Daniel Gwynn, 11/26/12
No Justice, Only Pieces

All of my life, I've been a victim of "The System" -- subjected to systemic demoralization, castration, incarceration, extermination, & alienation.

I'm a fatherless child from the womb to this tomb. Our government has made it extremely difficult for my father to be a man, and for him to teach me to be one. A ward of the street and fatherless as well, he became a father much too soon; with only a high school education, he tried to support two families. His struggles drove him to drink, and abandon his responsibility to me.

I'm also a motherless child, born to a single mother only 17 years old; a dropout whose struggle to survive drove her into the arms of abusive men who came between us. I was once again abandoned, left on the door steps of my beloved Mom-mom, while she moved to another state with her two other children.

Both parents were torn down and ripped away from me by "The System". A perpetual deterioration of every Black Family from one generation to the next. Although the Civil Rights Movement forced the world to acknowledge us and concede that we are Americans & human beings; we were still Ghettoized -- driven into a state of poverty, and systematically exterminated via mass incarceration, disenfranchisement & self-deprecation.

No mother or father & a tortured soul, I was left to fend for myself. No guidance for the future, or any help to navigate the muck & mire of the streets (who embraced me & taught me to survive). School provided no means for escape or motivation to stay & learn. People judging me made it easier for me to become a thug, thief & liar. The cops would beat me down at every turn, forcing me to be their stooge or go to jail. Donning a suit & tie didn't hide me from their abuses because I was "marked". I couldn't even get a good paying job.

I was marked for life, processed & booked for a crime I didn't commit. My innocence was lost, and the system had broken me down, for I was thoroughly discouraged from becoming a better man. There's no justice, only a broken system; there's no profit in rehabilitation, only the broken pieces of my dreams, and I'm not the only one.

Daniel Gwynn