The Blaze Autobiography
*Blaze Of The Earth*
My government name is Gabriel Concepcion. My chosen attribute, however, is "Blaze." Why Blaze? Because I am very passionate about things I believe in. Passionate to the point that I burn with conviction and seem to be inblazed when in debate. This passion within me creates a thirst like the heat of the earth on fire, a thirst for knowledge, wisdom, strength, unity, and freedom. It is like the Sun glowing in the essence of my being; emitting a brightness from me eyes that cast reflections of its rays spitting fire in all directions. This passion comes from the unshakable spirit and the nobleness of my heart, the limitless power of the mind, and the unrelentless will to be free.
The reason I do not use my Government name is because of the history behind how our names were acquired. Our names come from the old slave masters who oppressed us and kept us under intense and brutal bondage and servitude. My ancestors, prior to that, earned their names - names earned according to what the universal spirit deemed appropriate for us to wear for life. Our names were a reflection of our character and personality. A verbal manifestation of who I am! Of who we are!
In this autobiography, you will find that the great spirit... God... decreed yhat my spirit manifest itself as >Blaze. One Blaze, born out of oppression, like the phoenix, Blazing out of the ashes of society... Blaze of the Earth.
This is why my indictment says: "The United $tates of amerika v. King Blaze." This is why I continue to speak with courage. For the meaning of courage is standing up got your belief and for what is right, even against majority's opinion; "...be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life..." Rev. 2"10
My Early Childhood
What was my childhood like? Many people have asked me. Very lonely! I oftenly played alone. Spent hours in the pool alone. I talked to myself alot, entertained by imaginary creatures and friends. I was a good kid, very respectful, who like many kids was afraid of the dark, heights, and that boogie man hiding under the bed, that for some reason loathed to allow us kids to use the bathroom.
I loved nature: trees, parks, rivers, and oh! That awesome star speckled sky! I must have thought I was truly the chosen one. The Golden Child. Because during long car trips at night I would be fascinated by the fact that the bright twinkling stars at night, followed the car and me where evere we went! During one long car trip from N.Y. to Florida, I spoke to the moon and stars for the entire trip. Impatient as hell during the day hours for night to fall so that I may resume this conversation with my celestial friends.
Some of my best moments was when I dreamed. Only then was it that I had true freedom. Not that illusion of freedom we are force-fed today. That so-called freedom that has killed all our true leaders; for practicing their right to freedom of speech. This freedom that has all countries of color dying of hunger, disease, and exploitation. That freedom to "join" the forces that seek to deny us and perish if you oppose. No not that illusionary freedom, but the freedom to dream and think for myself!
In my dreams was when I was free. Free from abuse that I endured as a child. Free from my mother being beat-up by her countless boyfriends, free from the hunger pangs and free to do as I pleased. in my dreams, I helped people, loved people, saved those in mortal peril and loved that special girl whom I still yearn to find. This one girl who I would grow old with, raise kids with, without leaving them as did my father. No! But raise our kids, to love and be loved. Unfortunately, even that is hard to find in this morally decaying society.
A Brave And Intelligent Child...
I was very bright and wise for a child. I excelled in school. Especially in English and literature. The reason for this was because of my desire to be able to explain in words what is going on all around us today; things I seemed to know even as a child, which frustrated me that the adults did not know or see! I later learned, sadly, that most people just don't want to see the causes of our social ills and moral declines, because to see this would mean to acknowledge that something is "wrong." And to acknowledge this means to act for or against it! So they refuse to accept and see that as a "whole" we are in bad shape, not by inferiority or "choice," but by design; Man made vices. As a child, I was wise enough to see things for what they are and not what they appeared to be. I did get held back in second grade. This was most likely because my mother moved around alot, fleeing from abusive boyfriends.
Seeing these things made me a defender of woman and children, and why I vowed to find one woman to settle down with. Remarkably, I had made this vow when I was only a child; a vow I still uphold.
A Young Defender
In elementary school, due to practicing martial arts at a young age, I constantly found myself defending the other kids from bullies. Shockingly, my assistant principal, "Mr. Duhan," would come get me during the middle of class, whenever a bully would beat on a weaker boy or girl, and take me and the bully behind the auditorium then let me push the bully around to see how he liked it! Usually, the bully would leave crying and never pick on anyone again. This was the same principal whom I saved from getting his head bashed in when one day they caught a teen stealing hubcaps from the cars in the school parking lot. I was present and moved quickly into action when the teen swung a large, red monkey wrench towards the principal's head. I stepped in and flipped the teen to the floor. I was only a child when I saved that adult, only a child when I saved myself and my monther, who, drunk one night, started cooking and fell asleep leaving the stove on, almost suffocating us with smoke.. Some 15 years later, in the same way I would save a girlfriend and her two kids... Mr. Duhan always thought I'd grow up to be an attorney, a defender of the people. I wonder what are his heavenly thoughts now? (Now that I am a prisoner, a convicted felon?) I don't think I failed you, my friend. For I am still a defender of the people and let your Irish blood boil with pride for I sympathize with the I.R.A. cause!
