ABOUT THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AND BLACK MANIPULATION

Beneath the Spin*Eric L. Wattree

EXCELLENCE IS THE KEY TO BLACK EQUALITY

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ABOUT THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX AND BLACK MANIPULATION

That crime bill that so many are blaming on Biden started out as a bill to protect women. Then Clinton and his Republican cronies amended it into what it became. In addition, some of those people it affected belonged in jail. I had to move my son and daughter out of the Baldwin Hills "Jungle"area after seeing 13-year-old girls whorin' in broad daylight to get crack cocaine. Yeah, the prison industrial complex was a trap for many Black people, but the White man didn't force those very same Black people to rob, kill, and victimize their own people which led to their entrapment. So the best way to avoid being entrapped and staying out of the joint is to live a decent life and not get busted.
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There are literally MILLIONS of Black men who have never even seen the inside of a police station. So, what was the difference between them and the ones who got caught-up in the prison/industrial system? I know, because I was the son of a lifelong drug dealer - in fact, the Iceberg Slim of drug dealers in Los Angeles during the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Every drug dealer for miles around worked for him. And even I spent as much time in jail between the time I was 12-years-old and 19 as I did on the street.
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MY FATHER, MAC, AND BROTHER, VIRGIL 

IN 1966

When I got out of Oak Grove Juvenile Camp at age 14, my father had just gotten out of San Quentin the day before, and we hooked up and partied like there was no tomorrow. We became more like road dawgs than father and son. In fact, me and my older brother, Virgil, were kind of jealous of one another – he was jealous of me because our father treated me like a peer, and I was jealous of him because he was treated him like a valued son to be protected. Essentially, I became a part of my father’s crew. At 16 I was making enough money to rent an apartment in the same complex he lived in, and was the only one in high school with my own apartment. And on a couple of occasions, my father was going with a woman, and I was going with her daughter.
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But I was fortunate. When I got busted as an adult at 19 with a briefcase full of drugs (including heroin), the judge considered my father (who was in jail at the time), and my background. He felt sorry for me, so after I was convicted, he and Capt. Foster, the cop who first busted me at school when he worked the Juvenile Division, took me in the judge’s chambers and propositioned me. Capt. Foster told the judged that I wasn’t a hardened criminal, just stupid. Then when I started to protest over him calling me stupid, he told me to shut up, which I did. Then the judge gave me a choice between going to the joint or going into the Marine Corps. He told me if I came out of the marines with an Honorable Discharge he would expunge my entire record, Juvenile and all, and I could have a new chance at life. Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity, because I had already been in jail for over 90 days, and I didn't expect to see the street again for, at least, 5 years, and agreeing meant I could not only avoid the joint, but I could go home, chill-out, and get high.
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Ordinarily, the Marines wouldn't even think of letting anyone with my background in the Corps - I was a high school dropout with a long criminal record  - but the judge was a former Marine Corps officer with connections, and somehow he made it happen. He didn't want me to go into the army, that would take damn near anyone who could standup, he wanted the Marines to bite into my ass, and that's exactly what happen. Before the bus even came to a full stop at the recruit depot, the biggest, ugliest, drill instructor in the marine corps jumped on the bus screamin' my name, and when I didn't move fast enough, he grabbed me by the collar and dragged me of the bus, and told me, "When I say shit, you come-a-sliding. You got that, asshole!!!?" That was my introduction to the Marine Corps. and within two days of runnin', jumpin', and crawlin' through the mud (without sleep), only then was I assigned to a unit just to begin my training. But by then, I was fantasizing about how sweet life could have been in prison.
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The Marines showed me what a real gangster was. At first, they used me as a close combat dummy to show the other marines how to choke a person into unconsciousness, and then, how to attack the enemy to demobilize them. But then they tested me, because I had to have at a least a GED to stay in the corps, which I obtained. But then came the shock. After further abuse of boot camp, they suddenly started treating me differently and sent me to the Army/Navy Academy to further my education. Thereafter, the naval captain who was my mentor, got me assigned as an aide to the Commanding General - I wrote everything that came out of his office. And from that point on, I started living large.
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The general was a classical pianist and I knew jazz, so I introduced him to the music of Bird, Bud Powell, Phineas Newborn Jr, and Thelonious Monk. So we would sit around on the weekends, drink his scotch, and sometimes argue politics. He once told me, "If you weren't my aide, your ass would be in the brig". But we became like father and son. He would tell me about the battles he'd fought in WWII and the Korean War, and I would tell him about the battles I'd fought on the streets of L.A.
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On the subject of racism, he told me that "Most bigots were raised in the Ozzie and Harriet world of White America where they never even came into contact with African Americans on an eyeball-to-eyeball basis. So now, they think African Americans are intruding on their world, and people like you are taking the jobs of more deserving White people due to America's attempt to be politically correct. I felt that way myself once, until I met Chappie James (a fighter pilot and the first four star general in the American military). He was a Lt. Col. back then, and I was shocked when I recognized that he was the most brilliant man I'd ever met. Now Black officers are the secret of my success. I have more Black officers under my command than any general in the Marine Corps. I've found that Black people have more invested in their success. Black people are not just interested in success for it's own sake, they have point to make."
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So it was the excellence of Chappie James that served to rescue my life, and that's the way life works. It is through excellence that the Black community moves forward. Excellence is the key to Black progress, not screamin'. We can't out-scream the White establishment because they control the media, and we can't out-fight them because they control the military and police. So the only way for Black people to move forward is to out-think the White man, and we can do that, because what we so dismissively refer to as "soul" is nothing less than Black creative brilliance straining to be unleashed. So once we decide to start twerking our minds instead of our asses, we'll be unstoppable. 

