Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature, Part II

Posted on December 23, 2025 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

…Continued (If you missed the first installment, then click here: Journey Through Crime and Punishment, Part I.)

Crime and Punishment was first published in The Russian Messenger, a literary journal, in twelve monthly installments in 1866.

I reread passages of Crime and Punishment repeatedly, spellbound by a master of his craft. Some passages had me sigh and weep. (If I could write like this!) The dialogue between the main character, Raskolnikov, and Sonya, a friend of one of Raskolnikov’s victims, rivals dialogue written by Shakespeare, specifically conversations in Hamlet between Hamlet and Ophelia. I fantasized that if I ever went to prison for murder, then I would want a Sonya by my side. Sonya is much more than self-sacrificing, as literary critics often describe her, and she is no mere serial killer groupie. Forced to prostitute herself to support her family, she understands what people might do under certain circumstances. (Don’t confuse her with the improbable whore-with-a-heart-of-gold archetype.) Sonya is the first person Raskolnikov confesses to, and she is in his mind, in his guilty conscience, in ways that are both disturbing and delightful.

If you Google Crime and Punishment, it’s listed as a book with a “mind-bending plot.”

After reading Crime and Punishment, I developed a practice of reading the entire canon of an author whose work I liked, as well as biographies written about them. From Dostoevsky’s canon, The House of the Dead, and Notes from Underground, made a great impression on me. Inspired by Notes, I wrote an award-winning PEN essay, “ABACADRABA! Or Notes on the War on Crime,” about crime and punishment and how the so-called “War on Crime” was simply messaged in stump speeches by politicians but became policy: more police, more prisons, longer prison terms.

As a paralegal, I saw the reality of more prisons and longer prison terms, and the cost we paid as a society. So caught up did we as Americans become in this political frenzy about crime and punishment, that we earned the dubious distinction of becoming a nation that locked up more people in prisons and jails than any other nation in the world; a nation that held people in prisons for longer periods of time than any other nation in the world; and a nation that sentenced more people, including juveniles, to life in prison without the possibility of parole than any other nation in the world.

As I recounted in Part I, in the latter part of the 1980s, as a paralegal, I worked on a case of felony-murder, of a 16-year-old who had been sentenced to the maximum sentence of 25 years to life. He was one of six teenagers tried and convicted of felony-murder. His court-appointed attorney was grossly ineffective and didn’t provide zealous advocacy, despite the trial judge’s claim, and not simply because he lost the trial – “mere losing strategies do not constitute ineffective representation of counsel,” as courts have declared. All things being equal, at this stage, with my knowledge and understanding of the felony-murder rule and prosecutorial misconduct, I knew I could walk in any courtroom and successfully defend this individual as well as my childhood friends convicted of felony-murder. But the most I could do was provide the best legal advice, which was translated into a motion charging his attorney with ineffective representation of counsel, a motion most attorneys don’t want to submit against fellow members of the Bar, so this teenager had to submit the 440.10 motion pursuant to the Criminal Procedure Law (CPL) pro se, that is, on his own behalf. Because there were issues not part of the trial record, we were able to submit a post-conviction motion, which would go back to the trial court.

It was approximately three months before the judge responded to the 440 motion, in a 30-page decision. A 30-page decision, based on a pro se motion, spoke volumes. The trial court knew that this individual defendant had an appeal pending, and that he could ask the appellate court to grant leave to appeal and to consolidate the 440 motion with his direct appeal if he summarily dismissed the motion without an opinion. After the 440 motion was denied, I personally thought that the 30-page decision would pique the interest of the appellate court and that it would grant leave to appeal and hear the claims of ineffective representation of counsel. Unfortunately, the court, without opinion, didn’t grant leave to appeal. We then asked New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, to hear the case. It, too, would not hear the case.

I had been reading Crime and Punishment in between my work on this case. When I finished Crime and Punishment, I picked up Cicero’s Murder Trials. Reading about Cicero’s murder trials was a study in the importance of storytelling in a court of law, in controlling the narrative of the crime, how the story is told. In the case of Pro Cluentio (66 BCE), Aulus Cluentius Habitus was accused of poisoning his stepfather. In this murder trial, Cicero wove a narrative of the crime as complex as a spider’s web, where he sought to shift the blame onto Cluentius’ mother, Sassia, portraying her as morally reprehensible. Cicero also reframed the story about Cluentius, that he was a victim of relentless persecution. (The case was tangled in decades of prior trials, bribery allegations, and family vendettas.)

Pro Cluentio was significant in that it demonstrated Cicero’s mastery of psychological persuasion, and exposed Roman courts as arenas of social power, not neutral justice, which we could argue about the American criminal legal system. On the question of justice, advocates today, even if they have not read Cicero’s Murder Trials, know that American courts are not places of neutral justice, and have reframed this system as a “criminal legal system,” not a criminal justice system.

There is so much to learn from Cicero’s murder trials! From it, I advised pro se advocates to thoroughly study the law, but not to think that their knowledge and understanding of the law, as laypersons, would be respected by the court. In other words, I knew I could lecture and debate prosecutors and judges on the felony-murder rule, but that they would more than likely dismiss me because I wasn’t a member of the Bar. I thus explained to pro se advocates that success would lie in telling a compelling story of crime and hope that the law would be fairly and favorably applied.

