Public Viewing of 13TH Documentary and Open Discussion at Langston Hughes Performing Arts Theatre Hosted by B.U.I.L.D. Seattle
Jimerson speaking at Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center
“The only difference between the people in prison and on the outside, was that I had physical evidence that something went wrong in my life. I had bars, a bed, and a toilet that I had to look at every day to remind me that there was a problem,” Willard Jimerson explained to a crowd of people in Seattle during an open discussion after watching the 13TH documentary, directed by Ava Duvernay. He emphasized how every person in Black America will find themselves behind at least one of two types of bars, literal bars on a cell of a government institution or figurative bars on one’s own mind placed upon us by Western White supremacist culture. Here I tweeted a video clip of a portion of his address to the audience.
People gathered for open discussion after Public Viewing of 13TH
Some people may find themselves locked in both circumstances, but for Blacks in America being ‘locked up’ is a situation we are forced to combat with daily. Jimerson stressed the importance of recognizing when we are imprisoned in our minds (internalized oppression) before being faced with being locked behind bars. The hardest part of being in bondage in one’s own mind is operating within the exploitation, unable to recognize it as a state of enslavement. This is why many Blacks continue to shop at stores like Wal-Mart, Victoria Secret & Whole Foods; eat at restaurants like McDonalds, Wendy’s & Starbucks; or keep their money in banks like Bank of America & Wells Fargo. All of these establishments profit from prison labor and are examples of how we blindly fund our own oppression, operating within a state of exploitation though internalized oppression.
Jimerson was the youngest person in the state of Washington to be tried as an adult. At 13 years old he was sentenced to 23 years in prison. The fact that a society could allow for a child to be sent to prison (for a sentence almost double his age) could only be a result of the vicious attack that has been waged on Black communities across the country. Racism in our courts isn’t isolated to Chicago and New York, lives are being taken from people in courts of ‘liberal’ cities like Los Angeles and Seattle. The ideology of Black criminality is an idea that circulates in the media nationwide, although high-profile cases may be selected from certain cities we cannot forget that the problem is much bigger than what we are shown in mainstream media.
Jimerson being escorted by an officer to trial (1994)
The only way that a nation could prosecute a child so harshly is through cognitive dissonance. The cognitive dissonance that has occurred with White America in relation to Black America is a result of the dehumanization of Black people, most notably through the media. Jimerson blatantly said, “If I was a 13-year-old White kid that would not have happened to me.” We all know this to be painfully true.
The Prison Industrial Complex made $1.3 billion in profit on one year and more bodies, no matter how young, must continue to fill prisons in order to keep this system profitable. During discussion, members pointed out how the public school education system is used to catch young people of color. This is also known as the public school to prison pipeline which isolates young black youth for behavioral issues placing them into special education or into the care of resource officers. Behavioral problems that could easily be addressed by parents and teachers are handed to officers for the cases of our Black youth. Why is our nation hell-bent on isolating and destroying our youth?
Jimerson shared that America’s top priority is to keep Black people from feeling good about themselves. Living day in and day out within a white supremacist culture as a person of color is a traumatic experience. It’s imperative that we create safe spaces where we can uplift and support each other while navigating this world that has been created to suppress us.
Jimerson also stressed to the audience the importance of having relationships with those who are incarcerated, having these discussions, actually talking to the ‘subject’ of these circumstances, those are the experts we should be looking to. He shared that while speaking with incarcerated Black youth that many of them aspire to be entertainers or athletes, which he describes as ‘limited fields’ due to their age expiration. For example, athletes are more valuable in their youth while for professional careers like doctors & lawyers, value grows with experience. The fact that our youth cannot picture themselves in professional fields is due to the fact that they aren’t shown those narratives, they are groomed to expire. Currently there is a new $210 million juvenile detention facility being built in Seattle, but how can a progressive society be preparing to incarcerate more youth? Every Tuesday I visit the current Juvenile Detention Center in Seattle to teach write poetry with students as apart of the Pongo Poetry Project. Since I began teaching at the facility, the amount of youth detained has been steadily decreasing. At first I believed that was a sign of success but now with the state planning to upgrade the facility, I’m realizing that the decrease of juveniles in detention is seen as a problem to the state that needs to be remedied by a larger facility.
We must know that over 500 years of instilling fear, oppression and inferiority within a group of people cannot be extracted in 40 years. It’s going to take persistent and constant work to revolutionize our thinking. The opposite of criminalization is humanization. Not only are we fighting against systematic forces, but we are also suffering from internalized oppression in which many of us actually believe and act out the stereotypes and destructive narratives that are forced upon us. We must circulate more narratives of Blackness in a positive light rather than consuming those negative images that are forced upon us constantly. We must protect ourselves and each other in order to free ourselves as a whole from behind these bars.
