Why Vote for Barack Obama
From: Eddie Griffin
Consider the alternative: John McCain. If that ain’t enough to make you think twice, you need to go back, and examine some core values. Why are you here to begin with, as a black Republican... a role model for whom?
Some black Republicans are cranking up the pressure on other black Republicans to take a second look at Senate Barack Obama, in comparison to Senator John McCain. It is the War in Iraq that differs McCain from black Republicans, and by his war hawkish inclinations and antagonistic angry demeanor.
Recent comments by well-known black Republicans J.C. Watts and Armstrong Williams that they’re conflicted about the upcoming presidential elections and are contemplating voting for Barack Obama have sent shock waves through the Republican Party. (“Why black Republicans support Obama”, Black Politics on the Web)
We, members of Republicans for Black Empowerment, recognize the historical context of the times we live in and take pride in Senator Barack Obama conquering this nation’s most enduring racial barriers to become the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for President of the United States of America... Senator Obama’s nomination confirms how far the nation has traveled toward fulfilling its Constitutional premise that all men are created equal and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of racial equality. (“Republicans for Black Empowerment Salute Senator Barack Obama on Historic Triumph”, Black Politics on the Web)
The 2008 Democratic National Convention is scheduled for August 25-28 in Denver, Colorado. It will be a moment in history, when an African-American is nominated to be the next President of the United States.
On the closing night of the ceremonies, Thursday, August 28, 2008, Barack Obama will lead a Democratic Party rally, the size of Invesco Field, home of the Denver Broncos football team, with a seating capacity of more than 76,000.
Whether by coincidence or whether by design, the day will mark the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech.
By inspiration of the day, let us pray for the next President of the United States of America.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
A Man among Men: General Wesley Clark
By Eddie G. Griffin
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
If this election was won on the basis of the biggest cry baby, consider Senator John McCain’s reaction to an off-handed comment by General Wesley Clark on CBS Face The Nation.
Was John McCain’s honor so slighted that he would give General Clark a white glove slap in the fact?
General Wesley Clark said what he meant and meant what he said. Suck up it, McCain, and keep marching. Suck it up, Captain McCain. You’re outranked.
General Clark has won my admiration.
Let’s look at the context of this fiasco, Wednesday, July 02, 2008.
A BRIEF: What did Gen. Clark say to provoke McCain’s ire?
[Excerpts from "FACE THE NATION"]
BOB SCHIEFFER, "FACE THE NATION": Well -- well, General, maybe -- could I just interrupt you?
CLARK: Sure.
SCHIEFFER: I have to say, Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences, either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down. I mean...
CLARK: Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.
Ouch!
Everyone should know that one experience does not a president make. But the puppet and the puppeteer would rather use the occasion to cry foul.
John McCain, apparently sensitive about both his age and his military record, lashed back, not at General Clark but his opponent Senator Barack Obama. “I think the time has come to not just repudiate Gen. Clark, but to cut him loose,” McCain said.
WOW! How extreme! How can a little qualified criticism (which was not actually criticism)… how could such a small statement set of McCain’s internal nuclear reaction?
Obama’s initial reaction was that Clark’s statement was “un-artful”. But no, Barack would never questioned McCain’s patriotism or heroism. In fact, Obama lauds McCain’s service record and military service.
But does that appease the mind of a political strategist like Karl Rove:
I mean, General Clark was outrageous. It just was -- it was -- you know, this was -- this was beyond -- this was beyond the pale for General Clark to smear Senator McCain in this manner… So the question tomorrow is going to be… Are they going to stop smearing Senator McCain? Karl Rove, former Bush aide, FOX Contributor, speaking to Van Susteren
Stop Smearing Senator Mccain?
McCain appears to be manipulated by strategist Karl Rove. Their allegation is totally disingenuous. But the objective is not so much to make the allegation stick, but drive a wedge betweem Obama and Clark.
General Clark stands by his word
Retired Gen. Wesley Clark rejected suggestions he apologize Tuesday for saying John McCain's medal-winning military service does not qualify him for the White House. Elaborating, Clark said a president must have judgment, not merely courage and character.
At last a real military man stands up against all the fake whining to gain a sympathetic political edge.
WIKI Footnote
Wesley Kanne Clark (born December 23, 1944) is a retired General of the United States Army. Clark was valedictorian of his class at West Point, was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford where he obtained a degree in PPE (Philosophy, Politics & Economics), and later graduated from the Command and General Staff College with a master's degree in military science. He spent 34 years in the Army and the Department of Defense, receiving many military decorations, several honorary knighthoods, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Clark commanded Operation Allied Force in the Kosovo War during his term as the Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO from 1997 to 2000.
Now compare John McCain’s bio. Which is more qualified?
Eddie Griffin’s Commentary
General Wesley Clark is a military hero in his own right, so how can Senator John McCain “repudiate him” and “cut him off”. Imagine a captain repudiating a general. How insulting, like a white glove slap in the face.
Now here is a man more qualified to be president making a simple qualified statement, and McCain and Rove take it and run out in left field with it.
Post Note
"I think that you can always cite a candidate's service in the armed forces as a testimony to his character and his courage. But I don't think early service justifies moving away from looking at a candidate's judgment," Clark said.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., rebutted Clark's claim by arguing that McCain's years as a prisoner of war and the mistreatment he endured made him uniquely qualified to lead the campaign in the Senate to ban the use of torture in the interrogation of detainees in the war on terror.
"I don't think that Gen. Clark had the same intent as the Swift Boat ads of four years ago. I reject that analogy," Obama said. He said McCain "deserves the utmost honor and respect for his service to our country."
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Over 100,000 Ex-Offenders Restored Voter Rights in Florida
Put this in the Good News - Bad News column...
By Eddie Griffin
New Florida Rules Return More Than 115,000 Ex-Offenders to Voting Rolls by Damien Cave and Christine Jordan Sexton, The New York Times
The report states: “Gov. Charlie Crist announced on Tuesday that 115,232 Florida felons had regained their voting rights since new rules took effect last April”...
Once somebody has truly paid their debt to society, we should recognize it, and we should honor it and we should welcome them back into society and give them that second chance," Mr. Crist told a crowd of law enforcement officials and advocates for prisoners' rights in Tallahassee...
"That could make an enormous difference in November," he said.
[Read the Rest of the Story]
Eddie Griffin Commentary
In an election year where every vote counts, 115,000 ex-offenders in Florida represent a significant number of new voters. Their impact at the poll can swing the state from red to blue in November.
But what the governor gives with one hand, the state holds back with the other. According to the report, some 80% of the state's disenfranchised ex-offenders remain off the voting rolls in the state.
BRIEF HISTORY
The ban on voting by felons became part of the state Constitution in 1868, when many Southern states found ways to suppress black votes in the wake of the Civil War. Since only men were allowed to vote, many black men were systematically charged with false charges or Jim Crow offenses, imprisoned, and liberty and rights stripped away.
REPARATION MOVEMENT
Restoring the right to vote to ex-offenders is part of a long and endless “Redemption, Restoration, and Reparation Movement”. Although, however, the enfranchisement of a 115,000 ex-offenders may signify a civil rights victory of some great proportion. The greater proposition would be to enfranchise the other 80% and erase one of the last true vestiges of slavery.
By Eddie Griffin
New Florida Rules Return More Than 115,000 Ex-Offenders to Voting Rolls by Damien Cave and Christine Jordan Sexton, The New York Times
The report states: “Gov. Charlie Crist announced on Tuesday that 115,232 Florida felons had regained their voting rights since new rules took effect last April”...
