FROM THE BLACK HOLE
FROM THE BLACK HOLE
How do you perceive our movement? Do you see my DRIVE comrades and I as mere conduits through which humanity expresses itself in the form of our movement? Evidence of the life on Texas’s Death Row; while perhaps giving rise to those that are being bled of their spirit by these atrocious, vampirish death row conditions? If what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said is true, “when you lose hope you die.” Then our movement is evidence of the hope gasping, fighting for life within these walls of death.
I say the latter because each one of us here on death row as a result of a jury (most likely devoid of our peers) finding that we are a “future threat” to society: hopeless criminals. The interesting thing is though by Texas law a 3-time felon will not be labeled as a “habitual” criminal but most likely will receive a life sentence in prison. Many death row prisoners have never been convicted of ANY prior felonies.
Then again, this is not “interesting,” it’s contradictory!
Did you know if you serve on a capital murder trial, after you find the defendant guilty of capital murder, you HAVE to answer the following question:
Is there a probability that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society?
This is referred to as the “future dangerousness” question; one violative of the fundamental tenet of the constitution of the United States of America and its criminal justice system:
That all persons are presumed innocent and may not be convicted except on proof beyond a reasonable doubt of each element of the offense.
You see, how can you be found probable to commit criminal acts of violence in the future if the constitution says you are entitled to a presumption of innocence on these very future crimes?
Antithetical statements?
In 1972 the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional because it was imposed on poor African Americans more than any other ethnic group, and ultimately because death penalty statutes were overbroad. The “future dangerousness” question was established as one of the desperate attempts to narrow death penalty statutes as to give it a veneer of constitutionality so it could continue to persist.
Narrow? So narrow that Constitutional rights are still denied passage.
A historically contradictory system thus remains…a reflection of the contradictions in our society. Fallible men with their pseudo-knowledge have created a type of black hole into which they cast those they label undesirable, oblivious to how this same black hole is devouring much more than they intended it to; the very reason why the system’s machinations will birth its annihilation. And our movement is its birth pangs.
“Pseudo-knowledge”? What is it that death penalty advocates think they know? That they can predict the future? That they know how to constitutionally kill? How to create an infallible system created by fallible beings? That death row prisoners are more violent than serial killers in prison population? That a non-triggerman deserves death under a “party’s” law over a chainsaw murderer?
Pseudo-knowledge?
Speaking of “Black Holes,” astrophysicists theorize that everything which is pulled into it becomes a sort of mush devoid of its previously distinctive properties; something akin to waste.
Hmm….
Like star-bodies beyond the event horizon*, we are caught in the gravitational grasp of this black hole of a death penalty. Or more specifically, death row conditions that are draining us of our light, our dignity, our spirit, until we are zombified.** The death penalty is its own entity that deleteriously converts everything /one associated with it into its equivalent: death. Our “execution” is but a formality.
However, astrophysicists also theorize that black holes emit sound only detectable by instrumentation…
Let our movement be that sound, either as voices of liberation or the cries of a dying system. And though we are cast away as unredeemable, hopeless death dying to happen, we believe society can be redeemed. We believe there is hope for society; thus why our movement is instrumentation needed to hear what has been left undetectable. But we must ask, why has that been so? Why are such vital facts not fed to the people so they can make informed, self-determined decisions as to the best means to progress society, humanity? Perhaps the answer lies in your initial response to the first question of this article.
Revolutionary LOVE and Solidarity
Comrade/Brother Omari Huduma
Myspace.com/12785444
*The boundary of a black hole at which the escape velocity equals the speed of light and beyond which nothing can escape from within it.
** See my article, “Recognizing Psychological Warfare.”