As a paralegal, I continued to write about crime and punishment, sending hundreds if not thousands of letters – I lost count – to newspapers across New York State. At 24, I was an expert on the felony-murder rule, having read hundreds of years of case law and commentaries. The editors of The New York Times published one of my letters on the felony-murder rule, and of course a prosecutor responded and weighed in to defend a law that the greatest legal minds have criticized as being, at the very least, superfluous (the typical over-indicting of people charged with crimes), and that it violated the legal principle that prosecutors must prove each and every element of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt instead of bootstrapping a murder onto one of the enumerated felonies that could implicate the felony-murder rule. I also wrote hundreds of editorials. Newsday published one of my editorials as a guest editor, which it entitled, “Endless Punishment is a Crime.” This editorial was about Governor Mario Cuomo granting a “cop killer” executive clemency. In it, I cited Portia’s “Quality of Mercy” speech from The Merchant of Venice. This editorial earned me my first piece of hate mail, from Hicksville, NY! I embraced this hate as an editorial badge of honor. In his letter, the hater referenced race, stating that he didn’t know what my race was, and that he didn’t care, but…. (I learned about ad hominem attacks as a 17-year-old in my first year of college! It was what small-minded people were reduced to when they couldn’t debate the issues.) For the record, Gary McGivern, the convicted cop killer, was white, and Mario Cuomo a proud Italian. My editorial had nothing to do with race. It simply spoke to the political courage of Governor Mario Cuomo to commute the sentence of McGivern so he could make an appearance before the board of parole. Normally, the board of parole would rubber-stamp the governor’s decision to be clement, but in this case, the board of parole, because of political pressure from police unions, denied McGivern release to parole supervision with the stipulation that he would reappear before the parole board in 24 months, the maximum amount of time for a parole denial.

Shortly after I penned that article, Peter J. McQuillan, a respected NYC judge, wrote a law review article, “Felony Murder and the Misdemeanor of Attempted Escape: A Legislative Error in Search of Correction” (15 Fordham Urban Law Journal 821 (1987)), using the McGivern Case as a case study. McGivern had been convicted of felony-murder, as a nonkilling accomplice, according to his attorney’s theory (story) of the crime. McQuillan, in deconstructing the case against McGivern and his codefendant, wrote that the underlying “felony” used in McGivern’s case to invoke the felony-murder rule was a misdemeanor! Misdemeanor-murder? No such thing in the annals of jurisprudence.

With storytelling now part of my legal arsenal, I started reading true crime stories to see how authors told the story of crime…and punishment.

To be continued…

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Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature

Posted on December 16, 2025 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

I first became interested in the story of crime and punishment, how we tell those stories, at 16 years of age. Then, three childhood friends were arrested for two homicides. Two were immediately arrested, one was on the run for a week. The one on the run confessed to me, telling me exactly what happened. When I read the story in the newspaper, it was not like anything he had told me. My friend had no reason to lie to me as he recounted his role in the crimes, so I knew it had to do with how we tell these stories of crime and punishment. At that time, I knew nothing of “yellow journalism” or “junk food journalism.” I didn’t even know that the paper in which I read the story of those crimes was a tabloid pandering in sensationalism. I later learned that television news about the story of crime and punishment are far worse than the tabloids, its executives promoting the mantra, “If it bleeds, it leads.” This led me to calling Eyewitness News… Crimewitness News.

A year later, at 17 years of age, in my first year at Russell Sage College, I started reading and writing about the story of crime and punishment. All these years later, I remember the first statement of my political science professor: “Everything is political!” I immediately thought that this would apply to how we tell those stories of crime and punishment. I re-read my favorite book as a teenager, The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexander Dumas, through this lens. Upon my first reading, it was a story, pure and simple, of revenge, like Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado. With this lens, I saw The Count of Monte Cristo as a story of crime and punishment, of second chances, of reentry and reintegration.

The second class that made a great impression on me was Logic & Rhetoric. Although Russell Sage was a junior college, it provided the foundation of a great liberal arts education. It was as if I were transported back in time to the Middle Ages, studying the seven liberal arts: The Trivium (Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric ) and The Quadrivium (Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy). The main text was The Art of Deception by Nicholas Capaldi. This is when I took an interest in my namesake, William Shakespeare. In The Art of Deception, Capaldi excerpted Mark Anthony’s funeral oration at Julius Caesar’s funeral. I didn’t put it quite like this then, but this was the gist: WORDS CONTROL THE NARRATIVE, and that there was power in words. You could incite people to violence; you could attack them (ad hominem) instead of debating the issues; you could write something so beautiful that people would sigh or weep.

My childhood friends had three separate trials for the two homicides, two in front of the same judge, Sybil Hart Kooper, the self-professed “Dragon Lady,” though the tabloids may have given her that sobriquet. It was years later, when studying the law, that I understood why this was the case. At the two trials before Judge Kooper, the prosecutor told different stories; they offered two conflicting theories of the crime that couldn’t be told if all three of my friends had been tried together! The prosecutor told stories (lies and had witnesses commit perjury) to secure convictions, not to seek justice. (Any judge or prosecutor who brags about their conviction rate is not seeking justice and perhaps should immediately be brought before a fitness committee to determine if they should hold their offices.) Their court-appointed attorneys didn’t do much pre- or post-trial to address the practical impossibility of the two conflicting theories of the crime.

During my study of the law, I read The New York Law Journal every day it was published. I studied the “Shakespeare and the Law” column written by Justice Frederick C. Hicks as if it were canon law. At this time, I had read all of Shakespeare’s canon, but not through the lens of the law. In one column, Justice Hicks took on the infamous statement by Dick the Butcher during the Jack Cade Rebellion in Henry VI, Part 2: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” Justice Hicks commented that it was important to note whose mouth Shakespeare put those words in. He goes on to write that lawyers are supposed to be enforcers of the law, to stand up to tyrants who would suspend the rule of law and anarchists who would destabilize the social order.

