Feel ME
FIND OUT WHO WE ARE
Storytelling with Chesney Snow and Rebecca Gerrard
INSIDE RIKERS ISLAND We are not nameless faces at the bottom of a well, or the images in the media painting us as inhuman criminals. We are cousins, brothers, fathers, sons, grandsons, uncles, boyfriends, nephews, chefs, artists, mechanics, and more…..
Innocence devoured like a chicken spot snack box’ -Immortal
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Technique
Over the course of 5 days. Several young men ages 18 to 20 who had been recently incarcerated in the infamous Rikers Island correctional facility participated in a storytelling lab to explore their stories. These are their collected words offering a glimpse into their world.
“Labeled a black man without anyone trying to find out who we are”
HIDDEN SOUNDS IN HER VOICE - - - - - X A Son
The sound of my mom being hurt emotionally destroys me the core because she is the only person who has been in my corner through good and bad times. No matter how disrespectful I was, she never turned her back on me. I always wanted to express to her that I could never be more grateful to her for that. Just me knowing that my actions hurt my mother was destroying me so I always made an effort to show her different. I am trying, you feel me. Without her in my life I wouldn’t be the man I am today.
When I was born, I don’t remember that but my earliest memories are going to daycare. My Mom would pick me up and we would go by a big ass park, central park type shit, mad big with loads of green trees, I wasn’t paying attention to anyone else, just me and my mom and the ice -cream shop, I would ask her every day for ice cream, sometimes-feel me- if I asked her on the right day, in the right moment, she would say yes. I’m the oldest, nobody before me, just me and then my siblings, I remember the days they were born. We have a love/hate relationship, sometimes they mad annoying and I get mad upset, but I’m the oldest, I can’t get mad, they mad young. My Mom gets stressed out for me, my grandmother told me that my mom has to go to the hospital but she won’t tell me, the stress is starting to make her ill, me being in here makes her ill, I don’t want to worry her to death, me being in here is killing her. I don't even want to think about losing my mom. She always used to tell me that jail is bad, the first time I came in here she wouldn’t pick up my calls, if this happens again she will walk away, she wants to talk to me but she wants to teach me a lesson. She knows I am trying to change… I feel angry, I don’t know why, feel me, I have bad tempers, Always been an angry ass kid. My Mom would never judge me, she tells me to chill, keep calm. When they came to arrest me I wanted to punch them,...they arrested me in front of my mom. I’m getting older, Im 18, I’m trying to chill, what is arguing and screaming going to change? If I could have anything it wouldn’t be material; material things can’t buy happiness, I would be able to make me and my mum forget all the bad things I have done, she forgives me but I want us both to be able to forget. I’ve got a caring ass heart, I’m the oldest, I’m loyal, if you’re my friend I’ll ride with you, if my man getting into a problem I’m not going to leave him feel me. But the cost of my loyalty is conflict, sometimes it seems that I am more loyal to others but family is first, I’m a protector, a guardian, my little brothers, my Mom, I don’t play with them. I’m trying to be chill but I’m loyal to the wrong people and that’s what brings conflict into my home.
I can handle myself, some folks pick on weak and innocent people, but when I’m in here I can’t protect my home. I don’t care about being in here, I did what I did, until I hear my Mom, that’s what’s killing me. I’m trying to find a balance, I need to know when to chill, My Mom wants me to cut these people out, she knows if I don’t that she will lose me, but we are all in here. If anything happens again she will walk away. She wants to talk to me but she wants to teach me a lesson. My Mom knows the true me, she’s been around the good and the bad, and everything between. Everyone says we look alike, difference is she wears glasses. She is like female version of me. Mom is mad tiny to me now, and I’m short so we’re both there like I’m short and you’re short… my Dad is mad tall, I didn’t get his height! But I don’t know him. She wants me to graduate. I want to graduate, I want to be a pilot, I know i’ll need to learn algebra, engineering, I’ll need to know how to fix things but I’m not a school person. Highschool is just a waste of time, it’s just the same repetitive stuff from middle school, they just switch up the words and think we won’t notice, but we’re not stupid. You can learn anything you need from tv, you tube, you can learn how to tie your shoelaces, how to cook. I like watching documentaries, the smithsonian channel.
