What We Want You To Know

What would we like you who is reading this to know or to walk away with? We would like you to realize that it is hard for us. When I say "us" I mean the whole jail, all jails, prisons, detention centers, group homes and everywhere else someone gets locked up. It's hard because once you're convicted of a crime it's like everyone looks at you differently. They look at you as if your skin color was a turquoise green, or as if you had an third eye and were of a different species. We don't think it should be like that. Just because we've committed crimes it doesn't make us bad people. We just made a mistake in life and as everybody knows nobody's perfect. By writing this I want to say to you, "Everybody makes mistakes in life; it's just that some are bigger than others." I would like you, the audience, to walk away with a series of thoughts. As you read our poems and listen to us, feel our pain and understand where we are coming from.

By James

What We Want And How I Think We Can Get It?

My name is Jamar, and I'm an African American male born and raised in Rochester, New York. I'm one of a million kids in Rochester who craves attention. If you are a child of the Roc you don't get much, especially if you're African American. We all just want to be recognized. We try so hard to be recognized but we're still not. I feel that jobs don't even recognize us. We fill out so many applications, but never get a job. This is what draws people to sell drugs, and to do things that lead to deaths. When they sell drugs, so many people start to recognize them that it makes them feel wanted, like they belong. If they were to sit down and think, they would probably say I don't want to be recognized for this, I want to be a part of history. They don't think because where else would they get the attention.

Most kids can't get that kind of attention from their parents because the kids only have one parent because of a mother or father running out on responsibilities or because of divorce. That leads to parents having to work two jobs to make sure the bills are taken care of, to always have a roof over their heads and food to eat and clothes on their backs. When the parent comes home he / she is too tired to do anything with the child. Some parents are just drug abusers, and they only care about getting high. After that the kids go looking around for a place to fit in. They just want to feel like they belong. This is just another form of wanting attention.

It doesn't work out for some kids because people in Rochester tend to judge somebody just by looking at them. They feel it's necessary to hang out with people who are just like them. All we want is to know that we exist. How can we make it happen? Some kids change up who they really are, by changing the way they dress, walk, and talk, others turn to selling drugs. Most kids will do anything to get attention, but how they do it is not the right way. It sometimes seems we have no choice.

Some of us have important things to say, and we want to be heard. But it seems like there is nobody who will hear us. So we turn to the next thing. We carry around an attitude. We order people around, start yelling, and it helps us become heard. We're not saying what is really on are minds. Rochester can prevent this from happening to more of us. They say the kids of today are going to control how a future turns out, so why not help us make our future worthwhile. We can start programs that can help the kids of Rochester become recognized. The programs can give us jobs, make us heard, let us know we exist, and find out some way to help the kids that want attention from their parents. Programs can help parents find jobs that pay more so they won't have to work two jobs and have less time for their kids. There are plenty of things that Rochester can do, but there's just nobody paying attention, just like nobody pays attention to us. Until the children of the Roc feel we are paid attention to, many of us will keep turning to where we get it the most. We can't help for how good it makes us feel inside. Every kid wants to be valued. It feels as if we get more attention when we're doing something wrong, but we don't think of it like that so we keep doing it. All we want is that feeling inside to be valued, to know that we exist, and to know that somebody is paying attention to us.

By Jamar