Once somebody has truly paid their debt to society, we should recognize it, and we should honor it and we should welcome them back into society and give them that second chance," Mr. Crist told a crowd of law enforcement officials and advocates for prisoners' rights in Tallahassee...
"That could make an enormous difference in November," he said.
[Read the Rest of the Story]
Eddie Griffin Commentary
In an election year where every vote counts, 115,000 ex-offenders in Florida represent a significant number of new voters. Their impact at the poll can swing the state from red to blue in November.
But what the governor gives with one hand, the state holds back with the other. According to the report, some 80% of the state's disenfranchised ex-offenders remain off the voting rolls in the state.
BRIEF HISTORY
The ban on voting by felons became part of the state Constitution in 1868, when many Southern states found ways to suppress black votes in the wake of the Civil War. Since only men were allowed to vote, many black men were systematically charged with false charges or Jim Crow offenses, imprisoned, and liberty and rights stripped away.
REPARATION MOVEMENT
Restoring the right to vote to ex-offenders is part of a long and endless “Redemption, Restoration, and Reparation Movement”. Although, however, the enfranchisement of a 115,000 ex-offenders may signify a civil rights victory of some great proportion. The greater proposition would be to enfranchise the other 80% and erase one of the last true vestiges of slavery.
Monday, June 30, 2008
The Most Dangerous Man in America: The Boogey Man
By Eddie Griffin
This series is written for at-risk children and not necessarily for popular human consumption
Monday, June 30, 2008
The road to hell is not paved with gold. It’s paved with eggshells. Crack one eggshell. Crack another. Then you’ll find yourself in the belly of the beast.
Like never before, a man’s eyes are suddenly pried open to his own mortality. The curtains goes up on life in super-maximum security with the unceremonious introduction the “shank”, the makeshift knife every man must sees when entering prison at the super-max level.
Life here begins at life, and usually ends with death. Lifers, doing a life sentence, will die of old age or a knife in the gut. But the Old Bull is one tough son of a bitch. Each day he is fighting to live, fight to survive, if no more than just see another day. For the privilege, he will kill. Being forewarned, do not get in his path.
A sense of smell and a keen sense of danger
This is an animal kingdom where a man’s body odor is his territory. A bloodhound sense of smell and a extra sense of danger is gift for the soul of a man who wants to survive in prison. The smell the toughest guys in prison announced their presence before they arrived. The walls vibrate. Tension cries out of the brick wall like heat waves on a hot summer day. A man could sense his coming before he made his presences known.
Every man had a sacred zone. No man encroached into another man’s space, unless he wanted to intimidate and dominated the man who space was invaded. It was the invisible territory that separated the men from the boys.
Step inside my perimeter, says the spider to the fly, and I would put a person in a coma for a day, a week, a month, or have him on life support for a year. With the heel of my hand, I can strike like a cobra and deliver a forceful, if not fatal, blow to the face of anyone who steps inside my space.
They call it the “bum rush”, because there is no back down… and no time to say, “Oops! I didn’t mean it. It was an accident.” A man was DOA on the spot against a champion lifer. There is no concept of fairness in hand-to-hand combat in a battle to the death.
I bum rushed death, head-on, in an encounter with a young man welding a pipe. Just when I had become overconfident and cocky in my abilities to defend myself in hand-to-hand combat, the pipe cracked my skull and restored my sense of humility. I saw stars. Blood gushed from my head and oozed down into my eyes.
Damn! I did everything right in my defenses. I gave the assailant my arm for a target. Then I stepped to him and embraced him, face to face. But the pipe broached my perimeters, and I was terribly wounded, clinging to the assassin’s arm.
The will to live is powerful adrenalin. I had seen the futile fail. I saw the tears in their eyes when they fell. He heard them scream for Jesus to save them. But, in the silent realm of my mind, I without prayed: “Lord save me”. That was my blood dripping on the prison floor. I was only two shakes from being clubbed to death.
De ja vu
There was a butcher and a baker that King Pharaoh in the bible put in prison with Joseph. One night, they both had a dream. And, the meaning of the dream was this: One would come out of prison alive, and the other would die.
I would be the survivor who came out of prison alive. But my counterpart died. We had been training partners. And, we each were given a premonition of our moment of truth.
It began in the gladiator cage they built inside the segregation control unit, where inmates were allowed to recreate for one hour a day, a privilege and a curse awarded to us by the courts. On any given shift, three men would go into recreation cage per turn. But the drama came in when the assigned recreation partner would be an assassin.
It was a cat-and-mouse game where some prison guards tried to even the score, by putting a black inmate into the cage, followed by two white inmates. The guards would sometimes slip the white inmates knives. This was how the notorious white supremacist group known as the Aryan Brotherhood was born, by assassinating targeted black inmates.
I found myself in the cage with two recreation partners: One, the toughest guy in prison; the other a sojourner prisoner just passing through, being transferred from on prison to another, a marshal arts trainer. We did mock combat training for given situations that we might find ourselves against prison guards.
With a newspaper roll, our trainer taught us how to take a baton club from a guard. The objective was to give him the arm for a target, then bum rush him, and lock his elbows. It was this same scenario that I found my self against a youngster welding a pipe, my payback for defending his manhood. He was unappreciative and, given a choice, he chose to defend the very penitentiary pimp that was exploiting him.
The pipe came at me, as the rolled up newspaper baton. Go down into a crouch and set the forearm as bait for the baton. “I guarantee you they will try to break your arm”, our trainer said. As the club comes down, step into the man, straighten out your arms, and wrap his arm at the elbow.” That was the planned defense that I botched in a life and death situation.
I saw stars that took me back to that night in the gladiator cage, when we danced with the devil. I always stepped outside of my perimeter and got clonked by the rolled newspaper. In real life, the pipe grazed my skull.
And, that’s the way it happened that my blood dripped on the prison floor, and I was locked arm and arm, in a life and death struggle, against my would-be assassin. As I struggled, I prayed, “Lord, save me.” Then I heard the pipe hit the floor. I was free.
Counterpart of the de ja vu
My counter-part was Raymond Smith-el, a Moorish Science of America gladiator, known as the Sword of Justice, street named “Cadillac”. He was a bull. His muscle-clad block build was buffalo hide thick. It was rumored that once a would-be assassin stabbed him in the chest. They say the knife was crushed flat.
No wonder he had a reputation as a man who be killed. Raymond had a saying: “While everybody else is a Chevy, I am a Cadillac.” Damned if he wasn’t.
In the gladiator cage the night we danced with the devil, we practiced defending ourselves while in handcuffs. My trainer partner, Cadillac, was in handcuffs when he was delivered to his death. On his way to the shower in the notorious Nazi-style control unit. Thomas Silverstein and another Aryan inmate broke out of the gladiator cage with knives. The prison guards fled. The other inmates on the tier were helpless, because they were locked in.
How does a man in handcuffs defend himself against two men with knives? He cannot.
They tell me that Cadillac put up a pretty good fight at first, then raised his arms in the air and gave his assassins a clear shot at his heart. There, he died, my training partner.
Aryan Brotherhood leader and assassin, Thomas Silverstein, then took the body of Cadillac by the legs and drug him from cell to cell, making a stop at each black inmate’s cell.
A year later, Silverstein stabs a prison guard to death.
The BBC calls Silverstein the “most dangerous man in America”. Silverstein counters with the claim that the prison system made him that way, that the conditions in a super-maximum security were so harsh and cruel, that he could not help himself but to kill, kill, kill, in order to survive.
