I sing
I sing not for praise or critique. I sing to stay alive, reminding myself singing connects me to God, to a universe, to a spatial reality no confinement can touch, no oppression can wipe out. Singing heals my wounds, softens my heart. Men sing in solitary confinement to free themselves from boredom. I sing to stay human Because I don’t want to go insane So I sing Steve Champion (Adisa Kamara) “A Spirit Cannot Die” – by Steve Champion & Anthony Ross
Dedicated to Stanley Tookie Williams on the 10th anniversary of his death Ten years ago the weight of shackles pressed hard against his body collapsing his lungs squeezing his life but not his spirit determined to bury him beneath the rubble of ashes beneath time cast him to oceans like forgotten Ancestors written out of history a historical footnote. But we haven’t forgotten the death of Malcolm and Martin or the struggles of Harriet. No more can we forget Dec. 13, 2005 Stanley Tookie Williams made his transition as we all will do. His life was like an oracle captured in “Blue Rage, Black Redemption” Asking questions, searching for answers dancing with shamans never idle, never content without interrogating himself and the world at large. His spirit cannot die as we shoulder the next task of training the next generation to keep the light lit and trail ablaze to remember. We carry him within the bosom of our souls We evoke his name through laughter and stories We incarnate him within the consciousness of our being. We draw strength from him in our daily struggles. We’ll continue to march Forward in his name because a spirit cannot die when it’s kept alive through the energy of those who refuse to lie down. On San Quentin’s death row, Steve, Anthony and and Tookie (Adisa, Ajani and Ajamu) became close friends, learning and speaking Swahili, studying, discussing and writing words of wisdom. The faces I see
By Steve Champion (Adisa Kamara) Whenever I enter the Death Row yard I always try to see it from a different perspective, and after 34 years you would think I’ve seen it from every angle. But I haven’t… no one can. A person can spend almost an entire lifetime somewhere and come to think they know everything about the place and faces. Then one day, all of a sudden, like gunshots shattering the quiet calm, the person realises they don’t know the place or its faces at all. Death Row and its faces are like that. The mosaic of faces that litter Death Row yard are reflections of urban life. They speak of marginalised social conditions, of emotional and psychological baggage, and of a thousand other life deformities that painfully contort the face in unfathomable ways. These faces pace the small yard in rectangular or circular patterns that unconsciously define the limited parameters of their lives, where a single basketball, a deck of cards, and a chess set symbolise the nothingness and powerlessness that’s always felt, and always present. Many of these faces attempt to conceal private pain, holding it back like a failing levy. Many faces are those of children, not yet fully grown men (but men enough to be executed). There are husbands and sons who have never experienced the gauntlet of confinement and who are straining to overcome their vertigo. There are the blank faces hardened by concrete enclosures, stranded on a deserted mental island, unable to return. But all of the faces, including mine, struggle to deal with the common thread that joins us more closely than we care to admit, death. When I observe people engaged in conversation, I watch their facial expressions to see the undercurrent of interior feelings rushing beneath the translucent surface. Sometimes I catch a face staring at me, giving me that jagged penetrating gaze, as if we’d once been mortal enemies, or as if I remind the face of another face it once knew. I disarm it with a smile – the other looks away – and in that brief space of time I have articulated a profound message. Sometimes I feel the urge to walk up to someone whose face shows particular signs of confusion and ask “What’s wrong?”, but prison protocol prevents me from making such an intrusion, which can be tantamount to invading the sovereign airspace of a foreign country. The result? War. What do you do when you see a face experiencing what you have gone through? Well, on Death Row, you do nothing, nothing but watch in silence as the faces go from one extreme to the next. A perfect re-enactment of Greek tragedy, where death waits patiently to close the final scene. If I say to someone “How are you doing?”, I am met by well-honed defence reflexes aimed at protecting the ego and erecting a wall around insecurities that are too vulnerable to be exposed. I understand it, so I just observe, face after face, made bitter by time and scarred by living, forged in a season of defeats that have moulded a battered soul. Truly, it’s a burden to have to go through life with a phantom face. When yard recall is announced, I return to my cage, bringing those faces with me, and I meditate, tapping into the realm where every face becomes one. Later, when I finish meditating, the faces return with all of their contradictions, and I wonder what expressions tomorrow will bring. Steve Champion (Adisa Kamara) Brother to Brother,
