The Dead Can’t Bury the Dead!

Posted on March 18, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

In Shakespeare love often happens in the context of a tragedy: Hamlet and Ophelia in Hamlet; Romeo and Juliet in the play of the same name; Othello the Moor and Desdemona in Othello; Aaron the Moor and Tamora, Queen of the Goths, in Titus Andronicus.  (The last two, in part, are stories of interracial love, which is worthy of a post of its own, how the Bard treated this subject.) Shakespeare’s “love stories” happen in the context of comedy: As You Like it; The Merchant of Venice; and Measure for Measure.  Note that many of Shakespeare’s comedies have strong women, including Rosalind in As You Like It, and my favorite, Portia, in The Merchant of Venice.  Many of these “comedies” end with weddings.

When I think of our baby brother, I try not to think of his story as a tragedy.  He was one of the funniest people I’ve known.  When I think of his untimely death – when is death ever on time? – I laugh more than I cry, thinking of things he said, and how he said them.  He had the perfect timing like the best comedians.

When my brother proposed to his fiancée, Cynthia Credle, it was both beautiful and funny.  He shared this moment with his families, his biological family, and his extended families.

Cynthia makes it into my Hall of Women during this Women’s History Month because she loved my brother, and my brother loved her.  For a man, and I’m speaking as a man, to be truly loved by a woman is one of the most precious gifts we receive.

Dying young is tragic.  Dying two months before your wedding makes it exponentially tragic.  Still, I don’t think of my brother’s life and story as tragic.  We shared many great moments, most of them funny because my brother was a comedian at heart, and he had a good heart.  His numerous friends can testify to that.  And I know that there’s no consolation for us, his families, in his untimely death, but when our brother “shuffled off his mortal coil” and we celebrated his life, because the dead can’t bury the dead, we witnessed how so many people loved him.  This brings me happiness, because not only did he know love, but he was loved.

My brother was the best man at my wedding.  If you look at the pictures, especially at the Church, he is standing watch like a security guard, his body language saying: anyone trying to stop this union must go through me!  I was going to have the honor of being his best man.  That’s just how the Waters Brothers roll!

The sad thing is that I won’t ever roll again with my brother on this plane.  If there’s a Heaven, I know he’s there, and I know the angels and the heavenly hosts are cracking up at something he’s saying.

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“We Are Family!”

Posted on March 17, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters
Wanda & Cheryl

If you have been following my posts, or you know my family, then you know that I have three sisters.  Jeanette Waters, the Matriarch, of course, you know, from my tribute to her.  Today, though, I want to uplift my other two sisters, Cheryl, and Wanda.

People who know my sisters don’t think of Cheryl as a fighter.  But she is the original fighter among the Waters sisters.  Cheryl was a preemie, not expected to live.  When she pulled through, the doctors called her their “miracle baby.”  Cheryl is my “Irish twin,” though not in the strict sense, in that we were born in different years.  But for four months out of the year, we are the same age. As kids, during this time, we had to explain to adults who asked our age that we were not twins, that we have the same mother and father.

Cheryl, I think, embodies our mother.  Jeanette says she’s the best person she knows, so uncharacteristically Gemini.  Well, Jeanette, Cheryl should have entered the world in September, not June.  This explains your sentiments.  Jeanette can get astrological reading the signs and the stars in the sky.  Maybe, just maybe, this explains why Cheryl is not a “typical” Gemini.

Wanda, the youngest, the smallest and the shortest of my sisters, is a fighter.  Let’s say she’s the feminine version of Napoleon.  Mommy would say, “Something is wrong with you!  You’re always fighting.”  (Black women have always had to fight, for everything, especially their dignity and respect, in these here United States.)  Actually, Wanda is like a ninja, not Napoleon.  In fact, let me give my baby sister an African attribute.  Wanda is like Nzinga Mbande, who was Queen of the Ambundu Kingdoms of Ndongo and Matamba.  Among other things, Nzinga was a military strategist, a fighter.  For the record, many of Wanda’s fights were in defense of our baby brother.  I think Whitney, not Houston, learned this, and that anyone who gave him any problems, he knew he could send Wanda after them.  Whitney and I could not have three better sisters.  They have always had our back because we are family!