The Boogey Man
Today, Silverstein is the Boogey Man of the prison system, the man who will never see the light of day again. He is locked away in a special prison cell with “no human contact” status inside USP Florence.
A Boogey Man is an official title given to select men, who are locked into a dungeon, never to see the day. The first Boogey Man that I had heard rumor of, while in federal prison, was Robert Stroud, otherwise known as the “Birdman of Alcatraz”.
I learned of the boogey man legacy from the lips of “Red” Haynes, the successive boogey man after Stroud died in Springfield. Each man had killed a prison guard. Since there was no death penalty, prison officials take vengeance by forcing them to live out their lives in a living hell… some bitter medicine I tasted for myself.
The story of Red Hayes, as I told it years ago, was here was a man, one of the first prisoner subject placed on the experimental drug know as Valium. After being released from prison without the medication, Hayes suffered a “white out”. From there on, he could not remember what heinous crimes he might have committed.
The men who never saw the light of day again
Hiller “Red” Hayes sat in front of my cell in the Control Unit and told me what he remembered of his life. He had been in solitary confinement for thirteen straight years. He remembered no family life. He had no family or friends, and everybody in the world had forgotten that he existed.
His back was full of red, raw circular bedsores, festering with the stench of death. When he raked his sandpaper-rough hands over the stubs of reddish gray hair, it would crackle. He was electro-static. His body was so full of electricity. He could probably electrocute a person with a handshake. I was amazed to see sparks fly from my fingertips. And, a handshake could become a static electric shocking experience.
As for Red Hayes, they say he killed a prison guard, so they put him away for his natural life. As he talked to me and told his story, he stared out into a distant dimension. Here, I was looking at a man who would die in solitary confinement within the year, a man with no family or friends, a man nobody in the world knew about.
The Most Desperate Man Who have ever lived
After Red Hayes died, the Boogey Man passed on to Gary Trapnell. His adventurous autobiography outlives the Fox himself, author of the “Fox is Crazy, Too”. He was the guy who hijacking an airliner, demanded $300,000 ransom, and the release of Angela Davis, the Black Panther Amazon Queen of the Revolution. But the exit of his life was more adventurous than all the former crimes combined in his autobiography.
I was there to see his last chapters in real life… actually on the prison yard when a hijacked helicopter came into the prison to snatch Trapnell away. I witnessed one of the most daring escape attempts in history, a crime that would condemn Trapnell to “no human contact”, never to see the light of day again.
As we sat on the prison yard, a comrade nudged me and pointed out a helicopter coming into compound, flying erratic like something amiss. It was an attempted escaped by hijacked helicopter. Gary Trapnell and his buddy were making a desperate bid for freedom.
I found the unfolding scene amusing and entertaining. But my partner thought not, so he suggested that we get off the prison yard before the shooting started. This was one drama that was a must see for me, even if bullets flew everywhere. I enjoyed deadly excitement. They don’t make movies like this in the free world.
This is the most excitement I have had all day. Why not watch?
I watched the hijacked helicopter come toward the back tower like a dive-bomber, with the cockpit rocking from side to side. The tower guard never saw it headed his way. In the meantime, there was a drama unfolding inside the cockpit, between the female hijacker and the pilot.
Here was a woman flattered with words of love from a legend adventurer. She literally worshipped Trapnell. He instructed her to charter a helicopter and then hijack the pilot, fly the chopper into the prison compound, and pluck him and his buddy up off the yard.
As the helicopter reeled and rocked in the air, the two escapees made a mad dash across the compound, their yellow windbreakers flapping in the wind. Inside the cockpit, the pilot seized the woman’s gun after a long tussle. As he steered with one hand and held the gun on the woman in the rear seat with the other.
The female hijack makes this retarded statement: “Oh, that’s okay. I got another one in my purse.” When she reached for the second handgun, the pilot blew her brains out of the back window and safely landed the chopper.
From that day on, Gary Trapnell would never see the light of day again. But his desperate attempts at escape did not end there. A year after the hijacked helicopter escape attempt, the daughter of the woman turns around and hijacks an airliner herself and demanded Gary Trapnell’s release. She had the hijack airliner fly to the city near the prison. This buried Trapnell.
The Most Dangerous Man in America
The current Boogey Man is Thomas Silverstein, hence the legacy lives on.
This series is written for at-risk children and not necessarily for popular human consumption
Monday, June 30, 2008
The road to hell is not paved with gold. It’s paved with eggshells. Crack one eggshell. Crack another. Then you’ll find yourself in the belly of the beast.
Like never before, a man’s eyes are suddenly pried open to his own mortality. The curtains goes up on life in super-maximum security with the unceremonious introduction the “shank”, the makeshift knife every man must sees when entering prison at the super-max level.
Life here begins at life, and usually ends with death. Lifers, doing a life sentence, will die of old age or a knife in the gut. But the Old Bull is one tough son of a bitch. Each day he is fighting to live, fight to survive, if no more than just see another day. For the privilege, he will kill. Being forewarned, do not get in his path.
A sense of smell and a keen sense of danger
This is an animal kingdom where a man’s body odor is his territory. A bloodhound sense of smell and a extra sense of danger is gift for the soul of a man who wants to survive in prison. The smell the toughest guys in prison announced their presence before they arrived. The walls vibrate. Tension cries out of the brick wall like heat waves on a hot summer day. A man could sense his coming before he made his presences known.
Every man had a sacred zone. No man encroached into another man’s space, unless he wanted to intimidate and dominated the man who space was invaded. It was the invisible territory that separated the men from the boys.
Step inside my perimeter, says the spider to the fly, and I would put a person in a coma for a day, a week, a month, or have him on life support for a year. With the heel of my hand, I can strike like a cobra and deliver a forceful, if not fatal, blow to the face of anyone who steps inside my space.
They call it the “bum rush”, because there is no back down… and no time to say, “Oops! I didn’t mean it. It was an accident.” A man was DOA on the spot against a champion lifer. There is no concept of fairness in hand-to-hand combat in a battle to the death.
I bum rushed death, head-on, in an encounter with a young man welding a pipe. Just when I had become overconfident and cocky in my abilities to defend myself in hand-to-hand combat, the pipe cracked my skull and restored my sense of humility. I saw stars. Blood gushed from my head and oozed down into my eyes.
Damn! I did everything right in my defenses. I gave the assailant my arm for a target. Then I stepped to him and embraced him, face to face. But the pipe broached my perimeters, and I was terribly wounded, clinging to the assassin’s arm.
The will to live is powerful adrenalin. I had seen the futile fail. I saw the tears in their eyes when they fell. He heard them scream for Jesus to save them. But, in the silent realm of my mind, I without prayed: “Lord save me”. That was my blood dripping on the prison floor. I was only two shakes from being clubbed to death.
De ja vu
There was a butcher and a baker that King Pharaoh in the bible put in prison with Joseph. One night, they both had a dream. And, the meaning of the dream was this: One would come out of prison alive, and the other would die.
I would be the survivor who came out of prison alive. But my counterpart died. We had been training partners. And, we each were given a premonition of our moment of truth.
It began in the gladiator cage they built inside the segregation control unit, where inmates were allowed to recreate for one hour a day, a privilege and a curse awarded to us by the courts. On any given shift, three men would go into recreation cage per turn. But the drama came in when the assigned recreation partner would be an assassin.
