Open Letter to Obama
April 1st, 2009
Dear Mr. President,
Congratulations, and may “hope achieved” spring down to us. Mr. President, as you’ve learned personally, some believe hope is not a strategy. But, today, after 24 years of incarceration (with my innocence maintained and my faith strained, yet still intact), I write you from a state prison facility to let you know that along with the reality of a mass incarceration of Americans (2.3 million United States inmates), primarily Black male, that as of this day “hope” may just be the only strategy left and/or available to save the generation of children I see in here around me today.
Some many years ago, as I sat in a solitary confinement cell, I picked up a Bible and read a verse (in Proverbs) which said, “where there is no vision the people perish”. It is that matter of both “vision” & “perish” that has invited me to write you today.
Mr. President, in the United States Constitution, it begins with a line that says, “We The People”. In the Declaration of Independence, there is also a line which says, “We hold these truths to be self evident that ‘all men’ are created equal.” Yet, the reality of both of the above is that at the time this was being said, they (the drafters), didn’t mean my grandmother, grandfather, mother, nor me. At the time the word “we” was being used, the country was divided into two groups of people. One group who were still, in fact, considered slaves and three fifths of a human being. But, all this I am sure you already know, as does our country.
Nonetheless, I sat in my prison cell and watched the day of your inauguration speech, as you stood on the landing of the U.S. Capitol and took your oath, I looked upon the background, high above you, and gazed upon the statue atop the Capitol building, a statue which represented the “Symbol of Freedom”, yet, was designed and built by a slave named Phillip Reid, who at the time of helping mold this symbol of America’s Freedom was not even himself free. I realized then and there that there has been many times throughout history that people have had to “assume” that they were part of this great American history when they were actually not.
In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, found in Article 21, it says, “Everyone has a right to take part in the government of this country, directly or through freely chosen representatives”.
For the past twenty-four (24) years I’ve had to watch a generation of young men come through here, including one of my own sons, all rotate around a “spirit” of not knowing what body of people, what spirit of country, and to whose true marching orders we are really meant to be part of.
It has become important to me as I reflect back and re-read your inaugural address speech and came upon the line which says, “what is required of Us now is a new era of responsibility---a recognition on the part of Every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world”. This has left me with two important questions: does that required “Us” mean me? Does that duty of “we” mean those who have been incarcerated, whether innocently or accordingly convicted?
Mr. President, it is my belief that you have created a “culture of obligation.” But, at this level of government (to me) the problem may the issue of our “cultural gate keepers.” Those who are now responsible for the lives of over a million and a half young Black, Latino and poor white lives behind bars, of whom you did not mention in your inaugural address.
As we all witnessed in Oakland (California) a 26 year old Black man on parole, was willing to take the lives of four (4) police officers while sacrificing his own. There was no government restriction of rules, and/or monitoring bracelet that could have changed his mind because what appeared to be missing was a sense of “societal responsibility” and understanding that even our victims are an extended part of our family that we are responsible for.
The question is, why didn’t the prison system which held him, reach him “internally” at a level beyond rules and regulations prior to his release? Why was he willing to kill, “and be killed” so simply? What part of society was committed to reach back to him during his incarceration? At what point did the prison system educate him on being part of that We, Us, America that he was going to return to---or did they just hold him until his time was up and make sure he abided by prison rules? Who on the side of “right” gave him his marching orders upon release?
Mr. President, I once read in the a news article that listed the top music artists you had on your iPod. Among them, it listed Jay Z. Well, with 24 years in prison, I’ve never seen an iPod, and neither have man of the men around me, but I do know that daily I see many very young males walking around me with “Spiritual iPods” that are playing in their hears, the songs of Notorious B.I.G. signing the words “You’re nobody unless somebody kills you”. Yet two things are clear, sadly, Biggie did become bigger in death, and that many of these kids who have never seen their families together during a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner meet them for the first time in a casket with their eyes closed at a funeral. So, what troubles me is not so much that they’re willing to die, but that they don’t even want to leave here (prison) and get back to living.
Mr. President, as many focus on the budget today and talk about what will be taken from a generation decades from now if the American debt isn’t taken care of, someone should say that the “generation theft” is not just inheriting a financial debt, but leaving a generation without “even the hope” of being part of their own society.
