On the eve of the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict… somehow I feel like the establishment is saying support us or you’ll get smoked.
You’ve never seen pain until you sit down with a man serving a life sentence, for being in the wrong car at the wrong time, who’s never pulled a trigger, and every appeal has been denied tenfold. Looking in the mirror like the joke’s on you; for believing in a system that was built on your servitude. For having the audacity to believe in fairness, or the cliché of innocent until proven guilty. What’s proof to a deaf jury, who does all the listening with their eyes, and casts judgment by the visuals society created.
Young, gifted and black that may be true, but somehow that still isn’t enough to defy the odds. It’s like a machete against a machine gun, AI against an infant, Barry Bonds against my little league team as I swing for the fences, once I realized the systemic warrior I was up against. The realization put my ‘Fear’ in its proper context. Fear the white man, never, but the government, the system and biased institution that carries him; maybe so. He’s their logo, their mascot and all he’s missing is that big red cape with U.S.A. imprinted on the back of it.
Kyle Rittenhouse yearned to be a cop at a young age. It was his dream, his passion, his lifelong goal. No harm in that, except unfortunately you have to ask yourself why and what type of cop he aspired to be? Was it the cop who was sworn to protect or the one who had sworn enemies? What fueled his aspirations, the freedom to protect or the freedom to shoot? We can’t ignore the fact that lately police officers have become known for their ability to murder without consequences just as much as they have for arresting people, and to some this may add to their allure.
I met Vance Haskell the summer of 2007 in the law library of the Camp Hill penitentiary in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. Five minutes into our conversation he stated he was serving a life sentence, fifteen minutes later he told me he was innocent. We hit it off, which set the stage for a rare comfortability. But it’s a difference between saying you’re innocent and showing you’re innocent, and my boy Vance walked like it. I met Hassan Bennet five years later at SCI Greene and he had bars for days, he could rap with the best of them. He said to me, “Rem, I’m a get myself out of here. I ain’t do this shit.” We were in solitary confinement at the time, and I took it at face value then asked him to spit something else.
Fear is a layered term no matter what context you use it in. I play with the thought and ask myself do they fear us? Why are we perceived as a threat? Is it our physical prowess, envy of the natural rhythm we possess, or maybe it’s just a knee jerk reaction to protect the power they hold and any inkling of the truth awakening in us is a threat to that, a constant paranoia because just one day we may say the hell with it, get fed up and….
In March of 2004 I was released from an Ohio prison to a halfway house in Lancaster, Ohio. Small town, with no black faces in sight except for my roommate at the halfway house. This land was just as foreign to me as the Middle East. We were forced to work as one of the stipulations of staying at the halfway house and I landed at a restaurant as a dishwasher. $5.25 an hour, hard labor, but who cares I was halfway free. Me and another newly released inmate leave work one night and a car full of white boys pull up recklessly. “Fuck you -!” A bunch of cuss words and disrespectful gestures followed as they threw bottles at us while daring us to
approach the car. Two cold convicts fresh out of the pen and we froze, city boys in disbelief, ready to pounce but something wouldn’t allow us to move. My 38 year old mature self now knew it had nothing to do with the white boys, it was the repercussions we would face if caught confronting them. We were no match for what they had behind them. Our fear of the system was already embedded in us.
The thin blue flag is a black and white version of the American flag with a single stripe. It’s a known representation of law enforcement; and has also been adopted by opponents of the Black Lives Matter Movement. The affiliation doesn’t stop there, Kyle Rittenhouse and his mother can be seen repping the flag on their social media platforms, along with photos of a young Rittenhouse clutching an AR-15. An avid Trump supporter, Rittenhouse was bullied in high school and became infatuated with guns and the police at a young age. I’m noticing a pattern here, one hidden behind the babyface and the crocodile tears, one that the public continuously writes off on their moral tax return.
I was sentenced to 20-40 years for attempted homicide and 3.5-7 years for a gun never found in my possession in a Pennsylvania courtroom. The judge told me he was making an example out of me for all of the Detroit guys who think they can come to PA, stash drugs and shoot people. Really? He didn’t see me or the evidence, he saw the stereotype my face represented in his mind. He morphed every black felon into one, until it built up a complex and justified his beliefs. Vance Haskell got sentenced to life on the word of a shoplifter, and Hassan Bennett got life on the strength of doctored phone records. I’m noticing a pattern here, one that just about says we’ve been sentenced since we came out of the womb.