I wrote poetry at then tender young age, too. Poems about love, life, and the destructive path our world was taking. My favorite teacher, Ms. Ross, commented after seeing her many years later, how I ended my poems with the conscious verse of: "..and mankind will destroy mankind.." Ms. Ross died, but lives in my heart. It was in her class where I saw the first shuttle explode. And yes, I still think that mankind will destroy mankind unless we make a conscious decision to change this destructive path we are in. Most of my poems and stories written when I was child were thrown out by my mother. That hurt more than if she had thrown out a million bucks. For money has never meant much to me, not like my writings did. Not like the truth does!
When I graduated elementary school, Mr. Duhan gave a speech about me. I also got a trophy for swimming, 2nd Place, and one for the basketball team, 2nd Place. A trophy for the Daily News Physical Fitness Award, a certificate for science and another for literature... I could not complain about my childhood. Yes, I suffered a lot. Things I won't write here. But I did well, even though I was ever the dreamer.
I remember going to the roof of our New York City building on summer nights and day dream about superior alien civilizations. Wishing they would take me away. Surely, their world had to be better than this one. More peaceful. Or I would trade fantastic tales with other friends. I longed to be taken from this world that justifies hurting each other so. But: "When I was a child, I thought as a child, and when I became a man, I put away all those childish things." There are many childhood memories I could share, both good and bad. I suffered a lot as a child, but I do not regret my past. So I'll end that childhood memory with another brave act when one day I saw a female school mate drowning in the 7ft. section of the pool. (She was slipping into the deeper part where it quickly slopes down). Being already an excellent swimmer, I dove in and saved her. No one saw this or thanked me. Just as years later I would save a prisoner in MCC, who I found dangling and turning purple from strangulation. I do not seek recognition for these acts. For this is what life is about. Being you brother's keeper and loving your neighbor as you would love yourself. I just wish there were many more people who really care.
Life, Love, Parents, & Education
I love life. I only hate the conditions many of us are forced to live under. We do not create these conditions for ourselves, just as the Ethiopian child did not create her malnourished state. What I see is a slow process of cause and effect; which is an irrefutable law in the material world. There are social and political causes which creates our present conditions (The Effects) in out lives and society. Nor do I blame supernatural beings for our woes; man is capable of every wickedness under the sun..
It wasn't God or Satan that urged my father to leave when I was only three months old. It was the environment that shaped his frame and mind. I don't hate him for leaving nor do I love him. I saw him three times. The second time because he knew he was dying. The third in his coffin. And yes, I cried, but not for what I lost, but for what I never had. A father! My mother raised me. A struggling, uneducated woman with too many kids. We were not religious. My mother is still alive. Getting older, sick, and still loves to party. Like many of our men and women, she is a product of our society, a reflection of our so-called free society. Definitely free to be poor, down, and out. That's why there are so many impoverished and uneducated people in the world's richest and technologically advanced country -- because of the type of freedom that seems to be encouraged.
I love all my siblings, but have never been close to any of them. The broken home factor seemed to make us all go our seperate ways, a condition found mostly among our people here. The family is like the glue that keeps it strong: You break that and you unleash a lot of forces that hurt the individuals within the family.. Yet two milling fathers, mothers, and children are imprisoned. No one cares it seems..
Eventually, I went on my own at a young age, moving in with older women whom I like because of their maturity. I sought, but was unable to find, a woman who wanted to settle down. After 9th grade, I dropped out and began to work. I worked from 9 at night until 7 in the morning for $30 a day in a bakery. I went to many other jobs, in the Bronx Boys Club, a deli, a bowling alley, at a BMW and Saab dealership, and eventually unsatisfied with the pay and degradation that came from many of those jobs, I began to sell drugs.
I was a good worker; and honest, loyal, and hard worker. But I found way too oftenly that my jobs were tainted with the type of degradations a capitalist society encourages and defends. Racist bosses who worked you to death and paid you shit! Even though I was a hard worker, I was oftenly hungry, in need, and even homeless. Because the pay was never enough, the choices I had was either to pay the rent, or forget the rent and buy food, or forget both of those and buy clothes. In one weak moment in my life, alone and confused, I did none of the above. I went and picked up a lonely girl and did drugs.
