When the Ferguson, Missouri, grand jury chose not to indict White police officer Darren Wilson for killing unarmed African-American Michael Brown, San Quentin prisoners watched television as protests erupted around the nation. Despite disappointment, the prisoners said they didn’t want to give in to helplessness.
Inmates Demond Lewis, John “Yayah” Johnson and Eric Curtis met in San Quentin’s gym to discuss how to stop the next Michael Brown or Oscar Grant from being killed by the police.
“If we can have a bad ripple effect, then we can have a good one too,” said Lewis. “We have to let people know we care about them, and get them to carry our message out there. That’s our contribution back to society.”
Lewis, a 40-year-old from Perris, Calif., was sentenced to 109 years-to-life for shooting a man in the leg. Curtis, 46, from Compton, has served 20 years on a 50-to-life sentence for gun possession under the Three Strikes Law. Johnson, a 43-year-old from Oakland, is serving 30 years-to-life for bank robbery.
“Knowing about W.E.B. Dubois and MLK means nothing if I don’t deal with my psychosis,” said Johnson.
The conversation focused on taking accountability and community-based policing.
Lewis: The biggest issue we have is that…police work in communities that they don’t live in. People from the community would be familiar with the residents of that neighborhood. This is how you build relationships. You have to be able to talk to them.
Johnson: It’s hard to be mistreated if you have a reputation for doing good. If Ms. Jackson isn’t saying nothing about the crack being sold next door, then she’s condoning it. She’s confirming all the stereotypes that bring the police. We have to get out of the mindset that stopping crimes in our community is snitching.
Lewis: If they use money for police technology to fight crime, they can use money to stop crime. Put in more cameras.
Johnson: We can put cameras on us and arm ourselves with technology.
Lewis: We can talk about all the White police in the world, but we have to police ourselves. If we aren’t getting more involved in what the police do in our communities, then we are no better than they are.
Johnson: If we hold our people accountable first, then we don’t have to worry about police bypassing leadership and dealing with it. Parenting your children, and showing a better way, keeps police from doing it.
Curtis: Kids need to start wearing slacks and shoes. If you change the way a child dresses, you can change the perceptions. That should be a start.
Johnson: …(T)hese (police) are professionals. If someone is not committing a crime, it shouldn’t matter how they are dressed. If an individual is operating under a bias, then it doesn’t matter what a Black man is wearing.
Curtis: We as a people of color need to disassociate ourselves from everybody else, not forever, but long enough to get ourselves together.
Johnson: Why do we hate each other for being from different hoods? We have to deal with these problems now to deal with the future. By realizing mistakes, we can pass on answers. It’s not right police come and kill us, but it’s not right we kill each other. Other people feel they have to check us because we’re perceived to be uncaring about ourselves.
Curtis: I agree. There is so much we have to deal with from ourselves and outside people.
Johnson: Do you think we’re alone in this? Look at all the White people you see. We can go back and use the civil rights movement as a platform. You have to tap into your power base.
Demond: We rarely take accountability for our actions. You have kids that believe that it is OK to get tattoos on their face because Lil Wayne did it. We don’t dispel the myths. You can’t tote pistols or shoot people like they do in video games or rap about. That’s how I got 109 years.
Johnson: There is no one-size-fits-all solution. We have to look at the most egregious killing by the police and see why they happen. So how do we as Black men change that? We have to be more active in our community. We can’t have an us-against-them mentality. There is no better opportunity to use the system than now…to our benefit to shame them
No one on the panel believes riots are the answer.
Johnson: I understand the anger involved, but rioting is unnecessary. It’s not a medium that solves the problem – it makes it worse. City Council should be the vehicle to deal with these issues and us.
Lewis: Who is actually tearing stuff up? You have people jumping in with hidden motives and all this is going under one heading – this is how they act; they get violent! It’s not true that it’s all Black people out there doing that.
Johnson: People can’t sit back and allow these things to happen because it justifies the excess force the police want to use. If we lack the knowledge and community support to fight these types of things, they get away with it. I think racism can be contained in the face of goodness.
