Editor's Note: Timothy Yeargin is one of several power-FUL PNN Plantation correspondents who contribute to Poor Magazine notes from the inside, a column of planation resistors who needs your help to get justice.
Has the time you have done in prison as a father really helped you? Are the people of society addressing our issues here in prison? I do pray that society understands that some of us fathers are really trying to change for our children. Is crime the only way for some of us this day and time? No, but sometimes being poor causes us as fathers, sons, and brothers to make bad choices in life just to survive. But now as a father, I have had time to really look inside myself and know that it wasn't about me. It was also about my family that I left behind. We all as human beings were fed the wrong mind food because of listening to men in the streets of poverty. Yes, some of us listened to them. At that time they were all we had. Most of us were poor and looking for a way out so we could help our families. Some of us, are products of our environment that made us this way. Now let me say this to those who read this because the attitude some of us as fathers have didn't come from how we were raised. Some of us without fathers listened to other homies and looked up to them. Yes, those who did have a father found out he was never there. When he was, we never got a chance to talk with him. That's why some of us were raised around bad influences without knowing that it was osmething that you and I thought good turn out to be so bad! Now, let me put it another way, so we all can understand. Our brains are computers which take in good and bad things. When we as young teens see our fathers doing wrong or our older men selling drugs and making money, we want to do this too. Not all of us, but some of us fell into this trap in the streets. But now as a father, a brother, and an uncle, I have to make the right choice for the little eyes that are watching you and me.