Clinton Young – Loud & Clear
Topic: The Saga Continues – Label me this, Label me that
Date: November 5, 2017
*NOTICE*
Due to a roller coaster of emotions & such, I was not doing much writing but I have started back. With jpays– here is an idea to help me keep track of the ones I am receiving; number them. The next one you send to me label #1, this way in the future if I get, for example, #5 & #7 then I will know I didn’t get #6 and can write the mailroom about it and get it printed off. If you are writing me for the first time and decide to use jpay, please include the address. I cannot write back with jpay, but once I get your address you do not have to continue to include it in future letters. Due to problems I would always suggest you send me your first letter via regular mail. Details for all of this are included on my website: www.saveaninnocentlife.com. Although the letter program on my website is better and more secure, I just want to make sure I get what people send. Again, I am back on stable ground so I am writing more. Thanks.
Alrighty then.
It seems that some things change and some remain the same.
What has not changed is Midland. The D.A told my lawyers that she was not agreeing to anything. Some other stuff has developed that makes such a stance even more shocking. My lawyer asked me not to blog about it right now. I really really want to though, but I will give it a week. I will say this. If ANYTHING about this case has shocked you, get ready, because you haven’t seen anything yet. It even shocked me! I can’t wait to write about it. I should be able to in a week, just giving my lawyers time to sort everything for the next course of action. I am truly blessed to have appeal lawyers that care so much about me. More so with what I am currently facing. This is going to be where it matters most. I regret being so hard on them in the past. Due to previous lawyers messing me over, I made it harder on them. Though it is through the struggles that we have gotten closer. I would hope that having worked this case and with me all these years that they would feel it made them better lawyers. Steel sharpens steel. I push them to hit harder, they pull me to tone it down some. I am, as people know, a very determined person. I have a dominating personality, so we knock heads all the time. But I really do love them. Hearing the joy in their voice when I got a stay, that let me know how much they care about me. Margaret even commented to me that day that they seemed happier I got a stay then I did. I was happy, but my mind was clicking over to the next battle. This is not over with yet. More so with the way some things unfolded. The only thing is, if I get a new trial, I cannot have them as my lawyers. They are only appeal lawyers. The bond I was able to build with them over the past years, I will not have the time or opportunity to develop that with new lawyers for trial and such.
Since I will not have the best lawyers love can get, I will need the best lawyers money can buy. As it seems I will have to fight for any and all I want. With donations being sent to clintonyoungfoundation.com it is building up to be able to raise more awareness here in Texas and also to save up for future legal costs. They big name lawyers, they charge 300-400+ an hour, usually with a 30-50k retainer fee just to get started. This is the land of the free. As long as you can pay for it!
I thank everyone that donates. Everything adds up.
On to other matters.
I did an interview with Midland news station. Ah, I think I did horrible. I was mentally and emotionally exhausted from the two weeks prior. The interview was on the 25th of Oct. I was still sorting out everything from Robert’s execution and then getting the stay. I was also nervous, as my lawyers told me to hold off on the interview, but the next day they were here! I didn’t know exactly when they were coming as no formal date was listed, just that it would be on one of the media days. I was stumbling over my words, didn’t properly express myself on some points that I should have. I think it was the worst interview I’ve ever given. Plus, I couldn’t gather my thoughts so I kept looking down to think and to the side. If they desire to make me look bad, guess they could. Hopefully the reporter understands all I just went through. We shall see how it turns out. Another film with me in it is supposed to air this month also but I’m not sure where. When he lets me know I will have it posted on the sites and such.
When I wrote in a previous blog about love versus force, my meaning was accepting people for who they are. To allow them the freedom to be themselves in all ways, not trying to get people to live up to my standards or what I see as right, and that I focus on the bond with those in my life that I have. I write that as it is applicable to a civilized society. For example, if I were to be locked up in a maximum security prison, I would not walk onto the rec yard and yell out “I Love You All!” No. THAT would NOT happen! 🙂 haha. The other guys might not be as emotionally advanced as I am causing them to get the wrong idea. Then I would have to resort to my Viking/Irish bloodlines! 🙂 haha
Seriously though, prisons in the U.S are so different than in Europe in so many ways. It is due to how the government shaped the systems. Prison and war have ways of showing the worst about humanity, the ways that people find to hurt each other, how people will turn a blind eye to the suffering of another. People in mainstream media even joke about prison rape. Like it is just something that is to be and because it is men, it’s like a pass is given to the weak being attacked. What’s even worse is the way guards have made light of it and put a person in a bad situation on purpose.
