I didn’t pick up a gun with the hopes of lodging a bullet in the chest of another kid. I didn’t douse any of my neighbors with gasoline in order to kill them. I wasn’t that father punching the mother of his children in the stomach or face. And I wasn’t better than those who committed those actions. But I was black in a city wracked with poverty and political malfeasance, a person whose life was counted as a zero, who believed during certain moments that he didn’t deserve to live.
