Better, Not Bitter Page 2

  In the wake of George Floyd’s last words, “I can’t breathe”; the ambush of Breonna Taylor by police in Louisville, Kentucky; and all the protests that followed, there have been many stories written about injustice and systemic racism. In most cases, however, these articles capture only one part of the story: the impact of an event or the collective action that followed. Often, we tend to lean on binaries that help move our agendas along, both in general and in the realm of social justice. We hear about either the looters or the peaceful protesters. Never about the oppressive forces that led to such an outpouring of rage and grief being expressed in the streets. Never about the work and progress accomplished as a result of the resistance. In order to mobilize for change, we must be able to connect the dots between a murder in Minneapolis and brutality in Biloxi; between redlining in Chicago and Black homelessness rates in Los Angeles. And there’s another side to these headlines. A more intimate perspective that is just as impactful in changing minds and hearts is the story of Breonna Taylor moving from Michigan to Kentucky for a better life. It’s a story of George Floyd serving at-risk youth with a Bible study group in Houston. Knowing the collective narrative is important. Knowing the story of the individual is transformative.

  Linking the individual narrative with the collective one paints a clearer picture of what’s actually happening to Black and Brown people in this country. No room is left for speculation or assumption. That said, it’s vital to continue telling the earthly, collective part of any story, of our story. How white supremacy embedded in the American system of injustice infringed on the rights of five Black boys and their families. How Korey Wise experienced deep, terrible trauma while behind bars. How Raymond Santana returned to prison because he was unable to find meaningful employment, making it more difficult for him to bounce back from our ordeal. Ours is the story of five boys who were brought low only to rise again because the truth can never stay buried. Ours is the story of five boys who were buried alive and forgotten. Ours is the story of a system that forgot that we were seeds. The story of how this system is actually alive and sick. How it is operating exactly as it was designed. How Black and Brown and poor people in marginalized communities are unable to financially fight against this system, and that’s by design. How anybody who is trapped in that marginal space becomes part of the oil that keeps the machine moving. All of that grit and grime, the trials and triumphs, the injustice and inequity, four hundred years of American history, are part of a necessary conversation that I will continue to have as I write and speak around the world.

  Yet, I do know there is more. So much more.

  The Central Park jogger case is actually a love story between God and His people about a system of injustice placed on trial itself, then toppled, in order to produce what amounts to a miracle in modern time. But as the old saying goes: “When you’re walking through hell, keep on walking.” There is always something on the other side. There is purpose on the other side. Sure, it’s hard to see it that way. You can’t always see the path, even when you’re on it. But one day, just like I did, you’ll turn around and reflect on the journey and say, “My God, look at what I went through. This didn’t happen to me, but this happened for me. I came out stronger.” Will there be indelible scars? Yes, of course. The way I move through the world and how I see myself have forever been altered by the levels of pain and uncertainty I had to climb my way out of. But I returned to society and learned to live on my own two feet. And now I get to show people how they can live on theirs. In the immortal words of the great modern philosopher Cardi B, “Knock me down nine times, but I get up ten.”

  Islam says, “Don’t ask for help from anyone or anything except for God. There is nothing worthy of worship except God.” So while family, friends, and mentors are important, when it comes to who is driving my life, I’m thinking that God is over and above even the saints or my ancestors. God is the One who is the author and the controller of this whole thing. We really don’t have control. Our control and happiness come from being in sync with God. Whatever happens—the good, the bad, or the ugly—our acceptance opens us up to receive peace, harmony, and comfort. We cannot force a square into a space that wants only a circle. We simply say, “Man, God is good.” Let’s release ourselves from the pressure of being in control.

  I’ll never forget what Les Brown said to me a few years back. He said, “Yusef, I tell people all the time, it’s not a matter of whether you fall in life, because you will fall. When you fall, try to land on your back because if you can look up, you can get up.” We all have the power to come back. I chose to believe that if I surrendered my control, God would never leave me. That was what helped me come back better and not bitter.

  To be clear, my story does not begin with the Central Park jogger case. It begins with a young Black boy growing up in Harlem with a fierce mother who is incredibly loving and extremely protective of her children. It begins with a village of support and love surrounding me and infusing in me a confidence that would serve me greatly later. And just as my story doesn’t begin with the Central Park Five trial, it doesn’t end with the exoneration nor the multimillion-dollar settlement from the City of New York. Threaded through it all is how I’ve taken the injustice of a system that tried to destroy me and turned it inside out into a life of service. What I’ve lived through so far has required that I accept even the ugly circumstances I’ve experienced as God’s will for my life, in order to be equipped to embrace the future. Acceptance—more than even forgiveness—is what is necessary for our forward movement. And acceptance can absolutely live alongside our demand for accountability from those who have wronged us. That’s ultimately what this book is about.

  What happened to the now Exonerated Five was a tragedy on the ground level, in the earthly realm. We were criminalized and dehumanized. But parallel to that was another reality. A greater intention. Spiritually, I had to say, “Wow, look at God!” No one could have created a story as dynamic as this.