This wasn’t meant to be the topic of this blog. A joke I made got me thinking about it as I wrote this though and also about how I changed my thinking. Before, I had always thought that if a guy was not strong enough to stand on his own two feet then he couldn’t stand with me. If he couldn’t stand up for himself then oh well, tough shit. That line of thinking has come from having been all alone and had to fight for mine. Having gone through the flames and then overcoming. It was the struggles I had early in life that made me stronger. Not everyone in life is conditioned to fight the same. I used to think that it was something to be proud of, that if I thought someone was going to stab me, I didn’t feel fear. Or that I could dominate my environment by any means needed. When I was called “dangerous” by the system that helped shape me, I didn’t feel shame. No, I felt a sense of pride. However, outside of the system, I did not want to be seen as this dangerous person. More so while free, I understood the free world was different than prison. I wanted a normal life while free, to be a part of society. Though in prison, “dangerous” is a virtue. Even while I was locked up I understood how sick that line of thinking was. Not just for me, but the very system that causes it to be required.
It is shameful that as a society people are locked up in these environments. Then after they become the person the need to be to survive, we condemn them. The U.S prison systems are a threat to public safety. Prison gangs formed as a way for out numbered ethnic groups to protect themselves, and now many of those gangs wreak havoc on communities. A reaction to the system. The system then responds for access to votes and funds and builds solitary confinement cells. Thousands go into isolation. As the years tick by, their minds deteriorate, and the weaker prisoners are left even more so and victimization spikes. The result is to pass more laws and create fancy policy labels. With people getting rich from private prisons, then pass laws locking more people up to fill the prisons. Prisons are laboratories of hate and emotionally numbing, they breed the worst in humanity. If people could flip a switch and scan with a camera to see how most prisons are, they would be disgusted.
Prison has shown me just how deplorable a human being can be. Also how, with routine, people can ignore others, no matter the problem. I have seen mentally ill people here. One time a guy had shit in the middle of his floor just playing with it while staring off at whatever he was looking at beyond the walls. The whole side of the pod stunk! It had been 2 days!! (this was years ago) The officers were just walking by, cussing him out as they passed but doing nothing to fix the problem, just following routine. I refused to exit the dayroom and after throwing a fit about it they finally did something. I remember rank coming to the pod asking me what the problem was and I said “What’s the problem? You can’t smell the fuckin’ problem?!” One would think that would have been enough but no, I had to push even further about if having to smell shit I was going to have to smell pepper spray too. One extreme to resolve another. My position to the guards was that they were working in a place where they breathe shit in all day. That concept never seemed to cross their mind I guess. I don’t know why the other prisoners didn’t speak up. Maybe they enjoyed it, or were afraid to force the issue or hell maybe they thought it wasn’t cool to make the guards go in the guys cell and clean it up, who knows. There were other prisoners who would have spoken u, but at that time none of them were down there on the disciplinary level.
I tell ya what, Labels are a fucking trip!
We put labels on people, then based on that we ignore certain things. Things that a person with a different label wouldn’t be ignored. Beyond the ‘others’, is the prisoner. Often seen as sub-human or worthless.
Labels.
A cheerleader in a small town gets killed and the feelings of outrage are overwhelming to all. Yet, flipping through the channels and seeing a news story about a girl of the same age getting stoned in Syria gets merely a headshake and the channel changed. As ‘that’s how “they” are’. The labels of “ours” vs. “theirs”, “us” vs “them”, “we” or “those people.”
What is in a name?
Everything, if it is a label.
As soon as we put a label on someone it seems to make it to easy to throw them away, toss them in the trash bin. One for every label. That is, until it hits home. Was terror only terror after 9/11? Was crack and meth only an addiction? Politicians response to prior drug problems was to build more prisons. Now that their nephews, friend’s daughter, etc are turning up dead from heroin and pills, well now it becomes a crisis. An illness, see that is a label we can fix. They are sick, not “bad” people!
It is no longer a crime wave or dope feens. Those labels we have to lock up and punish.
The ironic thing is that the current U.S heroin/pill problem is a result of drug companies being unregulated by politicians. As the companies make more money, stock prices go up and politicians and investors get wealthier. Then the problem comes to their neighborhood and now it is a crisis.
Money and Labels.
They way people determine each others worth, or lack of.
I wonder how the future will really look. Sometimes it seems like Love is fighting a losing battle. However, it is all the hate that makes us cherish the rarity that is love. To value our bonds as even our human connections are fading. The advancements we make in society with technology, just more ways we do not have to deal with each other, person to person.
We seem to be on a journey to remove what makes us, “us”.
Label it progress! People say the damndest things.
Time ticks on.
Veni Vidi Vici
In Solidarity I remain, www.saveaninnocentlife.com
Clinton YOUNG #999447 www.saveclintyoung.com
D.R- Polunsky
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