It was a cat-and-mouse game where some prison guards tried to even the score, by putting a black inmate into the cage, followed by two white inmates. The guards would sometimes slip the white inmates knives. This was how the notorious white supremacist group known as the Aryan Brotherhood was born, by assassinating targeted black inmates.
I found myself in the cage with two recreation partners: One, the toughest guy in prison; the other a sojourner prisoner just passing through, being transferred from on prison to another, a marshal arts trainer. We did mock combat training for given situations that we might find ourselves against prison guards.
With a newspaper roll, our trainer taught us how to take a baton club from a guard. The objective was to give him the arm for a target, then bum rush him, and lock his elbows. It was this same scenario that I found my self against a youngster welding a pipe, my payback for defending his manhood. He was unappreciative and, given a choice, he chose to defend the very penitentiary pimp that was exploiting him.
The pipe came at me, as the rolled up newspaper baton. Go down into a crouch and set the forearm as bait for the baton. “I guarantee you they will try to break your arm”, our trainer said. As the club comes down, step into the man, straighten out your arms, and wrap his arm at the elbow.” That was the planned defense that I botched in a life and death situation.
I saw stars that took me back to that night in the gladiator cage, when we danced with the devil. I always stepped outside of my perimeter and got clonked by the rolled newspaper. In real life, the pipe grazed my skull.
And, that’s the way it happened that my blood dripped on the prison floor, and I was locked arm and arm, in a life and death struggle, against my would-be assassin. As I struggled, I prayed, “Lord, save me.” Then I heard the pipe hit the floor. I was free.
Counterpart of the de ja vu
My counter-part was Raymond Smith-el, a Moorish Science of America gladiator, known as the Sword of Justice, street named “Cadillac”. He was a bull. His muscle-clad block build was buffalo hide thick. It was rumored that once a would-be assassin stabbed him in the chest. They say the knife was crushed flat.
No wonder he had a reputation as a man who be killed. Raymond had a saying: “While everybody else is a Chevy, I am a Cadillac.” Damned if he wasn’t.
In the gladiator cage the night we danced with the devil, we practiced defending ourselves while in handcuffs. My trainer partner, Cadillac, was in handcuffs when he was delivered to his death. On his way to the shower in the notorious Nazi-style control unit. Thomas Silverstein and another Aryan inmate broke out of the gladiator cage with knives. The prison guards fled. The other inmates on the tier were helpless, because they were locked in.
How does a man in handcuffs defend himself against two men with knives? He cannot.
They tell me that Cadillac put up a pretty good fight at first, then raised his arms in the air and gave his assassins a clear shot at his heart. There, he died, my training partner.
Aryan Brotherhood leader and assassin, Thomas Silverstein, then took the body of Cadillac by the legs and drug him from cell to cell, making a stop at each black inmate’s cell.
A year later, Silverstein stabs a prison guard to death.
The BBC calls Silverstein the “most dangerous man in America”. Silverstein counters with the claim that the prison system made him that way, that the conditions in a super-maximum security were so harsh and cruel, that he could not help himself but to kill, kill, kill, in order to survive.
The Boogey Man
Today, Silverstein is the Boogey Man of the prison system, the man who will never see the light of day again. He is locked away in a special prison cell with “no human contact” status inside USP Florence.
A Boogey Man is an official title given to select men, who are locked into a dungeon, never to see the day. The first Boogey Man that I had heard rumor of, while in federal prison, was Robert Stroud, otherwise known as the “Birdman of Alcatraz”.
I learned of the boogey man legacy from the lips of “Red” Haynes, the successive boogey man after Stroud died in Springfield. Each man had killed a prison guard. Since there was no death penalty, prison officials take vengeance by forcing them to live out their lives in a living hell… some bitter medicine I tasted for myself.
The story of Red Hayes, as I told it years ago, was here was a man, one of the first prisoner subject placed on the experimental drug know as Valium. After being released from prison without the medication, Hayes suffered a “white out”. From there on, he could not remember what heinous crimes he might have committed.
The men who never saw the light of day again
Hiller “Red” Hayes sat in front of my cell in the Control Unit and told me what he remembered of his life. He had been in solitary confinement for thirteen straight years. He remembered no family life. He had no family or friends, and everybody in the world had forgotten that he existed.
His back was full of red, raw circular bedsores, festering with the stench of death. When he raked his sandpaper-rough hands over the stubs of reddish gray hair, it would crackle. He was electro-static. His body was so full of electricity. He could probably electrocute a person with a handshake. I was amazed to see sparks fly from my fingertips. And, a handshake could become a static electric shocking experience.
As for Red Hayes, they say he killed a prison guard, so they put him away for his natural life. As he talked to me and told his story, he stared out into a distant dimension. Here, I was looking at a man who would die in solitary confinement within the year, a man with no family or friends, a man nobody in the world knew about.
The Most Desperate Man Who have ever lived
After Red Hayes died, the Boogey Man passed on to Gary Trapnell. His adventurous autobiography outlives the Fox himself, author of the “Fox is Crazy, Too”. He was the guy who hijacking an airliner, demanded $300,000 ransom, and the release of Angela Davis, the Black Panther Amazon Queen of the Revolution. But the exit of his life was more adventurous than all the former crimes combined in his autobiography.
I was there to see his last chapters in real life… actually on the prison yard when a hijacked helicopter came into the prison to snatch Trapnell away. I witnessed one of the most daring escape attempts in history, a crime that would condemn Trapnell to “no human contact”, never to see the light of day again.
As we sat on the prison yard, a comrade nudged me and pointed out a helicopter coming into compound, flying erratic like something amiss. It was an attempted escaped by hijacked helicopter. Gary Trapnell and his buddy were making a desperate bid for freedom.
I found the unfolding scene amusing and entertaining. But my partner thought not, so he suggested that we get off the prison yard before the shooting started. This was one drama that was a must see for me, even if bullets flew everywhere. I enjoyed deadly excitement. They don’t make movies like this in the free world.
This is the most excitement I have had all day. Why not watch?
I watched the hijacked helicopter come toward the back tower like a dive-bomber, with the cockpit rocking from side to side. The tower guard never saw it headed his way. In the meantime, there was a drama unfolding inside the cockpit, between the female hijacker and the pilot.
Here was a woman flattered with words of love from a legend adventurer. She literally worshipped Trapnell. He instructed her to charter a helicopter and then hijack the pilot, fly the chopper into the prison compound, and pluck him and his buddy up off the yard.
As the helicopter reeled and rocked in the air, the two escapees made a mad dash across the compound, their yellow windbreakers flapping in the wind. Inside the cockpit, the pilot seized the woman’s gun after a long tussle. As he steered with one hand and held the gun on the woman in the rear seat with the other.
The female hijack makes this retarded statement: “Oh, that’s okay. I got another one in my purse.” When she reached for the second handgun, the pilot blew her brains out of the back window and safely landed the chopper.
From that day on, Gary Trapnell would never see the light of day again. But his desperate attempts at escape did not end there. A year after the hijacked helicopter escape attempt, the daughter of the woman turns around and hijacks an airliner herself and demanded Gary Trapnell’s release. She had the hijack airliner fly to the city near the prison. This buried Trapnell.
The Most Dangerous Man in America
The current Boogey Man is Thomas Silverstein, hence the legacy lives on.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Gun Law Ruling: New Wild West & Criminal Thinking
By Eddie Griffin
Friday, June 27, 2008
Now I am the one disappointed with a Supreme Court decision. While John McCain hey and haw over the Court’s decision to give the accused terrorist the right to defend themselves, I bemoan the lifting of gun bans, giving everybody the right to shoot it out. If you are a black, male, ex-offender, you are just at the mercy of handgun owners, who have the instant power to make a life-and-death decision of the spot.