This was my spiral downward
My Spiral Downward
I was never the type of person to hurt others. I could not find it in me to stick people up at gun-point, nor did I ever kill anyone. I never beat up on people in some type of sadistic joy. I am an animal lover, a nature lover. I don't celebrate holidays because they are lies that do more hurt for people than good. So, in a way, I see my drug addiction was a subconscious was of slowly killing myself. Giving up fighting since no one else wanted to fight. I was at the point that I wanted to die but didn't dare do it quickly or violently. I could not hurt others, so I began to hurt myself.
These people who talk about choices make me laugh. Yeah, I had plenty of choices, all of them fucked up choices. What I did not have was chances. That is what our kids need: "Real chanves!" Not choices. If you are one of those brain-washed onces who like to plave all the blame on your people, for their lot in life and our over-all global conditions, then I pity "you." Because the truth is there for all to see. The social reality. The reality of the world situation!
My medical history is unremarkable. I suffer from no diseases. I did acquire an anxiety disorder from being in solitary confinement for about 5 years, and so far, imprisoned for a decade. All this solitary time was because I was considered a leader and a threat. So they kept me segregated from the main prison population until I came to Leavenworth. In Leavenworth, I did two years in the hole. None were ever for disciplinary reasons. When I did act up, it was because i was fed up with this madness, and the solitary time was driving me insane!
I have suffered countless numbers of head injuries from abusive police and/or guards who always put me in the hospital and then justified it by saying it was in self-defense, but they were always lying. Usually my crime was for daring to "speak up!!!" Yeah, and I got shot twice at point-blank range. Why? For defending my friend. An Irish-Polish kid who I "thought" was my best friends. Here I was, again sticking up for others who won't even stick up for themselves. But yeah, I had choices. I just always seemed to choose the humanitarian kind, and it seemed to me that the majority of capitalists in the world hate the humanitarian pedigree. How else could they come up?
My oldest sister's husband is a Marine of high rank. He wanted to get me into the Marines, even with my flat feet history. But even at a young age, I was in my early teens, I held a conscious aversion to the military. Just like the aversion I had for kops and guards. In my block, kops chased us and beat us for no reason. Guards help imprison many innocent and non-violent people (check your stats!). These civil servants are supposed to be there for the people. Yet they are oftenly used by those at the upper stratum; the wealthy corporations and politicians as tools to get their way and hurt the people. When the people make legit protest, who are the ones called to smash up their voice of dissent? The goffers! The kops!
Many of these civil-servants claim to be Christian and God-fearing citizens. Yet either knowingly or unknowingly, they serve two monsters, for killing, imprisoning, and oppressing in not an order by your God, but by man. What would Jesus do? Would he be a part of Caesar's military, or work in his prisons, or help imprison the afflicted and poor? Absolutely not!
People can justify their position in life until they turn blue. But the basic truth is inescapable. They are oftenly turned against the very same people they have sworn to protect. When it is time to go to war, you're going whether it's justified or not. When you are ordered to run into a cell, you don't care if the prisoner did wrong or not. You're gonna follow orders and we already know about the kkkops in our ghettoes! They are an occupying army!
My criminal history (if that's what they want to call it) started when I was 20 years old. In other words, I was good until I started falling victim to drugs. No, I was no real criminal. I was a person who needed help, not prison. All my offenses were petty. Petty theft, loitering, grand larceny, disorderly conduct, and finally the sales of a $10 bag of narcotics, that someone else sold. It was "in prison" when I caught these 15 years from what originally began with a 2 to 4 year bid. And these 15 years were not because I did anything, but because I was a boisterous leader and prison activist in Riker's Island.. And a member of the Latin Kings, brought here by a snitch looking for a way out. I was his free ticket home!
But no; I never hurt people, and definitely not those who did not deserve it. My worse crime was to steal from my own mother and sisters due to my sickness. Our greatest crimes would be to 1) Violate the trust of those who trust us (Kids, family, and friends), 2) To remain silent when we see injustice, and 3) To take part in these inustices for personal gain!
My drug choice was heroin, and that monkey on my back was no joke! It was an ape! Heroin is highly addictive. It is a disease, one that is not understood. Too oftenly we turn our backs on our addicted brothas and systas, lock them away in prison for life when what they really need is love nad help; not the chain and whip! I never went to treatment, nor did I depend on any supernatural forces to help me quit. I just quit. This is why, I guess, You God gave us free will... Will Power!
