I believe that “Bigs” (Notorious B.I.G.) had it correct when he said “You’re Nobody Til Somebody Kills You”. He just should have added a few a few more words, “if you vote Democrat”. It seems hard to find someone politically well positioned who cares to help you be somebody while you live, especially among the purported Liberals and Progressives. Political cowards, with a lack of courage that the Wizard of Oz couldn’t help. With a certainty they come running, outraged, when somebody is killed. But where are they when the people embodied by the metaphorical archetype of Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Laquan McDonald, Breonna Taylor, and Eric Garner are trying to live?

When I say “killed” I am not only, and in this instance not at all, talking about deaths that result in the literal loss of life, but instead the loss of hopes and futures.

For my entire life I have been told that Black people who are cut of the same cloth, and of the same ilk as JC Watts, Mia Love, and someone who has become dear to me, Glenn Loury, have it all wrong. Our only way forward, I’ve been told, is to wade in the waters trodden by the likes of Jesse Jackson, C. Dolores Tucker, and Barak Obama. I accepted this as fact without any refutation because it was coming from people whom I love and respect. I also never challenged this notion because of some of the personalities of the party with which Watts, Love, and Loury are associated with are toxic.

A bit selfishly, and only as this issue became personal, have I begun to revisit it; I am trying to live, trying to have a future after 26 years—deservedly—in a tomb. I asked the well placed political liberals, who I had been raised to support and believe in, to help me live. I told them that I have done quite well, and I won’t embarrass you, just help me get a letter to the Democratic Governor of Illinois. Van Jones, Bobby Rush, Ako Samad, and countless others; mums the word. I mean not even a ‘no, sorry, I can’t help you.’ Ironically enough, Dr. Glenn Loury wrote a letter of support on my behalf and many of the conservative readers of his blog signed it. These are the people who I just said had some toxic personalities in their crowd.

I asked the liberals one simple thing, shine a light on my case to the governor. I did not ask for money, or for them to donate a kidney to me, just email this letter to the governor, to an inbox he will see. I am a prisoner, I cannot penetrate the barrier that surrounds the governor of one of the most populous states in the union. All of you talked about criminal justice reform on the campaign trail, and here is an example of a case that will not give your opponents any political fodder to use against you. In the words of the old adage, the silence was deafening.

I am left to assume that they are waiting for me to be killed, for this opportunity I have been presented with to pass me by, so they can show up with their ostensible indignation—in a non-election year—vowing that this will never happen again (at least not for the next four years).

I am begging, let me be somebody now, while I am living, not after someone kills me. I believed what you said and all of your promises, and intend to hold you to them. Thus, I will heed the words of Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.