Eddie Griffin could care less. Who has guns? How many guns they have? I could care less as long as they keep them pointed the other way. I don’t take to kindly to being shot at. And, Texas has been notorious for its gun-tooting shootouts and drive by shootings. It is the birthplace of the Wild West. The Supreme Court’s decision simply re-opened the days of men carrying six-shooters on their sides… that is, all except black men.
A black man with a gun is going to go to jail, permit or no permit. GO TO JAIL: DO NOT PASS GO. Jail first, ask questions later. Wherein, everybody else is given the benefit of the law.
So, the public shooting gallery is opened to everyone, except black men. As a black ex-con, I do not even have the right to a gun to defend my home. I am at the mercy of the armed burglar.
But I do have a right to defend my life, which is why I learned how to kick a gun out of anybody’s hand, except a “trained officer”.
Now let’s look at the need to “bear arms”.
No middle-American family wants their child to find the family’s handgun. But Columbine taught us something. Virginia Tech taught us something. And, we are still learning the terrible truth about gun violence. We can go on and on about these unexpected and unintended consequences of gun possession.
But there is this fretful public argument about “protecting ourselves against criminals”. Are you kidding me? You have need of being protected from yourselves. America doesn’t even understand the workings of “the criminal mind”.
The criminal is not a criminal if he does not commit a crime. This is the way the criminal mind thinks. To him, a gun is nothing more than a trophy, with no criminal intent behind it, until the trigger itch his finger. And, every gun owner seems to have that same itch, that desire to use it, and that secret desire to kill somebody with it.
I never saw a gun that I did not like and did not use in the commission of a crime. Just having it begged for its use, otherwise, no gun, no crime… not even the thought.
Now comes the “criminal intent” part, where people reason: He knew within his own heart, before he did it, that he was going to commit a crime … premeditated and deliberate.
But gun crimes follow the Law of Spontaneity. Opportunity opens the door to crime.
A gun gives a man an advantage over his surroundings and the people in it. Any or everybody can become a target. (Some criminal minds look at targets as a shoot gallery) It just depends on the circumstances as to when a criminal will strike.
As long as a potential “criminal” don’t jump at the opportunity, no crime will occur. So, a potential criminal goes about his business as a law-abiding citizen, until “that” opportunity comes along.
I agree: Hand guns for protection of home and family is a protected Second Amendment right that should be afforded to all citizens, barring ex-offenders and mentally unstable. Gun safety is a head-of-household responsibility. (In other words, big brother doesn’t shoot little brother).
The gun must remain in the possession of the family as an heirloom and never be re-sold. All guns should be traceable to its purchasing source, and the owner held responsible.
The only way a black ex-con is going to get a gun to use in the commission of another crime is by stealing it from a burglarized house, or from gun dealers moonlighting from the trunk of their cars. (Been there, done that, and got the t-shirt).
Criminal Mind Thinking
If you shoot me, I refuse to bleed, because I am too mean to die. I feel no pain, because I grew up in an abused family, half-hungry, crack-head mama, and an alcoholic daddy. You can’t kill me, because died already, a hundred times. I am my own worse nightmare that grew up to almost adulthood. I stop hurting inside a long time ago, when the tears dried up. You can’t kill me.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Now I am the one disappointed with a Supreme Court decision. While John McCain hey and haw over the Court’s decision to give the accused terrorist the right to defend themselves, I bemoan the lifting of gun bans, giving everybody the right to shoot it out. If you are a black, male, ex-offender, you are just at the mercy of handgun owners, who have the instant power to make a life-and-death decision of the spot.
Eddie Griffin could care less. Who has guns? How many guns they have? I could care less as long as they keep them pointed the other way. I don’t take to kindly to being shot at. And, Texas has been notorious for its gun-tooting shootouts and drive by shootings. It is the birthplace of the Wild West. The Supreme Court’s decision simply re-opened the days of men carrying six-shooters on their sides… that is, all except black men.
A black man with a gun is going to go to jail, permit or no permit. GO TO JAIL: DO NOT PASS GO. Jail first, ask questions later. Wherein, everybody else is given the benefit of the law.
So, the public shooting gallery is opened to everyone, except black men. As a black ex-con, I do not even have the right to a gun to defend my home. I am at the mercy of the armed burglar.
But I do have a right to defend my life, which is why I learned how to kick a gun out of anybody’s hand, except a “trained officer”.
Now let’s look at the need to “bear arms”.
No middle-American family wants their child to find the family’s handgun. But Columbine taught us something. Virginia Tech taught us something. And, we are still learning the terrible truth about gun violence. We can go on and on about these unexpected and unintended consequences of gun possession.
But there is this fretful public argument about “protecting ourselves against criminals”. Are you kidding me? You have need of being protected from yourselves. America doesn’t even understand the workings of “the criminal mind”.
The criminal is not a criminal if he does not commit a crime. This is the way the criminal mind thinks. To him, a gun is nothing more than a trophy, with no criminal intent behind it, until the trigger itch his finger. And, every gun owner seems to have that same itch, that desire to use it, and that secret desire to kill somebody with it.
I never saw a gun that I did not like and did not use in the commission of a crime. Just having it begged for its use, otherwise, no gun, no crime… not even the thought.
Now comes the “criminal intent” part, where people reason: He knew within his own heart, before he did it, that he was going to commit a crime … premeditated and deliberate.
But gun crimes follow the Law of Spontaneity. Opportunity opens the door to crime.
A gun gives a man an advantage over his surroundings and the people in it. Any or everybody can become a target. (Some criminal minds look at targets as a shoot gallery) It just depends on the circumstances as to when a criminal will strike.
As long as a potential “criminal” don’t jump at the opportunity, no crime will occur. So, a potential criminal goes about his business as a law-abiding citizen, until “that” opportunity comes along.
I agree: Hand guns for protection of home and family is a protected Second Amendment right that should be afforded to all citizens, barring ex-offenders and mentally unstable. Gun safety is a head-of-household responsibility. (In other words, big brother doesn’t shoot little brother).
The gun must remain in the possession of the family as an heirloom and never be re-sold. All guns should be traceable to its purchasing source, and the owner held responsible.
The only way a black ex-con is going to get a gun to use in the commission of another crime is by stealing it from a burglarized house, or from gun dealers moonlighting from the trunk of their cars. (Been there, done that, and got the t-shirt).
Criminal Mind Thinking
If you shoot me, I refuse to bleed, because I am too mean to die. I feel no pain, because I grew up in an abused family, half-hungry, crack-head mama, and an alcoholic daddy. You can’t kill me, because died already, a hundred times. I am my own worse nightmare that grew up to almost adulthood. I stop hurting inside a long time ago, when the tears dried up. You can’t kill me.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
To Prison & Back
By Eddie Griffin
Thursday, June 26, 2008
How did you survive in prison? And, how were you able to transition back into society?
These questions are asked of me often. And, I always give this one-word response: Faith. But I realize the answer is too shallow and simplistic to satisfy to the inquirer what has only a superficial understanding of the meaning of Faith.
What does Faith look like in action? I guess that is the question.
Recently, Commissioner Roy Brooks asked that I speak to a group of at-risk youth in a special program. We agreed that this was part of a front-end strategy to prevent students from falling into the prison system.
My attitude to at-risk youngsters with great potential is this: If you are going to go to prison, then you must go through me first, because I’ve been there. In fact, I’ve been to the “end of the line of the end of the line” in a super-maximum security prison.
