Oscar & Ammaad

The 2019 Oscars.

No where is white entitlement clearer than social media. It's where my wife got started in the PR game, new media, twitter taste makers, influencers. The trickle down of that, it makes the whole thing much, much worse. The irony of Kanye's mother, the English director at the local college crossing over, over the sin of vanity and that of not LA but Hollywood the poison of make believe inside all it's deconstruction. The kids have given up I would do with a smart phone and free porn the power of litigation keeping me from over getting a scar meeting a challenge. But this was Oscar's night 2019, I was alone at the crib, Cassius was asleep, the mood was festive after all I owned a house had a hobby a son that was asleep and a wife at the Oscar's.

It was the second time in life my phone ever went off like this. The Oscars 2019 home alone my son Cassius sound asleep. We love the Oscars for the same reason we love the Royal Wedding, Religion and happy endings Mr. Kraft, my man! Free Meek Mill is right, still sour Meek was well that against Drake when it counted oh well. You can’t win them all. But the Oscars, I always dress up for them, don’t play with guessing games as much you know what I just let the beg when everyone rolls in. This is in stark contrast to the BET awards, the greatest night in TV all-in i watch evert second of that production like the Super Bowl.

It’s like they have nothing to hide on that side on the aisle. The Oscar’s the pinnacle of entertainment tinsel town city of light what’s your dream? "This ain't a buffet Kit!" Pretty Women

This past year my wife summer crush VP of feature doc’s at Natgeo (Disney) had a pony in the race. Out of all of “us” amounting to well the best fucking network in all of America and it’s been this way since pretty much I started acting white (er) I mean left Boston. So many of us it was the power of that busing program over the pedigree of Madison preppy kids. We could do anything especially drink a lot fast over long hours. But my dearest summer crush out of all the stars in our galaxy was out there with Free Solo, Alex Honold, no ropes, El Capo. It was a feat and a film! Mad props and gum drops, Jimmy Chin. I hadn’t had my phone go off like that when they won the Oscar since our boy J. Wig was exonerated by Santonio Holmes and later by the officials in Super Bowl something. It’s one of the greatest stories we have, J. Wig, left for dead in Carolina, taking it all back, rocky 3 style. It's a book and a movie like Legendes. It's the greatest story we'll ever have. Big Up's Wig, Val, Keelber, Preemo, Gangstarr foundation. 4 reel.

And the Oscar goes too…. Free Solo. 2 worlds I could never escape them. The pinnacle of career and life and I'd just received news concerning Ammaad Chase-El, I did a big brothers type of program years ago in DC. We couldn't help him, we tried, it was everything you'll read what happened to Ammaad. Oscar night they win right when I get the text from Ammaad's mother regarding his sentencing fate and would I write a letter to the judge and come out to support and sit with.

I called, talking to Robin was ping after ping after ping. I didn't even tell her, she loved summer, but real life had overtaken. Robin’s son Ammaad had a sentencing date in DC superior court set, it was in April, we’d just gotten word, she’d ask me to appear, if I could, AND PLEASE write the judge a note of support. It had been three long years since Ammad was arrested in conjunction with the killing of a 40 something immigrant on payday on Georgia avenue here in DC. Ammaad didn’t have a job this guy did. Ammaad was not a father. He was a father a dad not an immigrant. It all went down for less than five hundred dollars in cash. Biggie's killer was paid out less then 10K. "Life is cheap in Casablanca Rick." Casablanca

