OPINION: We can stop conflict by remembering to be humane | Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service
Joseph Cook
August 21, 2023
Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service invites community members to submit opinion pieces of 500-800 words on topics of interest to central city Milwaukee. To send a submission for consideration, please email info@milwaukeenns.org. The views expressed are solely those of the authors.
A boy once fell into a hole in the ground. As he started to cry for help,
people gathered around the hole to help and to see what the commotion was about.
EMTs attempted to rescue the boy but weren’t successful.
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The preacher, the imam and the rabbi came, but none of them were successful.
The boy’s friends showed up, jumped inside the hole and got stuck too.
The boy’s parents came, father and mother side by side. The mother knew her husband. She knew his private and public battles, and she knew without a doubt that the father could rescue her son.
The father rolled up his sleeves, turned down help from others and went into the hole. Moments later, he came out of the hole with his son and his son’s friends.
Asked how he succeeded when all the others failed, the father simply said, “I been in the hole before. I been in the hole plenty of times, so I know the way out.”
Before I left New Lisbon Correctional Institution for another institution, one of my friends told me that the officer didn’t allow him to eat because he was only a few seconds late.
My friend took up the issue with the sergeant, who agreed with his officer.
My friend who worked in the main kitchen and prepared the meal that he was denied was very angry. He asked me how to write a complaint.
I did three things: I listened; I gave him some things for the night from my canteen; and later that evening, I spoke with the officer with whom he had a conflict.
I politely pulled the officer aside and told her that she should speak with my friend about the incident. I told her he was angry about what happened.
She initially got defensive but was still open to the conversation.
She said if she allowed him to come late, she would have to bend the rules for everybody.
After she finished, I told her that my friend was a good guy who usually is on time and that his anger was a secondary emotion.
Initially, he was hurt and somewhat humiliated by not being able to eat the food that he helped prepare.
I told her that I understand officers are just trying to do stressful jobs and go home. But prisoners are also just trying to make it through another day.
I told her that some conflicts can be resolved if we just communicated more instead of automatically punishing and verbally bashing one another.
She listened to me and afterward she told me to tell him to come and talk with her.
Keep in mind that he was in battle mode now. When I told him that she wanted to talk with him about the incident, he said he was good and that the damage was done.
He looked at me as if were crazy – like I betrayed his trust by talking to her about the issue without his permission. I saw him holler at one of his guys who was in the same street organization as his. He was running it past him.
After I told the officer that he was good, she persisted. “Cook, please tell him to come and talk with me,” she said.
He told me he appreciated what I was trying to do, but that he was cool. She persisted.
I told him to go and holler at her and that she wasn’t taking no for an answer. I told him to go in there not as a prisoner, but as a human. I told him to humanize himself. And that it was easy for her to deny him due if she dehumanized him.
He went to speak with her. When he came out of the kitchen, he shook my hand and told me she was so apologetic that he couldn’t get a word out. She restored the damage that was done.
He left that conversation feeling better.
He told me the only thing he wanted to tell her was that everybody’s situation is different and that his budget didn’t allow him to have a personal canteen, a commissary where inmates can buy authorized items.
But even without him saying that, the officer approached him with dignity and respect, which was a healing moment.
She neutralized his anger by treating him like a human being, which didn’t cost her a thing.
I recently heard that the definition of humility is always being teachable.
On a spiritual level, I didn’t like what she did to him and what she was doing to herself. She was denying her own humanity by denying his.  She probably went home and fed her pets not based on whether her pets were being good or bad, yet it was too easy for her to deny a person food.
And his response fueled the issue.
I know my friend as a man who doesn’t cuss or casually disrespect people. So, seeing him step out of these characteristics was unsettling.
Back in the day, this was one of the types of holes I had to learn how to escape. I used a lot of energy and effort in climbing out of these holes. I wasted a lot of energy and effort, but it wasn’t a waste being able to help others climb out.
Whatever we go through can serve us if we allow it to teach us.
In so doing, we will be able to help others who might be going through the same or a similar struggle.
Joseph Cook, a former Milwaukee resident, is incarcerated in the Oakhill Correctional Institution.