Robespierre Toussaint Phillips meditates on his present. He went through all the stages of grief, regret, rage, despondence and now is in a place of acceptance. He took the Swahili name Mwasi which meant rebel or revolutionary and paired it with the Arabic word for martyr Al-Shahid. The guards would not call him Mwasi Al-Shahid. He had to answer to roll call under the name he was condemned under. The name his people back in Mississippi named him. It was a proud name he always cherished. Robespierre the zealot of the French revolution, and Toussaint who led the Caribbean slaves to freedom against France.
He went through a Marxist phase reading the war diaries of Che Guevara and writings of the luminaries of the Black Panther Party, works of Ghassan Kanafani who founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Ideas change and now he is a student of many philosophies but master of none. It was common to accept Islam by African American inmates. It gave him peace for a time, but he was interested in many things beyond the scope of it’s ideas. He read on Anarchism, read about nationalism struggles and about wars through out history. He had pro bono college kids come help with his case, after a while even the most dedicated drifted off back to their lives, every once in a while he gets Christmas cards from his old legal team.
He had a face full of boxers scars to show his formidability as a warrior, but at this stage in life… so close to execution he was interested in the idea of being a warrior in a garden. He found him self studying plants and animals from all over the world. Eastern works by Musashi Muyamoto and Hindu scholars. Now he limits his reading to a few hours in the morning and a few in the evening. This kept the wild rush of serotonin drain that comes from the weight of being on death row among the lost and hopeless, the enraged youth and the wise elders. Mwasi has written several books and talked to graduate students in interviews with the press about the changes his soul has undertaken since being condemned. No matter what he does that’s positive, the conservative media paints him as a vicious killer whose very existence is a threat to society. A gang leader, a convicted murderer and a con man making publicity stunts to save his own neck. That is possible, after all the core of human nature is self preservation but he likes to think the changes he made are authentic and he has some genuine redeeming qualities to share with mankind.
Early stage grief exhaustion is a familiar symptom here. It’s easy to read day and night for years until your neck is rolled into a crook that keeps you from sleeping soundly until you never want to read again. He used to have perfect eye sight but years of the yellow buzzing dim cell has done a number on him. Needing reading glasses recently, they wont prescribe him anything unless its life threatening. He had to have a pair smuggled in. The men here come in hard core, spending decades in civil wars and stabbing each other over chess games of subliminal disses in conversations long past. Before the end, many come to a healing place in their journey. They warehouses leaders of the most dangerous hoods in California, drug smuggling groups, Italian and Mexican mob and Hells Angels hitmen all come to rest in a place of deep wisdom long before their number is called. Its a shame some of these minds didn’t put their brilliance into legal work. Some have multiple college degrees, publish in journals and even a couple best selling authors. Hoping to leave some sign of their legacy when the stagnant State of California execution schedules move again. It stops completely under Democrats, speeds up during Right Wingers. Once or twice life saving exhonerating information was blocked to both sides, sending innocent men to die.
He remembers the hippie manifesto of Ram Das, “Be here now.” Sitting in an eased meditation posture on his folded mattress. He listens for the small sounds of life outside of the roar of deadmen slowly going insane. Past the bars slamming shut, the noise of buildings full of shouting, PA announcements by guards there was something else. Songs of birds, the rush of a jet taking off across the bay at SFO. He wishes he could hear the sounds of breaking waves. He would do anything to do simple things like spend a day at the beach, go fishing in the Sierras, camping at Big Bear or Yosemite. He can wish, visualize and study books. Never an artist on the streets, he has developed a real skill with paint. Rendering amazing landscapes out of National Geographic and Time. He loves to hear about the prison guards pets and hiking trips. Closing his eyes to take in the nuance of walking the Pacific Crest Trail, Kayaking the Alaskan fjords among glaciers, traveling in the rain forests of the Congo. He is a member of World Wildlife Foundation and even writes a radical activist girl from Earth First who became obsessed with his case at The Innocence Project.
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He has only tangential information on his 2 sons. Born to a she wolf. Ishmael and Israel, left to fend for them selves in a world that as Native American poet John Trudell says… “eats souls.” Mwasi knows his son was locked up on a murder and using jail house arithmetic figures he should be getting out soon. He has no way of knowing where to send a letter, other than shooting kites to the runner on the tier to see if one of his people could relay a message. This is risky. Allowing criminals access to you family comes with danger of the unknown. No matter how ferocious your reputation for murder is, or level of atrocity you are comfortable subjecting your foes to… its hard to gauge the “dope fiend” itch people get. Convicts and gangsters with pedigree of his generation are more predictable. To at least tell you if they bedded you woman, or shot your brother in a card game, but this new generation will rob your grandmother and set her on fire just to find out what burning hair smells like.
Reminds him of the old proverb, “the cast out child will burn the village just to feel its warmth.” Those are true words with the generation his had failed. The thugs today don’t live in a milieu of honor and respect. They don’t help the mail lady pick up her spilled bag. They jump her with boxcutters, leaving her disfigured for the junk mail in her bag. In his day music was about soul, love, revolution, dignity. Now it’s all about abject poverty, despair, gangsterism, self destruction, predation. This is noble ideas from a man who was convicted of killing a tired college student in her parents store, coming up the stairs and executing the mother hiding behind a bathroom door and putting a shotgun right up to the father’s chin, blowing his jaw bone and one of his eyes into the street bellow.
He has replayed what was said at court a million times. Fiery diatribes by a DA team with political ambitions. Mwasi tries to remember if he did it, but always draws a blank. He honestly feels in his bones he was framed, betrayed while sleeping in his own bed that night. Was he born under a bad sign? So unlucky that a combination of cosmic coincidences and false clues put a target on his back? Alas that is what every body says. 99% of guys down here in the tombs cry their first couple years they were framed. Its a big misunderstanding, or tell a different version of events for every day of the week where they are the victim. The universe has conspired to change the chemical makeup of stars and time and space to frame them… a little shivering dope fiend from south central or east LA who sliced the throat of a cabbie, dragged an old lady 700 feet over cement parking blocks, tearing a woman’s arms off to steal 59 dollars and a silver watch. It boggles the mind the things young and misled youth will end up getting condemned to the needle for.
He has watched the method change from gas and electric to lethal injection. Now instead of a scientific curiosity of electric death, or the stressful wait for sodium cyanide tablets to liquify in sulfuric acid. Now they are being put down like animals. Put to sleep with a burning poison that freezes the lungs, retards the heart’s ability to pump and causes death over a coarse of half an hour. Trying to breathe, trying to cry out, fighting restraints, whispering prayers to the contempt of racist guards, lying prosecution teams and families who don’t care if you did it as long as someone pays for their pain. Mwasi takes a deep breath looking out the window, seeing but not able to hear seagulls and the bells of clipper ships moored on pilings in San Rafael Bay. He hoped he could sleep tonight, but he was ready to watch the dawn rise if that’s how it worked out.