I’d known Ammaad through the mentor’s program in DC a big brothers type of thing we were involved with back in Boston. When I say we it’s everyone that is with me today. This moment. Slanging forex down in DC I’d escaped the shots certainly coming from me in the book I “legendes” I’d left behind locking in with Minx, headed to Chicago one day at nineteen and never retuned. I was clearly a product of community service at Hayden also of teachers and JAZZ, so even in DC in my early 20’s, I’d take advantage of a little known sponsored week off (community service) a yea. I’d parlay going into local high schools speaking through friends and sometimes cold calls 2 the kids of their special education departments. I couldn't even rent a car legally. My coworkers in operations (all black) for an enormous FX sales, trading, clearing, payment business were befuddled. The white co-workers on the other side of the room the brokers the traders the guys with the money even more befuddled in 2000 Washington DC. I love taking those days off, panful gorilla Tuesdays. “Wait, what are you going to talk about?” A new type of corporate curtain would pop and say an in a drawl that meant to me he’d actually never worked a day in his life, “You work in operations bro.” I couldn’t hear that by them I'd known more than enough by then to take nothing to heart outside of heavy weight's. once you get out you realize no one makes it. You count your blessings. So I smiled with it all, happy to be alive back having survived again a coma and almost fatal incident only a year prior. Life had been fast for me, DC, 2000 was what the Big Guy had always say, “go someplace no one knows you.” This was that, my life was a function of the dopest people, and it started with stuff like that everything good I took from my incredible high school story of luck, courage, faith and well whiteness. I’d speak to these kids about what I have no idea. But I’d be invited back. I was shocked more people didn’t take Mr. Ruesch’s few days off a year to holla at community service some did many like my Turkish lunch partners did not those that did certainly did not book speaking engagements on their own. So I was put in sales. I’ll never forget leaving all the brothers and sisters behind in operations. My first friends when I came to DC having never been before having not known anyone. America was like Pac said, the same everywhere nothing had changed since Legendes and nothing had changed since 2000. I learned even faster in DC the uniqueness of my story, the first one, Legendes.

I wish Spec, and Black could get out but by then already they were stuck forever right there in Black Boston. Game over, happens quick. Doesn’t mean shits not goodie and all of that just means your still black. In all of this, years went by and my DC became enchanted capturing DC selling forex. Minx soon joined me. And by 2006 I was on top of the world. My last five numbers dialed you’d want to know about every single time. I’d had the opportunity through my man Vin at Tempus (Consulting) to worm in the DC mentor’s program. His girl ran the whole show and we all went to happy hour as we so often did but that time we talked about mentor’s, I had a bunch of questions, and told them about my days at Ruesch. So I signed up, I lived with summer crush in the DOPEST loft in DC above Bus Boys & Poets. Draft night, I met Ammaad Chase-El. He was seventeen. It was a year long program. One Saturday a month. He was a pretty good little DJ and once I told him about our dear friend DJ Premier he’d have a million questions. “How do we get in this business C?” he’d ask me. Kids do. When someone in your own life tells you they want to be in a band or see if they can make it music, it’s the hat on the corner test in a crowded city, if the shit fills up with scratch while your doing your thing, OK, we can talk. Maybe put some energy behind it. Ammaad’s dad ran a local Mosque in DC separated from his m other robin, a poet from DC / Maryland. It was great, that year however Ammaad read and wrote in what seemed like the third grade of Madison school systems. There was no hope then, the world is too cold and competitive. I told the Mentors program when asked what could make a difference. Man, big one, look I I needed Ammaad to know him when he was eight and nine. My dad always warned me about one bad night could ruin your life one bad night. Ammaad was a gentle, nice kid, he’d never had A run in with the law.

But he was 20 now, he saw what life was going to be like, he wasn’t getting anywhere, knuckle head friends, the frenzy of youth, money and cool Instagram updates the fucking pressure of that. So, they put on masks one night and went back to that CVS on Georgia ave where the drunk man had a pocket full of cash they saw. I knew Ammaad, knew his dummy friend and the other one too. He probably thought it was a joke. But the kid shot, he shot the gun, and killed the man. So many cameras the other kids please out over 20+. And now the attorney was bankrupting his family the lineage and legacy of guns and share cropping his sister had went to Howard University wondered how the fuck did this happen? He’d been able to stay in the hospital pending this arraignment which kept getting pushed black excuse me back. It fucked me up. We’d told Robin (Ammaad’s mother) mentors and Ammaad the army was calling or Navy it didn’t mean war it just meant s shot for maybe maybe you can balance your check book and not live with the burden of stress and anxiety onto others and yourself.

