white people because of a few racially incited psychopaths lurking around with guns and licenses to shoot to kill anyone that appears to be a threat to them and their supremacy.

Trayvon Martin: A Reminder of Emmitt Till

What I say as an old black man, I say in truth, sincerity, and love.

When 17-year old Trayvon Martin was shot to death by a vigilante neighborhood watchman, something woke up young Afrian-Americans. What I am seeing and hearing from these youth is the same thing that I experienced when I was a 9-year old child and I got the news of Emmitt Tills’ murder in 1955.

Like a sleepy-headed youngster rudely awaken from a dream-world reality, my eyes were forced open to a new reality that I had never contemplated. I was a black kid in a segregated America, and some people hated me for no other reason than the color of my skin. I was as heartbreaken as Toxie in that unforgettable movie that made me cry my eyes out. In that movie, Toxie discovered the same sad lesson about being black and hated for no reason,except that she was black.

But hip-hop hood rats disdain the teachings about the old days of segregation, lynchings, and civil rights marches. Suddenly today, it hits home, like a dash of ice water in the face. Black boys are particularly hated and stereotyped, and people ignited with color-aroused prejudices will shoot them dead on the streets, for no other reason than the color of their skin.

A young black man, wearing a hoodie, looks like a "menace", they say. But to whom do they look a menance, except to someone aroused and incited by skin color? It is confirmation that they never really accepted the black hip-hop generation and its thug imagery.

But hip-hop never knew that there were sick people out in society who would will shoot them dead, without mercy, at the drop of a hat pin, just because of the way they look.

Mama and Daddy tried to teach them about this old obsolete concept of "racism", which went in one ear and out the other, because they are deluded by its relative dormancy into believing it was non-existent in these times. And, Mama and Daddy were no help in sheltering them from the harsh, cold realities behind the screens and phoney masks. Things could not be as bad in race relations as in their own day.

Several black parents from around the country, has said since, that this shooting of this young 17-year old black kid, resurrected their greatest fears, a secret that they had kept hidden in the family closet of skeletons: That there were psychos lurking out there in society who felt intimidated and threatened by their very presence, by their mere existence. And, sometimes these psychos do go off, especially where circumstances are murky and the law is quiet unsure and there's no living witness around to testify... reminiscent of the back roads of Mississippi, where only God knows the brutal torture and death of three civil rights workers.

Circumstances and times change, but attitudes rarely. Given a dark, moonless, rainy night in Sanford, Florida, couched under a hoodie from the element, Trayvon Martin dashed his way down to the local convenience store to get some candy and ice tea. Little did he know that evil lurked in the dark with suspicious eyes.

Trayvon Martin was in George Zimmerman's cross-hairs.

Why?

I remember the words of Toxie in that movie so long ago that made me cry like I never cried before. In that unforgetable movie, the little colored girl had been adopted by a white family, who wanted to give her a decent upbringing. Then one day, on Toxie's birthday, the white family invited all their families and friends to the birthday party. There were no other coloreds invited.

Toxie turned six years old, the same as me, a big boy old enough to sit in a moviehouse all alone.

But the little white kids treated Toxie so badly at her own birthday party that I cried my eye out for Toxie and with the young actress. To top it, one especially cruel little white girl took a chocolate cupcake and taunted Toxie until the little colored girl could not hold back her tears.

When the adopted parents asked Toxie why she was crying at her own birthday party, when she should be all happy and gay, Toxie asked: “Why do they hate me because I am so black?”

Wow! It was an odd of way saying something she could not understand. I never will forget, as big a boy I thought I was, I walked out the movie with eyes full of tears, and my brand new jacket left behind on the seat where I sat.

The movie ended with no answer to Toxie's question; then came the lynching of Emmit Till, and I asked myself the same question.

But the rest is history of an old black man, of times past, oblivious to today. And, I think, when I condemn hip-hop in “sagging pants”, I could have warned them that the gangster thug image could get them killed.

Why do they want to look and dress like they are so big-and-bad tough? But that’s looking at it through a grandfather’s eyes.

Youth are correctable, if the Lord gives us a chance to mold them into men. But this society will not allow us to teach and train them to grow up to be men, because they take their lives, from our control, at a very young age. They, however, cannot train them up to be men- men of strength, honor, and integrity- rulers of empires- leaders among men.

If they think it is not racial favoritism, just watch how many white people hire white people, at the exclusion of blacks, and how quickly they rise up the corporate ladder. High unemployment among young black men is the result of the same attitude behind the Trayvon shooting. They routinely reject young black men in employment, in competitive job positions, favoring white candidates of equal or less skill sets.

Blacks are placed in positions of inferiority by design, office without windows, titles without meaning.

These are systematic rejections and retardation in self-development that we call Racism, never being able to catch up, from a behind the line start and no inheritance in the land, never being equipped with the education and skills for self-reliance and self-sufficiency, being asked to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, with our hands cuffed behind our back, and a criminal record in our future. A young black man, with a hoodie over his head, looking as suspicious as a crime waiting to happen, his future cut off, never rising to be his true potential, but going down in the dust as a suspect of nothing more that the color-aroused stigma.