Editorial Note: This article was first published on HearHerVoice. A new audio recording of Shaka reading the message is available just below the text.
For steps you can take to free Shaka right now, click here.
Introduction
On July 20, 1983, my son Mark Steven Lasenby was born to myself and his teenage mother, L. Lasenby. i was 16-years-old and in the Lake County Jail for Attempted Robbery and soon to be sentenced as an adult to prison. She was a 19 year old, soon to be a single mother, that had just walked across the stage at West Side High School to receive her diploma while pregnant.
We would name him Mark Steven Lasenby and, approximately six days later, i would be sentenced to 30 years as a first offender and sent off to the so-called Department of Corrections. i was one of the many young New Afrikan/Black males that had been harvested out of the ghetto colony by one of Reagan/Bush policies of “getting tough on crime.”
i would serve 15 years of that sentence. During that whole period of captivity, my son and i were extremely close. His mom and i were high school sweethearts and, although she would eventually move on to live her life, We remained close, and she never denied me access to my son. i would eventually give him the name Jela Simba Shakur.
Jela and i could pass for twins and even now people see old teenage pictures of him and immediately think that it is me.
He was also a young athlete that could both box and play basketball. When he was in the 8th grade, he was already being scouted by a top 10 Indiana College that invited him to campus and given a full-recruitment package tour.
i can still remember how shocked and excited about all of the pretty college girls showering him with attention. We just couldn’t keep him on track or focused.
His mom would go on to have two more sons and three more daughters.
While Jela didn’t have a father in the house, he had mentors and an extremely close relationship with his grandfather who tried to save him from the mean, harsh streets of Gary, Indiana and East Chicago. But he couldn’t compete with the housing projects of East Chicago and the local school system that recruited my son at an early age into the Vice Lords street organization and family. He was proud of this and loyal and impressed that as a 14 and 15-year-old he was being shown a lot of “‘love” and “respect” by the O.G.s and leadership. Once he learned that i was G.D. (Gangster Disciple, or Growth and Development), he didn’t know how to take it.
i used to quiz him about his organization and, while trying to politicize him, he only knew the basics. As usual, the old heads wasn’t lacing the youngsters up; they were just having them put in work. But i also think the organization provided him a family structure for a man and young Black man that he didn’t have or felt wasn’t enough.
i would develop a close relationship with all of his siblings. What i did for one, i did for all. They used to wonder if i was their real dad.
When i came home in 2000 after a parole violation, Jela came to live with my wife, Akili, and i for a while. It was the first time he and i really had a chance to bond on the streets together.
It was a new experience. Although my wife had kids whom i grew to love and get close to, except for the baby girl, they were all just about grown. So, us getting to know each other in a setting outside of a visiting room was both an exciting experience and a challenge.
Jela was a young Black boy transitioning from boyhood into manhood, as a 17-year-old man-child trying to find his way. A young warrior who, like so many others, had been dealt a bad or raw hand, growing into manhood without a father to guide or mentor him and forced into a role with overwhelming responsibilities, prematurely.
Being raised by a single mom, being forced to assume the role of protector, provider, and man of the house at an early age, while i myself was being forced to become a man and grow up fast while trapped behind enemy lines and fighting for survival. The ghetto and the streets is a rite of passage for many of us, but so is the penitentiary. Young Black men coming into or being harvested into the Prison Industrial Complex as teens or 20 somethings are having or going through a form of unnatural arrested development.
i was a father, a dad, a pops, before i even knew what that entailed as a Black man in Amerika.
As a young man, i was still trying to discover who i was and what it fully meant to have a young son, while beginning a fresh 30-year sentence.
What did it mean being in love with a young 19-year-old womyn who had just given birth to your child and feeling like you had abandoned both? As behind the walls, you battle and bang with racist ass prison guards trying to crush your spirit and rob you of your sense of humanity…
Hood Violence is the Result of Colonial Violence
Reactionary violence in poor communities, oppressed or neo–colonized communities, is a result of Our relationship to the state or government.
It is a result of the unequal distribution of resources to Our communities, the economic deprivation and class exploitation within Our community, where a colonial relationship masquerades as institutionalized racism; where from birth to death, you’re told or shown in life that your life has no value or self-worth; that you ain’t shit.
This messaging, this signaling, is often internalized. Internalized to the point where the lack of mentors, knowledge of self, and of recognition of self-worth has you full of self-hate and self-destructive tendencies.
This view of yourself is also projected onto those that you see in your image.
“You ain’t shit nigga”, ” Nigga i will kill you”,
“Black ass nigga you ain’t never gone be shit”, over and over.
Amerikan society has always devalued Black life, both Black manhood and womanhood, as men were physically and emotionally castrated and as Black womyn had their wombs violated and babies ripped from their bodies or were secretly sterilized without their consent or knowledge.
As We swung from trees amongst the magnolias, burned alive in fiery pyres.
Jela: Definition Born While His Father Was in Prison
Jela was shot twice in the back with a shotgun as he tried to walk away from a fight with another teenager he thought was a friend and whom he had played basketball and video games with all day. Another 17-year-old kid who took my son’s life and who, through that very act, killed a significant portion of his own life, having been sentenced to 55 years for the crime of murder.
Two lives ruined and destroyed as the colonial state continues to dig deeper into Our collective soul and spiritual psyche.
A Vicious Cycle
L. Lasenby had six children—three boys and three girls—a Black Brady Bunch without the class and the privilege of growing up in white middle-class suburbia.
Five years after Jela was murdered, his youngest brother, baby brother, Joshua, who was only 14-years-old and whose girlfriend was also expecting a baby, was shot in the back and killed while trying to squash a street beef between two rival groups.
Shot in the back while hopping a fence. Running away from a grown ass “man” that stepped out on the porch with an assault weapon and started shooting at a group of kids.
Like Jela, Joshua’s girlfriend would go on to give birth to a little girl, a daughter, that he never laid eyes on and, like my granddaughter, will grow up never having known her father.
Fast forward several years and the last son, James, left Gary to make a fresh start, only to be driving home from work and be hit and killed in a head-on collision by a lady texting and driving that had swerved across the yellow line. i cannot make this ish up!
Imagine, just for a minute the psychological trauma and impact upon their mother, grandmother, and sisters. Trauma, PTSD…
Crushed!
Imagine being in the Solitary Housing Unit (SHU, or Solitary Confinement) and having to absorb all of this information.
There is no Red Cross or Red Crescent for Us.
No Peacekeepers, Cease Fires, or Reparations for Us, which is why those of Us who are men and/or fathers got to step up to the plate with Our womyn and represent.
Remember while We might have allies, sympathizers, or supporters, We are Our own liberators and responsible for Our own liberation and freedom.
Happy Father’s Day to those that have kids or have chosen to embrace all kids in Our community as Our own!
FREE THE LAND!!!
Shaka A. Shakur
Listen to Shaka Read the Statement
Featured image: Jela Simba Shakur with Shaka Adiyia Shakur. Credit: The Shakur Family.