February 2002, me and two of my boys decided to take a road trip to Atlanta. I’m 18 years young, drinking and partying with the tolerance of a 30 year old, barely any stubble on my chin, but enough on my soul to recognize, enough of a dark history to activate my senses. My boy Nev had a long lost friend that now lived in Augusta, GA, and why not visit her, it wasn’t too often we were an hour away. We drove with our usual city flair, minutes later stopping at a gas station that looked straight out of a Western. Four pumps that were borderline inoperable, but we entered the mart anyway. I was the first to notice the KKK flag behind the counter, my friend Rob noticed their faces, and Nev noticed the shotgun easing its way in plain view. We retreated before the entrance bell sounded, our legs activating a mind of their own. Nothing about this scene was familiar to me but my gut knew better, he knew that this represented an institution I’d been up against all my life.
A quick snapshot of Rittenhouse’s social media posts speaks volumes. The undertone is so potent it’s hazardous. “Blue Lives Matter”, a mugshot of Jacob Blake with the caption: “LOL He’s Innocent” all led to Rittenhouse answering the post of a local militia outfit to take up arms to defend the city from ‘civil thugs’. This was the moment he’d been waiting on, his claim to fame on a silver platter. His first stop, a used car dealership as an armed guard. Jacob Blake had just been shot seven times, but all that seemed to need protecting was a small lot of twenty used cars.
When you know, you just know, it’s not something you speak on. It’s a gray cloud that hangs over our presence, a shadow that you can’t shake, that extra weight that you carry so much it becomes a part of you. It’s called the justice system, and by 2014, me, Vance and Hassan had validated our fear. By this time it had morphed to hatred, anger and frustration. Vance’s and my appeals were at the federal level and Hassan’s was still at the state. It was a denial in the first degree, but after seven years of battling back and forth Vance was at least granted his appeal rights back. Hassan looked at me and said, “Rem they still fucking up..” but he never was defeated, even when most felt they had the right to be.
As I wait in the bull pen of the Erie County prison in September 2021, the reality check haunts me. It’s been 15 years since I’ve been this close to freedom yet I still can’t grasp it. I’ve watched four prisoners get released back to back; from their change of clothes to the car they set foot in once they reach the gate, it’s surreal to me. The snapshot is cut short as two sheriffs walk in wearing bulletproof vests and guns on their hips. It’s a five hour ride back to Huntingdon prison and as I size up drivers I wonder just what type of ‘white’ they are.
Young, relaxed faces, okay this may not be that bad, their crew cuts are the only red flag. “Is that cool?” one of them asks, referring to the tightness as he clasps the shackles around my ankles. It’s the small things a convict checks for when examining a cop. An experienced eye for the details can be the difference between life and death or a new charge. I notice the driver adjusting the settings on his iPhone from the backseat. I’m mesmerized, upon seeing an iPhone in person for the first time, then before I know it rap music snaps me out of my reverie.
Things start to get hazy in the life of Kyle Rittenhouse, a.k.a. bodyguard, b.k.a. militia man recruit, around 11:20 p.m. on the night of August 25, 2020. Protestors face off with militiamen screaming as a dumpster burns in flames. Groups of white men with assault rifles at a Black Lives Matter protest without a care in the world. Who says race doesn’t matter? Somewhere along the line Rittenhouse started impersonating a medic; running up to strangers offering help becoming shocked at the odd stares he got in return. Maybe he needed a mirror in his back pocket, or maybe obliviousness was his way of life, and he forgot the assault rifle he had dangling around his neck.
Even sitting in my 5 x 9 cell with no window, it’s not hard for me to capture this image. Black Lives Matter protests, a young white kid running rampant with an unlicensed assault weapon in hand. Are you uncomfortable yet? Should an unarmed man stand defenseless, or take action before action is taken upon him? That fight or flight get you before you get me instinct is hazardous, and someone should have placed a highly flammable sign on Rittenhouse’s back. Four 223 rounds shattered the pelvis, tore through the right lung, liver, left hand and grazed the forehead of Joseph Rosenbaum.