Remember when downloading ringtones was all the rage?  My sisters don’t know this, but on my phone they all had the same ringtone, Sister Sledge’s title song from their 1979 album, “We Are Family.”

Wanda, Me, Cheryl, Jeanette

We are family

I got all my sisters with me

We are family

Get up everybody and sing

Everyone can see we’re together

As we walk on by

(And) and we fly just like birds of a feather

I won’t tell no lie

All of the people around us they say

Can they be that close

Just let me state for the record

We’re giving love in a family dose

We are family (hey, y’all)

I got all my sisters with me

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She Invited Me into the Red Tent

Posted on March 16, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Shawnee Benton Gibson has a special place in my Hall of Heroines, for two reasons.  First, we share the same Born Day, different years.  I can always expect a call or a text from her on our special day!  How cool is it that I share the same Born Day with three women I’ve met during my odyssey? Shawnee, and my two “white sisters” I mentioned in a post.  Second, and more importantly, Shawnee invited me into the Red Tent.

The Red Tent is where the world begins. Under this tent one finds music, magic, and miracles, including the miracle of birth.  Under this tent one finds loss and grief, those twin towers of life, and how to deal with them.

Shawnee is a Womanpreneur – love that term! – Community Leader, Healer, Vision Coach, Author, Artist, and Inspirational Speaker. She is also the Co-Founder and CEO at Spirit of A Woman (S.O.W.).

Shawnee has been sowing seeds that have borne much fruit. I met Shawnee through my sister Jeanette.  When you have extraordinary sisters, you are bound to meet extraordinary women, one of the many blessings of growing up with and having three sisters.  Yes, I know why the caged bird sings; yes, I know how to be a friend with women; and yes, I know that women will lay it on the line in ways men cannot even conceive.  In one of my other posts, I stated that if I ever needed a lawyer, then I would first call my women lawyer friends, not any of the male lawyers I know.

Women know something, they have this knowledge that has kept the species alive.  If the world were solely left to men, I wouldn’t be writing this right now.  We would have destroyed it.  Why would any male be resistant to the leadership of women?  I especially like how Shawnee is an advocate of women’s health, especially Black women, raising health concerns the medical profession has ignored or minimized.  Women are more willing to have deep talk around matters that touch hearts and souls, while men will get all enthusiastic about sports.  I also like that Shawnee won’t hesitate to call out the foolishness of women, especially women of color, who think that we, men and women, are not in this together, for better or worse.

Shawnee, call me or text me on any other day than our Born Day!

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My Pandora

Posted on March 15, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Hope remains!

(Disclaimer: Ladies, women, womenfolk, and girls, I know that a man wrote the myth about Pandora, blaming women, as the writer of the Hebrew Bible also blamed a woman, Eve, for all the evils let loose in the world.  The story has, for the most part, been misinterpreted.  [Men put all that evil stuff in Pandora’s box].  What remained in Pandora’s box is Hope.  And women are our Hope to save humanity.)

My thought processes are complicated, maybe even convoluted, but I am never confused.

I am a writer.  I write, therefore, I am.  First and foremost, I am a poet.  I don’t know if all poets have a Muse, but there is something that inspires us, that sometimes tugs at our heart strings, but produces beautiful music.  Poetry is music that has its own orchestra.

This Women’s History Month I have felt like a Conductor of a great orchestra, of women.  The Conductor seems to lead the musicians, but it is the music that takes control.

One of my favorite pictures of my wife

I’ve been working on and thinking about a collection of poetry, Love Poetry is Lame, for a little more than a decade, inspired by My Muse, My Pandora, My Wife, Luisa Diaz.  In Love Poetry is Lame, there are two voices, one, the man who has given up on love, which has harmed him, and the other, who has been transported by love.