  My hope is that when you read this book, this stance can be applied to your own life. Evaluate it and realize that everything is ultimately purposeful. You have a purpose. Consider Joseph () from the Bible. Or Yusuf () in the Qur’an. His trials were only a drop in the bucket when we consider his victories. Consider the stories of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass and Fannie Lou Hamer. We have these narratives that guide us, and too often we write them off as simply stories to uplift us. But they are not just about one person living one life, but rather they are complex narratives with the potential to reveal something about our own existence. They show us that we, too, can have personal power. We can be triumphant. We don’t have to fall in life and stay down. We can get up. We are all favored. And in a way, that’s what I hope this book does for every person who reads it.

  When I look at my life post-release and how people celebrate the fact that we endured this awful thing, I always say, “What happened to me and for me can happen to you and for you as well.” You may look at people and put them on these pedestals, but really, we are all servants. The more enlightened we become, the more humble we become. So, more than anything, when you close this book, I want you to dream again. I want my story to give you hope. I want you to say to yourself, “I’m going to try to take advantage of every opportunity I’m given. All the visions I have, let me carve out time to do it.”

  Yusef Salaam

  Footnote

  1 Please note: I have used () throughout the text as a sign of reverence. Muslims are not allowed to mention the name of any prophet without saying , which means “Peace be upon him.”

  ONE

  The Escape

  We are at war / The bulk of which will not be physical / The bulk of which is mental…

  YUSEF SALAAM

  From the days immediately after I was released to one of my first experiences with meaningful employment. I felt respected, and like I was making an important step toward a successful life.

  WHAT DO YOU WANT TO EAT?”

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sp; It was gray outside. The clouds were dense, hovering just above our heads. My mother, my sister, my mother’s friend Ayesha Grice, and her niece Beverly all stood outside the car waiting with huge smiles. They were picking me up from prison. Finally. Still wearing my prison jacket, I melted into their hugs. All I could think about was putting one foot in front of the other, making sure that the release was actually happening. It was both beautiful and frightening to be out.

  The night before, I’d tossed and turned with anxiety. I didn’t want to go to sleep. What if I don’t wake up? What if somebody kills me just before I leave?

  Leaving the adult facility didn’t feel real. I was finally going home, but I was terrified. It felt like I was escaping. Like I was a fugitive, and at any moment they were going to say there had been a terrible mistake and return me to my cell. But I was free. I’m fairly sure that I didn’t really celebrate until I was back home, sitting in my apartment, trying on my clothes. I stayed up for thirty-six hours after my release just trying to take it all in: seeing my family’s faces, our home I hadn’t seen in almost seven years, the noise of the city streets, now loud and unignorable even though it had once simply been an unnoticed daily sound track playing in the background of my life.

  But once in the car, I had my first decision to make. A relatively simple one, I suppose, but to have the power to make any kind of decision felt monumental. I’m not sure anyone around me at the time really understood how abnormal it felt to actually have a choice in something, even something as seemingly mundane as what to eat for breakfast.

  “Man, I don’t know. I could eat anything,” I responded.

  Only miles down the road from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, we stopped at an IHOP. I sat down in the booth, still pondering this surreal new world I had found myself in, feeling very overwhelmed with trying to process it all, and I asked, “Well, what do you think I should eat?”

  My sister said, “I’m going to get a Belgian waffle.”

  Just the name, Belgian waffles, sounded so exotic, a delicacy from a far-off place. I said, “I’m going to get that, too!”

  Just the day before, my breakfast had been some lumpy oatmeal. Earlier that week it’d been powdered eggs. I would’ve been handed a nearly expired milk carton that had black and brown slivers of something floating in it that was clearly not milk. Are you for real? You mean, I can order whatever I want? I felt like I was dreaming, like I hadn’t fully awakened in that moment.

  The server brought out our Belgian waffles and they looked perfectly fine. I was completely floored when my sister said, “This is burnt.” Now sure, the underside was a little charred. And maybe a little bit more than charred, but the top was light and, to my mind, totally edible. But my sister wasn’t having it. She called over the server and asked, “Hey, can you make this over? It’s burnt.”

  “Let me pose like you do.” My sister always tried to make my experience in prison lighter. Visits galvanized me and made me feel like I could get through another week.

  My face must have registered my shock at the audacity of her request. “Hey, Ace…”

  My sister, Aisha, is my number one. We are best friends. She is a year and a half older than me, and I’d always loved hanging out with her and her friends, learning what it meant to be cool. I was already what elders called an old soul. A bit more mature, beyond my years. So hanging out with my older sister seemed normal for me. I’d question her and her friends about girls and they were always cool, saying, “Oh yeah, we’ll let you know. We got you!” Ace would give me input on my style. Just a little, here and there. I had a pair of jeans I designed not too long before being arrested. There was a likeness of Big Daddy Kane on the knee and all kinds of colorful art and patches. My sister added, “Oh, if you add this, or flip the patch diagonally, that’ll put you over the top.” And I did it. She even took some ice and a needle and pierced my ear, which, in the late ’80s, only amplified my cool factor. Hanging with her gave me access to little nuggets of teen wisdom that would take me to the next level.

