HOW MAY WE SERVE ?

Dear Luis Enrique , 

I know that many people out there are struggling, despite our nation’s slow comeback from the great recession. I want to re-introduce a story that has been plaguing our communities for a number of years now. America’s prison systems have grown in number due to privatized ownership. Communities have begun to make the poor suffer even more due to their circumstance. Arresting people for minor infractions and tickets. Then, forcing them to pay huge fines when they already cannot. I was made aware of a 61-year old woman in Montgomery, Alabama, who was placed in jail for 2-weeks because she couldn’t afford to pay for a parking fine. She was placed in thousands of dollars of debt and put in debtor’s prison because she could not pay.

I tracked this woman down and paid her fine. She was finally freed. I told her that I wanted her to write her story and have it published. She wrote everything herself, despite her elementary education and her busy schedule taking care of her special needs grandson, whom she had to leave behind while incarcerated. She was locked away in a cell built for 12 people, although it was overflowing with 36. Almost all of the incarcerated with her were there for minor infractions and fees that kept accumulating, taking them from their jobs and their families to make their poor circumstance of struggle even more difficult.

This leads to lost opportunities of employment due to accumulation of criminal records and loss of jobs due to imprisonment. Children being placed under the care of others because their only guardians had to leave them behind to serve imprisonment for minor infractions, all while accumulating more debt and being placed into circumstances of greater loss. I am sharing this story to make a change. There are states that make a majority of money through issuing tickets; tickets that involve paying utility bills late, wearing baggy clothes in public, and so much more.

We need to shift this hatred we feel for those who need help. We, as a community, are doing this to our fellow man who needs help, support and love. We often forget we are all in this together. What if we reached out to help those in need? What can we do as a society to find a solution for these added laws for violations? How do we solve the problems of poverty by further contributing to that cycle of disparity? We live through the same force, the same God, as we share this infinite Universe. The lack of inner consciousness suppresses our love, and what we need to have inside is love. It’s the only way that any of us are going to survive this world.

Namaste, Wayne W. Dyer