Those wise Greeks had five words for love.  Spanish, my wife’s first language, has two words for love.  English only has one word for love, perhaps because the English language is incapable of capturing the many faceted nature of love.

Most love stories are improbable.  (Read my review of Memoirs of a Prison Lawyer, Prison Wife, by Claudette Spencer-Nurse.)  This is a much longer story, how I found my love.  (Maybe another time?)

My wife is the first and only woman I have ever truly loved.  She is beautiful, she is kind, she is patient.  And I know you don’t earn your way into Heaven, but if one did, my wife would have a first class ticket to Heaven, for being a great mother of two girls.  (Mothers, you know what I’m talking about!)  Men were not given the gift of childbearing, because we are the weaker sex.  We couldn’t deal with the pain and the agony of giving birth, and of raising children, often alone.

I had planned this post to be my penultimate one this Women’s History Month, but I sensed my wife getting a little jealous at all the other women I was uplifting this Women’s History Month.  My sister Jeanette even called me and said I needed to uplift my wife.  Sista, that was already in the Plan!  “The best laid plans of mice and men. . .”

Notwithstanding my disclaimer at the beginning of this post, my wife is like Pandora.  If I gave her a box and told her not to open it, she would want to.  She would ask me if she could open the box.  So, open the box I give you.  Hope is not in this box, but my love, in all the languages that exist.

Te amo!

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My Two White Sisters

Posted on March 14, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

One day, when we were kids, Mommy made a Pronouncement: “Today, you are going to meet your white relatives.”  I don’t recall meeting our white relatives (maybe I was traumatized), but I remember this pronouncement.  I was still innocent, and, therefore, had no sense of the evil white folk had done and were continuing to perpetuate against Black folk in America during the Decisive Decade that I was born into.  To think that white folk were in our family tree. . .

At this time, and throughout my life, I started having this dream, of a tree.  As a kid, I found myself in this Garden, and there’s a tree, the biggest tree I’ve ever seen, and people, Black and Brown, Red and White, and Yellow, are leaves on the biggest tree I’ve ever seen.

This was before the Day of the Rope.

The tree seems to grow even bigger over time, and the Black and Brown leaves jerk up and down.

During the Decisive Decade, when I was a Black Boy, I saw the Black and Brown “leaves” falling from the biggest tree I’ve ever seen.  The Red leaves were practically gone.

This dream has not gone away.  I still dream this dream, but I can now interpret it, with my understanding of history, psychology, and the science behind DNA.  Of course, the leaves on the biggest tree I’ve ever seen are people, the whole of humanity, all the races.

One of the most beautiful passages I’ve ever read about race, which explains something else, uses a tree and leaves as its metaphor:

Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,

Now green in youth, now withering on the ground:

Another race the following spring supplies,

They fall successive, and successive rise. . .

  • Homer, The Iliad

One day I was invited to give a “race talk” at a predominantly white church.  I wanted to shake things up a bit, so I went to the biggest tree I’ve ever seen, although it’s only in my dreams.  Later, I imagine this tree of my dreams in Mississippi, so far from the Garden of Eden.

My race talk began with my family tree.  I told the white folk that I was shaking it, and shaking it, and shaking it, as hard as I could, until a white person fell out.  I then went on to say that if they shook their family trees hard enough, then a Black person was bound to fall out.  (I confess, I enjoyed making them turn red, but it turned into a teachable moment, to have a courageous conversation about race.)

Eleven percent of my DNA has European roots.  I have second cousins whose percentage of DNA is eleven percent African, and 79 percent European. Perhaps they are the “white relatives” Mommy mentioned during her Pronouncement when we were kids.

My two white sisters, Joyce Penfield and Anjahni Davi, though, are not bound to me by blood or DNA, but we share something special, including we were all born on October 1st, in different years.

When our baby brother Whitney, not Houston, passed away less than a year ago, I learned from the people who love him, that family not only includes the people we share parents, but also with people we share our lives.  With my two white sisters, we have shared important moments in our lives, where our journeys intersected.  They are just as much a part of me as my biological sisters.