My study of the law focused on two things: prosecutorial misconduct and the felony-murder rule, the crime for which my childhood friends were tried and convicted. In the third trial, my friend had a one-day trial and was summarily sentenced to 20 years to life at the age of 17.

The felony-murder rule goes back to the 1500s, in Olde English common law. From the very beginning, it was a law that came under intense scrutiny. It is a strict liability crime steeped in various mythological theories of the law: transferred intent; vicarious liability; and my all-time favorite, a fiction of law – that which is not true, but for purposes of the law will be accepted as true and not allowed to be disproved!

For my friends’ sake, I went back in time and read case law and commentaries from 1541 through the 1980s. The earliest case associated with the felony-murder rule is Lord Dacre’s Case (1541).

 In the latter part of the 1980s, working as a paralegal, I worked on a case of felony-murder. Six young Black males, between the ages of 16 and 18, were tried and convicted of attacking a white male. Thirty days after the attack, the victim died in the hospital of septicemia. Because one of the individuals implicated two of the others in the crime, his case was separated from the other five, and he stood trial alone. The other five were tried together and convicted based solely on the testimony of one eyewitness, who allegedly viewed and witnessed the crime through a bodega window half-stacked with goods at twilight and positively identified all six individuals. The prosecutors, of course, had the witness state that he knew the perpetrators of the crime from the neighborhood, given the vagaries of eyewitness testimony, considered in legal circles the most unreliable form of evidence.

Reading the transcripts was Kafkaesque! The five individuals tried together were found guilty on the eyewitness testimony of one individual, who spoke through a translator, because his first language was Arabic. All five defense attorneys cross-examined the witness, asking the same questions, receiving the same answers. The Five were summarily convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life, the maximum sentence under the law. When the Five were scheduled to be transferred from Rikers Island to a state prison, their sentencing minutes (transcripts) could not be located. Sentencing minutes must accompany anyone sentenced to state prison. Because the sentencing minutes could not be found, all Five had to be resentenced. Before resentencing, three jurors came forward with various allegations of juror misconduct: that during deliberations a juror was smoking marijuana in the jury room; that one juror stated that if they did not come up with a verdict that the judge would sequester them over the holidays (it was the Christmas season); and that there was something fundamentally wrong with the eyewitness testimony. The jurors did not believe that the witness could positively identify six people under said conditions cited earlier, especially given that the commission of the crime lasted no more than 30 seconds. The jurors also did not believe that three of the Five were guilty of any crime. (Earlier, I wrote that the individual tried alone only implicated two of the Five in his confession. Three of the individuals were innocent – I was working on the case of one of the innocent teenagers. They were guilty by association because they knew the other three, but happened not to be with them that fateful night. Had they been there, they more than likely would have participated in the crime.)

The judge had to hold a hearing on the jurors’ allegations, which he stated defied the [peculiar] logic of the law. Court officers were put on the stand and cross-examined by the defense attorneys if they smelled marijuana wafting from the juror room. Although three jurors had come forward with allegations of juror misconduct, the defense attorneys only secured a sworn affidavit from one, perhaps thinking that they needed no more. On the stand, the juror stood by her allegations, under the cross-examination of the prosecutor and the judge.

The judge ruled against the Five. He proceeded to resentence the Five. The defense attorneys argued for a sentence less than the maximum sentence of 25 years to life. One defense attorney pleaded with the judge that if he had done anything to offend the bench, then not to take it out on the individual he was representing. Then the political dance began, the judge complimenting the defense attorney for his zealous representation of his client, even though during the hearing the judge stated that he would give the defense attorneys more time to investigate the allegations of juror misconduct if they admitted that they had “screwed up,” with the caveat: “But I don’t know, if I were an attorney practicing law in this town, that I would want it to get around that I screwed up in this murder case.” Of course, the lawyers would not admit their ineffectiveness.

The plea for leniency was summarily dismissed. Before resentencing the Five to 25 years to life, the judge stated that they were lucky New York State had a governor (Mario Cuomo) who was opposed to the death penalty, because otherwise he could very well be sentencing the defendants to death (as Lord Dacre had been executed four hundred and forty-four years before the sentencing of the Five). Note that the individual who stood trial alone was sentenced to the minimum sentence under the law of 15 years to life. During the trial, his attorney highlighted the fact that the victim died from septicemia, not the wounds suffered during the attack. Years later, I wondered if the victim’s family filed a lawsuit against the hospital.

As I feverishly worked on the post-conviction motion (CPL 440.10) of one of the Five, I would take a break and read Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I thought of my friend who had confessed to a murder, which I now knew could be labeled murder by misadventure, and the psychological torment he must have been experiencing, in the same way Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, whom I simply called “R,” was tormented by killing Alyona Ivanovna and Lizaveta Ivanovna.

Crime and Punishment is often cited as one of the greatest works of literature.

To be continued…

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Leadership Mini-Series: Joseph, Ethics, and Leading with Conviction – Transforming Lives

Posted on December 7, 2025 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

From Prison to Purpose: Leading with Conviction

Joseph in Prison in Egypt and his remarkable story of return mirror that of modern “leaders with conviction”—formerly incarcerated leaders who transform their lived experience into advocacy and change.

In the last 20 years, most of the criminal legal system “reform” across the nation has been inspired and informed by or led by formerly incarcerated leaders. As Glenn E. Martin, the founder of JustLeadershipUSA, stated: “Those closest to the problem are closest to the solution….” (I have heard this mantra recited again and again, even by players in law enforcement, including prosecutors, without crediting Glenn, and as Glenn has stated, they leave out this important part, “…but furthest from power & resources.”)