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When I went into town I couldn't even buy myself a drink, because the officers would kiss my natural ass, thinking that I could help them get on the general's good side. The general also set me up in private quarters in a spacious room in the rear of the base library where I could work at night without being disturbed. So I would walk around in the darkened library at 2 a.m. in the morning with John Coltrane echoing in the background through the rows of books on any subject I decided to get into. I even setup a bar to hold the many bottles of alcohol that the officers would bring by when they came to suck-up, and I was living part-time with my commanding officer's beautiful daughter, Kathy. So life was sweet. I had to pinch myself. That was a long way from the joint, and I knew I'd never go back to my old way of life.
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Then one night the general came by the library with two documents. One was an announcement that the unit was being redeployed, and the other was an early-out education discharge for me. He said, "Go find a school dumb enough to accept you, and give 'em hell." And that's exactly what I did.  And I left him a thank you note on the back of the album, A Portrait of Thelonious by Bud Powell (he loved both "Ruby my Dear" and "Squatty" from that album), and I gave him some advice - "Work on accenting the second and fourth beats, and the up-beats of those 16th note runs. That was the key to Bud's success."
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But prior to my going into the military, everybody was so sure I was going to the joint that when I showed up at home after the judge let me out of jail, my grandmother thought I'd escaped. But that's what broke the cycle, and I pledged to myself at that moment to get my act together and never get busted again, and I haven't. In fact, after I came out of the Marine Corps, had my record expunged, and graduated from college, Capt. Foster approached me and offered to sponsor me in joining the LAPD. He said that they needed people like me, and he guaranteed me that I wouldn't be a street cop long. But Val, who was an Angela Davis-type, told me, “That sounds like a plan, but where the hell do you plan on sleeping when you get off from work?” So that plan went straight down the drain.
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ERIC JR.

But what was ironic about that was, Val and I had a daughter, Kai, and a son, Eric Jr, and my son went on to become a federal drug agent (DEA). And fortunately, after my son and daughter were born, my father saw the light and went on to become a longshoreman.
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After my father died, when I was in my thirties, my grandmother recognized the bond we had, and not being big on preachers, she wanted me to do his eulogy. I looked, sound, and acted so much like my father that at the funeral one of my uncles just looked at me and broke-out crying. And I was so passionate over the loss that after the funeral the preacher asked if he could keep a copy of the eulogy. In spite of everything, I was proud of my father, and Mac was his own man right up to the end. He didn't even have to die, but when he was in the hospital, for some reason, he wouldn't let the doctors touch him.
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My wife was also overcome with emotion. She and my father had formed a strong bond. Although Val was a militant sister (the President of the Black Student Union in college), she was the niece of "Big Joe" Langford, who Iceberg slim came to live with when he first moved to Los Angeles to take care of his mother. From the very beginning, my father and Big Joe nurtured me and Val's relationship when we were teenagers. On our first date, for example, they had a gigolo name Shelton, who escorted starlets for the Hollywood studios, escort us around town in his Bentley. Making women feel special was Shelton's stock and trade, and he made it a night that Val cherished, and talked about, for the rest of her life. It started with him retrieving her at her front door and holding her hand to escort her to the car, and then opening the back door for her where I was waiting in the backseat. My father had given me plenty of cash, but I didn't have to spend a penny. Shelton had everything covered. Val would later say, that Shelton is the prettiest man I've ever seen.

