Mockingbirds
Are Endangered Robert H. Outman, Prisoner P-79939 Written on January 2, 2016
In
an effort to awaken our social conscience to the evils of injustice, intolerance,
vengeance, and hate, author Harper Lee wrote To Kill A Mocking Bird.
It's a classic novel set in the 1930's, published in 1960, and made into
an Oscar winning movie in 1962. In her novel, Lee chronicled the
confluence of innocence and evil in the human condition. She illustrated
how evil flourishes when innocence is indifferent.
The
1930's lack of social conscience saw Tom Robinson, an innocent black man,
convicted and executed for rape. Boo Radley, a mentally challenged
white man, was accused of being evil and malevolent because he was different.
The lack of a social conscience allowed fear and ignorance, evil's acolytes,
to insure that evil would reign supreme.
Fast
forward to the 21st century. Mockingbirds are endangered and evil
is on steroids. Police are shooting people like it's open season.
Justice refined hands out life sentences like parking tickets, and incarceration
is so bountiful that, for the first time in history, prisons are listed
on the stock exchange. Human incapacitation is thought to be an $80,000,000,000
a year industry, or more, in the United States.
Under
the tutelage of evil, fear is killing the mockingbirds of reason.
In the absence of reason, through the collective genius of those without
a social conscience, who refine intolerance and retribution with a vengeance,
the convict's debt to society can never be paid. The internet assures
electronic branding, prejudice, and unemployment, thereby guarantying an
interminable cycle. The prejudice and intolerance are so insufferable
that parolees will re-offend, just to escape back into prison, trading
one hell for another.
One
of those psychologically broken parolees is Peter, a California prisoner
serving twelve years. Peter describes rehabilitation as "Not as advertised,
you ask for help, and they give you hate." He has the same
sentiment for the self-applauded parolee guidance program. Like so
many parolees, Peter ran into walls of prejudice and intolerance at every
turn.
Peter
saw two fellow parolees commit suicide, an act too familiar with California
prisoners and parolees. With no means of income, homeless, sleeping
under cardboard, cold, and hungry, rather than commit suicide, Peter chose
to rob a gas station for $34, knowing the act would send him back to prison.
Peter's story is all to common. It's a shameful indictment of "rehabilitation."
For
further evidence, one only needs to see how the elderly are treated in
prison. Any person with a social conscience has to be brought to
ad nauseam to see a jackbooted guard bullying and screaming at a frail
old prisoner in a wheelchair. In every sense of the word, this is
state sanctioned elder abuse. Civilized societies do not punish old
men to death, yet thousands of old men and women wait for death in United
States prisons.
One
of those thousands is Jerome, 79 yrs old, having served 18 years into a
life sentence in California prisons. Beyond being frail, old, and
totally confined to a wheelchair, Jerome suffers from congestive heart
disease. His lungs are so weak from mesothelioma that he requires
24/7 oxygen, supplied by an oxygen generator. Without AC power, it
has to be recharged every two hours. Problem prosthetics in his left
hip give him constant pain, aggravated by advanced osteoarthritis.
A chronic blood clotting problem requires dangerously high doses of blood
thinning medication. Diabetes and medication demand close monitoring.
If this isn't enough, he was recently diagnosed with kidney cancer.
Clearly, Jerome isn't a threat to society and becomes less so every day,
as he degenerates. Yet, California is going to punish him to death.
To
put Jerome and others like him into a social conscience perspective, most
people can remember the bombing of the Pan American Airlines 747 over Lockerbee,
Scotland, which killed 266 people. The perpetrator was sentenced
to life in prison, in Scotland. While in prison, he developed prostate
cancer, and received a compassion parole. He walked out of prison
and on to the plane taking him home, where he died a year later.
Jerome can't walk anywhere. His health is worse than was that of
the perpetrator of the Pan Am bombing, and although it shouldn't make a
difference, his offense was less. Do the moral math. California
doesn't have an ounce of compassion.
Those
without a social conscience will ignore the facts and statistics, dismissing
this article as disaffected. Those who have a social conscience know
the value of mockingbirds, and will step up, demanding change.![10x5 Page Background GIF Image](../../Images/10x5_Page_Background.gif) ![Infinity Symbol](../../Images/Infinity_Symbol.gif)
Page 2 | Frontiersman,0c/o
4984 Peach Mountain Drive, Gainesville, Georgia 30507 http://frontiersman.org.uk/ | September 2017 | |