I recently got off 90 days property control. I was supposed to exit this dungeon early June. I view these little excursions as my sabbatical to realign myself, place myself under critical examination, deepen my insight and commitment to our struggle. Due to the precarious nature of prison, I’ve tried to instruct those within my orbit that one must never get attached to the few privileges and amenities they afford us, and always be prepared to give them up without contracting a muscle. We didn’t get a chance to touch base on the topic of anger in a meaningful way and I thought I’d share my insights on this very powerful emotion, and how I’ve learned to manage it. When we talk about becoming complete human beings we must deal with the various components of our makeup such as the spiritual, intellectual, psychological and physical. The spiritual component is the domain where we recognise our unity and oneness with humanity. It is also where we derive our centre to create morals and ethics that govern our life. The psychological component is connected to the spiritual (so is everything else) because everything happens within, before it is outwardly expressed. So if we don’t deal with our internal world we become susceptible to impulsive and erratic behaviour and emotional outbursts because we are emotionally immature. We overcome emotional immaturity by self examination which brings about inner growth. The emotions are nothing but energies. But what gives them power is our thoughts. Energy follows thought. If a person is angry, in rage, in love, or feels envious there is a thought behind it that gives it power. The emotions don’t have the ability to reason or rationalise. The emotions just react. That’s why the emotions must never lead and must be under arrest to the intellect. Think about someone you love or was/is close to you, and who behaved in a way that has angered or upset you but you were able to forgive that person. How did you achieve it? You shifted your consciousness. And by doing so you were able to let go of the anger. I am in no way suggesting that one should never feel anger. What I am saying is do not allow yourself to be held hostage by it, live and give it the power to govern your life. You don’t need to live in anger. Make a commitment to yourself that you won’t. I can surmise that there are a litany of things you are justifiably angry about. I know people have lied, cheated, broken promises to you. Many of them have betrayed themselves and flushed their dignity down the toilet. I know the cesspool of filth and cowardice people have allowed themselves to surrender to. The state of affairs has descended into a dispirited swamp we do not know. So how do we deal with this insanity without throwing up our hands and walking away? Michelle Obama gave a wonderful and amazing speech at the Democratic Convention. But there was one phrase she made which I think encapsulates who we are. She said, “When they go low we go high”. No matter what’s going on around us, we must continue to rise high and higher. We are able to do this when we strive for wisdom and address our issues with wisdom. Wisdom comes as a result of our intellectual growth, internal development, awareness, experience and insightfulness about the true nature of things. We both are acutely aware of the type of environments we were raised in. Each phase of our experiences shaped our consciousness. Because we were living it we accepted and embraced this abnormality as normal because that was the limit of our knowledge base, and experiences. We were conditioned to resolve our conflicts and problems through violence, force and brutality. Even today, I notice when individuals get frustrated they easily revert to behaviour and old habits that do not raise to the level where that type of action is warranted. We have to retrain our mind by deconstructing these behavioural patterns we depended upon and accustomed ourselves to. I try to deal with individuals with wisdom. Is it testy at times? Yes! When I see certain behaviours and character flaws I don’t agree with I weigh it against positive traits the person possesses and try to encourage that aspect in them while pointing out what they need to work on. I understand that some people need room to make mistakes. Some people get it and correct their actions and some people never get it and just need to be reincarnated again because there just isn’t enough time in one lifetime to rid themselves of the internal rot dwelling within them. What is important is you have to find your centre. I’m speaking of the place within yourself where harmony, peace and tranquillity reside. That no matter what is going on in the external environment and world there is a space of inner calm that you can tap into which allows you to be unaffected emotionally, psychologically and spiritually by things beyond your control. You have to create a ritual to not only reinforce who you are, and what you are, but also to expunge those toxins, which at times are imperceptible or can go unnoticed, yet the subconscious absorbs everything and acts it out in our conscious behaviour. This is why the ritual has to be regularly practiced and performed. For 30 years I’ve practiced meditation and spend quiet time each day with myself in order to check in on myself and take stock of my inner world. It is this ritual that enables me to deal with the daily pell mell and soul crushing conditions of this place. Lugging around negative emotions doesn’t benefit me one iota. In fact, it takes away energy I can utilise in other areas. In order for me to be at my best and do my best, I must be free as much as I can, from anything weighing me down. When I began this journey to pursue self-knowledge, and get to know myself so that I can know others, I learned that human beings, especially those we love and are close to, can both amaze and disappoint at times. Because people are complex, meaning they can be messy. Despite the broken promises and let downs I’ve seen enough good and have experienced enough blessings on this journey to not become anywhere close to being jaded. I know that all that any of us can do is the best we can with what we have to work with. There is a reason for hope and optimism. One of the things I’ve learned is change is constant and inevitable. This is not a concept I originated but rather an intrinsic truth that exists in nature and in life. In my personal experience I’ve known people who were once strong who have become weak. I have seen people who were once weak become strong. This has taught me that you cannot freeze people in time and keep them locked in your own perception box, because people, circumstances and situations do change. Who a person is today may not be the same person they will be in the future.
