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Category Archives: Politics
Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature – The Series
In this series, I trace how a teenage brush with homicide headlines became a lifelong interrogation of justice. From police tape and tabloid “if it bleeds, it leads” narratives to courtrooms, prisons, and the literature that wrestles with guilt, I ask what truth survives punishment. Along the way, I revisit forgotten voices, personal losses, and hard-earned lessons—seeking a language that honors victims, confronts systems, and insists on humanity, story at a time, without flinching. Continue reading
Posted in being a teenager, Black History Month, Education, ezwwaters, Genealogy, Growing Up, Justice Chronicles, juveniles, Life Sentences, Martin Luther King, Murder, Parole, parole board, Politics, race, raising black boys, Reentry, remorse, Segregation, Slavery, Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats, Streets of Rage, The Black Blood of Poetry, urban decay, Urban Impact
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Revisiting _The Miseducation of the Negro_ This Black History Month
Carter G. Woodson’s seminal book, The Miseducation of the Negro, published in 1926, is a book Black folk should periodically revisit, perhaps every three years, ideally every year. If you are Black and you have not read the book, then … Continue reading
Posted in Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Education, ezwwaters, Lest We Forget, Politics, race, raising black boys, Slavery
Tagged 1619 Project, african-american, Aristotelian Logic, Aunt Jemima, Black history, Black History Month, Brown v. Board of Education, Candace Owens, Carter G. Woodson, Clarence Thomas, Classical Rhetoric, Compulsory Education Act (1852), culture, General Grammar, history, Jim Crow, Nicholas Capaldi, Plessy v. Ferguson, Russell Sage College, The Art of Deception: An Introduction to Critical Thinking, The Miseducation of the Negro, Tribium, U.S. Senator Tim Scott, Uncle Tom, writing
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For the Love of Poetry
I love poetry. It is only fitting that my fourth book of poetry, The Black Blood of Poetry, will be released this Valentine’s Day. Although this forthcoming selection, on its face, may not seem like “love poetry,” it is, because … Continue reading
Posted in Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, ezwwaters, Growing Up, John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Poetry, Politics, race, Revolution, Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats, Streets of Rage
Tagged 1960s, Countee Cullen, Decisive Decade, JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, RFK, The Black Blood of Poetry, William Blake, William Carlos Williams, William Shakespeare, Willliam Wordsworth
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Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature, Part III
Continued… (If you missed the second installment, then click here: Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature, Part II) The modern War on Crime, as we know it, was inaugurated with Richard Nixon’s campaign for the presidency in 1968. Nixon declared … Continue reading
Posted in Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, crime, ezwwaters, Justice Chronicles, Politics, race
Tagged Abel Meeropol, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Alexis de Tocqueville, Attica Correctional Facility, Attica Rebellion, Billie Holiday, cien anons de soledad, Class, De Profundis, Democracy in America, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Great Society, Gustave De Beaumont, Hudson Valley Black Press, hyperincarceration, Loic Wacquant, Medellin Cartel, Michelle Alexander, Nelson Rockefeller, News on a Kidnapping, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Oscar Wilde, prisonm-industrial complex, race, revanchist America, Reynold's Magazine, richard nixon, Strange Fruit, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, THe Four Zoas, The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, The House of the Dead, The New Jim Crow, The United States Penitentiary System and its Application in France, war on crime, War on Drugs, Watergate, William Blake
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Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature, Part II
…Continued (If you missed the first installment, then click here: Journey Through Crime and Punishment, Part I.) Crime and Punishment was first published in The Russian Messenger, a literary journal, in twelve monthly installments in 1866. I reread passages of … Continue reading
Posted in crime, ezwwaters, Justice Chronicles, juveniles, Murder, Parole, parole board, Politics, race, raising black boys, remorse
Tagged ABACADRABA! Or NOtes on the War on Crime, art, Cicero, Cicero's Murder Trials, crime and punishment, Dostoevsky, Endless Punishment is a crime, Felony MUrder and the Misdemeanor of Attempted Escape: A Legislative Error in Search of Correction, Fordham Urban Law Journal, Gary McGivern, Governor Mario Cuomo, Hamlet, HIcksville, Murder Trials, New York Times, Newsday, Notes from Underground, PEN, Peter J. McQuillan, photography, Poetry, Portia, The House of the Dead, The Merchant of Venice, The Russian Messenger, travel, writing
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Celebrating 65 Years of Life
I saw the best minds of my generation drop out of school and get their education on the streets, in the schools of hard knocks: in group homes, reform schools, jails, reformatories, insane asylums, and prisons. They dropped out of … Continue reading
Cancel Culture Redux
Revisiting “The Cancel-Culture Conundrum.” Continue reading
Posted in crime, Malcolm X, Nation of Islam, Politics, race
Tagged cancel culture, Charlie Kirk, Elijah Muhammad, faith, history, JFK, Jimmy Kimmel, Malcolm X, news, politics
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“Teaching” Alice Walker
In preparation for a lecture in the course I teach, African American Literature in the 20th Century, I am re-reading excerpts from Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose. In her prose, Walker makes nearly perfect sense. … Continue reading
Posted in crime, ezwwaters, Justice Chronicles, Lest We Forget, Politics, race, Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats, Streets of Rage
Tagged Alice Walker, Brownfield, GrangeCopeland, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose, Mister, personal, Poetry, Relationships, Rodney King, Saving the Life That Is Your Own: The Importance of Models in the Artist's Life, sex, Streets of Rage, The Color Purple, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, women
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The Anatomy of Advocacy, Part 3: Strategy in Action – How They Won the Fight
Inside the research, coalitions, and bipartisan sponsorship that led to Chapter 310 of the Laws of 2008 and discharges from lifetime parole. Continue reading
Posted in crime, ezwwaters, Justice Chronicles, Life Sentences, Murder, Parole, parole board, Politics, race, Reentry
Tagged bipartisan sponsorship, Chapter 310 of the Laws of 2008, CUNY Graduate Center, David Paterson, John Jay College, New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty, Osborne Association, parole reform New York, Prisoner Reentry Institute, Senate Bill 6731
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