Posted in being a teenager, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, Family, Genealogy, Lest We Forget, Politics, race, raising black boys, Relationships | Tagged | Leave a comment

Fiat justitia ruat caelum

Posted on March 13, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Today I get to uplift an advocate and an author, Claudette Nurse.

I have not met a person more passionate about justice than Claudette. (She causes “good trouble.”) She is an attorney. She worked for the Legal Aid Society, in its Prisoner Rights division. She is also an author, of two books, Memoirs of a Prison Lawyer, Prison Wife, and a novel, All Tapped Out.

To use a wrestling metaphor, Claudette never taps out. Anyone wrestling with the legal system would want her on his or her team. She is the zealous advocate people charged with crime expect and hope for but often do not receive. If I ever need an attorney, I would first call Claudette. In fact, in my experience, I would take a woman lawyer over most men. Whenever someone reaches out to me about a legal issue, before I pass judgment or give legal information, I call one of my women lawyer friends, and Claudette is at the top of the list. Perhaps this is solely my experience, but women attorneys bring something to court most male attorneys do not because, I think, men lack a certain sensibility.

Claudette jokes that I am her “work husband.” For more than ten years we did work for the Coalition for Parole Restoration (CPR), a grassroots nonprofit organization, which Claudette cofounded. CPR was tackling the issue of parole reform long before it became “sexy” and “fundable.” In fact, any progress made on parole reform in New York State has CPR and the work of Claudette to thank, this includes the Parole Preparation Project. On a similar note, Claudette stayed in contact with many people she represented when she worked for Legal Aid, long after the cases were over. In fact, we visited people in prison, because we never forget, we never forgot them. Claudette and I also started a law firm, Spencer Waters Legal Associates, LLC. Today, we are doing work together through the New York State Prison Crisis Response Coalition (NYSPCRC). NYSPCRC formed two years ago to respond to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in prison. And even though that issue brought us, a group of advocates with various ties to the criminal legal system, together, we have not confined ourselves to the pandemic alone. Currently, we are pushing for New York State to fully reinstate the Temporary Release Programs (TRP) for all people in the NYS prison system. (For a copy of our white paper on TRP, please message me.)

I highly recommend reading Claudette’s memoir. It’s an improbable love story that, surprisingly, does not read like a legal brief. It also speaks to her passion for justice.

I know Latin is a dead language, but when you live in the legal system, you pick up a host of Latin phrases. So I’ll roughly translate the title of this post: “I care not if even the heavens fall, let justice be done!” That could be Claudette’s motto.

Posted in crime, ezwwaters, Justice Chronicles, Lest We Forget, Life Sentences, Murder, Parole, Politics, Reentry, remorse | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Pearl Comes to Brooklyn

Posted on March 12, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

The past month and nearly two weeks I’ve been writing a blog post every day.  When I am in writing mode my overly active imagination goes into overdrive.  I have eureka moments, and even an epiphany or two!

This morning my mind messaged me what to write.  As I awakened, it dawned on me that the first twenty years of my life, and the last twenty years, I have been profoundly influenced by the leadership of women.  So, today, I want to uplift a transformational leader, Carol Faye Burton.

I met Carol in 2002 when she relocated from Michigan to work for the Osborne Association.  Carol had been made an offer she couldn’t refuse.  The work she was doing with children impacted by the criminal legal system in Michigan she brought to New York.  We both worked out of Osborne’s downtown Brooklyn office in Brooklyn Heights, and Carol settled in Brooklyn.  In fact, I was the first person Carol hired when she came to Osborne as a leader.  Later I would joke that it took five interviews over a couple of months before she hired me, probably a record.

Core Staff: Prison, Reentry & Family Services

For the record, Carol and I built a division at Osborne, Prison, Reentry, and Family Services (PR&FS), that endures to this day.  We hired and worked with some remarkable and passionate people, some still at Osborne after nearly twenty years.  We can take pride in and credit for hiring people who stayed for the long haul.