Glenn commissioned the study, “Leading With Conviction: The Transformative Role of Formerly Incarcerated Leaders in Reducing Mass Incarceration,” by Susan Sturm & Haran Tae, of Columbia Law School, which demonstrates how these leaders leverage social capital to drive reform. Like Joseph, they embody the practice of “Encouraging the Heart”: leading by testimony, resilience, and the courage to be remembered.

👉 Who are the modern Josephs in your community, and how can we amplify their leadership?

Postscript: This reflection bridges a sermon I proclaimed, “The Moral Imperative of the Cupbearer” (Click the link to listen to the Sermon: The Moral Imperative of the Cupbearer), at Rye Presbyterian Church; “Leading with Conviction: The Transformative Role of Formerly Incarcerated Leaders in Reducing Mass Incarceration” (Click the link to read the Report: Leading With Conviction); and “The Leadership Challenge: How to Make Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations,” by Kouzes & Posner.

See the previous blogs in this series: The Leadership Challenge of Remembering; Joseph, Cupbearers, and Ethical Memory.

Posted in Justice Chronicles, Leadership, Reentry, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

How to Mentor Teens Effectively

Posted on November 8, 2025 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

When I worked in child welfare more than 20 years ago, my supervisor would assign to me what she thought of as the toughest “cases,” i.e., teenagers, and cases where the child ended up in the system because of an act for which the biological father was accused. Nonetheless, the case was given the mother’s surname, which revolved around the indisputable fact of biological motherhood before the advances of DNA evidence could definitively identify the biological father. My supervisor did not know me well, but she knew that I could not be intimidated by any male who beat children to the point that it was abuse, and the State stepped in as the “custodial parent.”

The younger children, and the teenagers in particular liked me. I think that children, even toddlers, are accurate barometers, even in their innocence, of innate human goodness. Toddlers instinctively know that they are safe in my arms. Then, I didn’t have children, which my female coworkers didn’t believe, because the kids took to me, as if being a parent was a prerequisite to working with children. And parents, their first question to a child welfare worker was, “Do you have children?” Anyone who answered that question in the negative, from these parents’ point of view, couldn’t begin to understand what they had to endure as parents.

Do you have children?

Even though it’s been more than 20 years since I worked in child welfare, occasionally I bump into individuals who were teenagers when they were in care. One young lady, whom I have continually bumped into, was 15 years old when I first met her. Bumping into her last night, she said, “I’m going on 40.” She was sporting a new hairstyle since I last saw her, and I commented on how it suited her: short and dyed blue.

I bumped into this young woman, A, when she was 19 years of age and no longer in care. As soon as I got on the #4 train, taking in the surroundings of the car, I saw her. She saw me and addressed me by name. She was surprised that I remembered her and addressed her by name. I remember that she was a teenager who wanted to feel wanted – she had been abandoned by her mother, maybe even trafficked, and her father did not know how to raise a teenage girl – that her paternal grandfather would want her and rescue her from foster care, which never happened. A toddler was sitting next to her. She told him to say hi to me. I saw maternal pride, and I knew in that moment that she would be a good mother, that her son would not end up in child welfare if it were within her power.

A. told me that her son was in his first year of college. She said this with obvious maternal pride. I told her that I was proud of her. She rushed me and gave me a hug.

I remember this young woman, when she was in high school and not feeling well, would tell the counselor to not call the foster parent, but to call her worker, Mr. Eric. She knew that I would show up, that I would not question how she was feeling.

Working with and even mentoring young people is not complicated. The first rule of thumb: Just show up, and leave all judgment behind.

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I Know Why the Caged Poet Sings

Posted on October 23, 2025 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

Some of my favorite poets happen to be named William – William Shakespeare, William Blake, William Wordsworth, and William Carlos Williams.

When I meet most people, I often ask them what their names mean or the backstory of their names.

When I was a teen, I met two juvenile delinquents. They were destined to end up in group homes, reform schools, jails, reformatories, insane asylums, and prisons. When they first started getting arrested, they had to come up with aliases because the truant officers and police never believed their names, perhaps not as a pair. I wish I could do justice to how they tell the story, with affected accents and all. Every time I heard the story, and we had an enduring friendship, meaning I heard it many times, it would bring me to uncontrollable laughter. They could have been a comedy duo. They were George Washington and Thomas Jefferson!

From the very beginning, truant officers and police didn’t believe they were Washington and Jefferson, although those were their surnames.

“The first time I told a cop my real name,” George Washington said, “the cop slapped me upside the head. And, of course, I had to be with Thomas Jefferson! And the first time, the cop said, ‘And your friend is Ben Franklin?’ Then I didn’t know I had the right to remain silent, but I shut up. ‘And you, boy,’ the cop said to my ace boon coon, ‘what’s your name?’ My friend said, and I could see him bracing himself for the blow, ‘Thomas Jefferson, SIR!’ The cop hit him harder upside the head than he had hit me. After several encounters with cops, giving our real names and being punished for the truth, we became George Blackmon and Thomas More, our favorite aliases. In fact, every time we got picked up by cops, we gave them different names. We never asked our parents why they named us after two slavers and a rapist to boot! All we found in those ‘slave names’ was persecution!”

I didn’t ask my parents why they named me William, so I have no backstory, though I say they knew I would become a poet, because there’s a certain providence in naming your children.

Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:

To make a poet black, and bid him sing.

  • Countee Cullen

Posted in Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, crime, ezwwaters, Growing Up, Justice Chronicles, juveniles, NYPD, race, raising black boys, Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats, Streets of Rage, Urban Impact | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Blacklight

Posted on October 1, 2025 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

I turn on the Blacklight,

And look under America’s skin,

Peeling away layers,

Exposed is her skin disease,

Her obsession with race,

Her legacy of Slavery and Segregation –

Those peculiar institutions!

