Feelings Were So Intense 3

“Crime and punishment” was the subject most frequently cited in the Streams 6 index. Adolescents, writing about their experiences in 1992, helped raise awareness and the desire in local neighborhoods to address the violence and the sufferings of victims and perpetrators. A student using the pen name Poppa wrote from prison, “Now I’m here and it looks like I’m going to stay for a while. I wish I realized what lay ahead for me when I was younger. I most certainly would have changed my path in life, but it’s not too late . . . for those from B’ville. I know life has been hectic, but try to represent in a quieter way.”
(p. 36)

Marado gave a vivid picture of life after sentencing in his piece, “The Big House”:

As we got off the bus, two C.O.’s grabbed to make sure I didn’t fall. My legs were still shackled. . . we were marched to the main building. As soon as we stepped into the ‘Big House,’ the captain came up to me and said, “Boy, this is Elmira. This is not Rikers Island. Rikers Island is a playground, boy. You’re in the ‘Big House’ now.” He cursed at me and he cursed my mother and said, “If you start any trouble or sh-t, you die.”
(p. 80)

In the final section, Coping With It All, Jose Respito’s piece “A Day in the Life” described twenty four hours in the life of an incarcerated student on Rikers Island. The author transcribed a phone conversation between an inmate and his mother:

“Hi, Ma. Yeah, I’m okay, how are you? Good. Well, Ma, I just called to see how you were doing. Are you coming up to see me tomorrow? Ma, put some money in my commissary. About fifty dollars, alright? Yeah, Ma, I know you need to pay the bills, but I need money too. Okay, then just put forty dollars.” Damn! “Oh and Ma, you didn’t forget the sneakers, right? No, I don’t want Reeboks. I wanted Nikes. Forget it! Just bring the sneakers. Ma, I gotta go, okay? Love you. Bye.”
(p. 137)

The line between victim and perpetrator was easily crossed, as Jeff, a small time drug dealer, wrote in his Personal History:

I had been shot on a street called Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. I was taken to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. There they performed surgery on me for four hours; and had to stop because of loss of blood. They had to wait until my blood rebuilt. I had already lost four pints.
(pp. 40-41)

Streams 6