WS Chronicle

To the Editor:

“Tackling crime, Punishment” on March 20, 2014 was a great article.
Why? Because what I saw from a distance (I’m incarcerated) was and possibly is the beginning of solid work by Elder Lamonte Williams of Diggs Memorial United Holy Church. There were many organized “think tanks” and an array of organizations and businesses coming together to develop a solution.

Reading the article gave me hope that African American youth may have some real help in guiding them to the reality of our situations and producing a collective program for bringing us into a more respected existence.

This will not be easy, considering the many different ideologies that suppress our nourishment and overall unity. Science has shown that as long as there is an individual perspective present instead of communal perspective exercised, the building, constructing and producing of healthy children is, psychologically, a fleeting illusion. A universal development has begun with all of the participants of the “My Brother’s Keeper” panel discussion, but I must stress that development is teaching the ways and means of becoming productive citizens.

In our condition as African Americans, the tackling of the socioeconomic status of poverty and want is one of the beginning elements to eliminating black-on-black crime, addiction and the majority of the other social ills that we as a people have suffered from since Reconstruction.

My personal movement is not just talking at a situation, but helping to the best of my ability. Here, in federal prison, I have been using African American studies as a catalyst to help the youth and the mature to come in contact with who we are as a people and understand their responsibility to their people and the community in general. My hope is that you, the powerful leaders, create a “Universal Development Program” for all who desire to be active participants in the Democracy. Jails, prisons and social death are not the only solutions. “Proactive conception = Universal development.”

C. Cunningham