I do not regret my past, no do I waste any mental energy in wishing I had done anything differently, because if that's the case, we'd have to go way, way back to the day when one of Columbus' ships "crashed" into my island, and instead of swimming out there to help them and repair their ship as we did, we should have killed the swine! I do not look back at the "would've - could've" scenarios. I leave from the past, educate, and agitate! I am conscious of the causes and forces that got me here. Yes, I do take the responsibility for my actions, but I know it's all deeper than choices. I do not regret my choices. I know I am a better man than a majority of military men, kops, or guards. I can not be bought or bribed. Humanity has no price, and immunity from injury or death or imprisonment is not worht purchasing at the expense of lowering oneself to the standards of the ruling power. The ruling power realize, as I do, that men and women are so simple of mind and so much dominated by their immediate needs that these deceitful rulers will always find plenty who are ready to be misled! And deceived!
I do not even regret my addiction. I am proud to have been a user. Proud to have climbed out of the abyss of addiction alone; what did not kill me made me stronger! I can say with a clean conscious that I've been there and done that! Proud that I grew out of it and learned from it. I went to my own college -- "The College & University Of Life's Hardknocks." I find it amusing of all those who want to tell you about the criminal life style, about how we think, about crime, addiction, and "choices," but they never been there. And their choices were ones which they "chose" to comform to what the establishmenttold them was the correct thing to do. They have been successfully brain-washed.
In the ancient days of the Hebrews, no matter how many hundreds of years passed, no matter how long they were in subjugation, or what land they found themselves in, when asked what they were, they'd proudly say "I am a Hebrew!" Today, many Puerto Ricans are the same.. No matter where we are born, we say "I am Puerto Rican," a descendant of the Taino/Arawak nation. "¡Que viva Puerto Rico Libre!" I am one such Boriqueño. A stranger born in a strange land and forced to accept strange ways that are completely alien to our humble nature and way of thought.
Listen ye Christian, according to your book, was it not God who dispersed us and confused our languages, thus giving us each a seperate racial and national identity? Do you, then, not consider it a crime and shame against God that you have allowed mere men to come and take your language, identity, and even land? Something that was given to you by God! Is it not a sin to "conform" and not fight back for what your God gave you? I think it is a crime. And if you think it is a sin for me to care for others, to oppose militarism and imperialism, to think in my manner and speak up proudly, then God forgive me. For I will continue to do this until my soul is releases and allowed to float back into one with my creator. Whom you call Yahweh.. "..He who causes to become."
Sometimes I think I will not be released because of the way I think. My political beliefs; in a time when to dissent is dangerous, in this not-so-free land. But I will continue to think as I do. I'd rather die thinking in my manner than live thinking as the conforminsts do. It's no secret that we all exist in our own self imposed prisons. I, being a prisoner, find that I am more free than many so-called free people, because I will not conform to how others would like me to think. I do not follow people, I do what is right. And we could never compare Powell or Marin Muñoz to Malcolm X and Dr. Albizu Campos. The latter two were not conformists. The opposed the U$ Military and were for the people 100%, never denying who they are and where they came from. Malcolm and Campos and many others were and are aware that a population of sheep in time will beget a government of wolves. Politicians should sincerely seek to improve the character of the community, but it's only getting worse for us.. and then they teach us to blame ourselves and our children. Oh, ignorant persons! Do you not know that a Sheppard who allows his sheep to fall to the wolves is not a good Sheppard, just as a prison administrator who fails to convert their prisoners into decent and productive citizens are not good prison administrators, nor a government who fails to improve the character of their states, cities, and communities are not a good government!
Year by year, decade by decade, and century by century, through the death and sufferings and cruelty that this government produces, they force goodness and honesty and truth into an even smaller corner. We live in a world that grows colder and meaner all the time. A world in which most of the examples of behavior for younger generations are very bad examples, which guarantees that each new generation will be less compassionate that the one before it. Each new generation will have a greater tolerance for lies, murder, and cruelty. We are not far removed from Hitler, Stalin, and others who killed millions. The U$ has done the same. From World War 2 until today, the U$ has killed "The Most", while acting like the world's savior. Things will change only when "The People" do something collectively. So if I'm cursed for not conforming, so be it.
This is my life and my autobiography. The pages are still turning and many chapters yet to be added. "..a livelihood belongs to every man.. and when you deprive me of it... you have almost committed murder to the whole entire race.." a Miner, 1920.
"Powerful people will not educate powerless people in what it means to take power. The aim of powerfull people is to stay in power by any means necessary."
The Saga Continues!
A prisoner of body;
Not of soul.
Find out why Blaze is in prison..
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