JustUs: ‘Truth not Facts’
One man’s story of overcoming addiction through love and grace, in contrast to the systemic violence he, and other inmates, experienced in prison; a call to reimagine a criminal justice system that truly offered rehabilitation.
The last time I went to jail, I had been in there for about 18 months while I was fighting my case. I called my mom, “Hey, Mama, you guys wanna come bond me out?”
She said, “Well, let me talk to your sisters and see if we can get up the money.” She talked to my sisters and they said, “No, Ma. He’s up to the same thing. He’s gonna get out and go right back to the drugs. So, we ain’t in.”
But my mom said, “Well, I’m going to come get you.” She went and got a loan and came and got me. I was strong in the Word and I meant what I said. I was done with crack.
After my mom bailed me out, I went to pick up my car which had been impounded while I was in jail. Right before they arrested me they had searched my car — tore it up. I mean TORE IT UP! I had a nice Cadillac and they pulled everything out of it that they could but found no dope — I was finally arrested for what they found in my house.
I drove my car home and was slowly putting the insides of it back together when I found a pipe under the front seat with a big ol’ rock right next to it — and I’m thinking, “Did they set me up?” I mean they had searched my car up and down, even looked in my spare tire, and the dope was right there under the seat, just clear as day!
I picked up the rock and that pipe and I put it in my pocket. I said, “No, I ain’t gonna do it.” But I didn’t throw it away. I knew I should have just thrown it, but I didn’t. And then, later on that day, I broke it up and hit that thing — boy, and Scotty beamed me up! Whoo! As soon as I got beamed up, here comes my Mom. I mean, as soon as I took the hit, not 20 seconds later, she came home and saw me.
I saw the tears in her big ol’ brown eyes and I said, “Mom. I bet if you’d have known this, you’d have left my ass in there.” She looked at me and said, “No, baby. I still would have come and got you.”
Sometimes, when I tell this story, it makes me weep, just recalling those words: “No, baby. I still would have come and got you.” Oh my God. You could’ve kicked me or cussed me out. But that kind of blatant love makes you butt naked, raw and vulnerable. There’s no defense. It makes you defenseless.
Anything else, I could have handled — come on, bring it on: “You’re a liar, a failure, an addict, worthless, a criminal.” That’s all you got? Yeah, I could stand up to that.
But love and grace will lay you out, butt naked, no clothes on. Oh my God. That was what made me think differently and the pivotal point that led me to be drug-free today.
That’s the thing that we gotta convey to society. It’s when a person is broken, messed up, and deserves love the least, that is exactly when they need it most. And that grace is the thing that will give people the 360 right there. The key is helping people remember their importance, understand their magnificence, and then invest in helping them reach their potential instead of punishing them.
But the criminal justice system takes all our shortcomings and faults and it magnifies them. That’s all they look at. They take that smallest part of us and make it the biggest part of our existence, when all this good stuff is sitting right here just waiting. It’s dormant. It’s waiting to grow but it’s not put in the right environment.
Instead, they send us down a dark tunnel into a place of violence at every intersection — a gladiator school where you learn how to place magazines around your belly in case someone tries to stick you. You learn to always step out of your pants if you sit on the toilet in case you are attacked. And when you act out in that violence, they send you further down into the hole where there are no people, just an overflowing toilet, rats and isolation.
If you drop an oak tree seed into a concrete world — it’s still alive in there, and vibrant, but it’s not growing. It’s just dormant. But if you take it from there and drop it in a decent place where there is enough sun, earth and nutrients — you don’t even have to plant it — just put it somewhere it can possibly grow and that thing would take off on its own.
The fact is, all of us in prison are human beings who committed crimes, but that is not our truth. We are not ontologically criminal. That is not our essence. And instead of helping us return to the full truth of who we are, the criminal justice system takes away our names, gives us DOC numbers and robs us of our dignity, freedom, happiness, and, most of all, the potential to be our best selves — who we could have been if someone had tried to nurture us instead of neuter us.
And how can it change as long as the justice system continues to lie about what it is doing to us? They give us a piece of paper that says, “The court is sentencing the defendant to incarceration for ten years of rehabilitation and is fitted towards the sentence.” Rehabilitation my ass. There’s no rehabilitation. When you send us to the “Department of Corrections” you’re making us more incorrect. There’s not a sliver of corrections in that place.
Those of us telling our stories as part of Motus Theater’s JustUs project are fairly new to this whole idea of Restorative Justice, but we know that telling the truth and taking responsibility for the harm we have caused is a big part of it. And we have reflected as a group, in our writing process, on that harm.
But we are also asking the criminal justice system, itself, to sit in circle with us and hear the ways we have been harmed, because it, itself, has been “criminal” in the name of justice.
Daniel Guillory is a Motus Theater JustUs League Monologist. He is a minister, visual artist, poet and writer with the pen name JB. He is developing his voice as a motivational speaker. He is a grateful father and new grandfather. He is moved by his work with Motus Theater to not simply support Restorative Justice but to transform the entire criminal legal system.
This autobiographical story was written by Daniel Guillory 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