PR&FS ran a number of “programs” at various prisons, including Sing Sing, the historic and (in)famous prison.  One day, during a snow storm, Carol and I went up the River by way of Metro North during a snow storm.  We were the only registered volunteers that made it to the prison that evening, because we had promised the men that we would be there for a closing ceremony for those who had completed a parenting class.  This spoke to the passion Carol brought to the work.  It was probably this passion that kept us from freezing at the rail station.  We could have easily stayed in Brooklyn, had the perfect excuse not to go up the River during a perfect storm.

Carol would relocate to California after about five years at Osborne, not because of New York Storms – she hailed from Michigan!  She was given another offer she couldn’t refuse.  She left me at Osborne, brought me out to participate in a conference in San Franciso a number of years ago.

My work with Carol took me all across these United States.  I remember going to a leadership seminar at Gap International in Pennsylvania.  There were six of us from Osborne, and I was the only male.  It was at the Gap where I came up with my stand: “I am a change agent for a just society.”

Carol remains in California, with the Jeweld Legacy Group, casting pearls where they are most needed.

Posted in crime, ezwwaters, Family, Fathers, Justice Chronicles, Osborne Association, raising black boys, Reentry | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Let There Be Light!

Posted on March 11, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Prison is a place where there is an absence of light.  The little bit of light that exists is generated from and emanates from the people imprisoned there.

The Panopticon

There is a strange architecture around the design of prisons, beginning with the Panopticon, the brainchild of the 18th century theoretical jurist and expounder of utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham.  The architectural design of the Panopticon consisted of a rotunda structure, constructed with glass windows, and facing the center.  In this design, every prison cell was occupied by a single individual, and each cell faced the center where the guards were positioned in a tower.  The thinking of the day thought this design “genius,” for a number of reasons, including the psychological pressure on people in prison not knowing when or how they were being observed.  The real beauty though, was that often a light was shone towards the people in cells, practically blinding them, and they could not see the guards in the tower.

As society became just a wee bit more “humane” in how it treated people in prisons, the bright light of the Panopticon was dimmed, thus creating a place where there is an absence of light.

Donna Hylton, in her book, A Little Piece of Light: A Memoir of Hope, Prison, and a Life Unbound, demonstrates how light emanates from people who have “reentered” society from prison.

When Donna was in prison, she wrote a letter that made its way to me.  At that time, I was working at a nonprofit organization, coordinating what we called the Family Resource Center (FRC).  The FRC worked with and for people impacted by the criminal legal system.  We ran a popular support group for families with incarcerated loved ones.  We also received letters from almost every prison in New York State.  My staff and I prided ourselves on individual responses to letters.  Often, my staff would flag a letter for me that they thought I should respond to.

In Donna’s letter to the FRC, we learned that she was putting together a “pitch” for executive clemency.  I responded to the letter, giving suggestions on her pitch.  One of the tragedies of long-term imprisonment, is that, perhaps because of the absence of light, people in prison have a hard time “seeing” or even imagining what the world looks like from the other side of prison walls.

When Donna was finally released, she found her way to my office in Brooklyn, asked the people she was meeting if “Eric” was around.  I met Donna, and I saw her light, so it is fitting that the word “light” is in her book.

We should all want a little piece of light in our world, in our lives.  Read this book and get some.

Donna & Eric – 3-15-2022 at The Grace Center in East Harlem
Posted in crime, Education, ezwwaters, Growing Up, Justice Chronicles, Life Sentences, Osborne Association, Reentry | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

An American Odyssey

Posted on March 10, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

I like a good story, one reason why I like Greek comedies and tragedies, and I fancy myself a storyteller.  So, I’ll tell you a story. . .

Once upon a time (1973), Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York State signed off on a draconian “drug” law that bears his name.  At the time, it was the harshest drug law in the nation, with many states, and the Federal government, following suit.

The Rockefeller Drug Law was like a fast-moving brush fire, devastating urban areas inhabited by Black people and people of color.  There were so many casualties in this War on Drugs, which escalated President Nixon’s War on Crime, declared in 1968 when he was running for the U.S. presidency.  These drug laws, in large part, fueled “mass incarceration” (I only use that term here because people have not yet wrapped their thinking around the accurate term, “hyperincarceration”).