  “Ace… all you had to do was scrape that off. In prison—”

  But I stopped myself. I wasn’t in prison anymore.

  If you were a prisoner and then you become a returned citizen, for you to have even a peanut butter and jelly sandwich feels like an enormous privilege. If you have tuna fish with actual mayonnaise, you feel like you’re eating a gourmet meal from a Michelin-starred chef.

  Unfortunately for this restaurant, they made the choice to take my sister’s plate to the kitchen, scrape off the bottom, and return the same waffle back to her. Wrong move! Aisha was livid, and her response was 100 percent New York. She said, “This is not okay! I’m a paying patron. I need to be able to get what I paid for. This is unacceptable.” And with that they went back and they made it right.

  That’s when it hit me: Wow, I’m home. I’m actually free. In prison, you cower. You accept. You bend. You say, “Oh, somebody spit on that side of the plate? Okay, cool. I’ll just eat from the other side.” You see a piece of hair? You say, “Oh, let me just carve around that strand. I’ll eat the rest.” You certainly do not say, “Excuse me, waiter. There’s hair in my food.” So, in that moment, when I watched my sister demand to be treated fairly, I knew I was home. Not only had my physical self been returned to society, but in many ways, my dignity was also restored. The humanity that was wrongly stripped away from me had been given back.

  My mom, sister, and I in Clinton. Visits had a rejuvenating power, and my family would come every visitors’ weekend.

  There is a saying in prison often used when a person is preparing to be released or their release day is coming up. It’s called “getting short.” Some of the men would say to me, “Hey, Yusef, you getting short, ain’t you?” It means that one’s time in the facility is dwindling. In a larger sense, “getting short” is a way of acknowledging that someone is going back into the world. For many reasons, this is cause for both celebration and trepidation.

  Prison is its own world. In this created world, so much is normalized. It’s normal to hoard your favorite snacks. I loved bean pies but you couldn’t get those all the time, so they were definitely treasured. From the commissary, my go-to was Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies. I haven’t had them in a long time, but even now, as I write this, I can recall their delicious taste and soft texture. I loved Chips Ahoy! cookies, which were everyone’s favorite in the youth facility. Whenever we had an opportunity to use the microwave, people would heat up the chewy ones until they were soft and gooey. It was like being a child all over again, a momentary escape into our lives before.

  It’s normal for photographs to become your most cherished and protected possession in prison. People could take anything from you but not your photographs, because it felt like stealing your memories, your reminders of freedom. They felt even more important or real than a letter, a way to let your mind escape the confines of prison, to see the people and places you love with your own eyes. Stealing a photograph would be a reason to fight. If we’d been allowed to have a safe or a vault, the photos would have lived in there.

  It was also normal to walk in particular ways so that you weren’t attacked. You had to keep your head up, keep a steely gaze and a strong chin. You had to watch your back. Never allow yourself to be caught slipping. Awareness of who was standing behind or beside you was paramount. It was normal to align yourself with various groups for protection. It was normal to accept dehumanization in a myriad of forms. Such as being herded like dogs from one part of the jail to the next. The abnormal is made normal, and so it takes time to adjust to the real world and to survive it when you return home. This is why so many men and women have difficulty transitioning back to regular life, and recidivism is incredibly high in some communities. People become acclimated to prison life, and often they aren’t given the tools and resources—the actual rehabilitation needed—in order to survive on the outside.

  Malcolm X said, “The prison systems in th
is country actually are exploitative and they are not in any way rehabilitative.” Sadly, it’s often incumbent upon the person to educate him- or herself while inside. Many states have even been slowly removing education in the prisons, though there are still some facilities that offer vocational and academic training. Sure, there are people who leave prison with tried-and-true skills. I’ve seen guys go in and learn how to become expert tailors. Others become certified drug counselors. The problem is, when they leave prison, they are unable to sustain their practical needs long enough to be able to put those skills to good use. If they don’t have family support, they have to first find housing, and shelters are often crowded and filled with opportunities that scream recidivism. Both rental and job applications can ask for a criminal background check, which leaves them unable to go into the field they trained for. And unfortunately, there are still large numbers of people who leave prison without any education, formal or otherwise, and who have difficulty finding meaning in society. They haven’t been holistically trained to live fully independent lives.

  There is also another, significant burden on the men and women released from prison: They aren’t psychosocially accepted; they aren’t seen as persons of value. With that societal judgment and internal struggle compounding the external ones of housing, food, and employment, especially after they had become so acclimated to prison life, they cannot appreciate their value; they do not see themselves as a person born with any real purpose. The world is telling them a lie, and everything they encounter from the time they exist inside those prison walls affirms it. Opening themselves up to the idea that God might use their experience for their good feels foolhardy. Guys have all but said to me that they feel like they were born in error. As a result, they move through life like they are mistakes. And that mentality manifests alongside the choices they make: the ones that send them back to the only place where they believed they had some worth, even if it is a machine whose value system is dehumanizing and distorted.