How much money did this 26 year old parolee from Oakland ask for, before taking the lives of four police officers, of whom, now to their own families, no amount of money can replace? For me, in spite of a false conviction, and long before Bill Cosby and yourself spoke on Black fathers engaging their children, I did all I could to direct my own children toward a better life. Yet, none-the-less, in the year 2008, my middle son, Darrius Deshawn Jones, was shot in the head and murdered on the streets of Boston. Prior, I wrote from this prison cell all those “in Government” I could get to help, all by certified mail [over 60] only to get two (2) replies.
Why would a government body working under an oath to help, not even be willing to reply to me? I suggest, because like it was for slaves when the words “We the People” were written, they didn’t believe the right to protect my children, to maintain my family connection, or to “just be heard” was meant for me.
Still, I won’t be left to believe that at the most historical time in history, My President, would extend his hand to a community of people in another country, who may have helped knock down towers killing hundreds of people, nor create a video for Iran hoping to engage them in change and dialogue, wouldn’t want to “at least once” address the millions of young Black, Latino and poor in these prisons of the United States. In this era of responsibility of which you speak, is there a responsibility for us? And for those who oversee us?
I, for years, have expressed no desire to use my time here playing basketball, lifting weights, watching TV or playing card and board games. If I must be incarcerated, with no help in questioning my conviction, I believe I should be able to exercise my (alleged right) to the “pursuit of happiness” by doing what I can to reach these kids around me---as do others who feel they are just left in a system aging and waiting to die---while getting them to understand that crime and prison life are both just basically blank checks written out for those who try to cash them on inner city streets of poverty. Yet, Mr. President, there is no father program where I am, no family unification program, no mentoring or reconciliation programs----So, I ask you---who is responsible for providing these “tools of responsibility” we need to change the Spirit of death growing behind these walls. Where is the stimulus money, or even the “will” of those in charge to see this change?
No, I am not willing to believe that the first Black President, of whom my murdered son did not get to see, and my inner city grandchildren will have to depend on, would talk so openly about the spirit of God in his inauguration address and then tell all of us throughout the country, (locked behind prison walls) to now fix our own lives by using the instruments of Pharaoh---telling us to make bricks without straw. I won’t believe that. Nor, am I asking you to do a job that those of us who have done years behind these walls can and should be able to do, in order to save our own children and stop a self destructive system within. I’m only asking that you also take “Presidency” over this often times hidden society, and require its leadership (with authority), that if they can’t get us fully prepared for a free society, that they at least be required to give us, in the words of Stevie Wonder, just enough---just enough---for the city. (Because the spirit of death is behind these walls, and on our inner city streets.)
Mr. President, like you have risen to learn about freedom, I have fallen to learn about captivity and exclusion. There are no web pages, facebooks, internet access, nor cable news shows for us to follow your lessons on “responsibility.” So, I send this letter out to the world, hoping to reach You.
I need to know, and so do so many of these men in here and heading back to society (need to know) that when you say you want black fathers to own their obligations to break the cycle of not being there for their children---are you also talking to those incarcerated?
When you say, “all deserve to pursue their full measure of happiness,” do you also mean those who strive to change while incarcerated? Mr. President, when you say---“What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility---a recognition, on the part of every American that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world.” Does that mean me? Those around me? And the Superintendent of my prison? And, if it does---when will you make that clear to those being held in distant woods all over the country, who may not know, you know, we even exist or feel they lack the proof that finally this “Us & We” actually means “Us”!
Mr. President, Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “all I’m asking of America is to be true to what you said on paper”. One behalf of my children, grandchildren, family and the family of those around me who will inherit the spirit of what we leave behind, I am now asking you to ensure this country, its government and yourself will be “true to what you said on paper”---so that even those incarcerated here, (and those responsible for holding us) can get on the “right side of history” and leave here and come home with hope and the feeling of nation.
You recently said you are a “big believer in persistence.” So am I! Which is why I write to you now. Unanswered letters have never stopped me!
Mr. President, please speak out to these prison institutions beyond Guantanamo Bay and deliver us safely to the future generation of our communities.
Sincerely,
Mr. Darrell A. Jones
A (Falsely) Incarcerated
Father With One Less
Son In the World
Old Colony Correctional
1 Administration Road
Bridgewater, MA 02343
Darrelljones67@gmail.com
Cc: To all those who ignored me before, and ever took an oath to protect, serve and claim freedom, justice, God and the Right to be America.
