To Hunters Point

by Maurice Green

This is something that was sprung on me (an invitation to write for the Bay View). I honestly didn’t know where to start, ‘cause I’ve been messing up for so many years – killin’, robbin’ and using drugs. You never have hope unless it’s just in you.

Maurice-Green-web-300x198, To Hunters Point, Abolition Now!
Maurice Green of Hunters Point, where the shoreline doesn’t look a lot different from the mural behind him.

But I always loved my hood, Bayview Hunters Point, growing up as a kid, always fighting for my hood. And now that I’m locked away, I still have the fight in me for my hood.

But this is a bigger giant that we all must come together and fight. There’s too many young men warring with each other and not with the real enemy. The true enemy is the one who’s telling your mothers, grandmothers, fathers, baby mothers, kids, friends to pack up their things and move, while the police ride around victimize us because of our skin colors. They even go as far as killing us just because of someone videoing them doing their job in a vicious way.

One of my favorite sayings by Malcolm X: “I think that any Black man who goes among so-called Negroes today who are being brutalized, spit upon in the worst fashion imaginable, and teaches those Negroes to turn the other cheek, to suffer peacefully, or love their enemy is a traitor to the Negro. Everybody on this earth has the right to defend himself. Everybody on this earth who defends himself is respected. Now the only people who are encouraged to love their enemy is the American Negro” (from “The Old Negro and the New Negro,” a 1963 interview).

The icing on the cake is that we are also killing ourselves and thinking it’s cool. I tell you it’s shameful when you got young men in prison who just watch the “news” to see if someone Black in their hoods got killed. If so, they’re happy – like they got the hardest hood in America. Foolish!

There’s too many young men warring with each other and not with the real enemy. The true enemy is the one who’s telling your mothers, grandmothers, fathers, baby mothers, kids, friends to pack up their things and move, while the police ride around victimize us because of our skin colors.

Those young men are lost, and who is to blame: the men who sit around and say nothing, as well as the ones who condone the police killing their children and the men and women who can’t have a loving conversation with their children.

We need to embrace US – take a stand for our future. Hunters Point, take a stand and love your community.

I’m currently serving time and if anyone would like to send me some love, here’s my door opener: Maurice Green, V-48430, MCSP A1-230, P.O. Box 409020, Ione CA 95640.