I can remember lookin' out of my fourth floor window watchin' the sun come up...What we called the " back park" would radiate brighter as the sun rose higher. What would've been a bad view to most was so beautiful to me...concrete, trees, checker/chess tables made of stone...benches, monkey bars and the typical project basketball courts where only half of them have rims...the air was so...so...pure then. It's a wonderful blessing to look thru a young person's eyes...so innocent. We never looked at livin' in the projects as a bad thing. It was home...the pissy staircases, the crackheads, the broken elevators...it was home. But something changed over time...as we got older, the air started to taste not-so-pure...at least for some of us. After movin' to what seemed like a better nieghborhood, I would learn that a tenement was just a fancy word for "smaller" project. I then had a sixth floor window to look out of. It felt like home also...it WAS home. It had all of the familiar elements of home...crackheads, broken elevators, etc. etc. But yet again, something changed...or was it that I changed? It is said that "home is where the heart is"...Well, my heart was no longer in it. The vibe was always there because my friends were there but my heart had moved on to greener pastures. I found knowledge...and it was that knowledge that showed me that I didn't belong there...So when I began to look out of my now sixth floor window, I saw not what was...but what needed to be. I had to break that cycle of public housing, welfare, etc. The class system created by the "elites" put me & mines there. I say that to say ...it is your MISSION to GET OUT!!! I remember watchin' "Rhyme & Reason" and Wise Intelligent from P.R.T said, "I'm not stayin' true to the hood, I'm stayin' true to the people in the hood." I've adopted that credo ever since...Let us all dedicate our life to change...Peace & Freedom
Truly Yours,
Mitch L. Hennessy
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