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by Ruby Padgett
Lately we hear more and more about the injustices in the world. It’s like our time has come around again. Just as the pendulum swings on a clock, we are all racing to be heard before the pendulum begins its swing in the other direction.
Of course, we all have our own agendas in anything we fight for. A friend, a family member who has been hurt or touched by an injustice.
With that said I am speaking to how I personally feel about the disparity in justice for the rich and the poor, the people who have friends and family that are willing to fight and those who don’t and who are left with no voice.
I have been all alone in my fight for freedom some 30 or so years. I have no family who speaks out, I was too young to have friends and the few that I do have now are ones that I have met since my incarceration.
I appreciate the help Adrienne Roberts and CCWP has given me over the last few years. She seems to be the only real person that I’ve connected with who sees me as anything other than a number.
I understand that I made a horrific choice in December of 1985 and that that choice has defined me for all these years in the public’s mind, but I watch the news and see all these people who have money or their families have money and the public sees them in such a different light. How is it that the world, in all its fights for justice, refuses to offer the poor who have made these bad choices the same objective view?
When does injustice take the time to look at each and every one of us and decide that 25, 30, 35 years of incarceration is enough to justify a second chance, no matter if it’s a life or life without sentence?
Do we who have no money ever receive a second chance? Do we who received a Life Without Parole sentence yet were still under the age of 25 when the crime was committed still not warrant the same consideration as all those other people who were under 25 and only received life sentences?
When does injustice take the time to look at each and every one of us and decide that 25, 30, 35 years of incarceration is enough to justify a second chance, no matter if it’s a life or life without sentence?
Send our sister some love and light: Ruby Padgett, W26787, CIW AA-210U, 16756 Chino-Corona Road, Corona, CA 92880.