You wanna hear my ideas about education? It’s all fucked up! It’s all a plot to get money - yeah you go free til you’re 18 and they say they teach you the basics but when you apply for a job with a specific skill you have to pay for night classes and tests, you even have to pay for the MTA test, everything is about money, they don’t give a fuck about you, they just worried about their pockets. I would get rid of highschool and swap it for college - have classes that you want to learn in like if you want to be a doctor or a lawyer, you spend 4 years doing that instead of highschool, teach kids things that they need in life, right now school don’t teach us shit about what we need in life. I have to do high school so that I can go to college and learn what I actually want to learn. When I’m outta here I’m moving to Ohio - I want to wake up and see deer in my back garden. I’m done with all this city shit.
CHANGING EDUCATION ‘The current education system was designed and conceived for a different age’
-Ken Robinson ‘Changing Education Paradigms’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
‘Established in 1879 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the school was founded by Richard Henry Pratt, a US Army Officer who had served in the Indian Wars and believed that his experiences with the Native peoples he had formerly captured and imprisoned equipped him to educate them[...]The ideology of the Carlisle School is alive and well in contemporary urban school policies. These include zero tolerance and lockdown procedures. A student in a school I recently visited described the innocuous term ‘school safety’ as a “nice-sounding codeword for treating you like you’re in jail or something.’
- Christopher Emdin, ‘For White Folks Who Teach In The Hood’
MY TRUE LOVE - - - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- - - X A SOULMATE
Three summers ago I lived in Houston, Texas, I had some businesses in Atlanta.
Georgia at that time. I was talking to a girl on facebook, I didn’t know that much about her but when we talked I was happy, I smiled. So I was in a mall in Atlanta in a Zara clothes store and somebody grabs me from behind, I turned around and it was the girl I was talking to. I instantly felt a connection, the first thing I did was hugged her and that when I knew I was in love. She was dressed in a red dress and had a beautiful scent to her. Now we are happily together and plan on getting married once I get out. The day I get out I'm going to propose to her. If I get deported I lose my girl, the love of my life, I lose my freedom, I will go back to a country that isn’t home, my life will be taken away. I was 14 when I came here. My Mom was here first, I came to join her two years after my dad died. I had nothing left in Romania. I came here for the American Dream, to have a better life, In Ireland we were called black, we always got kicked out of houses, always treated like a lower class.
Roma people move to a country and we ruin everything, we steal, we never want to make, we just want fast money, but we have been through a lot, I want you to look up Roma people and see what we have been through. We have moved around so much, my mom is from Germany, my dad’s Italian, my siblings born in France, Romania, Ireland, we never settled anywhere. It is the history of Roma people. My Mom is a beautiful woman, she has green eyes, all my siblings: my 5 brothers and sister have green eyes except me. My Mom has dark,dark hair. She comes up to my shoulder, I have her nose. She’s funny and her laugh is, i don’t know how to describe it..squeaky? She’s gentle but don’t mess with her. She never remarried after my Dad died. She came here to work, she would work in pizza shops, in laundries, she was a cook, she would send money home for us. My Dad and I looked alike. He was a mechanic, he taught me to fix cars since I was 6, he died when I was 12. I was making decent money here, I had a car shop, my life here really meant to something, I thought things were going to change, but it’s the same stuff. I was in Houston Texas for 3 years. It was my ‘first coming to America’ The weather was good, the people were welcoming, polite, I had my apartment, life was good. People weren’t racist to me here like they were back in Ireland. My Mom left to go back to my country, to look after my brother, he is sick with Leukemia, he’s getting better now,I speak to them every day. But the dream isn’t true, everything in the movies is a lie, I thought I was going to get rich instantly, I quickly realised that wasn’t true. Life is better here but it isn’t like the movies. If I could change my story now I would make better choices, I would get my papers, I wouldn’t do anything illegal, I would go to school. When I get out of here I will propose I want to be there for my mother, my brother, my girl I want to do better I want to live a regular life. Now I have an ICE detainer, I can’t get bailed out, I have to do my time. I don’t know if I will be deported, they could decide within 48 hours of me being released.
