www.terryhowcott.com

That important reflection and inventory led to the realization that the trepidation was borne from a fear of imagining myself deeply rooted in their shoes.

After hundreds of reposts with short blurbs, delving into the crevices of their story would require me to face the potent conceivability that any of us could be sent away for making some miniscule error in judgment.

Carving out a writing would require me to accept that these young women could have just as easily been a bold, youthful, careless, underdeveloped Terry Howcott.

I recalled my earlier years as a dining room server, overhearing successful businessmen discussing petty street crimes that they had committed - confessing the indiscretions of their young adulthood.

I thought of how the oppressor has always managed to hyper-inflate even the most mundane events in order to suit a kind of sick itch to have control of masses of Black bodies.

These Scott Sisters are us - as they withstand a brutal punishment that in no way corresponds in fairness with their purported crime. They persist against the oppressor's disproportionate wrath even that much more, given their medical concerns, the atrocious nutritional value of their food intake, and the mountain of stressors that they endure in their daily lives.

Living under these conditions, grouped together with having to comprehend the terror that they are in prison for life for no substantive reason - are akin to attempted emotional and physical murder.

These Scott Sisters - they are us.

Their story reminds us of Africans who "talked back"- were subsequently framed - falsely accused - and hung from tree limbs with their murderers pointing and chuckling with glee.

They are us, in that they remind us of our vulnerability, and that in a persecutor's world, our Black African stories are rarely believable even when pitted against the backdrop of fantastical "White lies" and conjurings.

The Scott Sisters are us - as the vicious unfairness of their sentences remind us of how they're policies are perpetrated against us with savage velocity rather than in the crisp, thoughtful, considerate manner in which they give one another gracious "second chances."

And, yes - the Scott Sisters are us. We see it in their grueling punishment which leaves us mindful of our own barbaric impatience with one another. In the peace of stillness, we are conscious of how White supremacy - including that found in Black-face - has acculturated us (via media illustrations and online infiltration) to believe that there is never a good, understandable, or complex explanation for Black misconduct.

The Scott Sisters are us.

If in our knowledge of this, we don't work, blog, scream and shout at the top of our lungs to save them - many of us will be sick with guilt when the next one they kidnap (and make no mistake that this was a literal kidnapping) turns out to be our daughter, sister, aunt, mother or niece.

Confused and choked with grief, we will desperately seek out activist thinkers and bloggers who - through the pain and all - will gladly help to carry our message home.

Scott Sisters Hunger Strike Set

Gray-Haired Witnesses For Justice Plan Hunger Strike
at The Department of Justice, June 21, 2010

No More Banquets!

"The case of the Scott Sisters is a horrific representation of the cases of countless other Black and poor women who have been denied the benefits of true justice and been incarcerated wrongly and in the process punishing, injuring and destroying Black families and children across the nation."

Scott Sisters Hunger Strike Set For June 21

Contacts: Ruby Sales / B.J. Janice Peak-Graham
1 (706) 323-0246 /0247 spirithousedc@gmail.com

Gray Haired Witnesses For Justice

Shakeerah Adul Al-Auur
Fatirah Aziz Icffmah
Mae Jackson
Marpessa Kupendua
Debra D. Napier
B.J. Janice Peak-Graham
Ruby Nell Sales
Jamia Shepherd

Make a Contribution to the June 21st Hunger Strike Cause

Make a Contribution to the Cause

For more information, visit the Gray Haired Witnesses Blog

"We Stand in wisdom and with courage as the moral consciousness of a Nation"

Gray Haired Witnesses Blog

How To Write The Scott Sisters

(From the Scott Sisters Blog).

Jamie and Gladys need to read from you. Please let them know that you care by dropping them a card or a letter. It would mean a whole lot to them if you would do so!

If you would like to send money in, please go to www.inmatedeposits.com, register for Access Corrections and use each of their names and numbers to make your donation.

They each would be very grateful, Jamie even has to purchase her own food as the prison won't pay for her special medical diet.

Jamie Scott #19197
CMCF
Area 3, Clinic Bed 7
P.O. Box 88550
Pearl, MS 39288-8550

Gladys Scott #19142
CMCF/B-Bldg.
P.O. Box 88550
Pearl, MS 39288-8550

Grey Haired Witnesses For Justice

"Calling Upon a Nation"

We Stand in wisdom and with courage as the moral consciousness of a Nation