It was good to see the youngsters on the front side of prison bars, than having to counsel them on how to survive behind bars. It is an opportunity to work the preventative side of the criminal justice equation.
Teach, without mercy, is my motto. So, I gave the kids a full dose of my adventures and misadventures, realizing shock value is a better teacher for at-risk kids.
When a man goes to prison, he is socialized into a culture completely different than free world society. His transition leads to a form of institutionalization. Returning to society means going through a re-socialization process. An ex-offender must become re-socialized to a society sometimes in the distant future. So, he suffers “future shock” in the temporal sense, and become “humanized” again.
A man is what he feeds his mind on while in prison. Those who fed on anger, hate, revenge murder, and materialistic aspirations, were recycled as DEFECTIVE, a menace to society.
Those who used their time to educate themselves and keep abreast of world events were more apt to readjust to society.
We had an educational program in prison that worked. But it was a program disapproved by government “educators”. Liberation education always runs against the grain.
To the At-Risk Youth, I shared what life was really like living in a violent maximum security. From a high school honor student, I went to the “end of the line” of the end of the line, where society puts a man away and never expect or intend for him to come back.
“Eddie Griffin did twelve calendars,” I told the students. What does that mean? That means that I did 12 years of “hard time”.
What is hard time?
When a man steps into a prison cage, he is walking on eggshells. It feels like walking on “holy ground”. Here, men kill men, at the drop of sweat bead, on an average of one-per-month.
Make them see the Blood on the Floor
The sight of blood-splattering is sickening. But it is something a man must comes to terms with, if he is to mentally survive maximum security.
What does that mean relative to society? It simply means that a man is de-sensitized and de-conditioned to violence. A man learns to snort violence like a lion sniffing the grounds of the jungle. A man's nose can snort out fear like a shark senses blood in the water. These are extra-senses I never had use for in society. Neither had I need for a sixth sense of danger. (Where did that come from?)
How does a man forget Murder, in the First Degree?
A man sits down in the mess hall to eat and gets his throat cut from behind, from ear-to-ear. [Students gasp!]
If they gasp at this then surely they cannot handle the rest of a myriad of untold stories, like this: A man being stabbed in the shower by three men. He slips and slides in his own blood as he tries to fight off his assassins. As he slinks down into his own blood, he is crying bitter tears.
Only one man I know of who was stabbed to death in prison without shedding a tear or crying out for help. His name was Cadillac.
And, the screaming of Bro. Herman who was repeatedly stabbed in the chest, screaming to the top of his lungs: “Pleeease! Somebody help me. Somebody, Pleeease, Lord, pleeeeze. Wait a minute, wait a minute, please don’t kill me Pig”. His best friend was named Pig, what would you expect? Dumbfounding! Over a cup of coffee, Pig killed Bro. Herman who was only three days from going home.
It hurt in a personal way. But there were the survivors, like the guy nicknamed Money being cut open “like a can of beans”, folding the separated layers of his torso together and walking to the prison infirmary without losing a drop of blood.
How about the inmate sitting in the prison barber’s chair, getting stabbed in the jugular vein with a pair of scissors? I had never heard of such a vein, and knew nothing of it, except that after the stabbing blood could skeet up to the ceiling.
Then, there were the two gladiators who charged into each like jousting knights, both with knives, like locomotors with full steam ahead, two rams on a collision course. Pete Man dropped to the prison floor like a sack of flour, stabbed in the temple. It was a fair fight with both men going at each other. (Society doesn’t see it that way).
Instead of telling any one of these stories, I decided to tell these at-risk youth about “Gus”. I wanted to point out some important lesson.
Now here was a guy named Gus whom I was tutored in prison. During one tutoring session, Gus took the occasion to call two other inmates the B-word… loud and nasty. Gus put me in such a predicament and had no regard for his own good.
Lesson Number One: Choose your friends carefully. My best friend in prison was “Hondo”. His name meant “War” in Swahili, and he was a man with a Napoleon complex. He loved to fight and I was a man of peace. Nevertheless, he was my best friend in prison. And, his fight was my fight by default (my fault for my own choice of association).
At any rate, the authorities considered all of us in super-maximum security as “dangerous”. Every man respected the next man, if he earned the right of respect. And, this code is punishable by the death of a thousand cuts for a man who disrespects another man. A man is required to defend his own honor by himself. Gus violated the rule by calling other men in prison the B-word. This is tantamount to what we call: “asking for it”.
But in a maximum security prison, before one man can kill another man, he must get permission. A man just does not up and kill his advisory out of the blood like a psycho. He is subject to the Eye-for-Eye Rule: Live by the sword, Die by the sword. This was Pig’s fate.
The two men verbally assailed by my friend and comrade Gus came by my cell to ask permission to kill him. They told me their plan. I had nothing to say. Therefore, I kept my mouth closed.
Lesson Number Two: When you are in a predicament and don’t know what to say, don’t say anything.
On the night of the planned assassination, as all the inmates gather around the television on the cellblock tier, I assumed a position directly behind Gus’ chair. And behind me, was my backup, who later turned coward and fled.
I was taken by surprise when a hand with a knife in it reached over my shoulder. The blade smacked Gus in the chest, just above the heart. Wounded, Gus leaped from his chair right into the waiting arms of the other assailant. The second man plugged him in the gut, and Gas stumbled backwards.
There, I found myself standing between two would-be assassins and poor Gus slumped against the wall. "What would you do?" I demanded an answer of the students.
One girl replied, "Run."
In real life, however, the thought never entered my mind. For me, it was all about a silent prayer, “Lord save me”, and being frozen stiff in one spot.
Lesson Number Three and Lesson Number Four: Always pray in the time of distress, and wait on the Lord. He will direct your steps.
Sure, I knew how to kick a knife or a gun out of a person’s hand in the blink of an eye. But as long as we were locked eyeball to eyeball, I was compelled not even to flinch a muscle. Let them make the first move. Nothing happened. The would-be assassins back off and allowed me to carry Gus to the infirmary on my shoulder.
Fear of something that has not yet happened is what causes people to react to the fears of their minds, before the basis of the fear is realized. I waited and waited for the would-be assassins to make their next move. They never did. Instead, they backed down.
The Correct Answer
Therefore, the correct answer to the question about what to do, my advice to the youth: Do nothing because of fear. Deal only with what you see, not what you suppose. Stand your ground until the danger is certain. Otherwise, stand on Faith.
Socialization / Re-socialization
What I was describing to these at-risk youth was the initial socialization process into prison society. The second part would be re-socialization after coming out.
DE-HUMANIZATION: Making less than human. INSTITUTIONALIZATION: Becoming a brick in the wall.
Another part of the socialization process into prison is that of becoming more and more institutionalized and the de-humanizing effects "sensory and social deprivation”, where the natural five sensory organs misfire impulses to the brain, and the human organism sprouts an animalistic "sixth sense" which we call the sense of danger.
Sensory deprivation is fully achieved when a man is completely cut off from the electro-magnetic field of the earth. This comes about through prolonged solitary confinement inside in steel-concrete cubical... "The Mausoleum Effect".
In this the realm of psycho-physiological reality, men hallucinate and have “white flashes”. (WHITE FLASHES: Akin to electrical impulses to the brain that causes the eyes to perceive rapid blinking white-outs)
Then there is the ionization effect upon the brain that causes the whole body to become electro-static.
