They call him
Black Revolutionary Political Prisoner,
but I simply call him Daddy
by Crystal Hayes
My father, Robert Seth Hayes, former Black Panther Party member,
has been a resident of the New York state prison system for the past
29 years, making him one of the longest held Panthers in the United States.
He was arrested in September 1973 – I was only three years old at the
time – sentenced in 1974, and continuously denied parole since July 1998.
His latest parole board hearing was July 2002, and again he was denied
release for the third time. All this despite the fact that he has an
exemplary prison record with several accomplishments, not the least of
which is the successful completion of several college level courses, along
with peer counselor training and mentorship programs that have enhanced
his ability to serve the prison population the best way he knows how –
as an advocate, teacher and leader, gaining him enormous respect from his
peers.
The parole board, in an effort to continue to punish him for his
political activities, overlooks all of this, including the fact that
upon my father’s release many people are prepared to support him in his
transition back into the community in whatever capacity necessary.
Now in his fifth decade of life, my father is managing both diabetes
and hepatitis C. Under the best of circumstances these two diseases are
difficult to control, and prison complicates our efforts tenfold. It
took a near death experience before he was properly diagnosed a diabetic
and an organized effort on the part of his family and friends to galvanize
together politically to secure him medical treatment for the hepatitis.
Needless to say, it was a nightmare! Fortunately, we have been successful
in getting him treatment and his body has responded well to the medications,
no doubt because of his powerfully positive spirit and healthy lifestyle
over the years, eating right and exercising. My father is a wonderful example
that “you can jail the body but not the spirit.”
In fact, his spirit is as bright today as it was so long ago. I remember
experiencing his strength whenever I was in his presence as a little
girl visiting him in various prison facilities and feeling overwhelmed
by it all. Not overwhelmed because he smothered me with it, but overwhelmed
because I could not take it with me when I left him after every visit.
Today I continue to be overwhelmed by him, because I continue to
long for my Daddy to come home. Nevertheless, I was nurtured and raised
during those visits, learning some of my most powerful lessons in life,
and those lessons have propelled me into a life of activism, teaching
me to use my life to speak for those less fortunate in my community.
My father has taught me that there is honor in a life in prison if
your crime is fighting for the oppressed. Most of my mentors have been
either to jail or prison at least once in their lives – Nelson Mandela,
Martin Luther King Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, just to name a few.
Are there things that he might do differently today? I am sure there
are, but the basic principle of fighting for the oppressed is something
that will never change. We are an activist family. He taught me that love
for myself means love for humanity, and now we both teach those same values
to my 10-year old daughter, his granddaughter, and like me she is an astute
student of social justice.
I will not lie. Sometimes it is real hard to wrap my brain around
the fact that we are raising my daughter, another generation, with him
still incarcerated. It becomes a terribly hard thing for me to think about,
making me sick with grief and depressed.
However, in those difficult times I remind myself what true freedom
means, and for me it means to think freely and imaginatively, ultimately
shaping and sharpening the mind to think and act with consciousness for
those oppressed and lost. Freedom also means taking care of others in a
world and culture sick with individuality, exploitation and corruption.
Some of you might find this concept of freedom hard to comprehend,
because too many of you believe that freedom means going to the plantation
every day where your labor is exploited, only to return home to communities
with liquor stores instead of libraries, welfare offices instead of parks,
and candy stores instead of whole food markets. Others maintain that freedom
means having an Ivy League M.D. or Ph.D. behind their names and a downtown
office address.
They flaunt their Yale and Harvard lambskins as proof positive of
their freedom, when in fact too many of them trade in their black pride
or become as race neutral as possible for acceptance in the ivory tower,
only to discover later that no one respects a traitor, not even the devil
himself – ask black conservative-intellectual-turned-liberal Glen Loury.
After some personal tragedies where race mattered, Loury was forced to repent
for years of lambasting every social program since the Emancipation Proclamation.
He had to readjust his intellectual lens, changing the focus (a bit) from
blaming the victim, or black Americans, for racial inequality to blaming
the real perpetrator – a history of racism in America that continues to kill
and oppress black lives everyday.
Do not misunderstand me, I realize that we are all out here struggling
to survive the best we know how and more often than not we do so under
some of the most extreme of circumstances. However, what is important to
keep in mind is that none of us is truly free from exploitation unless we
are diligent agitators advocating for the freedom of all oppressed people!
You are no more likely to be free working for the city while your brother
hustles the streets to feed his family than if you make it to Harvard or
Yale, because collectively we still scrape the bottom of the barrel socio-politically
and economically.
Our community capital is what we need to work on, and that is what
the Panthers tried to emphasize and teach us – and what my father continues
to teach today.
When I define freedom this way, I realize that my father has more
freedom than he knows what to do with. It reminds me that he has lived
a life in prison liberated from the oppression that kills most black Americans
today. It keeps him healthy in mind, body, and spirit. He has empowered
me with that same spirit of liberation. In this way he has enjoyed and
continues to enjoy more freedom behind prison walls than most people will
ever enjoy outside of prison.
They call him Black Revolutionary Political Prisoner, but I simply
call him Daddy.
Crystal Hayes is a third year student
at Mount Holyoke College in Western Massachusetts with a double major
in politics and African American studies. Her father is currently at Clinton
Correctional Facility in New York state.