NEW YORK STATE LITERARY CENTER'S Incarcerated Education Program
2010 - 2011

In the fifth year of the New York State Literary Center's Incarcerated Education Program, NYSLC invited principals in the Rochester City School District to come to Monroe County Jail https://www.nyslc.org/5th%20year%20partnership.htm.

We Rochester City School District students who are in Monroe County Jail want you to hear our stories. We have been writing to try to help you understand our problems and where we are coming from. We don't want you to be afraid of us. Life is scary, and Monroe County Jail is a crazy place. We want you know us a little bit better. We all want a chance at life.

Drawing by Josh (From the Invitation Sent to the Principals

Listen to us. We want to change. We want to be successful in life. We need you to help us stay in school. We need teachers who will support us and help us and not tell us we are not going to make it in school. We don't need teachers who look down at us. We need teachers who want to help us. Sometimes teachers who don't care are the reason kids drop out of school. Some teachers don't understand we have problems and there aren't adults at home to keep us on the right track. 

Anthony (From the Invitation Sent to the Principals)

Following the presentation to principals, an incarcerated youth wrote a thank you note to the principals.

Dear Principals,

Throughout life things were not easy for me. Growing up I did have a father and mother, but that did not make things perfect for me. I think my mother and father realized what was going on for me, but felt they could not help me. Right before I was born my stepfather hung himself in a room in our house. From that point on, I think things were never the same for my mother.

I was born on July 30, 1993. My name has two last names because my mother and father never got married. My life up until I was seven years old was fine because I really did not know what was going on. Then I started to realize my mom was addicted to cocaine and weed and was barely there for her kids. With my mom a druggie on welfare, I felt we did not have the support we were supposed to have.  My father never wanted to leave my mother, and I think he felt he had to follow her path. 

I am the youngest in my family. In my early years I watched my brothers and sisters fight all the time. My brothers constantly called my mom names and told her she was worthless. When he was twelve one of my brothers was put in prison for twenty-five to forty years. From that point on I stopped talking to my family.

When I was thirteen my best friend, Devon Stott, got his life taken in a knife fight right in front of my eyes. He was fourteen. When I was fifteen, my parents started to go downhill. The bills started to get too high. They left me for dead, and I had to fend for myself. I was homeless and for seven months I lived in the underground subway in downtown Rochester. I starved for five-day periods. When I was sixteen, my new best friend had his life taken in a basketball pick-up game at the Monroe Y. At this point I stopped going to school, so my grades started to drop, and at sixteen I got put in the system for 3rd Degree Assault and  2nd Degree Robbery. It was cold outside, and I had no money and I felt like I had to make a decision. From that point on I started doing drugs, like cocaine. I was shooting up, and acid and mushrooms were like my best friends. 

I was put on probation in January 2010. I was good for four months. Then I became homeless and stopped caring. No one was helping me. Now I am looking at a release date in April. 

Thank you for coming, and thank you for listening to all of us.

Dillon 

At Monroe County Jail:

At Monroe Correctional Facility:

Writing is at the center of NYSLC's work with incarcerated youth.

My family is from down south.
My mom is from Michigan and her Dad is from Raleigh. 
My dad is from Rockingham, North Carolina.
His brother is from the same place I think. 

Who is my grandfather?
I can't remember some of the stuff from when I was a kid.

Was Hampton a slave name?

Where did I get my name? How and why? Did it come from my mom or did it come from the white man? 
Where did my name come from, Heaven or my father? 
Was I put on the Earth for a life of crime, to be in jail just like my dad? 
Was I named for a felon or a menace to society?

To be human...
is to be on two feet
upright...
    To breathe fresh air.

Human and God created...and
be thankful God created 
created for us

    To be human
    is to survive being shipped 
from Africa in chains and shackles
to be locked in a cell (8x10)
with nowhere to run and nowhere
to hide

To be human is walk upright
on two feet,
to speak
as many languages as I care,
to learn,
to eat
whatever I choose to hunt or
grow or cook,

To think, 
to count your way out of imprisonment

To be human is to cry when
someone dies
and to ask why.

Reggie 

Dale Davis and Margot Muto guided and developed the Picturing Our Dreams Mural with the youth. The Picturing Our Dreams Mural https://www.nyslc.org/dreamsmural.htm was designed as a bridge for incarcerated youth incarcerated in Monroe County at Monroe County Jail and Monroe Correctional Facility to picture a future for themselves in the Rochester community. The youth were asked about their lives, what they dream for themselves, what their dreams were for making Rochester a better, safer, more livable community for themselves and their children. The mural was created to share the lives, loves, histories, hopes, and fears of incarcerated youth and their dreams for themselves and for Rochester.

Picturing Our Dreams Mural was NYSLC's first mural to go out into the community to be exhibited. It was exhibited at a community college; at Rochester's Downtown Community Forum as part of presentation by Dale Davis and Edward Ignarri, Board Member of NYSLC, on NYSLC's programs with incarcerated youth; and as an exhibition of NYSLC's work with incarcerated youth at Link Gallery in Rochester City Hall. 

NYSLC Board Member Edward Ignarri and Visual Artist Margot Muto hanging the mural at Link Gallery in Rochester City Hall 

Dale Davis, adapted the writing of the incarcerated youth with whom she worked at Monroe County Jail in 2011 to create Born and Raised in The Roc. David Shakes directed a cast of seventeen in the performance on July 29, 2011 in Monroe County Jail

Introduction to Born and Raised in The Roc

The play is meant to show you that we are people too, just like you. We made mistakes, some worse than others, but mistakes all the same. We may or may not deserve to be here, but we are. 

Some say the Roc is a great place, so is Hawaii when it is not hurricane season.  But we all have our storms, storms of hate, bullets, and bloodshed. You hear about gangs. Gangs are made up of people. Nobody sees it until it is too late. When your son comes home with a fancy tat or maybe does not come home at all, or if your daughter meets you every Sunday for dinner, then doesn't show up one day, why? Was she raped, stabbed, or maybe left for dead, maybe because one little kid wanted to prove he was cool? Everyone says, "This won't happen to me" until it does. You know who did it? People, just like you and me. 

The difference is all of us are alone. We have our closest family by a flag and a color. Our families weren't there. Our fathers beat us, drank, did coke, and our mothers smoked crack, sold their bodies for one more hit, forgot we existed. We hustled to eat, robbed to take care of ourselves. We were left alone, misunderstood, and abandoned. But we are here. We are breathing and live just like you. 

The fact of the matter is we have dreams, dreams to be a somebody, dreams to have a true life and not call MCJ or Elmira home. 

Everyone is amazed by a new album. Worldwide, people spend thousands, millions to hear songs, while people kill everyday all around us for a simple twenty dollars. Do you ever think maybe if our lives weren't altered and changed by violence, drugs, and sex, we'd be just like you, forgetting people like us?

In the end we didn't want to do what we did. The bars, the cells, the jumpers don't mean we can't make a difference in the world. We care, we hurt, we love, and we die, just like you. We're important. We feel, and we will be home one day. How will you judge us then? Will we be able to have business, get jobs because we got a GED in jail? Will we be able to go to college when we get out? We are the same thugs and scum boys everybody despises. 

We need you. Do you care? We are people who could be inspirational and supportive. We could change the world. Please appreciate us at our worst. Everybody falls, everybody needs a chance. Maybe we did not get ours yet. Please understand.

You might be our chance.

Zachary