An Experience: I once reached for a plastic chair in prison and bright orange sparks leaped from my fingertips like lighting. It shocked the hell out of me, like 50,000 volts. Sometimes when I touch metal, I get the same shocking sensation, even 25 years later. It all depends on the weather and the ions in the air. As for the "white flashes", they still come, but for shorter durations.
Re-Integration into Society
The physiological reintegration is one thing. But what happens inside a man’s mind while in prison will determine his capability of coming back into society. And, every man’s mind is different. While in prison, some men feed on their anger, hate, and rage... which once was also my daily mental diet. But reading the Bible changed my mindset.
The transformation of Eddie Griffin was more a spiritual experience and not necessarily broken by harsh treatment and torture. My eyes glazed over with frost, in a refrigerated strip cell… frozen tears… staring out into a distant dimension at a ship frozen on the open sea. I died, I thought, and everything else was just a dream.
Lesson Number Five: The government doesn’t care if you live or die when you go to prison.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
How did you survive in prison? And, how were you able to transition back into society?
These questions are asked of me often. And, I always give this one-word response: Faith. But I realize the answer is too shallow and simplistic to satisfy to the inquirer what has only a superficial understanding of the meaning of Faith.
What does Faith look like in action? I guess that is the question.
Recently, Commissioner Roy Brooks asked that I speak to a group of at-risk youth in a special program. We agreed that this was part of a front-end strategy to prevent students from falling into the prison system.
My attitude to at-risk youngsters with great potential is this: If you are going to go to prison, then you must go through me first, because I’ve been there. In fact, I’ve been to the “end of the line of the end of the line” in a super-maximum security prison.
It was good to see the youngsters on the front side of prison bars, than having to counsel them on how to survive behind bars. It is an opportunity to work the preventative side of the criminal justice equation.
Teach, without mercy, is my motto. So, I gave the kids a full dose of my adventures and misadventures, realizing shock value is a better teacher for at-risk kids.
When a man goes to prison, he is socialized into a culture completely different than free world society. His transition leads to a form of institutionalization. Returning to society means going through a re-socialization process. An ex-offender must become re-socialized to a society sometimes in the distant future. So, he suffers “future shock” in the temporal sense, and become “humanized” again.
A man is what he feeds his mind on while in prison. Those who fed on anger, hate, revenge murder, and materialistic aspirations, were recycled as DEFECTIVE, a menace to society.
Those who used their time to educate themselves and keep abreast of world events were more apt to readjust to society.
We had an educational program in prison that worked. But it was a program disapproved by government “educators”. Liberation education always runs against the grain.
To the At-Risk Youth, I shared what life was really like living in a violent maximum security. From a high school honor student, I went to the “end of the line” of the end of the line, where society puts a man away and never expect or intend for him to come back.
“Eddie Griffin did twelve calendars,” I told the students. What does that mean? That means that I did 12 years of “hard time”.
What is hard time?
When a man steps into a prison cage, he is walking on eggshells. It feels like walking on “holy ground”. Here, men kill men, at the drop of sweat bead, on an average of one-per-month.
Make them see the Blood on the Floor
The sight of blood-splattering is sickening. But it is something a man must comes to terms with, if he is to mentally survive maximum security.
What does that mean relative to society? It simply means that a man is de-sensitized and de-conditioned to violence. A man learns to snort violence like a lion sniffing the grounds of the jungle. A man's nose can snort out fear like a shark senses blood in the water. These are extra-senses I never had use for in society. Neither had I need for a sixth sense of danger. (Where did that come from?)
How does a man forget Murder, in the First Degree?
A man sits down in the mess hall to eat and gets his throat cut from behind, from ear-to-ear. [Students gasp!]
If they gasp at this then surely they cannot handle the rest of a myriad of untold stories, like this: A man being stabbed in the shower by three men. He slips and slides in his own blood as he tries to fight off his assassins. As he slinks down into his own blood, he is crying bitter tears.
Only one man I know of who was stabbed to death in prison without shedding a tear or crying out for help. His name was Cadillac.
And, the screaming of Bro. Herman who was repeatedly stabbed in the chest, screaming to the top of his lungs: “Pleeease! Somebody help me. Somebody, Pleeease, Lord, pleeeeze. Wait a minute, wait a minute, please don’t kill me Pig”. His best friend was named Pig, what would you expect? Dumbfounding! Over a cup of coffee, Pig killed Bro. Herman who was only three days from going home.
It hurt in a personal way. But there were the survivors, like the guy nicknamed Money being cut open “like a can of beans”, folding the separated layers of his torso together and walking to the prison infirmary without losing a drop of blood.
How about the inmate sitting in the prison barber’s chair, getting stabbed in the jugular vein with a pair of scissors? I had never heard of such a vein, and knew nothing of it, except that after the stabbing blood could skeet up to the ceiling.
Then, there were the two gladiators who charged into each like jousting knights, both with knives, like locomotors with full steam ahead, two rams on a collision course. Pete Man dropped to the prison floor like a sack of flour, stabbed in the temple. It was a fair fight with both men going at each other. (Society doesn’t see it that way).
Instead of telling any one of these stories, I decided to tell these at-risk youth about “Gus”. I wanted to point out some important lesson.
Now here was a guy named Gus whom I was tutored in prison. During one tutoring session, Gus took the occasion to call two other inmates the B-word… loud and nasty. Gus put me in such a predicament and had no regard for his own good.
Lesson Number One: Choose your friends carefully. My best friend in prison was “Hondo”. His name meant “War” in Swahili, and he was a man with a Napoleon complex. He loved to fight and I was a man of peace. Nevertheless, he was my best friend in prison. And, his fight was my fight by default (my fault for my own choice of association).
At any rate, the authorities considered all of us in super-maximum security as “dangerous”. Every man respected the next man, if he earned the right of respect. And, this code is punishable by the death of a thousand cuts for a man who disrespects another man. A man is required to defend his own honor by himself. Gus violated the rule by calling other men in prison the B-word. This is tantamount to what we call: “asking for it”.
But in a maximum security prison, before one man can kill another man, he must get permission. A man just does not up and kill his advisory out of the blood like a psycho. He is subject to the Eye-for-Eye Rule: Live by the sword, Die by the sword. This was Pig’s fate.
The two men verbally assailed by my friend and comrade Gus came by my cell to ask permission to kill him. They told me their plan. I had nothing to say. Therefore, I kept my mouth closed.
Lesson Number Two: When you are in a predicament and don’t know what to say, don’t say anything.
On the night of the planned assassination, as all the inmates gather around the television on the cellblock tier, I assumed a position directly behind Gus’ chair. And behind me, was my backup, who later turned coward and fled.
I was taken by surprise when a hand with a knife in it reached over my shoulder. The blade smacked Gus in the chest, just above the heart. Wounded, Gus leaped from his chair right into the waiting arms of the other assailant. The second man plugged him in the gut, and Gas stumbled backwards.
There, I found myself standing between two would-be assassins and poor Gus slumped against the wall. "What would you do?" I demanded an answer of the students.
One girl replied, "Run."
In real life, however, the thought never entered my mind. For me, it was all about a silent prayer, “Lord save me”, and being frozen stiff in one spot.
Lesson Number Three and Lesson Number Four: Always pray in the time of distress, and wait on the Lord. He will direct your steps.
Sure, I knew how to kick a knife or a gun out of a person’s hand in the blink of an eye. But as long as we were locked eyeball to eyeball, I was compelled not even to flinch a muscle. Let them make the first move. Nothing happened. The would-be assassins back off and allowed me to carry Gus to the infirmary on my shoulder.