Often, when we think about hyperincarceration, we think of Black and Brown men.  The prison-industrial complex, though, also disproportionately imprisons Black and Brown women.  Black and Brown women are the connective tissue that keeps our families together.  When a woman is locked up, a family is also locked up, and the consequences are different and far more devastating than locking up men.  In fact, the whole family structure is impacted.  Liz Gaynes, the outgoing President of the Osborne Association, where I once worked, for 11 years, once stated that mass incarceration created the largest separation of families since chattel slavery.  This is sad, but true, and not hyperbole. . .

Today, I uplift a woman, Elaine Baretlett, impacted by the criminal legal system.

Elaine’s story, in part, is told in her book, Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett, by Jennifer Gonnerman.  Elaine is just one of many women who have experienced the trauma and the tragedy of imprisonment because of the Rockefeller Drug Law.  As in the classic story told by Homer, The Odyssey, after a war, it is hard to make one’s way home.

During my odyssey I have met many amazing women impacted by the criminal legal system. They are not tragic figures. They are heroines.

Read this American story, which gives you a glimpse inside the tragedy, but also the triumph, of a woman who experienced an odyssey of her own after the Drug War.

Posted in crime, ezwwaters, Family, Justice Chronicles, Lest We Forget, Life Sentences, Mother's Messages, Osborne Association, Politics, race, Reentry, Relationships, urban decay, Urban Impact | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Little Giant Comes to Harlem

Posted on March 9, 2022 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Yesterday I uplifted my sister, Jeanette, on International Women’s Day during this Women’s History Month.  Today I uplift three women I work with.

More than 15 years ago I met Dawn Ravella.  She was doing amazing social justice work at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church.  At the time, although I was working at a secular nonprofit organization, my work and Dawn’s intersected.  (In fact, since religious thought was instrumental in creating the modern prison [penitentiary] in America, I believe that it is a moral imperative that faith-based groups work hand in hand with community-based organizations addressing various issues within the criminal legal system.)  So interested was Dawn in my work, one day she “shadowed” me when I went to Rikers Island, not as a voyeur or visitor at a zoo, but as a person keenly aware of fundamental injustice and racism in our institutions, most blatantly evident in the criminal legal and punishment system.  This punishment system in particular. . .

Prisons and jails are nothing like people think they are.  Prisons and jails are nothing like they are portrayed on the large and small screens.  And people in prisons and jails are nothing like they are portrayed in print and on TV “news.”

William Eric Waters

The good news though is that people like Dawn are doing amazing work addressing various systems failures, a case on point is Coming Home at Emmaus House-Harlem.  Coming Home is Dawn’s brainchild, her dissertation project at New York Theological Seminary.  Dr. Dawn rolled this “program” out at the Reformed Church of Bronxville, where she stayed for a little more than ten years before relocating Coming Home to Harlem, bringing with her two amazing members of her Leadership Team, Sally Baker, and Theresa Colyar. Sally is a nonprofit leader, consultant, coach, and founder and Executive Director of Girls Inc. Westchester.  Theresa is a psychiatric nurse, community organizer, and Coming Home Facilitator Extraordinaire.

Growing up with three sisters, I like to believe that I have a different and more nuanced understanding of women and power than men who do not have sisters.  I’ve seen amazing displays of power, and empathy, from these women I work with, which makes it a singular honor to be part of this Leadership Team.

As to the title of this post, those who know Dawn know that she barely stands 5’ tall, but she is a giant in many respects.  She hails from Long Island, though I joke that she’s from Lilliput (the Land of Little People in Gulliver’s Travels).  If you know the story, the “little people” subdue the “giant.”

Posted in crime, ezwwaters, Justice Chronicles, race, Reentry, Religion, remorse, Shawshank Redemption, Streets of Rage, urban decay, Urban Impact | Tagged , | 3 Comments