Felix Rosado recently joined the Chestnut Hill College community as an inspiring and unconventional adjunct professor. Just two years ago he was serving a sentence of death by incarceration -- more commonly known as life without parole. He was freed via governor clemency after 27 years. Students say the class takeaways are improvements in their personal and professional lives -- worth the class time.
“I'm learning to ‘master self’ while rising from the ashes of madness.” ―Stanley “Tookie” Williams, “Blue Rage, Black Redemption: A Memoir”
The day that Stanley “Tookie” Williams was executed, I was working in the library at a juvenile court school in California. The students and I had talked this over for several months before the scheduled execution. Some of us felt a huge loss at the impending death of Tookie, as he was often called.
The day after he died, the library was filled with grieving students. Many saw Tookie as a hero for making such huge changes during his prison term on death row. We had a service of sorts in the library to commemorate his life and his achievements that brought more peace to this world.
As I write these words, I am overcome with a rush of nostalgia. Although my time at the Youth Guidance Center Juvenile Facility (YGC) in San Francisco was anything but joyful, I found solace in the streaks of graphite that marked my paper as I wrote for The Beat Within.
Growing up in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District, which was plagued by crime, drugs and alcohol, along with being raised by immigrant Spanish-speaking parents who did not fully grasp the consequences of our environment, evidently shifted my path from the American Dream they sought for me into a path of violence, depression and alcohol abuse.
It was not a surprise when I found myself within the white bricked walls of YGC at the young age of 14 for robbery with an added charge of conspiracy. This was only the beginning, as I would find myself staring out of the graffiti-carved plexiglass surrounded by the coldness of the stainless steel at least 15 more times within a four-year span.
To this day, the feeling of claustrophobia creeps in during the most unexpected times of my adult life, bringing me back to the reality of my broken childhood.
During my fifth visit to YGC for assault I was officially made a ward of the court and sent to my first group home. I ran away and eventually found myself back in YGC. I found myself revolving through the same doors of the courts, from group homes to juvenile detention, a never-ending cycle.
Just joining us? This is part four of a five part series. Start from the beginning. Kyle is now only a little more than four and a half months clean. His last relapse came during the Thanksgiving break of 2010.
