I Was And Still Am A Living Witness Poem by James McLain

I am a living witness to it all.
I could hear the people being raped at night,
in every Florida prison they placed me in.
In the last one Union correctional institution,
where Florida House's it's death row, the condemned.
I was raped my first night,
staff used this particular prisoner to initiate,
the non-violent
to instill terror into the hearts of the few.
Florida signed into law an apology for the boy's that
we're killed and raped at Auther D. Dozier school for boy's
from it's inception tonineteen seventy three again,
of which, I was one of.
The white house where the beatings took place to the unmarked
grave's where they disposed of over a hundred young bodies.
For some of you, where you live, in your country,
this may be normal to you.
My personal belief is that when you take a child at risk from
an abusive home and do with them as was done unto me,
what does an ignorant community expect to receive from these
individuals whom were so unmercifully exploted.
More now are dead than alive, some are doing life in Florida's
prison's.
The few such as me are the exception, now what do you who
live in the south, think about this.
In Florida, I along with over two million other people not on
probation in Florida which has no parole,
still cannot vote.
I was and still am a living witness to it all and have been
out of prison for over twenty years.
Do you really believe that by beating and abusing a child that
you can produce a more better rounded child,
that will function at a higher level and that the abuse combined
with a mean low intelligence.
That Florida's,
backwards thinking government still continue to provide.
That the man with small hands continues to think is alright.