One of my favorite television shows was this show called Lockup. It was all about what life was like on the inside, in prison. I think the reason that I was so fascinated by it was because I had never been to prison before and I never planned on going. You see all these men in small ass cells stacked on top of each other. Almost reminds me of the slave ships. You ever see the movie umm, damn what was the name of it? It was a movie about a slave ship that was found in the ocean and they had to go to court to decide who the slaves belonged to? “Amistad” that’s it. So there was this one moment in the movie when they are showing you the ship and under the deck of the ship were all of the slaves. (Beat) And at one point the ship was too heavy so they tied a random chain to a huge rock and it took like five men to lift this rock and push it over the side of the boat and I didn’t get it at first…then you see all of the slaves attached to the chain being pulled up from the bowels of the ship and falling overboard. Drowning for no reason. Dying of no choice of their own. That scene made me so sad, that this was the reality of my people in a time when fighting back wasn’t an option. But me, I made a choice to be in these chains. To be in my confined small room of hell and pain. After all that was done for me to be free…I made the choice to be in here. And it’s so ironic to me ya know? That everything that black people fought not to be is everything that I am. Confided, imprisoned, chained, drowning all over again. Except this time, I did this to myself. No white man did this to me. I did this. (Beat) But you know what the other difference is? Given a choice I would do it again. That was always the thing that would get me on the Lockup show, all of them would say that “If I had it to do again I would never do it.” (Laughs) But what they really want to say is that they didn’t really want to get caught.
