Letters & Spirits

"I didn't hear that right! How much time bruh?"

Ben Franklin once said, “The strictest law sometimes becomes the severest injustice.” Fredrick Douglass said, “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.” Then my man Henry David Thoreau turned the joint out when he said, “If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.”

Earlier this week I wrote the Hot Joint entitled "Inventory" where I explained to boyz how the George Zimmerman acquittal had everything to do with race and very little to do with the law. Unfortunately, there were so many people trying to tell me otherwise.

I explained how Michael Vick could be sentenced to two years in jail for killing dogs or how Plaxico Burress could shoot himself in the leg with his own gun and get two years. However, I didn’t mention that in the state of Florida just two months ago that a 31 year old black mother of two named Marissa Alexander was sentenced to 20 years in prison for firing a warning shot at her husband and no one was hit.

She claimed self-defense and tried to invoke the same “stand your ground” law that Zimmerman tried to holler but was rejected. The jury found her guilty as charged: aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. See firing a gun while committing a felony under Florida law is a mandatory minimum of 20 years but I’m still trying to find the felony bruh. Is defending yourself a felony because if it is wouldn't Zimmerman be committing the same crime?

So let me get this straight playa, you can follow a black kid, get out of your car, pick a fight with him, shoot and kill him and walk out of court with only minor scratches? See most folks got confused because Zimmerman’s mother was Hispanic so they were trying to say that it wasn’t a black/white issue. Like I said before pimpin’, it doesn’t matter what color Zimmerman was. The justice system didn’t care about the victim that was a young black kid.

In 1999 the state of Florida implemented a “10-20-life” law that states that anybody that shows a gun in commission of certain felonies gets an automatic 10 years. Fire the gun and it’s an automatic 20 years. Shoot and wound somebody and it’s 25 to life. So if my math is correct then killing somebody should get you more than life right? We’re still talking about the state of Florida with the same gun laws that were in effect in May when Marissa was convicted and sentenced right? Now either I’m crazy or the persons interpreting the laws and sentencing folks are. Sounds to me like both of the judges and jury’s needed to sit down with Henry David Thoreau before making decisions here. I'm just saying, somebody needed to break the law!

You can live in this world and think that racism doesn’t exist if you want to but I simply can’t afford to. The decisions that my family and I have to make every day to dodge the potential land mines out here are critical to our livelihood and freedom. I tell my kids daily that they can’t do what the other kids are doing in school because the standards are different for them. I’d rather error on the side of caution than give them permission to be careless with their lives. It’s sad but true and it is what it is.

As a result of the letter of the law and not the spirit of it, two children must grow up without their mother and Trayvon’s parents had to watch the man that killed their son walk out of court a free man. Now everybody that thinks that race didn’t play a factor in both of these cases needs to stand on their heads and spin around for 24 hours. Stop me when I start lyin’ playboy!

Holla At Ya Boy!
Jay Graves
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The quote under the caption isn't real but its REAL life!