            The auction block, like a butcher’s block….

The signs of the Color Line.

Approaching the Blacklight,

In the twilight years of my life,

I journey back in time,

To backroads taken, and not,
To look at life through worldly black eyes,

Through the lens of a pandemic,

Yet always through the eyes

Of a Black Boy

Whose Soul is on Ice

A Native Son

Living “Sonny’s Blues”

A Black Man Who Cried I Am

A Manchild in the Promised Land

Who Came Down These Mean Streets

Battle Scarred but not broken

            My Black Life has always mattered!

It was the dawning of Aquarius,

The Psychedelic Sixties,

Of Hippies, Yippies, and Woodstock,

Of free love and peace,

Of music, story, and song –

The songs my People sing.

Sing a song…

Painfully spiritual,

Heartrendingly soulful,

Elegiac and ecstatic,

Up-tempo and uplifting

Raunchy and revolutionary.

Subversive as a drumbeat,

The drumbeat heard at Creation.

The staccato rhythm of a tongue

Twisting itself to tell a story

Through a foreign tongue,

A twisted tongue

That speaks of Truth while lying.

A tongue that cannot

Encompass spiritual pain

Or tortured triumph.

            The gift of story and song.

It was the dawning of

            the Decisive Decade,

A decade of Death and Destruction,

Of chickens coming home to roost,

Of the ascendancy of the New Order of Assassins.

Die Nigger Die!

The Blacklight of my Life

Sines on Death and Destruction,

Of a sniper who kills our King.

Of the Prince who had been assassinated,

Of Camelot revealed as Myth,

Of the Conflagration of the Great Society.

            “Burn, baby, burn!”

The fire next time is always present.

The smoldering embers of Slavery and Segregation,

Easily lit and rekindled on the bonfire of hate.

            “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”

Self-evident lies are thrown on the bonfire of hate,

Going up in smoke,

The mythical American Dream.
Going up in smoke,

Laid bare as a Nightmare.

            “To die, to sleep, perchance to dream….”

At night

What nightmares awaken me.

The rise of the South,

The spirits of the Confederate dead rising.

Old Confederate soldiers never die, never die, never die

Old Confederate soldiers never die, never die, never die

The Confederate States of America

Never admitted defeat.

Black Blood still soaks the land,

Fertilizing the soil with Black Blood.

This land that is mine

Perhaps even more than yours (white America)

Since the gift of sweat and brawn

Cultivated American prosperity.

            “This land is my land….”

The Black Wall Street burnt down,

A counterpoint to theories of Black inferiority

            “Burn, baby, burn!”

The smell of Black flesh,

Of Black bodies burning

On the bonfire of hate,

Waft through America’s history,

Permeating the social fabric.

            “Burn, baby, burn!”

As I turn the Blacklight off,

The ghastly scenes of burning Black flesh

Waft through America’s history,

And the collective unconscious of my People.

The ghastly scenes

Of strange fruit swinging from red maple trees,

That American dance of Black death,

The metronome of Black Death.

Die Nigger Die!

Die Nigger Die!

But I live,

Because someone must tell this story,

Of Black Blood, The Black Blood of Poetry.

            Because Black Lives have always mattered!

Posted in being a teenager, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, ezwwaters, race, raising black boys, Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats, Streets of Rage | Leave a comment

Celebrating 65 Years of Life

Posted on October 1, 2025 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

I saw the best minds of my generation

drop out of school

and get their education on the streets,

in the schools of hard knocks:

in group homes, reform schools, jails,

reformatories, insane asylums, and prisons.

They dropped out of schools

that didn’t teach

The Pedagogy of the Oppressed;

schools that didn’t understand

the psyche of

The Wretched of the Earth;

schools that didn’t challenge;

schools that placed a premium

on memorization and rote

at the expense of

thoughtfulness and learning;

schools incapable

of tapping into

the creative energy of minds

that were once trained

in the greatest institutions of learning

on Mother Earth,

in Songhai, Ghana, Mali, and Timbuktu;

schools that taught

history that excluded them

and their contributions;

schools that alienated them;

schools that taught cruelty;

schools with low ceilings

and finite possibilities.

I saw the brightest boys of my generation

descend into insanity.

They were in the best high schools

the City had to offer,

but their minds

were light-years ahead of the curriculum.

We knew they were different,

their heads shaped like eggs,

but brilliant,

not of the world they were relegated.

They tutored others

in math and science,

and instead of graffiti

wrote formulas on the walls.

They were bored in lab

so conducted their own experiments,

on stray cats and dogs –

we saw their remains throughout the projects.

They flew homing pigeons

from coops on the projects’ rooftops,

sent esoteric messages

to other egg heads

throughout the City’s housing developments.

They experimented

with mind-altering drugs –

Acid, LSD, and angel dust.

They were our dark angels,

not of the world they were relegated.

They leapt off of tall buildings,

believing they could fly

like their pigeons,

and they did,

for a brief moment in time,

only to crash land in the concrete jungle,

their wings crushed

and their bodies broken.

I saw the best physical specimens of my generation,

the fastest, the strongest,

play three sports with effortless grace,

not become all American.

I saw them earn full scholarships

to play basketball

but drop out of school

in their freshmen year

because they refused to ride the bench

behind any of the starting five

whom they ran faster than

and jumped higher than

and shot hoops

with the accuracy of marksmen.

So, they returned to the streets,

their dreams of playing

pro basketball

dashed on the hardwood floors of colleges

eager to exploit their talent;

instead, they played in the summer leagues,

more dazzling than Earl “the Pearl” Monroe.