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KAI AT WINDSOR HILLS GRADUATION

But that was only the beginning. After Val and I were married, when Val was 19 and I was 21 and Kai and Eric Jr. were born, Mac and Big Joe made sure that we never wanted for a thing, and they got the kids into the best schools. Our kids went to elementary school with the children of doctors, lawyers, and politicians, and they kept the same teacher, Faye Armstrong, throughout. Faye was sharp, and she had a huge impact on Kai. At graduation, Kai was selected to give the graduation speech. When I looked at it, I said, "Aw, hell naw. This is too much. She's gonna trip trying to read all of this." Then, on graduation day, she came up on stage without the speech, and I panicked - "She forgot to bring the damn speech!" But then she look out at the audience and threw her head back, and it was on! She didn't even stutter - not once. And I've never underestimated her since.

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Kai also shocked me when she was able to help me with math when I was attending a university and she was only in the 6th grade - and she's still

MY GRANDDAUGHTER, TAYLOR

sharper than I am. And she passed that brilliance on to my granddaughter, Taylor, who's currently at Jackson State trying to decide if she's going to continue in medicine or switch to law. I told her, she can do 'em both. "Finish medical school, then go to law school. You've got time. You're still a baby." But she's been tinkering around with modeling, so I told her, don't let them talk you into modeling until you've completed your studies. That kind of celebrity lifestyle can become a distraction to what's important in life. Beauty fades, but knowledge only becomes more profound. I just had that discussion with her last week, and she promised me that she would stay focused. She said that after graduation, instead of modeling she was considering going into the Air Force to pay for the remainder of her education. I was delighted to here that, because the Black community needs more quality minds, not another superstar.
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I told my son the same thing when he was considering the possibility of following Tracy Murray into the NBA, but since he's a male I was a little more forthright with him - "Man, do you really want to dedicate your life to bouncing a goddamn ball?" He ended up going into the Air Force as well, and became the team leader of a group of "Ravens" that went all over the world with the President of the United States.
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But I'm digressing. Due to the watchful eye of my father and Big Joe, my children never knew struggle. But while Val and I had the street life in our DNA, we were both determined that our son and daughter would never know the street. In retrospect, that might have been a mistake, because I learned later in life that a knowledge of the street is an essential part of who we are as a people. Black street life is an education that can't be replicated on any university campus in the world. What I learned from Sweet Willie on the street has always given me an edge over so-called intellectuals.
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But there was a funny ending to this. One day I saw Val walking around the house with our weed box. When I asked her what she was doing, she said, “I’m looking for a place to stash it. The ‘pig’ just flew in and he’s on his way home.” Now, she knew Eric wasn’t gonna bust us for no weed. That weed box has been in the same place under our bed since he was a child, but she wanted to show respect for her son (“the pig”), so I just smiled as she took the box and hide it in the garage, recognizing that DNA never dies.
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But enough about my life. The point is, I know about this shit, and I knew many of the people involved – and a lot of their asses BELONGED in the joint - they’re

victimizing one another right now in the prison. So while people are right about the fact that the system victimized Black people, what we rarely hear about when we’re discussing this subject is how Black people victimized one another. We destroyed a lot of one another’s lives. I only have one friend who lived past the age of 30.

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So while I love my people, my heart refuses to bleed for people who were the victims of their own selfishness, greed, and stupidity. That’s the way life works. We have to account for the decisions we make in life. College was absolutely free back then – I went to college for $6.50 a term, and that included parking. So victims of the prison/industrial complex had every opportunity to choose a productive way of life. But instead, they let the White man treat them just like rats – he laid out some cheese and they walked right into the trap. Whose fault was that?
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If these “victims” had been thinking of the best interest of their people instead of their own selfishness and greed they never would have been entrapped. That’s why the predatory Hillary Clinton mocked them by calling them predators – if they hadn’t gone to prison many of them would have been on the street robbing, killing, and victimizing their own people. So in this case, the White man may have inadvertently performed a public service for the Black community, although, admittedly, his intentions were far from honorable.
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But that should serve as a lesson for the Black community. We must learn to think, instead of simply following our selfishness, greed and emotions, because if we don’t, the White man will use it against us every time. Look at how, as we speak, the bigoted Trump is releasing a handful of Black convicts from prison in order to try to delude the Black community into voting against their own interests and promoting his - and that's in spite of the fact that he’s the most vicious enemy of the Black community alive today – and, it’s working.
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POKING YOUR LIPS OUT 

