The theme for our survival as humans is PERFECT UNION.
We are living in an age of transparency. No longer can people easily hide who they are, what their true values are, and what groups they are agents of.
This is the age of Truth.
To survive the inevitable conflict that truth brings we need compassion and we need an all embracing agape that forbids closing ranks against those who don’t share our principles and values.
With the public lynching of Sandra Massey now in the public eye, I thought it would be a good time to share a discussion I had with Rev. Dr. Thomas Jones, an elder I am blessed to build with as much as his golfing schedule allows.
Jones was one of the first African American correctional officers in North Carolina before becoming a minister. As someone who was wrongfully caged in North Carolina prisons at sixteen years old, I was literally raised by the state. I know the psychology of the plantation intimately.
While I have, and will continue to challenge the abuse of power and law my methods were primitive when I was a child. Even as a child, it didn’t take long for me to see that the officers who treated us like animals were themselves being abused by the inhumanity of the prison industry. They too were reduced to things.
It’s no secret that the southern prison industry grew out of the form of slavery practiced on plantations and although the name had changed the institution still remained the same.
The main characteristic that enabled the plantation to be a successful method for reducing humans to profitable automatons was the ability of the owners and their shareholders to keep all the participants stratified by fear, the illusion of power, and resentment.
As we watch images of police officers kîlling people in cold blood, even the ones who call on them, remember that there are many who go above and beyond their job description to protect the general public in ways we are often all unaware of.
Keep in mind also that the fear and stories of abuse by law enforcement told by people who society has little value for until election time is usually valid. Its very simple, all good people must stand together.
I hope everyone who listens to the conversation between Rev. Dr. Jones and myself will see that even when life and social engineering has placed us in circumstances designed to keep us at odds, we have the power to let our common humanity remain our North Star to guide us through the complexity of natural conflict.
We need to always support those who are willing to life coach us by narrating their lives, especially when it’s our elders. This is how we learn, and how we create fertile spaces to grow and evolve in.
It’s torturous to spend even one day convicted of a crime you are actually innocent of and it’s not easy to interact with those who get paid to treat you as if you are guilty.
The most difficult struggle prison has given me is to be raised to view your community as your extended community and, then, to be transported to prison and live a life where your community is the place you are confined to and the people you are confined with and by.
People like Rev. Dr. Thomas are the rivers of Babylon that have nourished my growth.
Those of you who genuinely want to heal this world are called to reach out and enter into relation with those in exile.
1 Love Universal,
Daniel