I could not do what you are mandated to do
every day on society’s justice bench,
weighing retributive justice
against restorative healing.

I cannot look at police
and correction officers’
routinely criminalizing vocations,
and injudicious levying of fines
against the young
and black
and brown
and homeless

Punishing prison sentences
for the most obvious trauma victims
of chronic blue-shirt bullying,
theft,
not really clever lies,
racial profiling,
diminishment
and derision by militarized
and miseducated
mercenaries of a rabid Estate.

My son,
now twenty-seven,
was not expected to reach full emotional maturity
until his early thirties,
as evinced by research on ADHD.

However,
that pessimistic projection
may be optimistically skewed,
not accounting for trauma histories
common to significant learning disabilities,
nor a special education black male experience
in a racist and homophobic “corrections” society.

Economic and political maturity
security
integrity
may never arrive at the Promised Land
for the young black male
separated from his birthmother during infancy
to be parented by a mixed-race gay male couple,
having to defend not only himself
but his out gay younger brother
from predative peers
under the radar
of teachers
and school administrators
disabled by “zero tolerance”
means zero compassion
retributive justice
dysfunctional trauma systems.

This is the third time that police officers have failed
to include in their self-righteous reports
that they took hundreds of dollars out of my son’s pocket
and put it in theirs,
and triumphantly reported only a fraction
of the high quality,
organic cannabis found in his car,
while the majority disappeared

Not reported,
not seen,
not returned;
stolen from my young
black
homeless,
high school diploma with a fourth-grade education,
son.

If my oldest son could easily choose to work
at a full-time
living wage job

If he could get to work on time,
on the right remembered schedule,
with a reliable car,
and feel like he was not being judged,
ridiculed,
and bullied by peers
and supervisors,
shamed and blamed for not being smart enough,
clever enough,
quick-witted enough,
middle-class white enough,
man enough,
successful enough,
then he would not choose to spend long hours
and sleepless nights
delivering the only therapeutic self-medication to others
that has helped him numb the pain
of childhood,
community,
chronic post-traumatic stressors
which have led to his current social,
economic,
and political ostracization,
and potential imprisonment.

I am a certified multicultural community mediator,
so my training is about how to most effectively support
those experiencing trauma
and actively looking for restorative peace
and resilient social justice
therapeutic outcomes.

Mediators begin with identifying the victim(s) feelings
safety needs
and healthy wants,
and then explore the probability
that perpetrators too are victims
of childhood,
community,
and environmental
trauma histories,
fraught with
win/lose zero-sum
contextual stress
critical and chronic
non win/win events.

From that lose/lose potential perspective,
my son has been repeatedly victimized
by police officers
defensively trained
to tolerate their own predative
bullying behaviors.

If anyone would benefit from jail time,
and/or fines,
it is the perpetrators of organized,
anti-social crime.

But, again,
from a restorative justice perspective,
blue-shirt officers, too,
have been victimized by a militarized,
miseducated retributive justice system,
rooted in judgment,
blame,
and shame

And not compassion,
curiosity,
and contextual intelligence

Which is why I could not do
what you are mandated to do.

With unconditional regard,

GD, MDiv, MPA,
and heartbroken DD’s Dad