ACCOMPLISHES NOTHING

A group of mindless so-called Black activists recently came together to close down the Leimert Park campaign office of Joe Biden, the totally loyal Vice President of the first Black President in American history. They based their actions on cherry-picked elements of Biden’s long political history. Now, Biden is the most feared opponent of Donald Trump, and Donald Trump is the most virulent racist in modern history, and these people demonstrated to shut Biden's office down. That was one of the dumbest acts I’ve seen in my entire life. That's like coming under attack and then throwing away your only means of defense.
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Donald Trump is so much in fear of Biden that he got himself impeached trying to smear him. So why would these so-called activists want to drive the biggest threat to the most virulent enemy of Black people out of the Black community? There can be only one of three possible answers to that question – either they’re incredibly dumb, there’s some Cointelpro-activity going on, or somebody’s being paid under the table. I won’t bother to speculate which is true, but suffice it to say, the Black community needs to get a handle on this kind of thing, and not just sit back and watch it play out. Actions just like the one described is what brought down the Civil Rights Movement. Regardless of what a person’s views are on Biden, who the hell are these people to take it upon themselves to dictate who the Black community should listen to? The fact is, they don't have that right - period. Their attitude was condescending toward Black people. They treated us like we were a bunch of children that they, in all their wisdom, had to guide. Who the hell do they think they are!!!?
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Now, let me make myself clear. I’m not saying that Joe Biden is a saint. Politics is a dirty game, but we must learn how to play that game and pimp the politicians instead of letting them pimp us. And in order to do that, there’s one thing that we must ALWAYS remember. There are no political Messiahs out there. ALL politicians are full of shit – they have to be to survive as politicians. So in order to play the game to our advantage, it’s our job to learn to pick the turd that draws the least number of flies, and not allow others to do that for us, regardless of who they are.  

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I BEAR WITNESS
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I sit, I watch,

and I grow ever more obsolete
as I bear witness.
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I bear witness 
to a once vibrant people greedily gulping down society’s hemlock. Even as they claim to be “keeping it real,“ they continue to maim, kill, and despise their own in hot pursuit of the prime directive with the passion of a sheetless klan.

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I bear witness
to Black fists in the air in false solidarity promoted by self-serving poverty pimps as the world looks on and giggle at crooked fingers pointed elsewhere.
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I bear witness
to the superficial attempt to ban the “N-word” while the new "un-niggas" stand around watching children killing children and fathers drugging sons, as they celebrate, lionize, and enrich those who denigrate the very womb of their culture with impunity.
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I bear witness
to a generation of lost knowledge, cut off from its roots by Ronnie’s “Just say no” generation of crack, greed, death, and political corruption; A generation where the new N-word is pronounced “Responsibility” and the keepers of the flame completely ignore the destructive power of bitch, slut, whore, and tramp.
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I bear witness
to the reckless disregard of the words uneducated, irresponsible, and classless. Should we not ban these words as well, or should we ban banning words altogether as we celebrate their meaning?
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Yes, I do bear witness.
I bear witness to a new world -
a world where gross ignorance comes disguised as enlightenment, and funky sneakers look down with disdain upon the sweet smell of Florsheim; a world where saggin’ pants and gaudy glitter enable country bumpkins to masquerade as elegant, and the exquisite surrender of eloquence is the very essence of what it means to be hip.
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Where's Langston? Where's Baldwin? Where's Oscar Brown, Jr?
We need you stormin' this beach, because . . .
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I now bear witness
to a world where motherhood stands alone, to be “dope” renders a smile, and posterity is forced to embrace the wind for paternal sustenance; A world where the walking dead strut about rapping the wisdom of idiocy, and we praise the illiteracy of vulgar nursery rhymes as profound; a world where the mother of salvation's final gasp is compared to the pigmentation of brown paper bags.
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Malcolm, Martin, where are you?
I once stood with a crowd.
Now seemingly alone, I'm forced to bear witness -
horrific witness . . .
to the imminent demise of our people,
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And my heart bleeds.
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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
BLACK WRITERS, INTELLECTUALS, AND INDEPENDENT THINKERS
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Religion: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.