Transcriber: Delia Cohen Reviewer: Ellen Maloney
Do all children deserve parents?
(Audience) Yes!
Hello. Good afternoon.
I'm here to speak upon the necessity
of expanding the incarcerated's parenting roles.
Picture with me if you will:
an image of the 1.7 million minor children who have an incarcerated parent.
This number represents 2.3% of America's total population
of children under the age of 18.
There's an astonishing racial disparity connected to this issue as well.
Out of 1.5 million children who have a father incarcerated,
48% of these fathers are black.
And these same black children have been projected to be
seven and a half times more likely to reach incarceration,
while their white peers' projection is 0.9 times.
Still, it is all of our children
who are the silent victims of incarceration.
They didn't ask to be born into a world to be subjected
to the consequences of their parents' mistakes,
or to be snatched away from their primary support systems
with no explanations as of why.
We must remember that no one is mandated to give our children
any type of an explanation of why their parent is no longer in the home.
And our children can't act as their own lobbyists
to build supports and protections
around their issues of being disenfranchised of a parent.
When courts deal in criminal cases,
it ought to be recognized that it is our children
who are most traumatically affected in the sentencing phase.
Prisons disconnect children from parents.
This is a reality:
One that may lead our children
to continuing into the cycle of intergenerational incarceration.
And I, personally, don't believe this is based off
a "monkey see, monkey do" type of reaction either.
In a CNN.com article entitled
"The Silent Victims of Incarceration: Coping With Parents in Prison,"
Sharon Content frames my sentiments perfectly by stating:
"The cycle doesn't continue
because children saw behaviors and repeated them.
From my experience, working with the population,
the cycle repeats itself because of the lack of support
that this young child now has in their lives
after going through these traumatic experiences."
It is unfair that it is our children
who have been pegged "the future of of prisons."
Yet, they've been projected to be seven times more likely
to reach incarceration when held next to their classmates
who don't have an incarcerated parent.
So, essentially, it is our children who are the future of prisons.
And we are merely just the placeholders
for our very own children in this system.
This, in part,
is what the intergenerational incarceration cycle entails.
Now, coming from a background of having a father who was incarcerated
and shortly thereafter a mother who was incarcerated,
was I then 14 times more likely to reach this fate?
While in a workshop held here
called "The If Project," you're now familiar with it,
I posed this question to myself,
wrote it down, and shared it aloud
to my peers and the facilitators of the workshop.
Tears began to fall down my face.
I, prior to this, never cried before, not as a teen and let alone as an adult.
But it just came out though, which shocked me.
My inner child who hungered for the embrace of my parents
lost to the system had begun to resurface after being suppressed for so long.
So I abruptly stopped reading,
left the class, but returned later
to finish reading,
to conquer the demons
as a friend suggested.
Upon my returning, the facilitator she asked:
"Brandon, what are you feeling right now?"
She didn't give me any time to regain my bearings; she just pressed.
"Brandon. What are you feeling right now? In this moment?"
Initially, I wanted to verbally lash out at her in anger and tell her:
"It's none of your business how I feel. You don't know me. Leave me alone."
Because as a young boy, I was taught
that boys are supposed to be strong and brave and macho.
So I hid behind the macho feelings of anger.
Anger is what fueled much of my behaviors throughout life.
But as an adult,
I learned that anger is a secondary emotion.
It's a secondary emotion,
one that follows after a primary emotion, such as sadness or fear.
So, with this knowledge in hand,
in good conscience,
I couldn't continue to hide behind the walls of anger.
I had to admit to Amber, the facilitator, and my peers:
"Sadness is what I feel. I'm sad."
It's unfair for any child to have to feel on a consistent and often constant basis
how I felt in this moment:
the pain, the despair, disgrace,
abandonment, neglect,
ashamed, and at fault.
Contrary to anyone's beliefs,
especially those who haven't walked a day in our shoes,
this is how children feel when they're disconnected from their parents
due to incarceration.
I remember my great aunt screaming from the threshold of our home,
"Brandon, your mother's on the phone"
after advising me to, "Climb down from that tree," and, "Don't jump!"
Of course, against her wishes,
I jumped out of the tree like the Ninja Turtle I thought that I was,
did a couple karate chops, a few army action rolls
before running past her, hearing her silent prayer of:
"God, please don't let this little rough boy kill himself
before his mom gets home."
My mother's greetings were always similar,
somewhat to the effect of:
"Hey, how's my baby doing?
Are you behaving yourself?"
I'd always respond with, "No, but I'm trying to."
(Laughter)
She'd always laugh at my childish honesty
and would continue in to give me some parental advice, such as:
"Brandon, always think about what you do before you do it."
Or "Brandon, treat others how you want to be treated."
I successfully followed my mother's advice
for up to a week before becoming discouraged.
(Laughter)
Because I wanted to have a good report for Mommy on our next phone call.
But these phone calls were too far few and in between, due to their high cost.
But, the point at hand is no matter how limited my mother's parental advice was,
it had a major impact on my young life
and caused a five-year-old little boy to consciously think about his actions,
the cause and effects of his actions.
Now,
what if we can expand this?
What if we can make our children's qualities of life better?
And we can.
Simply by bringing on board
The Girl Scouts Beyond Bars,
a program established in the northwest in '97
at Oregon's Coffee Creek Correctional Center.
This program was later adopted by Washington State
and spread from our women's institution,
Washington Correctional Center for Women,
to here:
Monroe Correctional Complex,
the only male institution that I know that hosts this program.
I've spoken with men who are part of this program,
and their combined and shared experiences with their daughters are amazing.
I asked one:
"What was your most memorable experience
you and your daughter shared in this program?"
He answered,
"Of course, duh. It's all of them.
I'm getting to spend time with my daughter, laughing with her,
teaching her; every experience counts."
He continued to explain how he and his daughter
were blessed to be able to interact and participate in activities
that are built on morals and values.
And from what we teach: life skills, such as communication, responsibility,
critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, and goal setting
to our young daughters.
Now,
what if we could expand this experience?
And we can,
simply by bringing on board The Girl Scouts' brother organization,
even if they just share a likeness in name, The Boy Scouts.
We have sons in here.
I have a son:
seven-year-old little boy named Little Brandon.
(Laughter)
We have the pieces to the puzzle, people.
Let's just start putting them into place.
Another piece to this puzzle would be teacher-inmate parent conferences,
TIP conferences,
which would bring all parties together in a collaborative effort.
Bringing together the most influential adults
children have in their lives, teachers and parents,
is what will create synergy around our children
to push them to academic success.
Hence, farther away from this ill fate of incarceration.
These TIP conferences will allow us
to see where our children are at performance-wise,
it will give us an idea of where they need to be,
and will allow us to plan around how we're going to get them there,
and together.
It's been stated that:
young people who have lost a parent
to military deployment, or death,
or even divorce,
society has a level of compassion and understanding for that.
But for a child who has lost a parent to incarceration,
that same level of empathy doesn't exist.
Why doesn't that same level of empathy exist?
How can innocent children be made into pariahs of society?
I don't get it.
I'll leave you with this though.
How can we -
inmate parents, D.O.C administration,
public and private school officials, government officials,
and the community -
work to surround ourselves around this issue
of expanding parenting to the incarcerated
to show our children that they have worth and they do deserve a parent.
I'd like to remind you of one thing:
That even the best of ideas, the strongest of ideas,
are worthless if there's no push of action behind them.
So give a little push.
Thank you.
(Applause)