“I want you to look up Roma people, I want you to know what they go through” “The Roma are Europe’s most unwanted people. Some 10 to 12 million Roma live across the continent. live across the continent. They have been here for more than a millennium – and have been ostracised and suppressed throughout that time. One in four Roma is thought to have perished in the Holocaust.” -
,, The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/24/persecution-of -the-roma-brings-shame-on-europe
STRESSED - - - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- - - X My mom had been sick for years, she got diabetes, she ate healthy and stayed healthy but she still got sick, so sick that we thought we were going to lose her. March 27th 201, a cold night in queens, was the greatest but craziest day of my life. It was the day I met the greatest creation of my life, My Daughter and it was the day my Mom started to get better. The baby looked so like her,she looked more like my Mom than me., The more time they spent together the healthier my Mom became. That’s why I know there is a god. I have to lie to my daughter to tell her I’m on holiday, cause I can’t be there. It’s hard being in here, I wake up stressed, I go to sleep stressed, everything about being in here is stressful, sleeping, eating, being around everyone, being separated from everyone. I just gotta keep calm, I can’t break, that’s what they want me to do but they’re testing me. The longer I’m in here the more money they’re making. This uniform I’m wearing, someone’s making money outta that, this bed I’m sleeping in, someone’s making money out of that, these sheets, this mattress, this chair, the food, everything in here, is lining their pockets. But I gotta stay calm, I can’t break.
MASS INCARCERATION IN THE USA “America spends $80 billion a year incarcerating 2.4 million people. That money is spent on things like beds, staff, food, and facilities”
- Alana Semeuls, ‘
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www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/the-true-costs-of-mass-incarce ration/405412/
“In essence, the Negro community has been forced into a matriarchal structure which, because it is so out of line with the rest of the American society, seriously retards the progress of the group as a whole, and imposes a crushing burden on the Negro male and, in consequence, on a great many Negro women as well.”
- Ta-Nehisi Coates, ‘ ’ www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-black-family-in-the-age-of -mass-incarceration/403246/
"The United States right now incarcerates more African-Americans as a percentage than apartheid South Africa did."
- Nicholas Kristof, ‘ http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/dec/11/nicholas-kristof/kristofus-imprisons-blacks-rates-higher-south-afr/
MAY DAY - - - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- - - -- - - X
I am 18 years old. I play soccer. My brother loves watching me play because of my talent. I’m a midfielder. My favorite team is Manchester United. I got arrested in May. Right after I was arrested my father died. I couldn't go to my father’s funeral. It really hurt. But I have to be strong. I try to be humble. I can't break down. I just try to be humble you know. I had a dream that my Dad came to me right after he died and he told me he loved me. That's how I know there is a God. I know it.
CONTACTS AND RESOURCES
THE TOWN HALL Town Hall has played an integral part in the electrifying cultural fabric of New York City for more than 90 years. Disclosing a tale of a vibrant group of suffragists (The League for Political Education) whose fight for the 19th Amendment led them to build a meeting space to educate people on the important issues of the day. Email contact: jmaddox@thetownhall.org Website: www.thetownhall.org
PEACE IS A LIFESTYLE Founded in April 2002, LIFE Camp, Inc. (Love Ignites Freedom Through Education) is one of the leading violence prevention and intervention organizations in America. Based in South Jamaica Queens, LIFE Camp, Inc. develops young leaders and provides youth and families with positive alternatives to violence, bullying and other forms of antisocial behavior. At the core of their program, LIFE Camp, Inc. offers young people, ages 13-24, and their families educational, employment and social opportunities they might not otherwise have. Through their model violence intervention system, youth mentorship programs and award-winning initiatives, LIFE Camp, Inc. approaches violence as a public health crisis, therefore transforming entire communities. Email contact: ericaford@peaceisalifestyle.com Website: www.peaceisalifestyle.com