And when the sun sets,

not only did the freaks come out –

            The freaks come out at night,

            The freaks come out at night

— but the gamblers

collecting their winnings

from the games,

the pimps, hustlers, conmen, and gang members,

the whole wide underworld.

Then their physical prowess

was put to other tests.

I saw them outrun cop cars

and motorcycles

and police dogs.

I saw them hurdle

five-foot fences

in a single bound,

leap from building to building,

with cops in hot pursuit,

and they seemed to always get away.

Before extreme sports were invented,

they were pushing their bodies

to the outer limits,

redefining the use of space.

I saw them subway surfing

and elevator surfing,

engaged in thrills that could kill.

I saw the boldest boys of my generation,

those that didn’t die young,

graduate from petty to major crimes.

It started innocently enough,

playing hooky from school,

stealing lunch from the bodega,

but gradually escalated

to shoplifting,

burglary, armed robbery,

and even murder.

From juvenile delinquents

to juvenile offenders

to youthful offenders

to adult criminals.

In the projects

they hunted the rats for sport,

with BB guns

and bow and arrows;

and it turned out

that some of the animals’ remains

I saw throughout the projects

was not the result

of the brilliant egg heads’ experiments,

but evidence of their torture.

They were not only the boldest,

but also, the most alienated

of my generation.

They hated a world that hated them –

“The Hate that Hate Produced.”

They hated this world

of low ceilings

and finite possibilities.

They hated this world

that would deny them

their dreams.

Thus, they ended up

in group homes, reform schools, jails,

reformatories, insane asylums, and prisons.

A lawyer would later tell me

that all of this was “inevitable,”

which made me think

of the Watchers,

the Watchers from behind Venetian blinds,

the projects’ old ones in the know,

septuagenarian seers,

who predicted

that many of my generation

wouldn’t amount to anything,

that we’d end up

in group homes, reform schools, jails,

reformatories, insane asylums, and prisons,

that many of us

would not live long,

that many of us,

certainly,

would not live to see fifty years.

I saw the bravest boys of my generation

find their way out of the projects

and into Basic Training.

They knew

there was no way they could be

all they wanted to be

in projects

with low ceilings

and finite possibilities.

They went

from leaping from building to building,

from subway surfing

and elevator surfing,

to jumping out of airplanes

to fight in Granada and Panama.

They were honor guards in championship games,

those games

the best physical specimens of our generation

should’ve been playing in.

They were in the Marines,

in the Army, and Navy.

They swaggered down the streets of Spain,

ran with the bulls,

found cheap thrills in Manila

with “our little brown cousins,”

redefined what it meant

to be a Samurai in Japan,

fished in Korea,

drank beer in Germany

with the frauleins

and convinced them

that Hitler got it wrong,

that these physical specimens

were the Master Race –

you could

take them out of the ghetto –

none of them came back to the projects.

Later, I saw them,

military erect,

at the funerals

of their parents,

and their younger and older siblings,

and so many others

we grew up with

who died

in the summer of their lives

– casualties of

the wars on poverty and crime.

We looked at each other,

nodding,

acknowledging that

we are still here,

Black boys

transmuted into Black men

despite the strange alchemy

of white America,

the low ceilings

and finite possibilities

that would have been our lot

if we weren’t

the brightest,

the boldest,

the bravest

of our generation,

building on the Black philosophy,

of making a way out of no way.

In those moments, we looked at each other,

shared that nod of Black Brotherhood,

acknowledging that we were still here,

unbroken –

celebrating life.

Posted in being a teenager, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, ezwwaters, Politics, race, raising black boys, Streets of Rage | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Cancel Culture Redux

Posted on September 20, 2025 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

A little more than five years ago, I blogged about “cancel culture.” See https://ezwwaters.com/2020/07/24/the-cancel-culture-conundrum/. Given the backlash in the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, rebranded as a “conservative activist,” including canceling nighttime talk show host Jimmy Kimmel for his comments on Kirk, I thought it was time to re-post said blog.

In 1963, when JFK was assassinated and Malcolm X stated that the “chickens had come home to roost,” the Honorable Elijah Muhammad sidelined and silenced Malcolm. (The same thought came to my mind as soon as the killing of Kirk hit the news, and I knew, but not to this extent, that some voices would be silenced!) In 1963, it was all about the optics. Mostly everything in America during the Civil Rights and Black Power era was political, but Elijah Muhammad thought it wise to stay clear of this political minefield. In 2025, it is all about weaponizing the tools at Trump’s disposal to silence detractors, including comedians. Whatever one may think about Trump, it’s indisputable that he lacks a sense of humor; therefore, comedians are on his hit list.

He who controls the narrative, controls the country.

I’ve often said, with tongue-in-cheek, that one of the few things the Founding Fathers got right was the First Amendment. It’s one of the remaining things, albeit under attack, that one should love about America. (Dictators want to control the narrative.) Look at any dictatorship with state-run and controlled Media, and one will see the assassination and imprisonment of truth-telling journalists. In America, we take them off the air, but it might not be long before we imprison and kill them.

NOTE: In attempting to generate an AI image for this post, I got the following error message: “This request has been flagged by the OpenAI moderation system. Please try to rephrase your post.” Even OpenAI – the coders who wrote the algorithms – is in on the cancel culture business.

