Second Chances (An excerpt from a work in progress)

Second Chances. I struggle with that concept. To me, it is just that - a concept - where I come from - second chances are like luck - made - and not always by the individual. I hail from a place where life chances dictate that many people aren’t afforded a first chance. Take Wahid. When he was fifteen years old, Wahid was sent to prison. First, in Hagerstown, in rural Western Maryland, then at  the Maryland Correctional Institution in Jessup (MCIJ), where I met him in 2011. That's the adult lockup, not a juvenile facility. Did this mean as an adolescent, he had already blown his first chance? 

The next to the last son among five born to a mother who, as an immigrant to this country, had to focus attention and time on obtaining the basic resources necessary to raise her family - food and shelter, Wahid was often left to his own devices as a child. His family’s plight was not much different from many of the other young men I have encountered in Maryland’s prisons. They come from communities where adults and sometimes children, work at whatever industry is available to them, and usually make only enough to keep themselves and families locked into a perpetual cycle of earning low wages that go toward food and rent.  

But, back to Wahid, and second chances.

He would be the best person to tell this story, but since I have been granted  permission, I will try to do so. He was a smart child, this I could glean from the man he became. He was self-conscious because he had been chubby as a youngster, earning him the nickname “Fatboy” which would last well into his lean years. I sometimes wondered at his ability to laugh - he had a great sense of humor, though his early years had been fraught with trauma. Perhaps this is what made him such an old soul. Trauma ages the individual, and Wahid had become acquainted with violence early in life, learning it by rote, as most children learn the alphabet. 

I cannot shake the story he once shared with me about his stepfather terrorizing the family with a rifle, running through the house and threatening to kill them all. Facing death at a young age can make one expect that it will come calling sooner rather than later. Unable to find family within the confines of this unit of people living in the worst of circumstances, Wahid sought it in another group - the gang. There, he found other youth just like him, searching to make some sense of the life they had been handed, and seeking a connection, something to remind them that they mattered.  This new family, much like his old family had problems and the same basic needs. 

Taking a seat in the small nondescript room in the Lower K building where we held our training sessions at the Maryland Correctional Institution at Jessup for the men in our mentoring program, Friend of a Friend, I was struck by Wahid’s intelligence and maturity when we first met. I remember thinking, then saying aloud that he looked like the rapper, T.I., to Wahid’s chagrin. I now understand his reaction. At age nineteen, Wahid was pretty confident about who he was, and who he wasn’t. It had been a hard fought battle to get to that place, and he didn’t want anyone getting lost in delusions about who he might be, seeing only someone who looked like someone famous. 

His response, the fact that he didn’t just smile and laugh it off, indicated to me that he possessed the confidence necessary to do the work of the program - helping young prisoners navigate the prison environment, resolving conflicts peacefully and transforming their lives. These were no easy tasks, but the changes he had made in his own life spoke well beyond any words he could utter. He wasn’t just telling others what to do, or how to live, he was demonstrating it. I began to feel that Wahid would be helpful as I attempted to expand the program to the streets to reach youth before they got to prison. So, I told him I had a job for him when he was released.      

Wahid says when he was first released, he was leary because, “people always say they are gonna be there when you get out” but this is not always the case for people returning from prison. It is often the opposite as people move on in their lives, and the prisoner is forgotten, or simply becomes an afterthought. So, he did not call me until finally his mother, who had watched him sit about the house, said, “you need to call that lady”. In a short time, Wahid became a constant companion, much like one of my own children. We travelled to many places, I have always felt that it is necessary to show young people the world outside of their community. I remember during one trip to New Orleans, he hung out with my son, Malik, who was attending Xavier University at the time. The next day, Wahid told me that it was the first time that he ever felt his actual age. He was twenty-one. For most of his life he had felt much older. This is a symptom of trauma. 

Around that time, we began to talk about the PTSD that was a persistent reminder of his time in prison and the streets. On one hand, Wahid was perhaps one of the bravest people I had encountered, but he also had many fears, and this was a result of those early childhood traumas. He possessed an ever-present sense that trouble was out there gunning for him whether he was looking for it or not. And it was. Wahid had many concerns, he had to report to a parole officer who was cynical, and the office was a hostile ground where rival gang members sometimes intersected. There had been at least two deadly shootouts there. Making a decision to change one’s life does not eliminate the possibility of encountering enemies - young men from other gangs who recall your exploits from your days on the street.   

There was a certain amount of light that had remained in Wahid’s eyes despite all that he had been through, but if one looked closely, there was also a dimness that emanates from the experience of incarceration, particularly if one enters prison a child and must grow up there. I never thought that I was giving Wahid a second chance. Truthfully, in my work with men in prison, I did not set out to save anyone. My role was simply to assist them in the process of transforming themselves. So, over the years I have hired many men who were returning to Baltimore after time long and short in Maryland's prisons. Providing employment to them was more about presenting them with an opportunity, often one that they had not had as adolescents when most of them had gone to prison. Though, it has amounted to a second chance for some...       

This is the beginning of a story about my godson, Wahid Shakur, a young man who, despite growing up in the Maryland prison system, changed his life - did the many things that we tell folks will keep them out of prison, but sadly, was still swept away by the tide of mass incarceration that floods Black and Latinx communities. I am not sure when the tale will unfold completely, but I was just thinking about Wahid and had to share this.