Not for profit, we are for ourselves

By Robert Lilly

Robert Lilly

It began with a question: Why are so many of us here? In the many prisons I had dwelled, I began to notice a disturbing pattern. These observations drove me to find answers, with the hopes that I could identify some solutions to our common plight.

Twenty plus years ago, when I was serving, and completing my second state prison sentence, I came into contact with a group of men, all of us, just about the same age, with similar backgrounds. We’d either been in juvenile, foster care, homeless, or addicted to substances, and involved in gangs and violence, prior to our careers as adult criminals.

Down to the person, we had already accumulated multiple convictions, and for some, this would be our second stint in an adult institution, or we had crossed over from Juvenile, into the adult facility, and had remained there since our teen years.

For the men, the most glaring feature of adult prisons, are the ways in which we organize ourselves. In the Federal system, it was according to our geography, and in Texas’ state prisons, it was according to our gang affiliation or the city we had hailed from.

These breakdowns did not lend themselves to our unification. We often saw each other as competitors, opposition, and enemies.

The group of men I gravitated towards, for the most part, identified with the uniquely American versions of Islamic teachings, e.g. Five Percenters, Black Muslims of the NOI, and the Moorish Science Temple. To be certain, there was no genuine consensus, even in our varied expressions of what the religion meant to us. The common denominator was that these faith expressions emphasized nationhood and power over our circumstances.  However, in time, enough of us agreed that it was better to find our common ground in unity, than to remain divided, easy prey for the system.

We yearned to be more than what the world had told us we were, up to that point. We felt, deep in our beings, that we had a purpose for being here, and our continued survival was a key indicator of our “divine” nature and unique role in this world. Prison was our crucible and we had to figure out how to take a negative and turn it into a positive.

Man had stored us in his cages, to rot. And he had not done so without provocation, but his hands were not clean, in our eyes. We saw the fingerprints of colonialism, and racism, poverty and miseducation in our lives, and knew, intuitively, that our responses to that oppression, although ultimately counter revolutionary, and reactionary, were a direct result of our combined feelings of exclusion and isolation from society. Whether you were talking about the education system, entertainment, industry or politics, these realms of influence seemed to see us as an afterthought, at best or a nuisance at worst. Even more ominous than that, a thing to be exploited and discarded once a profit had been made off of us.

Eventually, and with great deliberation, we formed our response to this world, a response that initially could only be heard and felt in the context of the prison system. We formed our own association of men. We called ourselves the Universal Temple of Peace. Our bond, instead of the affinity and affiliation of gangs, became education and the hope to influence the next generation of young men. We wanted them to be alert to the traps society had set for us, and to develop the means of overcoming the hazards that had been placed in our paths. We had not yet conceived of the idea that we could change society, we were more interested in changing ourselves. Although we knew, intuitively, that all of our problems did not stem from our inner selves; we did know that without gaining some agency over our minds, bodies and emotions, we would continue to be the play things of this society and system. They would justify our exclusion, containment and destruction, by pointing to our behaviors.

We don’t believe in “respectability politics” but we do know that at the core of our liberation there must be a “reformed identity” and the systems, if they changed tomorrow, they could not produce in us what we are responsible for generating and regenerating, in our own selves.

Should we fail to address the inner challenges of self-doubt, feelings of inadequacy and shame, then we would only perpetuate the harms that had been inflicted upon us by others. The cycles of self-defeating behaviors had to stop and we cast down that gauntlet, right there where we had been sent to die.

It has been 20 + years, and most of us, some 30 or so men, are still in contact with each other. We have families, careers, ministries, ambitions, and hobbies that drive our lives. Yet, we know the work is not done. We still must take up the task of imparting to the next generation, the hard-earned lessons from the streets, incarceration and life after prisons, to those youth, and young adults, that still seem to be under the hand of our historical and collective enemies for progress and human rights for the Black Community.

This is our time, men, and my mentioning the men does not diminish the worth and value of the women. Women, you have been our saviors, and champions, and we cannot forget you, nor make the mistakes of the past where we compete with you or seek to dominate you. Rather, we must learn to work together, but we cannot do that until we get our ‘ish together! I acknowledge that I have felt it my duty to reach the men.

We want to first address our inclination to oppress, to emulate our oppressors, to harm each other and our women and children. We have to understand how patriarchy and sexism have driven a wedge between those of us we love and say we want to fight for. We are a contradiction that needs to be resolved and we must find our space, out here, in society, where it is much more complicated to do the same work that we did in there, under the scrutiny of a regime that cared no more for our humanity, than the contemporary forces that govern our lives.

We must, or we shall die, and before we die, we shall make our enemies wealthy, because they will continue to use our missteps for their financial empowerment, and our annihilation.

I want you to say along with me, that we shall no longer be for anyone’s gain. We are not-for-profit, we are for ourselves.