Fear of something that has not yet happened is what causes people to react to the fears of their minds, before the basis of the fear is realized. I waited and waited for the would-be assassins to make their next move. They never did. Instead, they backed down.
The Correct Answer
Therefore, the correct answer to the question about what to do, my advice to the youth: Do nothing because of fear. Deal only with what you see, not what you suppose. Stand your ground until the danger is certain. Otherwise, stand on Faith.
Socialization / Re-socialization
What I was describing to these at-risk youth was the initial socialization process into prison society. The second part would be re-socialization after coming out.
DE-HUMANIZATION: Making less than human. INSTITUTIONALIZATION: Becoming a brick in the wall.
Another part of the socialization process into prison is that of becoming more and more institutionalized and the de-humanizing effects "sensory and social deprivation”, where the natural five sensory organs misfire impulses to the brain, and the human organism sprouts an animalistic "sixth sense" which we call the sense of danger.
Sensory deprivation is fully achieved when a man is completely cut off from the electro-magnetic field of the earth. This comes about through prolonged solitary confinement inside in steel-concrete cubical... "The Mausoleum Effect".
In this the realm of psycho-physiological reality, men hallucinate and have “white flashes”. (WHITE FLASHES: Akin to electrical impulses to the brain that causes the eyes to perceive rapid blinking white-outs)
Then there is the ionization effect upon the brain that causes the whole body to become electro-static.
An Experience: I once reached for a plastic chair in prison and bright orange sparks leaped from my fingertips like lighting. It shocked the hell out of me, like 50,000 volts. Sometimes when I touch metal, I get the same shocking sensation, even 25 years later. It all depends on the weather and the ions in the air. As for the "white flashes", they still come, but for shorter durations.
Re-Integration into Society
The physiological reintegration is one thing. But what happens inside a man’s mind while in prison will determine his capability of coming back into society. And, every man’s mind is different. While in prison, some men feed on their anger, hate, and rage... which once was also my daily mental diet. But reading the Bible changed my mindset.
The transformation of Eddie Griffin was more a spiritual experience and not necessarily broken by harsh treatment and torture. My eyes glazed over with frost, in a refrigerated strip cell… frozen tears… staring out into a distant dimension at a ship frozen on the open sea. I died, I thought, and everything else was just a dream.
Lesson Number Five: The government doesn’t care if you live or die when you go to prison.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Pavlovian Response to Imus
Eddie Griffin
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
So, he did it again. Is anybody really surprised at radio shock jock Imus? I mean, just when we thought his goose was cooked with calling the Rutgers basketball girls “nappy-headed ‘hoes”, here he goes again, with a takeoff on Dallas Cowboy cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones.
When discussing the football player’s arrest record, Imus asked: “What color is he?” After sports announcer Warner Wolf answered that Jones was “African-American,” Imus responded: “There you go. Now we know.”
Now we know what? What does this abstract statement suppose to insinuate? In any case, it doesn’t mean what we all think it means, let Imus tell it. It’s all just a misunderstanding.
Is Imus so clueless to think that many African-Americans were not going to be outraged at the suggestion that blacks are naturally more criminal-oriented than anybody else?
On the other hand, an Imus supporter defends him by saying stuff like, “Statistics don’t lie.”
How in the world did we get so far out in left field? And, do we really need this dialogue at this time? We wouldn’t even be having this conversation had Imus used more discretion with his words. But then, there are some who claim that he can’t help it, that this color obsession thing is embedded in his heart.
Who let the dogs out?
Remember how pitiful Imus looked and acted when he was called onto the carpet about his “nappy-headed ‘hoes” comment? Remember all the millions of his fans rallying to his support to get him back on the air. Somewhere in the forgive-and-forget crowd was Al Sharpton.
So, who let the dogs out? I guess you can say that Sharpton had a large part to do with it. Now, in reaction to Imus latest flap, Sharpton was the first outraged. Why? Like the frozen snake a man picked up and tried to warm under his shirt, Sharpton knew Imus was a snake when he picked him up. So, it should have been no surprise to see him turn around and bite somebody else.
But Imus II is not like Imus I. Imus II is more seasoned for racial controversy, more wily and coy. He insinuates without actually saying. This gives him a defensible cover to hide behind the claim of a “misunderstanding”. Where Imus I was naïve and susceptible to public criticism, Imus II has his own cadre of friends, listeners, supporters, sponsors, and a radio station that allows him leeway to say what he wishes. (Damn the rest of the world!)
After a mass lobbying campaign was successful in putting the shock jock back on the air, advertisers flocked backed to him. And in the background, a brewing counter-demonstration from listeners showed that a boycott threat against advertiser could be waged on both sides. Alas, by popular demand, Imus came back, not as Imus I but as Imus II.
It would be futile and redundant to campaign to get him off the air again. The more Imus pushes our button, the more we react like Pavlov’s dogs, barking back at insults and slurs. Sooner or later, with all our complaining, we will ultimately look like the crazy ones.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
So, he did it again. Is anybody really surprised at radio shock jock Imus? I mean, just when we thought his goose was cooked with calling the Rutgers basketball girls “nappy-headed ‘hoes”, here he goes again, with a takeoff on Dallas Cowboy cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones.
When discussing the football player’s arrest record, Imus asked: “What color is he?” After sports announcer Warner Wolf answered that Jones was “African-American,” Imus responded: “There you go. Now we know.”
Now we know what? What does this abstract statement suppose to insinuate? In any case, it doesn’t mean what we all think it means, let Imus tell it. It’s all just a misunderstanding.
Is Imus so clueless to think that many African-Americans were not going to be outraged at the suggestion that blacks are naturally more criminal-oriented than anybody else?
On the other hand, an Imus supporter defends him by saying stuff like, “Statistics don’t lie.”
How in the world did we get so far out in left field? And, do we really need this dialogue at this time? We wouldn’t even be having this conversation had Imus used more discretion with his words. But then, there are some who claim that he can’t help it, that this color obsession thing is embedded in his heart.
Who let the dogs out?
Remember how pitiful Imus looked and acted when he was called onto the carpet about his “nappy-headed ‘hoes” comment? Remember all the millions of his fans rallying to his support to get him back on the air. Somewhere in the forgive-and-forget crowd was Al Sharpton.
So, who let the dogs out? I guess you can say that Sharpton had a large part to do with it. Now, in reaction to Imus latest flap, Sharpton was the first outraged. Why? Like the frozen snake a man picked up and tried to warm under his shirt, Sharpton knew Imus was a snake when he picked him up. So, it should have been no surprise to see him turn around and bite somebody else.
But Imus II is not like Imus I. Imus II is more seasoned for racial controversy, more wily and coy. He insinuates without actually saying. This gives him a defensible cover to hide behind the claim of a “misunderstanding”. Where Imus I was naïve and susceptible to public criticism, Imus II has his own cadre of friends, listeners, supporters, sponsors, and a radio station that allows him leeway to say what he wishes. (Damn the rest of the world!)
After a mass lobbying campaign was successful in putting the shock jock back on the air, advertisers flocked backed to him. And in the background, a brewing counter-demonstration from listeners showed that a boycott threat against advertiser could be waged on both sides. Alas, by popular demand, Imus came back, not as Imus I but as Imus II.
It would be futile and redundant to campaign to get him off the air again. The more Imus pushes our button, the more we react like Pavlov’s dogs, barking back at insults and slurs. Sooner or later, with all our complaining, we will ultimately look like the crazy ones.
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