JustUs: ‘Don’t You Dare Lecture Me’
The story of a young man trapped, in what he experiences as, the U.S. colosseum of racist justice and economic games of exploitation.
The criminal justice system doesn’t make sense to Black people. And if White people would think about it, outside of a lens of racist justification that says it’s normal for one out of three Black men to end up going to prison, they wouldn’t understand it either.
Black people work hard, too often at low paying jobs, only to be chased and locked up like exotic beasts. Then we get told: “You’re useless, you’re worthless.” The system actually does that to us.
The criminal justice system operates without empathy. They can judge us like they want to. They can enslave us like they want to because we’re never going to be free. Well, maybe some people… but not me. Not he or she who has been convicted, because now we are lower than our peers. Or maybe, no conviction needed, it’s just because we’re Black. Yes, I’m awake to the injustice, the racism, and the lies, but I’m still trapped. They waste us. They use our talent for surviving outside legal opportunities of economic gain for their entertainment.
But I am not entertained. I am not entertained. I want out of the colosseum but I’m trapped. Even though I have so far escaped the prison game, there is no escape when you come from poverty. Because I am my brother’s keeper, and if the jail keeper has my brother, then I, too, am caught like my cousin is caught.
My cousin is like my brother. We are all we have. We got arrested for some messed up trespass charge in this small town in Texas. I knew, being in that small, White town, that it didn’t matter that there was a good reason we were there. It just wasn’t going to look good, regardless.
So I paid a lawyer to get me in front of the DA before the court date. And when I talked to the DA, he dropped the whole case. He got to meet me personally. He got to hear the whole story. He got to be “surprised” by the eloquence of a Black man.
But he didn’t get a chance to meet with my cousin because my cousin had a public defender. It’s crazy. If their job was really to protect, defend, serve, and give you what you deserve, then they would have said to my cousin: “I see obviously there’s a mismatch here. Let me knock this off.” But they didn’t say that, even though we were on the same case and my charges were dismissed. He still went to jail. He still got parole. And that one event stopped his life for years. He wasn’t able to get a job in the area but he couldn’t move because that was where his kid lived. So he was instantly stuck. He didn’t want to live with his parents. He didn’t want to crash from house to house. But he had to suck it up — do whatever it took just to make a buck to feed his kid. He was stuck.
And seeing his pain is like seeing my pain. Every time I see him needing something from me… it’s like now I need something too. He needs something, so we need something. Because he’s hurting for cash, now we’re hurting for cash. Because I’m his brother.
And it’s not his fault. It’s not like he doesn’t want to work. He’s smarter than a lot of people that are in college. But he can’t finish his degree because he’s too far away from a school; he doesn’t have a computer, internet or the other things he would need to pull off long distance learning. And it sucks because some people are just given that stuff and they waste it. I see these White kids all around me getting their tuition paid for by their parents. Getting their dorms paid for by their parents. Getting food, money, cars, extravagant things — luxuries that my people wouldn’t even dream about.
And everywhere, there is this moral lecture — coming from the criminal injustice system, the school system, and the media — about knowing right from wrong. And I’m working my job and going to college hoping it will get me out of poverty but, really, what are my chances of making it out? Because statistically black men don’t make it up the income ladder. (Brooking’s Institute 2018, fact — look it up)
For us, there is rarely any ladder, just a lot of unexpected slides into prison. So don’t lecture me on doing it right. Don’t you dare lecture me!
I grew up watching my mom struggle after doing everything right. She is noble. She is fierce. A Black woman impregnated with me at 16 and she still managed to graduate from high school. And my grandmother, even though she too was a single parent, the product of foster care, did the best she could for my mom. My mom would wash clothes and work at a daycare so there was a place for me while she drove 60 minutes everyday to get to a college where she could get that degree, an advanced degree, so she could become an elementary school teacher.
And when she moved back to her hometown, with her expensive degree, wanting to work for the elementary school she had once attended, she was turned down for the teaching position because they said she was underqualified. They told her she could be a Teachers Aide. An Aide! “You know that hard work we lectured you about when you were a kid attending this elementary school? You know that education we told you that you had to get in order to prove your worth? It is worthless to us. Get back to the field where you belong.”
Well she didn’t go back to the field. And she got out of the whole education field itself because the next school in town that she applied to told her the opposite — that she was ‘overqualified’.
And maybe it’s good she got out… There’s no money in education. Here in Colorado, we spend less than $8,500 a year on each student’s public education and over $40,000 a year incarcerating each inmate. The whole game makes no sense. It makes no sense.
Astro Allison is a Motus Theater JustUs League Monologist. He is studying to get a BA in Business Administration with a focus in Human Resources. He has an acumen for business management but wants to put his creativity to finding a solution to the broken criminal justice system. An artist, stylist & entrepreneur. Founder of Superior Echelon.
This autobiographical story was written by Astro Allison in collaboration with Kirsten Wilson as part of Motus Theater’s JustUs Project: Stories From the Frontlines of the Criminal Justice System.
To book a performance or find out more about the Motus Theater JustUs Project, email info@motustheater.org
