Writing My Wrongs

by Shaka Senghor

  But Joi and Colin were different. They talked about how we could use the technology and innovation at the Media Lab’s disposal to help create better lighting on Detroit’s streets, increase the use of composting for urban gardens, and ensure that citizens knew the quality of the air they were breathing in. These were tangible solutions to real problems our community was facing, and their ideas sounded exciting and heroic.

  However, as I listened to their plans, I got the sense that they were based not on actual, firsthand experience, but on the romanticized version of Detroit that often gets sold in media and the public imagination. (It didn’t help that the presentation was being held at a fancy art gallery downtown.) Joi and Colin meant well, and their work had so much potential, but I felt like they hadn’t understood the real Detroit or recognized the people who were already working feverishly to make a difference in the city. So I decided to speak up. I raised my hand and told them that their ideas sounded great, but if they really wanted their work to make a difference, they needed to include the real Detroit in the conversation.

  When the presentation was finished, I approached Joi and Colin and introduced myself. They thanked me for what I had shared during the Q&A, and I told them that if they wanted, I would take them around Detroit and introduce them to some people who were doing amazing work.

  Colin and Joi looked at each other and agreed on the spot. They were on their way back to Boston that day, but they said they were down to come back to Detroit, as soon as they got the chance. We shook hands, and when they left, I felt like something special had occurred.

  Within fifteen minutes, Joi e-mailed me and told me how much he had enjoyed our meeting. A couple days later, I got an invitation to visit the MIT Media Lab in Boston. I had never been to Boston, so I was excited for the trip. When I got there, I saw a building that looked futuristic, covered in six-story panes of glass, and the work going on inside blew my mind. On the tour, they showed us cars that fold in half to make parking in cities easier, as well as a gadget called Makey Makey that allows you to make music with bananas or anything else you can think to plug into it. I was floored by the innovation I saw and the energy of the people I met while there. When we sat down for dinner that evening, I knew something magical was happening. I wasn’t sure what would come of this, but I wanted nothing more than to bring the work Joi and his team were doing to Detroit.

  —

  NOT LONG AFTER the meeting in Boston, Colin told me that he was taking a team to Detroit and asked me if I could serve as their tour guide. When the team arrived, I met them at their hotel and could immediately sense that they genuinely wanted to learn about the real Detroit—to see the complexities, contradictions, beauty, and ugliness of our battle-scarred city.

  We piled into two cars and headed up Grand River from downtown, driving through several neighborhoods on the West Side. We traveled through Zone 8, the neighborhood where Yusef had grown up gangbanging, and continued west into Rosedale Park, a nearby enclave of upscale, middle-class families. As the team looked at the big, beautiful brick homes lining the streets, I talked about the many contradictions and inequalities in our city. We drove on down Grand River Avenue, and a few blocks west of Rosedale Park, we entered Brightmoor, the neighborhood where I had grown up selling drugs.

  Brightmoor had suffered from decades of neglect, earning a reputation for high levels of gun violence and drug trafficking. But it was also an area full of promise and hope. I told Colin and his team that amid the burned-out houses and vast stretches of empty, overgrown lots, artists and entrepreneurs were working to bring life back into the neighborhood. It’s also an area where urban gardens are being used to counter the culture of drug trafficking. We got out of the car and walked around to talk with people and hear about their needs and challenges.

  As we drove down block after burned-out block in the capital of the Rust Belt, I watched the varied expressions of my passengers through the rearview mirror. Their faces registered emotions ranging from disbelief and sadness to intrigue and hopefulness. In my own heart, I felt a twinge of embarrassment for our city, for the people who call Detroit home—including myself. It felt like I was seeing Detroit objectively for the first time, and it was painful to witness what had happened to my beloved city.

  I felt compelled to explain the societal fractures my city had experienced—and the fractures I had experienced through it. But where was I to begin? How could I sum up the story of how a once proud city was torn apart by the crack trade, political corruption, and the steady outflow of the jobs that had once put food on its people’s tables? There was no easy answer, no way of neatly describing what it was like to grow up here and have the weight of this city press on your soul. I couldn’t put that feeling into words. So instead, I simply said that there was so much hope and potential there, even amid the violence and the disorder. Even amid the pain, fear, and destruction I had experienced and inflicted in these streets, there was still hope. And there still is.

  AFTERWORD

  Detroit, Michigan

  September 2015

  Earlier this year, I was rummaging through the footlocker where I store my journals, letters, and legal documents—the same locker that I carried from prison to prison for 19 years. I was looking for my parole papers when I came across a letter I had gotten from the godmother of my victim, nearly six years into my incarceration. It stopped me in my tracks.

  The letter, dated July 31, 1997, had arrived during the point of my incarceration when I was torn between old instincts and new possibilities. I wanted to change—but I didn’t want it enough. If you had asked the corrections officers around me that day if they held any hope for me, they would have at least hesitated. More likely, they would have laughed.

  But not the woman whose family I had shattered by a bullet. She had hope. She believed that transformation could happen, even for me.

  Dear James,

  A few days ago, it was the 6th year anniversary of my son’s death. I call Chris* my son because he lived with me much of his life. I’m sure you remember him because you are the man who murdered him.

  July 28, 1991 was a very difficult day for me and my family. I had spent 3 years being a caregiver for Chris’s mother, and she had just died of cancer in December. And then, six months later, I received the phone call that our son, Chris, was dead.

  His brother was devastated. To this day, he says he didn’t only lose a brother—he lost his best friend.

  Chris had a new baby son, only 10 months old. He also had two daughters. One is now in college, and although she is a very bright girl, she is having terrible bouts of depression because her dad is gone. The rest of our family tries to help her, but there is an emptiness in her life that no one else can fill.

