As I perused the sullen hallways of the county judiciary recently, it was impossible to be impervious to the warehoused bodies of young men and women, black and white, and Hispanics alike. You couldn”t miss them. Further more, it was impossible to go untouched by both their number and their plight. It was overwhelming. One young man stated to me that he was their trying to avoid a charge the courts wanted to place on him. I told him “They”re not trying to charge you, you are here because you have been CHARGED.
Why is it that they don”t get it? I expressed to him this bit of wisdom. When you break the law in a carefree way, you create your own destruction. The only thing that comes out of being caught up in the system is that lawyers get richer, and your fines finance the same system that is now incarcerating these young wannabes.
They don”t get it, they usually get arrested…, hanging with people who are doing the same things that they claim they are not guilty of. In other words they do the crime, then drag their families into their hell. And so, a vicious circle is born. A circle of crime, arrest, incarceration, release, violation, crime, etc.
The thing that bothers me about these people, is that they are destroying financially, socially, spiritually, and criminally the very folks they claim to love. Then they blame everyone else for their downfall.
Their actions befuddle and bewilder me, because we are all endued with the same capacity to desire and dream, to build and acquire, the same responsibility to our children, and family. Yet these for some reason have figured out a way to use, abuse, and destroy their own lives and all those who come in to their sphere of influence.
It is time to wake up and stop hurting yourselves. It is time for us to cry out against this self destruction.
James E. Samuel, Sr.
Columbus
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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