Posted in crime, Malcolm X, Nation of Islam, Politics, race | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Teaching” Alice Walker

Posted on September 17, 2025 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

In preparation for a lecture in the course I teach, African American Literature in the 20th Century, I am re-reading excerpts from Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose. In her prose, Walker makes nearly perfect sense. I don’t argue against any of her observations. Her fictional world, though, is pathological. As a Black male, Walker’s fiction is hard to digest, because there is not one redeeming Black male character, apart from Grange Copeland from Walker’s first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, though Grange’s son, Brownfield, is the evilest male character in Alice Walker’s fictional world, and Mister.

I don’t think, as a Black male, that I am Walker’s target audience – she does not write for Black men – though I feel like a target is on my back. Ironically, I binge-read hundreds of Black women authors – yes, there are hundreds – at Walker’s instigation. She claimed that Black men, including Black male authors, did not read Black women writers.

This morning, during my commute, I was reading Walker’s essay, “Saving the Life That Is Your Own: The Importance of Models in the Artist’s Life,” in which she writes about giving a reading at a college. One of the audience members asked what Walker considered “the major difference between the literature written by black and white Americans.” Walker muses that it is “not the difference between them that interests me, but, rather, the way black writers and white writers seems to me to be writing one immense story.”

Walker, continuing this line of thought, and it is worth quoting in full:

Still, I answered that I thought, for the most part, white American writers tended to end their books and their characters’ lives as if there were no better existence for which to struggle. The gloom of defeat is thick. By comparison, black writers seem always involved in a moral and/or physical struggle, the result of which is expected to be some kind of larger freedom. Perhaps this is because our literary tradition is based on the slave narratives, where escape for the body and freedom for the soul went together, or perhaps this is because black people have never felt themselves guilty of global, cosmic sin.

This made me think of the “sin” of police brutality, and specifically the 1991 case of Rodney King, who was severely beaten by errant blue knights of Los Angeles Police Department. Despite his severe beating, Rodney King wanted “to let go, to let God deal with it…. I didn’t want to be angry my whole life.”

Maybe Rodney King did not have an inner Bigger Thomas!

Despite his severe beating, Rodney King asked us all to “just get along.”

“Can’t we all just get along?”

I don’t know if this capacity to forgive white folk has been baked or beaten into the being of Black folk, but it is amazing grace beyond what a slaver can even imagine.

Posted in crime, ezwwaters, Justice Chronicles, Lest We Forget, Politics, race, Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats, Streets of Rage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Strategies for Effective Advocacy in Criminal Justice Reform

Posted on September 15, 2025 by William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters

The Anatomy of Advocacy, Part 1: How “Tough on Crime” Politics Reshaped Justice in New York

In the mid-1990s, New York was gripped by “tough on crime” politics. Headlines were filled with fear, politicians raced to outdo each other on punitive policies, and communities—especially Black and brown communities—bore the brunt. But behind the slogans and soundbites, laws were quietly reshaped in ways that would keep people incarcerated longer and under state supervision for life. One of the most consequential was Governor George Pataki’s push to eliminate parole for “violent offenders.”

In 1995, Pataki entered office promising to restore the death penalty and end parole for people convicted of so-called Index crimes. Within his first month, Executive Order Number 5 ended work release for this group, gutting a key reentry tool.

Though the legislature blocked his attempt to abolish parole outright, Pataki directed the parole board to deny release to people convicted of Index crimes, causing release rates to collapse to nearly zero. In 1998, his signature victory came: Jenna’s Law, requiring determinate sentences for Index crimes.

While not retroactive, the law carried a hidden penalty—a rider eliminating the three-year discharge from parole (Executive Law 259-j) for Class A-1 felonies, including murder and kidnapping. For many with the lowest recidivism rates in the state, this meant lifetime supervision.

This was the backdrop for an extraordinary grassroots fight—one led not by political insiders, but by the very people directly impacted.

The Anatomy of Advocacy, Part 2: Birth of the Ad Hoc Committee on Lifetime Parole

Every advocacy campaign starts with a spark—an injustice so glaring it demands action. For the people sentenced to lifetime parole under Pataki’s policy changes, that spark came when their parole officers told them, plainly: you will never be discharged. That’s when the organizing began.

The Ad Hoc Committee on Lifetime Parole formed to take on the fight. Comprised of people living under lifetime supervision, they began by mapping out possible strategies:

  • Litigation – A challenge under the U.S. Constitution’s Ex Post Facto Clause. But court battles are long, expensive, and uncertain.
  • Media Campaign – Modeled after the “Drop the Rock” campaign, but too risky for their circumstances given potential media distortion.
  • Legislative Advocacy – The most viable path: return to the Legislature to change the law.

The Anatomy of Advocacy, Part 3: Strategy in Action – How They Won the Fight

Successful advocacy is rarely about one big move—it’s about hundreds of small, strategic steps. The Ad Hoc Committee on Lifetime Parole executed a meticulous plan:

  • Research – Partnered with John Jay College of Criminal Justice (quantitative) and the CUNY Graduate Center (qualitative).
  • Bill Drafting – A Columbia Law School professor drafted the new Executive Law 259-j.
  • Political Engagement – Secured Senate Bill 6731, sponsored by Senators Volker, Maltese, and Montgomery; Assembly sponsorship from Members Aubry and Lentol.
  • Legal Direction – Guided by a public interest law firm on meetings and timing.
  • Coalition Building – Aligned with New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty, Osborne Association, Prisoner Reentry Institute, Citizens Against Recidivism.
  • Insider Support – Endorsements from Parole Chairs George Alexander, Robert Dennison, Edward Hammock, and Ramon Rodriguez.

The Victory – On July 21, 2008, Governor David Paterson signed the bill into law as Chapter 310 of the Laws of 2008. By October 2008, many members were officially discharged from parole, in full satisfaction of their sentences.