One of my DC guys, Emile Barnes was 94 too (year of high school graduation) from Cambridge Ridge and Latin, grew up in the fresh pond towers, we’ve won 6 super bowls watching the patriot’s together down here, it was his idea. I brought him in a after a few months after all Emile was black. 2 worlds thinking about Ammaad the letter I was going to write, as my phone ADD was blowing up watching Jimmy and his uptown girl excuse me wife and Alex take home the Oscar. A landmark moment for the network. Fuck, it I wrote the letter and would appear on that Friday in DC Superior Court. I stressed he’d NEVER been in trouble and talked about our year together what I knew happened. It was true. Ammaad did not pull the trigger, no priors, the judge said that alone made it unusual. The only black kid in a murder 1 case not to have one prior. Wow. The judge raised an eyebrow any movement from the law and Order crowd notable numbed by the system and atrocity of life. All business. Next! However what the scarred the fuck out of me was this, DC superior court, room 311, up three pearly new escalators, so much light in that massive main lobby wedged up by the US capital itself. Everyone was black everyone the rooms and directories felt like Grand Central Station the rooms looked like doors to trains, hundreds. All black. Tears. Reality. Nothing you can do. This was finality. It tore me up. Why do we have this? "My baby!" Grandmothers, I sat alone, breath trick. I hadn't seen the family in years. What the fuck have we done to these people in America, my Uncle Clayt was right. I'd never change.

The sin of slavery plays out everyday in a way that’s simply unethical when it comes to guns for whites and NO free college tuition for any descendent of American styled slavery. Sure there will be some loop holes ask Trump about loopholes but overall it will work and be beneficial. Take the guns away from the man and give away education to blacks in poor zip codes. 23 & 1 fo life. Trump is having trouble balancing a trade war with China because of how UNFAIR it has been in the past. Really. That’s the type of rhetoric we need regarding affirmative action and banning guns. The first guy before Ammaad looked pretty crazy to me, he’d killed his father in what the amazing female judge (appointed by Obama) said in a very level tone “a pretty horrific crime scene.” So much mental illness in those halls all black. You see we should teach about Vietnam, not the battles, not the politics, the body counts we should teach kids how the money worked. Who got paid? That's the class. It leads into Fannie and Freddie that alone would rile kids up enough to never listen again. That's what this book is for, a democracy needs a good revolution now and then. And never has history been kid enough kids to cast unto you the perfect villain on Marvel proportions. A reality TV president bottom of the barrel. And you have the surviving jedi's of those wicked early 90's to guide and support. Follow the money kids. Numbers only.

That’s all Black Knight and I wanted to know. Who got paid, how, why and how much effort did the shit take? We believed Cassius Clay. Who got paid how much and how was it hard work Mr. President? And since they didn’t teach us that or “complicated” was the weird when money entered the discussion.

Who got paid why and how the fact money is pushed so far back in our curriculum is I don’t know, like books and slaves I suppose. He makes the money, vote on a bill, he paid, to support it always follow the money. This was 2018 thousands of blacks, DC Superior Court. So many tears and the oh my god totally like crew takes over chocolate city. Superior Court Friday DC had the same chilling effect the burn input at the kids hospital would have on anyone. “The penitentiary’s Packed and it’s filled with blacks.” I couldn’t help but be struck as I closed in on a year of sobriety and the completion of my long waited therapy, my first novel, “Legendes” Oscar night and Ammaad, I thought 2 Worlds. It was so fitting I thought maybe that should be the forward of the book. We need a bold revolution of youth. Ammaad was spared. And set to be released early 2020. first time offender, minority female judge, she looked at the whole case which is the only thing you can ask. Like my dad used to say, "all's it takes is one night one bad decision Bunky the company that you keep is everything and you never listen." Bunky SR>