As human beings we go through evolution, and there will be certain things we cannot stop or control. We cannot stop our hair from greying, our skin from wrinkling, or our bones from weakening or from growing old. That is a natural process of life, but evolving isn’t the same thing as personal growth. There are people who reach old age who do not mature or grow because they don’t work at it. When I speak of personal growth. I mean spiritual growth, emotional growth and psychological growth. Growth in these areas requires introspection. It requires taking stock and taking a full inventory of yourself and checking in on yourself daily. I tell guys on death row that being sentenced to the death is not the immediate threat to our existence. No, the immediate threat is to our sanity and the struggle to hold on to it. I know many guys on death row who lost their minds. I know many guys dancing on the brink of insanity and who wind up teetering between a life of clarity and suffer from bouts of deep depression and emotional outbursts with schizophrenic behavior. There might be a link to genetics or being on death row might be the stressor that activates these illnesses but I believe that mental health like physical health has to be actively looked after if improvements are to be expected. I found that a strategy to battle against insanity on death row is creating a purpose in your life and committing to it because having a purpose in your life gives you a reason for being and keeps you physically and emotionally intact. It also creates focus and discipline. For me, not a single day goes by that I don’t strive to grow stronger and to be better. I try to reaffirm this every day. Prison may have taken my physical freedom but it has not taken my mental or spiritual liberty and it never will. Transported to another time
I’m seated on the auction block of the courtroom. Curious spectators wait to witness a legal lynching. The court stenographer chronicles every spoken word, History will not forget this day. Waist chains gird my wrists and waists. Lay shackles fastened to my ankles, I’m transported to another time when men hunted men, cruelly enslaving them. Not as prisoners of war but for profits. I am a commodity reduced to invisibility, where batteries of neuro psychologists and psychiatrists are paid thousands of dollars not to testify about my humanity, but about my saneness, my fitness to be tried, to be executed. Every morning the sun rises I chant an African battle hymn. Every evening the sun sets I chant a freedom song. I am stronger today than I was yesterday but not as strong as I will be tomorrow. Victory is mine. County jail buses are vessels containing black, brown and white bodies. I am transported to another time where slave ships have morphed into slave buses. Where slave fort is the new prison fort. Where a whip, a rope, a chain utilized to punish, brutalize and control are updated to tasers, pepper sprays and stun guns. Commanded by men and women who wear green, the color of money, the color of greed. I’m transported to another time when I’m poked and prodded. Flanked by armed guards. Misdirected and directed to kneel, to be still. And when the shackles come unclamped, I am not free to walk out of a prison, but into a cage, another fort where I sleep until I am transported to the plantation , again. Steve Champion (Adisa Kamara) Separation
What are mere months Of separation between You and I Who defy the odds and dared to love Through steel and concrete Barbed wire and razor wire Fences and walls Gun towers and bullshit Why should we lament Over inconsequential things When we shall have an eternity together. Steve Champion (Adisa Kamara) |
Adisa Kamara
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