Rittenhouse flees… George Gorsskreutz shouts, “Hey you just shot somebody!” Rittenhouse continues fleeing, two white men with the benefit of fleeing everyone including the authorities; must be nice. Rittenhouse yells he’s going to the police, Grosskreutz screams “Stop him!” Anthony Huber tries to smack him with his skateboard before Rittenhouse sends a bullet through his heart. Grosskreutz falls over Rittenhouse, and his right bicep is blown off. No surrender, no retreat, no apprehension, not even a FREEZE from a cop nearby, yet Jacob Blake was shot seven times for reaching in the front seat of his car.
I love rap music, but I’d never been so tuned in to the lyrics as I was while in the back of the sheriff’s vehicle. Petty me, I listened closely to see if he would drop the ‘N’ word while quoting the lyrics. I was anxious to see how cool he thought he really was, shackled from ankles to wrist and this is where my focus was. The system had polluted me and consumed my reality, turning me into a raceologist, looking for the worst in people instead of looking for an opening. As we arrived in the parking lot of Huntingdon prison I realized I didn’t have to look any further, because the worst was right in front of me.
I remember seeing Vance on the evening news in 2018, a year after I was transferred to another facility. He was the happiest man I had ever seen in shackles, and his orange jumpsuit fit like a tux. Or maybe our mind had hijacked our eyes and we were so kidnapped by the joy we couldn’t see anything else. As Vance walked through that courthouse on remand after getting his sentence overturned, he exemplified our vision and reignited our faith. A montage of every disappointment and late night in the law library replayed in my head. It was all worth it, sitting on the bunk watching the story play out on the news, it was the first time I’d been free in years.
Rittenhouse tried to turn himself in but was brushed away. BRUSHED AWAY? BRUSHED AWAY? I need to write the words over so that they can come to life. I have to force myself to believe it, but the unbelievable was just beginning. After hours in the comfort of his own home, Rittenhouse turned himself in, apprehension was so beneath him. Right wing conservatives swerved in praising him as a patriot. They raised two million dollars for his bail and morphed him into an online sensation. He posed for pictures with the Proud Boys, an extremist group with ties to white nationalism, all in the name of murder, under the guise of the real issue at hand. LIBERALISM VS. CONSERVATISM.… FREEDOM VS. OPPRESSION…. BLACK VS. WHITE. All upheld by a system that can see very clearly but has been claiming blind for too long.
Handcuffed waiting at intake at Huntingdon prison, the correctional officer, white mid-fifties mouth full of chewing tobacco looked at me and said: “See what them politicians need to do is move all you boys out of the city and put you in the country, then maybe you wouldn’t keep coming in and out of prison. Learn you some farming and what not. Hey…” He looked over to the avid rap fan who’d transported me here, his comrade in disguise. “Wouldn’t that make a great reality show; brothers farming?” He laughed by his lonesome at his suggestion. Me, I was disgusted but not only was I handcuffed but frozen by the same system that numbed me years prior. 2021 and I was still fighting against the smoke screens of the strides we’d made.
Hassan Bennett’s face was plastered all over the Philadelphia Daily News, braids in his hair, all smiles dressed in prison garb walking out of the courtroom. He’d represented himself after being granted a new trial on appeal and won. My boy became a phenom, a convict turned prodigy. The Federal Court ordered the state to release Vance Haskell after their failure to re-try him in 180 days, but instead the prosecution defied their own rule and re-filed the same charges against him. Justice and its hypocritical nature, misery at its finest.
Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty and his status grew larger than life. Congressman offered him internships and every media outlet lined up to interview him. He became a poster child, a prop, his whole style rehearsed to fit the mold of civil liberty, not even a firearm charge, the babyface kid from Wisconsin sold his look well and you better not have nothing to say about it. Remember Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner? Let me give you some clues…. a pack of skittles, a swisher cigar and a carton of cigarettes, all of the items used to criminalize them. Retail theft, a weed habit and under the table goods, convicted by the media of petty crimes to justify their death. Silly me for assuming the trend would stop now. How do you close out with an open wound? Or sum up a hereditary ailment with an essay. My soul is bruised and battered, each experience leaving a stain on my conscience. Tide can’t help. My regrets run deep, because I acted on my own kind before acting against the next. I’m 19 years in, Vance did 23 before he broke the shackles and Hassan served 11 but that pales in comparison to what we’ve been serving all our life. As the inhabitants of the land of the unjust, how I wish we could claim self-defense.
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