  What I want you to know, other than these painful things that you have brought upon my family, is that I love you, and I forgive you. How can I do less? Because God loves you, and I am a Christian, so I humbly follow his guidance. His word tells me (in the Bible) that He loves us all, no matter what we have done or how bad we think we are. And we are to love one another no matter the circumstances.

  James, you may think your life is a mess, but you are special. And God is able to pick you up and help you to go on. He can clean up your messes, no matter what they are. God can be your best friend. Just approach him as a little child. Crawl up in his lap and let Him love you. He can fill that empty hole down deep inside.

  Sincerely,

  Nancy

  The best I could do when I received this letter was take one small step. I wrote back. When Nancy wrote again, we began a correspondence that continued for years. Still, it would be half a decade before the change she hoped for would begin to manifest itself in my life.

  And that’s the thing about hope. In the moment when you feel it, it can seem foolish or sentimental or disconnected from reality. But hope knows that people change on a timeline that we can’t predict. We can never know the power that a word of kindness or an act of forgivene
ss will have on the person who needs it most.

  What I now know is that my life could have had many outcomes; that it didn’t need to happen the way it did. I was once an angry, lost teenager holding a community hostage to fear and greed. Thousands of youth are making the same mistakes every day. But we weren’t born that way. None of our children are born that way. And when they get that way, they aren’t lost for good.

  That’s why I’m asking you to envision a world where men and women aren’t held hostage to their pasts, where misdeeds and mistakes don’t define you for the rest of your life. In an era of record incarcerations and a culture of violence, we can learn to love those who no longer love themselves. Together, we can begin to make things right.

  * * *

  * Out of respect for the victim’s family and their privacy, I have changed his name.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special acknowledgments to my dream team! I am humbled and honored to work with such a diverse group of dope people. Thank you all for helping to make my dream come true.

  I’d like to thank my awesome team at CAA: Michelle Kydd Lee, Cait Hoyt, Michelle Weiner, and Darnell Strom. I’d also like to thank the amazing team at Convergent Books, the Crown Publishing Group, and Random House: Tina Constable, publisher; Campbell Wharton, associate publisher; Derek Reed, associate editor (thanks for pushing me); David Kopp, executive editor; Donna Passannante, director of marketing; Carisa Hays, director of publicity; and Jessica Brown, publicist.

  I’d also like to thank my crew at MIT Media Lab and IDEO (Joi Ito, Jess Sousa, Colin Raney, Sean Bonner, Lisa Katayama, Stacie Slotnick); my team at BMe (Trabian Shorters, Benjamin Evans, Sarah Bouchereau, and Alex Peay); and my team at #cut50 (Van Jones, my brother from another mother, Jessica Jackson, Matt Haney, and Alex Gudich). I love the work we are doing to change the world.

  Thanks also to Reid and Michelle Hoffman for all that you do to make the world a better place and for your continued support of my work.

  Special thank you and acknowledgment to Nancy Weaver. Thank you for extending to me grace in the form of forgiveness. For this I am eternally thankful.

  Special dedication to my cousin Charles “Chuck” O’Neal. RIP.

  I want to acknowledge all of the amazing people I have worked with and been inspired by. The list is much too long to include everyone, so if by some chance I forgot you, trust that I have you on a special list in my heart. Ebony Roberts, James White, Marie White, Alan Neal, Arthur Neal, Tamica Neal, Will Redd III, Vanessa Redd Campbell, Jermaine “Smiley” Campbell, Nakia White, Shamica White, Sherrod Redd, Calvin Evans, Mama Evans, all of my nephews and nieces, Malik Yakini, Clement Fame Brown Jr., Carmen Brown, Yusef Bunchy Shakur, Virgil Taylor, Katrina Storm, Joel Fluent Greene, Toni Jennings, Melissa Deshields, Marcus Little, Shuntez, O’Neal, Jerrel O’Neal, all of the students at Cody High School and Tri County Educational Center.

  To all of my guys on lockdown, much love and respect to you.

  Peace,

  Shaka

  Recommended Reading

  During my incarceration, these were some of the most meaningful books I read. They inspired me to walk in the light of my potential, to be more compassionate, and to embrace the power of love and kindness.

  The Autobiography of Malcolm-X: As Told to Alex Haley by Malcolm X

  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

  Soledad Brother by George Jackson

  Assata by Assata Shakur

  Cages of Steel, edited by Ward Churchill and J. J. Vander Wall

  Dopefiend by Donald Goines

  As a Man Thinketh by James Allen

  The Republic by Plato

  Angela Davis: An Autobiography by Angela Davis

  Segu by Maryse Condé

  The Prisoner’s Wife by Asha Bandele

  Houses of Healing by Robin Casarjian

  The following are books that I acquired when I was released from prison. These books have kept me grounded in the work that I do today, and have helped me grow and evolve as a man. Some are deeply enlightening, others are funny and inspiring, but each of them has left a lasting mark on my life.

  The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

  Rebuild the Dream by Van Jones

  How to Be Black by Baratunde Thurston

  The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh

  Orange Is the New Black by Piper Kerman

  Reach, edited by Ben Jealous and Trabian Shorters

  About the Author

  Shaka Senghor is a writer, mentor, and motivational speaker whose story of redemption has inspired thousands. He is the author of six books, a former Director’s Fellow at the MIT Media Lab, and a Community Leadership Fellow with the Kellogg Foundation. He currently serves as the Director of Strategy and Innovation with #cut50, a bipartisan initiative to safely and smartly reduce the U.S. prison population in half by 2025. In addition to serving as a lecturer at the University of Michigan, Shaka speaks regularly at high schools, prisons, churches, and universities around the country. www.shakasenghor.com