The Anatomy of Advocacy, Part 4: Lessons Learned from a Winning Campaign

Victories like the 2008 repeal of lifetime parole for Class A-1 felonies aren’t accidents—they’re the product of strategy, discipline, and persistence. The Ad Hoc Committee’s campaign offers a blueprint:

  1. Anchor in Research – Data builds credibility.
  2. Control the Narrative – Choose messaging channels you control.
  3. Build Unlikely Alliances – Bipartisan sponsorship was essential.
  4. Engage Multiple Stakeholders – Legislators, faith leaders, community organizations, and agency insiders together create change.
  5. Work Inside and Outside the System – Legislative advocacy + grassroots mobilization is a winning formula.

The takeaway: no matter how entrenched a policy seems, it can be undone with persistence, strategy, and collective will.

Participatory Research: A How‑To Blueprint

Why this matters: When those most impacted by the criminal legal system become designers, data collectors, and authors of research, the result is deeper truth—and policy that listens.
This blueprint draws on the Incorporating Lived Expertise into Research white paper (May 2025) and our campaign’s scholarship to offer a practical, ethical, and power‑building approach.

Pillars from the 2025 White Paper

  1. Co‑Design the Questions — Start by asking communities what needs to be known to make change. Center measures of thriving (housing, stability, family ties, civic life), not just “recidivism.”
  2. Share Ownership — Define data governance up front (consent, access, storage). Peer researchers should shape analysis and interpretation—not just collection.
  3. Policy‑Ready Framing — Translate findings into testimony, legislative memos, and coalition briefs. Build a dissemination plan before you field a single survey.

The Blueprint (Step‑by‑Step)

  1. Build the Table — Form a community advisory team (impacted people, CBOs/faith organizations, allied scholars). Set values: transparency, reciprocity, non‑extraction.
  2. Co‑Design Methods — Mix qualitative and quantitative: life‑history interviews, focus groups, administrative data linkages, cost analyses. Validate instruments with the advisory group.
  3. Train Peer Researchers — Interviewing skills, trauma‑aware practice, privacy/ethics, note‑taking, and coding. Budget for stipends and ongoing support.
  4. Co‑Analysis & Member Checks — Host analysis circles; test emergent themes with participants. Invite critique and document how feedback shaped results.
  5. Advocacy Integration — Timeline research milestones to legislative calendars and media moments. Prepare one‑pagers, infographics, and scripts for hearings.
  6. Return the Knowledge — Release findings first to participants and communities. Offer teach‑ins, digital toolkits, and data summaries in plain language.

Ethics & Care

  • Do no harm — Minimize risk, honor anonymity preferences, allow withdrawal without penalty.
  • Fair compensation — Pay lived experts and peer researchers for their labor.
  • Credit & Authorship — Co‑author reports and presentations; cite community collaborators as a norm.

From Evidence to Impact

Participatory research amplified the parole reform movement because it blended data with lived expertise:
quantitative analyses (release patterns, cost models) alongside qualitative narratives (reentry strengths, barriers), framed for policy action.
This is how research becomes a lever for justice.

Research as Resistance: Building Knowledge Together in the Fight for Parole Justice

Note: The following reflection is part of our ongoing series on justice, research, and reform.
As a member of the research team, I saw firsthand how scholarship—conducted with directly impacted people—can shift policy, narrative, and law.

When Evidence Meets Lived Experience

When the Ad Hoc Committee on Lifetime Parole organized, we didn’t just raise our voices—we brought evidence.
From the start, we understood that stories alone, while powerful, could be dismissed. But research, conducted with directly impacted people and not just about them, carried undeniable weight.
It became a cornerstone of our advocacy, demonstrating to lawmakers and the public that long‑term imprisonment was neither necessary for public safety nor justifiable as endless punishment.

Early Foundations (2006–2007)

In 2006, our team presented “Public safety/public interest: Experiences of people who have served long terms in prison released to the community” at the American Society of Criminology in Los Angeles.
By March 2007, at John Jay College’s Off the Witness Stand conference, we shared “To parole or not to parole: Using science to inform parole decisions for people who have been convicted of violent crimes.”

Peer‑Reviewed Anchor (2013)

These studies culminated in “How much punishment is enough? Designing participatory research on parole policies for persons convicted of violent crimes” in the Journal of Social Issues (2013).
See John Jay College •
Taylor & Francis Online •
ResearchGate.

Extending the Frame (2017–2022)

  • Boudin (2017), “Hope, Illusion and Imagination.” Law review article that cites and builds on our JSI piece to reframe punishment and parole.
  • DeVeaux (2022), “Not just by rates of recidivism.” Taylor & Francis study centering how NYC Black men define success after prison—work, relationships, mentoring, and civic life.

From Research to Practice (2025)

Our latest internal framework, “Incorporating Lived Expertise into Research” (May 2025), distills what we’ve learned about designing, governing, and sharing research with the people most impacted.
It’s not just a method—it’s a stance: research is resistance.

What’s Next: The Participatory Playbook

Next up, I’ll share a practical guide to participatory research for organizers, advocates, and scholars—how to structure partnerships, protect participants, co‑analyze data, and translate findings into policy.
If you care about justice, you can help produce the knowledge that movements need.

Calls to action:

• Subscribe for the final installment: Participatory Research: A How‑To Blueprint (coming soon).

• Share this post with a colleague in policy, academia, or community organizing.

• If you’re part of an organization seeking to adopt a lived‑expertise model, reach out—we’d love to collaborate.

Posted in crime, ezwwaters, Justice Chronicles, Life Sentences, Murder, Osborne Association, Parole, parole board, Politics, Reentry | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment